My brother Robert made the journey back east to take this photo of my Mom’s old home. I lived there for about a year and I went to my first public school. The kids in Rhode Island were way ahead of the kids in Illinois. They were already in algebra, French and Latin and I didn’t have a clue. I think I was in second or third grade at the time. My grandparents didn’t own this place. They lived in the lower apartment. My grandmother made rootbeer in the old ball-and-claw bathtub and I actually drank it. If I had realized how everyone’s ass had rolled around in that ball-and-claw tub, I would have had to pass on that sweet fizzy drink.
Also, when I was a kid, I shoveled coal into the basement furnace. The coal man would come to the house and open a little iron door on the side of the house and dump a load of coal into a room in the basement. We had to have the coal room door closed when that man came by or we would have a lot of coal dust in the house. I don’t ever remember being cold in that house but it had a smell that was common to all the homes.
112 Young Street, Pawtucket, Rhode Island
1939
One of the best things about going to visit Nana and Papa was seeing Inky and Bitzie
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