We had scouted out all the patches of wild blackberries and raspberries in the surrounding area, and throughout the early summer, we would go out to pick them in the early morning for Mom to prepare. One summer, we spent time picking red raspberries at Bisackey's Farm for 5 cents a pint. We found that it takes an awful lot of little raspberries to fill a pint, and soon gave that job up.
In the fall, we would take a sack and go up the cemetery road to pick the black walnuts that had fallen to the ground from the group of trees along the road. We would bring them back and dump them on the ground, then stomp on them to remove the blackened juicy skins on the outside of the walnuts.
We would set a ladder against the chicken coop and carry the nuts to the roof where we spread them out to thoroughly dry. Without gloves, our hands were stained a greenish black color that even the harsh P&G soap couldn't remove.
For years, it was our habit to go out in early September to an abandoned orchard near the country club to pick apples and sometimes pears. We usually did this in the afternoon of the first day of school, which was always a half day. We would put them in our cellar in a bushel, with layers of newspaper to keep them from touching and spoiling too quickly, and some of them lasted until about Thanksgiving Day.
The large house next to us was once the home of the superintendent of a large local mine called the Catsburg Mine. A one time, part of the hill above had been levelled out and a tennis court with a fence around it had been built. By the time we were growing up, the house was still standing and occupied by the Hudock family, and the superintendent had long been gone and the fence around the tennis court had been removed. But it was still a great place for kids to play.
There was a large field above the "tennis court' which was always known as the Mule Field. It got its name because the mules who pulled the coal cars out of old Catsburg Mine would be put there to graze at the end of the workshift. This is where Lou and I later built houses, and Lou still lives there.
Along with our friends in the neighborhood, Al Filipelli, Tom Fagan, Donny Boyd and others, we could play kickball, touch football, and baseball on the tennis court area. The problem with baseball was that off the flat area, it was all downhill so any ball that got through rolled a long way.
As kids, none of us ever had a bicycle. Our folks just couldn't afford one, but I have no recollection of feeling deprived. The nearest thing we had to a bicycle was a second-hand scooter which was great in going down hill on Jones Street. Dad bought us a punching bag that was hung in our storage shed at the top of our lot. It was a great way to let off steam, and we became quite proficient in keeping it going in a rhythmic beat.
I remember the time that a baseball was hit too hard and rolled on down the bank and broke one of the panes in the cellar window - the one that we dumped the coal through. Dad wasn't home, and Mom gave us money to go to the hardware store to get a replacement piece. We took out the broken pane and the putty, and replaced it.
Baseball was one of our greatest interests as kids. Lou and I would play catch every day in the shade of the large maple tree in our back yard. I would be the pitcher and he would be the catcher. He would set his glove as a target, I would wind up and try to throw to that spot. At a later time, both he and I played those positions for the Monongahela High School baseball team.
During the Depression years, sandlot baseball was one of the major entertainments for the area. The local team, the Mononghela Merchants, managed by Harry Sickles, would play at "Yankee Field" about a half mile south of our home. It was located between the railroad tracks and the river. Right field ended against a large slate dump. About a hundred people would usually attend the games, standing or sitting on chairs they had brought along.
Their schedule was games on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and often a Sunday afternoon game. The league covered a wide area in the Mon Valley. The age of the players extended from the teens to into the 40s, and there was a high level of baseball ability. Money to support the team was by raffles and the "hat" that was passed for donations at each game.
Badly scuffed baseballs and cracked bats were given to younger kids. It was the only way they could obtain them. We would take the cracked bats home to Dad, and using his cobbler tacks, he would reinforce them as best he could. When we used them, we were always careful to hold them while batting with the cracked portion vertically to reduce the strain on the bat when it hit the ball.
Our local gang often played pickup games along the river side of the railroad tracks beside the slate dump where there was a cinder area. It wasn't wide enough to have a regular size field for even youngsters, but it was handy to us, and close enough to the river beach for an occasional swim.
We would have to stop playing when a train hauling coal cars approached, so we would play a game of guessing the number of cars, then counting them to find the winning guess. As soon as the train passed by, we would go back to our ball game. There was spilled coal along the tracks which fell from the heaped up coal cars when the train jerked the cars when starting up. People would pick up this coal for use at home, carrying it in a burlap sack or a buskel. Sometimes folks would help out the process by climbing on stopped trains and throwing off some lumps.
Playing on cinders day after day, the threads on the scuffed balls would gradually get torn and the cover would loosen. We used it until the cover came off. Then we would take it home and cover it with black electrical tape. It wasn't as round as before but it worked fine until the tape split, and then we would have to re-tape it. We were having fun, and never thought of ourselves as under-privileged.
The summer Lou turned 14, in 1936, he started to caddy at the Monongahela Country Club, about 1 1/12 miles up Route 88 from our place. When I turned 14 and obtained the necessary Working Papers, I also started to caddy. It was a private club, and the members were mostly professional people from the nearby towns. All the caddies put their name on the board, and as caddies were needed, the caddy master would call out the names, starting from the top of the list.
If you were not there, you missed your turn and had to walk back out and put your name on the bottom, or have someone going out to the course add your name to the bottom of the list. Sometimes you could spend the entire day at the caddy shack without getting called. It became a guessing game to figure out how far up on the list you would be on a certain day. If we had caddied on a certain day, we would tell the other when he came home where he stood on the list. Wednesday afternoons, when doctors closed their offices, and weekends were the busiest times.
