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One memory that my mother never let me forget was my 5th Birthday. I invited all the children in the house to my party and told them to each bring me each nickel. Well, at the appointed time the doorbell rang. There were all the kids holding up their nickels. This was how my mother found out that I was having a party. She had to go out and buy soda and cake. My dad had a business in that house. He was a tailor. One winter he made the coal man a suit and the coal man gave us coal. That is how I learned about barter trade. We had a piano and I took lessons, forgot EVERYTHING! Cannot play or even read music now. This is the house we lived in when both of my brothers Sonny and Junior were born. This is also where we lived when I started school, Abington Avenue School. In those days you went to morning Kindergarten when you were four, and afternoon Kindergarten at five. The only memory I have of Kindergarten is one Halloween my mother dressed me as a baby (this was my costume). I really believed the teacher when she pretended that she did not know whom I was. And this was also the time I met my lifetime friend, Philomena. They were happy years, mostly because my mom "grew up" with my sister and me. She would go to the children's Library and take out books and read to us on the front steps. My sister, Millie, and I had a long time love affair with reading. (Time has not been good to either of us as far as our eyesight is concerned and reading like we did for years is now just a memory.) I remember my mother played games with us and taught us the Charleston and Black Bottom, dances of those days. She married at 16 and had her 4th child the month she turned 25. |