THOUGHTS ON EAST HARLEM

A few weeks ago was my Aunt Margie’s Birthday, she would have been 96 years old. My cousin Anthony posted a tribute on Facebook to her (his mother) on her birthday. Aunt Margie was a character, as were most of my aunts and uncles. We had a very large family; the Tocco children numbered 14 – eight boys and six girls. Sundays at my grandparents were madness. Grandma and my aunts would cook the meals, but my mother being the oldest, sat, and did nothing. It was always Aunt Rose, Aunt Margie, and Aunt Carmela. If we were poor, you would never be able to tell from the food on the table. As the saying goes…” from soup to nuts” literally.

FAMILY MEANT EVERYTHING

My cousin Anthony’s post included an old newspaper article about a fire in my grandparents’ apartment that killed my youngest cousin Angela. It brought back so many memories and it got me thinking about that tragic day back in March 1954. I was a kid walking home from the Harlem House on 116th Street to our apartment on 113th First Avenue. I’ll never forget it. As I was walking along First Avenue, I could see smoke and fire trucks in the near distance. Little did I realize that it was my grandparents’ apartment. One sentence in the article struck me “the tenement was in slum area being cleared…” I had never thought of them that way. Aunt Carmela and her husband, my Uncle Mattie, lived on the third floor of the same apartment building. Thankfully the firemen contained the fire and their apartment was intact. Aunt Carmela is still with us, God Bless her she will be 93 in December.

That tragic day Aunt Margie had gone to Lombardi’s Market to buy a few groceries for dinner and left Angela asleep on my Uncle Louie’s bed. My grandmother was in the kitchen of the first-floor apartment cooking. Grandma had candles on her bureau in her bedroom in front of the saint figurines with the window open. The curtains caught fire and everything went up in flames. I have to admit those tenement houses were fire traps. When I got there Uncle Chick was standing in the next building’s doorway leaning on the door frame with his head on his arm. His entire head of hair was singed from trying to get through the front door of the apartment. All my uncles were outside the building, they had tried getting in the apartment too. My Aunt Margie was outside the building as well, her hair was sticking out every which way. She had been pulling on it traumatized and in utter disbelief at what was happening. My Uncle Maxie was the only one at home, he had just got home from work and was in the shower. He smelled the smoke and got out. He grabbed my grandmother and tried getting her out of the apartment. She was crying trying to tell him in her broken English that the baby was in the bedroom. She cried “Angelina, Angelina,” but he thought she was crying about my Aunt Angie who had died a few years earlier at the age of 21. The baby Angela was named after Aunt Angie, who was my Aunt Carmela’s twin. The three of them were very close, my Aunt Angie was a saint.

After that day, my Aunt Margie and Uncle Chick were a mess. It took a very long time for them to get back to almost normal, especially my aunt. I think it got better when Anthony was born. You see, because of the trauma on that fateful day, it took quite some time for Aunt Margie to go full-term on a pregnancy. My Aunt Carmela would go to church every day to pray to St. Anthony that Aunt Margie wouldn’t have another miscarriage. Thankfully she didn’t, she had Anthony.

EAST HARLEM TENEMENTS

It never occurred to me, especially back then, that we were living in a “slum area.” Although the tenement apartments were old, I never thought of East Harlem as a slum. What I do remember is that everyone knew everyone. The doors were never locked; you knew all your neighbors. When there was trouble, everyone helped out. We didn’t know what it was to hire a babysitter; we just went to one of our relatives in the building or nearby and stayed there for the night. We played outdoors on 113th street between First and Second Avenue with cement mini stoops that my Uncle Maxie made. Old fruit crates and roller skates were made into skate crate racers. Tops of tomato cans we used as a patsy for hopscotch and empty soda cans for “kick the can.” We also played Johnny on the Pony…Cop and the Moe. I can remember listening to the Yankees in the World Series on the brown boxed radio, which was sitting on a shelf my uncles built in front of my grandfather’s candy store, while they played poker or morra. The loser in morra had to drink a 32 oz. bottle of beer without stopping. Uncle Mikey “Fish” drank so much, I watched him throw up behind a car when I was about eight years old.

SOMETIMES MONEY REALLY ISN’T EVERYTHING

The games we had didn’t cost a lot, some didn’t cost anything. Kids today have $500 video games and $1,000 laptops. If we were poor, we didn’t know it. We made the best of what little we had and had a great childhood. I would rather have my childhood than the one my grandchildren are living in now. Kids back then had fun…we came home from school, changed into our play clothes, did our homework, and ran outside to play with our friends. We didn’t get home until dinnertime. Half the times when I didn’t have homework I would go straight to playing with the other kids. When I came home, my dress was usually torn. My mom would yell because she had to sew my dress. We were always climbing fences, especially in Jefferson Park. Girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school. We had so much fun, our parents had to call out the window for us to come home. Just like in the commercial for Prince Spaghetti Day …”Annthoony.” Only Wednesday wasn’t the only day we ate macaroni.

In the summertime, we were gone all day. Jefferson Pool was right across the street from our house. For 25 cents we would swim until they threw us out. I remember the horse trough in front of Jefferson Pool. We would wait for our friends there and go in together. When we got a little older and the pool closed at night, we would climb over the fence at the gate across from the White House and swim until we got tired or the cops would come and kick us out. Sometimes, my cousins and I would take a blanket and a pillow and sleep out on the fire escapes….those were the best of times. When I look at my children and grandchildren, I know how much they would have loved it! I feel sad that they would never know how simple life was back then.

Slum area? Maybe, but I wouldn’t trade those memories for all the tea in China.