Memory is a capricious human attribute that can, depending on the nature of the recollection, be delightful or disturbing.
That we can recall times, dates, numbers and unrelated events that occurred many years ago or in the recent past is wonderful to contemplate. All humans have the capacity to remember in varying degrees and there is reason to believe that other animals have memory, some to a prodigious degree. When we remember, we do so by conscious effort and when the image is replayed in our mind we have it again just as real as when it was first imprinted. But it is not always accurate. For the most part, the recollections are grossly inaccurate, exaggerated misrepresentations of the events. That is true of numbers, dates, color, place, time and events. It is with this in mind that I begin to document the memories that I have of events that either made an impression on me or impacted my life in a significant way.
That we can recall times, dates, numbers and unrelated events that occurred many years ago or in the recent past is wonderful to contemplate. All humans have the capacity to remember in varying degrees and there is reason to believe that other animals have memory, some to a prodigious degree. When we remember, we do so by conscious effort and when the image is replayed in our mind we have it again just as real as when it was first imprinted. But it is not always accurate. For the most part, the recollections are grossly inaccurate, exaggerated misrepresentations of the events. That is true of numbers, dates, color, place, time and events. It is with this in mind that I begin to document the memories that I have of events that either made an impression on me or impacted my life in a significant way.
What is my earliest recollection? That question keeps picking at my memory banks because I do have some very vivid memories of my childhood. The problem is in trying to sort out the real from what may be a product of my imagination. There is no doubt that we frequently build an event in our imagination and then store it in memory and reflect on it till it becomes real. We have words to excuse us for such fabrications; we call it 'exaggeration' and it is a major problem in the reconstruction of events using memory alone. It seems that the more the event is recalled, the more the opportunity for exaggeration and the more real it becomes. I can't really be sure of the following prose but it's as close to the real thing as I can get within the limits of my capacity to recall.
The home at 806 West Indiana Avenue in Philadelphia was a typical brownstone row house and it was the 2nd or 3rd from the corner. My paternal grandparents lived there and I would hide under the dining room table. I can see the dark color of the table and the long overhang of the tablecloth that I would crawl under. My grandfather would cut an apple for me. I would take the slices and put them on a ledge under the table and stay there till I ate them all. I was secure under the table because I was afraid of my grandmother and I can't remember why. Her name was Marie Del Marco and grandpa was John. He had a wagon drawn by a team of horses and he would take me with him and let me ride on the seat. He would walk beside the horses and lead them and I have a strange vision of the creases in the seat of his pants moving from side to side, synchronous with the motion of the horses flanks as they walked. I don't remember much of what he looked like but I can still see the seat of his pants. My grandmother was a short, round woman who would hold me on her lap. I don't remember her features nor do I have many recollections of her. The rest of the family consisted of my father’s brothers and sisters: Paul, Benjamin, Josephine, Mary, and Lousia. Most of the family lived close to each other except for Aunt Lousia who lived in Wildwood, NJ and was married to my Uncle Gaietano. Now there was a man to remember! He was large, loud, boorish and boisterous. He was the patriarch of the Bonnelli clan and they worked in the meat, produce and grocery business. The house that they lived in was much larger than anything that I had ever seen in Philadelphia. It had many rooms, a wrap around porch with rocking chairs and lounge chairs, an underground cellar with a pair of double doors that opened on the ground. There was a very large garage but best of all were the animal pens. Uncle Gaietano (none of us ever called him that, he was always 'Uncle Bonnelli to us) kept goats, sheep and pigs. I can remember the day the pigs got out and we were chasing them with Uncle Bonnelli roaring long streams of Italian curses as we gathered them up. As if to punish them, that night he slaughtered one and we had pork for dinner the next Sunday. It was common at that time for the men to make wine and he was very proud of his effort. The meals at his house were always more than anyone could finish and the wine was delivered in pitchers from the barrels, cool, ruby dark and fragrant. He would take his place at the head of the table and shout. Every word that he uttered could be heard in the next county. I can remember being afraid of him at first but in time I became accustomed to his roaring and, like the rest of the family, paid little attention to him. He ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine and told stories during the meal. The conversation would be frequently interrupted by prolonged sonorous low frequency growls that would start deep in his stomach and rumble out of his mouth. He delighted in belching. The women would just glare at him but that only fueled his need to subdue them with more burps. We all knew when the usual bluster turned to anger. He was a man prone to violence and when his fuse burned into the powder and went off, he was a man to be feared. There are many stories told about his temper but the one that I remember best involved 'Lepse', the barber.
