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NORVIEW 11/4/2014 7:02:44 AM
NORVIEW - Wednesday – N0VEMBER 5, 2014
We lived in a 2nd floor apartment when we first moved to Norfolk, VA from Buffalo, NY. That was no big deal; living in the South, with mild winters, was more of ‘deal’ than I was willing to admit.
What I didn’t like about it was the apartment was on Colley Avenue. A collie was a big, shaggy dog, and this gave the kids at P.S. School No. 19 (Davis Emory Elementary) a good belly-chuckle. I was in the 8th grade at the time.
Had we remained in Buffalo l would have had to choose between Lafayette High and Kenmore High, as both were in my district but Lafayette had better football and basketball teams, and, besides, Kenmore had been built in 1920; Lafayette in 1931, the same year I was born.
The choice in Norfolk was a no-brainer: Maury High was not the only ‘white’ high school in my district in Virginia, it had the best ‘white’ football and basketball teams (we always lost to the black teams, but that never counted, anyway; the black kids all went to Booker T. Washington High, built in 1940. Granby High was the only other ‘white’ high school in Norfolk, and it was not in my district; besides at had been built in the 30’s). Leonard Maury had been built during the Lincoln Administration in 1862.
Like I said, “It was a no-brainer.” Speaking of ‘no-brainers’ I had a brother, a six-year-old, name of Jack.
Anyway, the old man, after a couple years, lost his job as men’s shoe buyer at L. Snyder’s Dept. Store; L. Snyder sold everything from pipe cleaners to refrigerators in their massive seven story 17,200 sq. ft. structure on Front Street in downtown Norfolk.
Not only did he lose his job (and the $3,120.00 a year that came with it), he also lost renewal on the lease on the 2nd floor apartment on Colley Avenue.
That was not the worst of it. Within a week, he announced that he had been re-hired by a brand new E.W. Edwards & Son, who was opening a store in Norfolk next month, and we were moving to Norview, VA.
Say what? The old man further told us he’d been hired as a Men’s ‘Assistant’ Shoe Buyer (despite Edwards was the firm that sent us from Buffalo to Norfolk in the first place). It seems E.W. Edwards & Son had also bought a strip of land in Norview (a suburb of Norfolk) about thirty miles away that included approximately 50 six-room houses which ‘transferees’ and recent ‘hirees’ with the rank of at least ‘assistant’ were eligible.)
We also learned that Archie Baldwin (the old man’s boss in Buffalo) had been canned because of ‘corporate theft’, and the new shoe buyer (from McCann’s) had been retained to stay in Buffalo for a minimum of two years, to give my old man a chance to prove himself (so he said).
“Not only that,” he went on to say, “but I have an agreement, thanks to FDR and his war-time agenda for More Jobs For More People -- they can’t let me go less than with a month’s notice -- that’s thirty days, laddies! And the new job comes with a two-fifty raise! Plus you’ll each have your own room in a house in Norview!”
(Whoopee! $3,250 a year and we get our own room!)
“And Norview High is brand-new!” was my old man’s clincher.
What he didn’t know was that I had a classmate, Reggie Gardiner, who lived with his parents in a 1st floor apartment on Princess Anne Boulevard just a block north of our place on Colley Avenue; all I had to tell them at school was I had to move in with Reggie (for economic reasons) and my continued tenure at Maury was assured.
Persuading my parents into affording my own streetcar pass ($1.00 a year, that plus 20Ȼ during the school days), were all I needed to get away with my ruse; it was as easy as pissing in the wind, and I was all set for the next two years.
During my days at Maury I started Latin 3, got a spot on the Debating Team, found myself as a Reporter and Featured Columnist for the BLARE (a bi-weekly school newspaper), and I discovered GIRLS! I wanted more than anything to get in their pants (I didn’t know EXACTLY what that meant, but it was all the football and baseball team ever talked about between games).
I never for a minute gave up my dream of becoming the first writer under 15 to make a million dollars, and while merely age thirteen that year, I sent a piece to Seventeen Magazine, though I have no idea what I said in an attached letter to their fiction editor. Anyway, I won 1st Place in their Teenage Contest, and a check for $500 was forthcoming. (I was 2,000th of the way there, and I wasn’t about to give up!)
I re-read aloud to Betty Thompson the telegram the fiction editor had sent just that morning. Betty Thompson, my current flame, walked with me home from Maury. “Congratulations!” I read, for the 200th time. “Delighted to inform the story called Poor, Poor Junior chosen 1st place winner in our contest to find most promising young writer in 1945.” Isn’t it great to be alive? I said, looking up at Betty from the telegram in my hand.
“I still wanna break up,” she said, and she smiled at me, slightly.
I said, “I never got in your pants.”
“You never will,” she said.
“Check for $500 arriving soon,” I continued reading. “Story to be published in October issue. Signed Ingrid D’artegna, fiction editor.” I still say it’s great to be alive, I said, folding the paper and putting it away in my shirt pocket.
What happened to the 500 smackeroos? I gave 400 to my old lady, and held out a 100 for myself. I used 65 dollars for an electric, portable Smith-Corona in a matching case, and the rest on paper, 8x10 envelopes and postage (all from L. Snyder’s).
In August the old man got fired again, and this time he and the old lady both wound up at J.C. Penney’s — in Watertown, NY!
