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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
SNOW 11/26/2014 5:31:15 PM
It snowed heavily (at least 1,168”) in Buffalo, New York the other night (week of Monday, Nov. 17th, and according to Carl Housemann "the worst I have ever seen!”), I was reminded that I used to get 35Ȼ for shoveling off the sidewalk in front of houses. I was further reminded that I spent my school years, from 1st to 8th grade, in the ‘snow belt’. I never lived anywhere it did not snow! The ‘South’ was only a rumor which I heard stories about.
From Dover to Youngstown, Ohio to Watertown, Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester — the four last in New York state — Buffalo and Rochester being the longest, as far as a residency was concerned.
Dover and Youngstown, Ohio made no impression on me other than at our place in Youngstown where I forgot to re-latch the screen in our 2nd floor bedroom, allowing the kid brother (6-months old) to roll out into the rock garden below.
Rushed to the hospital, we were told the kid had a ‘fractured skull’, but since they neither admitted him for observation nor came to their diagnoses using an X-ray machine, I convinced my parents the ER doctor was interested only in our money.
I entered 3rd grade in while in Watertown and it was there that I met Dave and Don Hamilton and their assorted family: Ward and Irene Hamilton, (the mother and father) and Rosemary (the older sister). I also met Roberta Rassley (my first girlfriend), and Ann Townsend (the village whore, not that I knew what a ‘whore’ was back then).
Don (a cripple with braces and a crutch), made up for it being he was built like what was eventually called The Hulk; Dave was as slight and small as Don was bulky and big.
I often played ‘scrimmage football’, until it got too rough, with the boys in the living room of their house. We played across the street in the vacant lot when it was not snowing.
The saddest day I remember was the day I said goodbye forever to Dave, Don, Roberta and Ann in the stairway of Ann’s apartment behind our house on Woodruff Street. I honestly thought everyone’s old man was an assistant shoe buyer, and we were together for only what was to be a matter of time.
The next place was in Syracuse, and this was on Madison St. at the top of a tremendous hill that had no beginning and no end. This was a perpetual hill.
When you managed to make three feet forward, you slid back five. There were many houses on the hill; people must have had dinner long after nine.
Public transportation was at the bottom, as was the drug store, the food store, and every market we wanted to do business with. Because my maternal Grandma, (Grandpa had lost his job in Kenton, Ohio, where my kid brother was born), — and my mother’s baby sister, Aunt Stevie now lived with us, plus the Grandparents, I had to go to the stores at the bottom of the hill more often than not.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. What was, was the number of times I had to go to the — dentist. And Dr. Leonard Elegen, D.D.S. was located downtown, on Elm St. This meant taking a bus from the bottom of the gigantic hill, returning to the bottom of the gigantic hill, climbing the 100 steps. . . (what do you mean I forgot to mention l00 steps?).
There were 100 stairs constructed alongside side of the bottom of the hill, from the very bottom where the public transportation was, and all the stores were, and you had to conquer these stairs first before tackling the hill itself.
Anyway, I’m sorry for not mentioning it sooner, but I was distracted about the dentist, and I just had to tell you about him; all the time I was in Syracuse I had bad teeth and saw him at least 10,000 times!
The best thing was that Madison Ave. Elementary School was located on Madison Avenue, on the very street I lived on, at the top of that awful hill! I couldn’t have asked for a better deal.
We lived in Syracuse for a full year and a half — two summers, 5,280 trips down and up the infamous hill. By the time we left the area, I was ten years old, and the U.S. was at war.
“We’ll be murdered in our beds, we will!” cried my Grandmother, as she ran from room to room, screaming in terror.
“Those Japs fight with knives, mark me words! We’ll be all slaughtered in our beds!”
As a consolation, the old man bought me a BB gun, a Red Rider model (I promptly shot myself in the middle finger of my right hand), and we moved to Buffalo.
(To be continued Wednesday, Dec. 3rd).