Wildwood, NJ in the 30's was a quaint, quiet city by the seashore.. We would take the train from Philadelphia and go there on weekends. The train tracks cut the town in half and the station was at the far end. There was one main street and on it was the usual main street barbershop. Lepse the barber was a thin, rawboned stick of a man with a high forehead; deep set eyes, a sharp nose and black hair slicked down with pomade and briliantine. He had a pencil mustache and looked like someone in a Toulouse Lautrec poster. My father would take me to him for a haircut and I had to sit in the small chair for children that he would put into the barber chair. I hated it and I think Lepse didn’t want to put up with me either. The Bonnelli Meat Market and Grocery store was on the corner of the street and the barbershop was in the center. Most of the shop owners in town were Italian and they would smoke, drink and play cards with each other. Gambling was endemic in our family; horses and poker mostly. An argument started between my Uncle Bonnelli and Lepse the barber, the issue long since forgotten, and words failed. Lepse threatened to go into the barbershop for a razor but Uncle Bonnelli was faster. He ran into the store and came out with meat cleaver. What followed was Lepse running for his life with Uncle Bonnelli after him screaming curses and swinging the meat cleaver. Lepse was faster and Uncle Bonnelli was winded after a short run and by that time other people were surrounding him and imploring him to calm down. He stopped running but continued to yell curses at Lepse, threatening to chop his head off and cut the rest of him into little pieces. I was 6 or 7 years old and it was the first time that I had ever seen men fighting. I mean really fighting. I grew up with men and women hollering, yelling, hurling curses of every variety at each other but the arguments never got past the verbal stage. I was afraid to look at my Uncle after that and it took a long time before I was comfortable near him.
Uncle Paul and Aunt Genevieve were close and play an active part in my early life. Their children, my cousins, were Lorraine, Benny, and Marie. Paul was my father’s oldest brother and he had the 'Del Marco' face. Aunt Gen was bothered with arthritis and had trouble walking. I remember being impressed by the picture of her as a young woman. I thought she was beautiful. They lived in a large row house on 6th street in North Philadelphia and the house had great fascination for me. It was the type of house that fueled my imagination because it had three stories, several staircases and many rooms. It was long, narrow and linear in design such that every room proceeded from the front door to the back. The vestibule opened into the living room, then the formal dining room, followed by the 'every day' dining room, the kitchen and the shed, which led to the rear yard. I can't remember ever seeing my aunt Gen in any other room but the kitchen. I have no recollection of her ever being in the living room. Aunt Gen was the best cook in the family and she had fresh cake or pie with every meal. She would cook, Lorraine and Marie would bring the food out and we would gather at the table to wait for my Uncle Paul to sit at the head and then we would begin. After dinner we children would run upstairs to the third floor and play. Uncle Paul would go to his chair in the living room, read the paper and quickly fall asleep. My parents would bring me there on the weekends to play with my cousins. Benny was several years my senior so he was in charge of what ever we would do, he was always very kind and helpful to me. I remember him being an altar boy and going to the church with his red and white vestments for weddings on the weekend. I was taken by the fact that he knew all the prayers in Latin. What really impressed me was that he got money when he served at weddings and funerals. I decided that being and altar boy was the thing to do when I was older. I was in love with my cousin Lorraine. She was the oldest, in her mid teens when I was six. She had a beautiful face with large dark eyes and she could envelop you completely in her gaze. Marie and I are about the same age and we got along very well together. One event that looms large in my memory is the Saturday afternoon that Benny took us to the Avenue movie theatre to see the premiere of 'Frankenstein' with Boris Karlof. There was someone dressed as the monster walking around the front of the theatre and Marie and I were scared stiff before we even got to see the film. That afternoon made such an impression on us that we still mention it when we see each other..
The early years with my cousins were carefree fun and all frolic. By the time I entered my teens, I moved away from the closeness of the family and began to run with new found friends.
The home at 806 West Indiana Avenue in Philadelphia was a typical brownstone row house and it was the 2nd or 3rd from the corner. My paternal grandparents lived there and I would hide under the dining room table. I can see the dark color of the table and the long overhang of the tablecloth that I would crawl under. My grandfather would cut an apple for me. I would take the slices and put them on a ledge under the table and stay there till I ate them all. I was secure under the table because I was afraid of my grandmother and I can't remember why. Her name was Marie Del Marco and grandpa was John. He had a wagon drawn by a team of horses and he would take me with him and let me ride on the seat. He would walk beside the horses and lead them and I have a strange vision of the creases in the seat of his pants moving from side to side, synchronous with the motion of the horses flanks as they walked. I don't remember much of what he looked like but I can still see the seat of his pants. My grandmother was a short, round woman who would hold me on her lap. I don't remember her features nor do I have many recollections of her. The rest of the family consisted of my father’s brothers and sisters: Paul, Benjamin, Josephine, Mary, and Lousia. Most of the family lived close to each other except for Aunt Lousia who lived in Wildwood, NJ and was married to my Uncle Gaietano. Now there was a man to remember! He was large, loud, boorish and boisterous. He was the patriarch of the Bonnelli clan and they worked in the meat, produce and grocery business. The house that they lived in was much larger than anything that I had ever seen in Philadelphia. It had many rooms, a wrap around porch with rocking chairs and lounge chairs, an underground cellar with a pair of double doors that opened on the ground. There was a very large garage but best of all were the animal pens. Uncle Gaietano (none of us ever called him that, he was always 'Uncle Bonnelli to us) kept goats, sheep and pigs. I can remember the day the pigs got out and we were chasing them with Uncle Bonnelli roaring long streams of Italian curses as we gathered them up. As if to punish them, that night he slaughtered one and we had pork for dinner the next Sunday. It was common at that time for the men to make wine and he was very proud of his effort. The meals at his house were always more than anyone could finish and the wine was delivered in pitchers from the barrels, cool, ruby dark and fragrant. He would take his place at the head of the table and shout. Every word that he uttered could be heard in the next county. I can remember being afraid of him at first but in time I became accustomed to his roaring and, like the rest of the family, paid little attention to him. He ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine and told stories during the meal. The conversation would be frequently interrupted by prolonged sonorous low frequency growls that would start deep in his stomach and rumble out of his mouth. He delighted in belching. The women would just glare at him but that only fueled his need to subdue them with more burps. We all knew when the usual bluster turned to anger. He was a man prone to violence and when his fuse burned into the powder and went off, he was a man to be feared. There are many stories told about his temper but the one that I remember best involved 'Lepse', the barber.
Wildwood, NJ in the 30's was a quaint, quiet city by the seashore.. We would take the train from Philadelphia and go there on weekends. The train tracks cut the town in half and the station was at the far end. There was one main street and on it was the usual main street barbershop. Lepse the barber was a thin, rawboned stick of a man with a high forehead; deep set eyes, a sharp nose and black hair slicked down with pomade and briliantine. He had a pencil mustache and looked like someone in a Toulouse Lautrec poster. My father would take me to him for a haircut and I had to sit in the small chair for children that he would put into the barber chair. I hated it and I think Lepse didn’t want to put up with me either. The Bonnelli Meat Market and Grocery store was on the corner of the street and the barbershop was in the center. Most of the shop owners in town were Italian and they would smoke, drink and play cards with each other. Gambling was endemic in our family; horses and poker mostly. An argument started between my Uncle Bonnelli and Lepse the barber, the issue long since forgotten, and words failed. Lepse threatened to go into the barbershop for a razor but Uncle Bonnelli was faster. He ran into the store and came out with meat cleaver. What followed was Lepse running for his life with Uncle Bonnelli after him screaming curses and swinging the meat cleaver. Lepse was faster and Uncle Bonnelli was winded after a short run and by that time other people were surrounding him and imploring him to calm down. He stopped running but continued to yell curses at Lepse, threatening to chop his head off and cut the rest of him into little pieces. I was 6 or 7 years old and it was the first time that I had ever seen men fighting. I mean really fighting. I grew up with men and women hollering, yelling, hurling curses of every variety at each other but the arguments never got past the verbal stage. I was afraid to look at my Uncle after that and it took a long time before I was comfortable near him.
Uncle Paul and Aunt Genevieve were close and play an active part in my early life. Their children, my cousins, were Lorraine, Benny, and Marie. Paul was my father’s oldest brother and he had the 'Del Marco' face. Aunt Gen was bothered with arthritis and had trouble walking. I remember being impressed by the picture of her as a young woman. I thought she was beautiful. They lived in a large row house on 6th street in North Philadelphia and the house had great fascination for me. It was the type of house that fueled my imagination because it had three stories, several staircases and many rooms. It was long, narrow and linear in design such that every room proceeded from the front door to the back. The vestibule opened into the living room, then the formal dining room, followed by the 'every day' dining room, the kitchen and the shed, which led to the rear yard. I can't remember ever seeing my aunt Gen in any other room but the kitchen. I have no recollection of her ever being in the living room. Aunt Gen was the best cook in the family and she had fresh cake or pie with every meal. She would cook, Lorraine and Marie would bring the food out and we would gather at the table to wait for my Uncle Paul to sit at the head and then we would begin. After dinner we children would run upstairs to the third floor and play. Uncle Paul would go to his chair in the living room, read the paper and quickly fall asleep. My parents would bring me there on the weekends to play with my cousins. Benny was several years my senior so he was in charge of what ever we would do, he was always very kind and helpful to me. I remember him being an altar boy and going to the church with his red and white vestments for weddings on the weekend. I was taken by the fact that he knew all the prayers in Latin. What really impressed me was that he got money when he served at weddings and funerals. I decided that being and altar boy was the thing to do when I was older. I was in love with my cousin Lorraine. She was the oldest, in her mid teens when I was six. She had a beautiful face with large dark eyes and she could envelop you completely in her gaze. Marie and I are about the same age and we got along very well together. One event that looms large in my memory is the Saturday afternoon that Benny took us to the Avenue movie theatre to see the premiere of 'Frankenstein' with Boris Karlof. There was someone dressed as the monster walking around the front of the theatre and Marie and I were scared stiff before we even got to see the film. That afternoon made such an impression on us that we still mention it when we see each other..
The early years with my cousins were carefree fun and all frolic. By the time I entered my teens, I moved away from the closeness of the family and began to run with new found friends.
The Time Of My Life: What It Was Like Being Me.
A Family outing circa 1930
My mother's side of the family had a much larger clutch of Aunts, Uncles and cousins. Louis Tursi married Anna Matsatenta and produced six children. My mother was the oldest: Agnes (my mother) Tom, Betty, Lena, Ida and John. Tom married Dorothy and had three children, Louis, Tom and John. Betty married Dominic Racco and had two, Marie and Anna Lou; Lena married Theodore Porretti and they had twin sons, Vincent and Louis; Ida married Tony Tumollo and had three, Rita, Anthony (who was always called Sonny), and Anna. John never married and remained, as far as we know, 'without issue' as they say. Every one on my mother's side of the family lived in South Philadelphia within walking distance of each other. I was seven or eight years old when we moved to South Philly to a house at 1623 S 16th Street, directly across from my grand parents who lived at 1622 S 16th Street. It was a narrow one-way street with trolley tracks down the center. All the houses were identical in size and layout, narrow and linear with living room, dining room and kitchen with a staircase on one side of the living room leading up to the second level. Upstairs was a front bedroom, a small bedroom, bathroom, and a very small bedroom in that order. Everyone who lived on 16th Street between More and Morris was Italian. As a matter of fact, it would be hard to find anyone who was not Italian anywhere in the entire neighborhood. All the homes had brownstone steps at the front door and the women found it necessary to wash the steps at least once a day. There were a variety of vendors who would ply their goods, hawking "Ice, nickel a block" or "Vege-a-teble-as, fresh-a-fruit, wata-mell-ona, can-a-lope-a, tutte fresca!!" I grew up in the era of horse drawn wagons mixed with trucks. The ice wagon provided us with the opportunity to steal chips of ice when the iceman was making deliveries. All ice men looked like they just came down from the trees, Neanderthal in physical as well as mental attribute. Hard to tell which were lower on the evolutionary scale, the men who delivered ice or coal. I thought that they ate live chickens for lunch.
A sideline here is the coal-burning furnace in the cellar. The cellar was a place of real mystery to me when I was growing up. It was a dark and dirty place where I was not allowed to play but I would go with my mother or father when they shoveled coal into the furnace. I remember being so very confused about 'banking the fire'. For the longest time I just did not understand what they meant by 'banking the fire'. Each night my mother would remind my father, 'be sure to bank the fire' and I didn't have the slightest idea what they were talking about. In our house, asking questions is not the thing to do and asking too many questions is a real no-no; I was packed full of questions.
I grew up in the company of my twin cousins, Vince and Lou. Uncle Ted had a poolroom in South Philly on the coner of Broad and somewhere (Snyder?) and the twins lived in rooms above the store. It was great fun to be around Uncle Ted because he was big, burly, loud and loveable with the children. He would give us candy and ice cream just to keep us out of the poolroom. My grandfather had a barber shop on the corner of 16th and somewhere and what I remember most about it was a long shelf that contained the shaving mugs of the patrons and the fact that we were not allowed to go into the back room of the barber shop. The place always had the sweet aroma of bay rum after-shave mixed with cigar smoke. We children were not permitted to go into the back room of the barbershop and I always wondered why. As I grew older it became clear to me that the back room of the barbershop was where the gamblers and the whores would gather. More gamblers than whores maybe, but off limits to the children.
|n my early teens we moved back to south Philadelphia. I think that the business that my father had was on the rocks and we were in need of funds. My father had a new store at Front and Allegheny Ave and was doing well but we somehow lost the home at 806 W Indiana and moved to 16th street in South Philly. I remember going to the 5&10 cent store, to the corner drug store to buy cigars and ice cream. I remember the 'Chinks'; it was a second hand store run by Chinese but I did not know that they were Chinese till I was in high school. Every one called them 'Chinks' and to me, that is what they were. There was a school for orphans at the corner of 15th and Morris and each morning all the children would march down the street to Drexel Public School. What I remember most about them was that they all looked alike. They all had the same clothes; the same shoes, the same colors and the boys all had the same haircuts. It looked like someone put a soup bowl on their heads and cut a line around it. Each morning they would march to school, each afternoon they would march back to the home and I never saw them other than that.
There are several significant occurrences that I remember about those days. One was the fight that I picked with one of the boys from another block. His name was Nicky and he was always calling me names. One day I went for him and the fight started. It was a disaster for me because soon after it started, he hit me on the nose, it hurt and started to bleed and I ran away. When I got home I hated what I did. It was the last time I ran away from a fight. I was good at starting fights but I don't remember winning many....I lost most of them but I never ran away again.
Then there was the time that I was invited to go to a secret meeting with some of the 'big' boys on the block. I don't remember their names but I can still see one of them clearly. He was about 15, dark curly black hair and a bit on the scroungy side. He was the leader and we met in his house one afternoon. His parents were both working and it was after school. There were about 5 of us and we gathered in the living room and he locked the door, closed the blinds and then everyone unzipped their fly and out came their peckers. I was told to do the same and I did. It was the first time that I realized that other boys masturbated. We all jacked off and swore never to tell anyone about our secret club. We were to meet as often as possible and enjoy ourselves. I remember being afraid that we would get caught so I never went back. I was threatened by the gang to keep my mouth shut, which I did.
The remaining years were filled with the usual growing pains. The boys on the street corner educated me about sex, crime, baseball and all the information that young boys need.
One incident that need be recorded is when I got into trouble with the law. It was a bit of shop lifting at the 5&10 cent store. The choice was the legal system or the Catholic Protectory, a synonym for reform school. I was sent there for the shorter part of a year and then remanded to the care of my parents. I vowed that I would never get in that position ever again. When I tell the story now in later life it never fails to bring raised eyebrows and cool looks. "Did you say....Reform School???" Looking back, it was not a very big issue, I went to the school a few blocks away and came home at night. It was not a lock up in the sense of the word but it always gave that connotation. However my Mother made sure I did not get out of the house for a long time.
A sideline here is the coal-burning furnace in the cellar. The cellar was a place of real mystery to me when I was growing up. It was a dark and dirty place where I was not allowed to play but I would go with my mother or father when they shoveled coal into the furnace. I remember being so very confused about 'banking the fire'. For the longest time I just did not understand what they meant by 'banking the fire'. Each night my mother would remind my father, 'be sure to bank the fire' and I didn't have the slightest idea what they were talking about. In our house, asking questions is not the thing to do and asking too many questions is a real no-no; I was packed full of questions.
I grew up in the company of my twin cousins, Vince and Lou. Uncle Ted had a poolroom in South Philly on the coner of Broad and somewhere (Snyder?) and the twins lived in rooms above the store. It was great fun to be around Uncle Ted because he was big, burly, loud and loveable with the children. He would give us candy and ice cream just to keep us out of the poolroom. My grandfather had a barber shop on the corner of 16th and somewhere and what I remember most about it was a long shelf that contained the shaving mugs of the patrons and the fact that we were not allowed to go into the back room of the barber shop. The place always had the sweet aroma of bay rum after-shave mixed with cigar smoke. We children were not permitted to go into the back room of the barbershop and I always wondered why. As I grew older it became clear to me that the back room of the barbershop was where the gamblers and the whores would gather. More gamblers than whores maybe, but off limits to the children.
|n my early teens we moved back to south Philadelphia. I think that the business that my father had was on the rocks and we were in need of funds. My father had a new store at Front and Allegheny Ave and was doing well but we somehow lost the home at 806 W Indiana and moved to 16th street in South Philly. I remember going to the 5&10 cent store, to the corner drug store to buy cigars and ice cream. I remember the 'Chinks'; it was a second hand store run by Chinese but I did not know that they were Chinese till I was in high school. Every one called them 'Chinks' and to me, that is what they were. There was a school for orphans at the corner of 15th and Morris and each morning all the children would march down the street to Drexel Public School. What I remember most about them was that they all looked alike. They all had the same clothes; the same shoes, the same colors and the boys all had the same haircuts. It looked like someone put a soup bowl on their heads and cut a line around it. Each morning they would march to school, each afternoon they would march back to the home and I never saw them other than that.
There are several significant occurrences that I remember about those days. One was the fight that I picked with one of the boys from another block. His name was Nicky and he was always calling me names. One day I went for him and the fight started. It was a disaster for me because soon after it started, he hit me on the nose, it hurt and started to bleed and I ran away. When I got home I hated what I did. It was the last time I ran away from a fight. I was good at starting fights but I don't remember winning many....I lost most of them but I never ran away again.
Then there was the time that I was invited to go to a secret meeting with some of the 'big' boys on the block. I don't remember their names but I can still see one of them clearly. He was about 15, dark curly black hair and a bit on the scroungy side. He was the leader and we met in his house one afternoon. His parents were both working and it was after school. There were about 5 of us and we gathered in the living room and he locked the door, closed the blinds and then everyone unzipped their fly and out came their peckers. I was told to do the same and I did. It was the first time that I realized that other boys masturbated. We all jacked off and swore never to tell anyone about our secret club. We were to meet as often as possible and enjoy ourselves. I remember being afraid that we would get caught so I never went back. I was threatened by the gang to keep my mouth shut, which I did.
The remaining years were filled with the usual growing pains. The boys on the street corner educated me about sex, crime, baseball and all the information that young boys need.
One incident that need be recorded is when I got into trouble with the law. It was a bit of shop lifting at the 5&10 cent store. The choice was the legal system or the Catholic Protectory, a synonym for reform school. I was sent there for the shorter part of a year and then remanded to the care of my parents. I vowed that I would never get in that position ever again. When I tell the story now in later life it never fails to bring raised eyebrows and cool looks. "Did you say....Reform School???" Looking back, it was not a very big issue, I went to the school a few blocks away and came home at night. It was not a lock up in the sense of the word but it always gave that connotation. However my Mother made sure I did not get out of the house for a long time.