The pay scale at first was 50 cents for 18 holes, and later raiseup to 75 cents. Occasionally, you were tipped, but we soon found that not all professionals are the best tippers. We disliked caddying on Ladies Day because of the slow pace they played. When the course was crowded, caddies sometimes carried double - two bags. There were no pull carts then, and some bags were monsters. Fortunately, the long walk home after a tiring day was all down hill.
While waiting around to be called, we spent time hunting for lost balls in th woods and high grass out-of-bounds and swinging and chipping with an old club one of the members had given us. One of the best things in the job was being able to play the course on Monday morning. Most members who left their clubs at the country club gave a caddy permission to use them. Since I am left-handed, I started out playing with right-handed clubs. It wasn't until after I was married that I bought a set of left-handed clubs.
After finishing caddying, hot and sweaty, we would sometimes go to the back door of the country club kitchen and buy a frozen candy bar for a nickel. Powerhouse was the best bargain. It was a full 6 inches long, not the puny 2 inch ones today in a 5 inch package.
On our way home, we would walk along the road which paralleled the first two holes on the course. We knew all the likely places where out-of-bounds balls might be lost, and checked these places out looking for them. This gave us balls for our Monday morning golf also and for chipping around waiting for our turn to caddy. In season, we would sometimes stop at two mulberry trees along the road on the way home, climb them on the step-like branches, and eat our fill of the berries.
In the winter, we would sled ride at night on the Cemetery Road portion of Route 88. We had a sled with oak runners and it wasn't as fast as the ones with steel runners. There were very few cinder trucks operating then. There were also very few cars running at night in the winter, especially in snowy weather. Along the roads at the hills, there were wooden boxes find with rough coal cinders which were spread by hand on the steepest hills.
The Cemetery Hill road runs into Main Street in a "T" and only the area near the intersection was cindered. On a good snowfall which had been packed a little with some car traffic, we could get a good start above our house and have a great ride down to the intersection where the cinders would stop us from going out on Main Street. At about 6 or 7 in the evening the traffic was so light that we felt safe to get out of the way of an occasional car that might come by, since we would have a warning by the car lights a long way off, and could drag our feet to slow down and stop our sled.
Growing up, in the early days, Mom made all of our clothes. During the 30s, the only place I can recall shopping for shoes and other clothes was the Workingman's Store where the prices were the lowest. The largest store in town was an A&P on main street near the entrance to the river bridge. The only thing I can remember buying there was coffee. You would pick out the brand you wanted, set the dial to regular and dump it into the grinder. Most supermarkets today now give you a choice of grinding your own.
My favorite store was Isaly near Third Street. We all loved the chipped ham - today sometimes called chopped - which was originated by the Isaly chain. The main attraction was their ice cream section There were at least 20 ice cream flavor choices, all in large containers that you could view. For a nickel we could get one scoop, but it was a special scoop - over six inches long and tapered to a point on the top. We had to eat and lick fast to keep it from dripping.
In those days, there wasn't any trash collection outside of the towns. Trash dumps developed in spots along rural roads, in ravines, and farmers dug a pit on their land for trash. When we moved to South Bend in the 1960's there still wasn't any formal trash collection. In the early years, we paid a local man to haul it to an abandoned strip mine at the Keystone Station area.
In the 30's, as youngsters, Lou and I would occasionally hunt at trash areas to pick up iron and aluminum items, old steel cables, and even aluminum bottle caps, large bones, anything thrown away and carry them to the junkyard below the hill to sell for spending money. A morning scavenger hunt might net 50 cents to a dollar.
My Aunt Kay worked during the golf season at the country club restaurant for many years until she married Lou Sabatini from the town of Donora. Aunt Margaret worked as an AT&T telephone operator at their switchboard center in Charleroi, about 4 miles south of Monongahlea. Margaret, who remained single, was employed there for about 40 years, working her way up to the center's supervisor for her last ten years. She never learned to drive and either rode the street car to work or rode with a fellow employee, who worked the same shift.
In the early fall, we got up at 5:30, when it was still foggy, and walked with him out to the the country club and picked mushrooms on the sloped 8th fairway beside the railroad tunnel. When we came back, we went to his house to watch him put them in a large pot of boiling water with a silver spoon in it. Supposedly, if the silver spoon didn't turn black, they were ok to eat.
Grandpa developed stomach cancer and suffered a lot, but never complained. According to Lou, our mother took care of her dad, and she told Lou that this was the hardest thing she ever did. Lou has since told me, "Everyone should be like him."
Movies were very important during the hard times most people faced. They offered an escape from reality. There were two movie houses in Monongahela, the Anton and the Bentley. There were usually westerns or Tarazan movies on Saturdays, sometimes even a double-feature. There were also cartoons and a newsreel . They ran continuously and patrons could enter and leave at any time. When it was a good movie, we sometimes sat through it twice.
Back then, instead of playing the Lottery, people would play the Numbers, which was based on the last three numbers, in order, of the daily U.S. Treasury report in all newspapers. Playing the "Numbers" was considered gambling, and gambling was illegal during that period. But like liquor being illegal at the time under Prohibition, speakeasy bars were common and the authorities usually looked the other way. You could play the three numbers straight to win , or spend more to "box them" which meant you would win even if they weren't in the right sequence.
Numbers writers were everywhere, in barber shops, stores, and there even were numbers writers who made daily home calls to their regular customers. Payment was usually 600 to 1, which meant that for a penny you could win $6.00.
Tony was the oldest son and not much interested in sports and outdoor activities at this time. He was more introverted that Lou and me, and would much rather spend his time in reading. So it was natural that Lou and I, who were closer in age, would spend more of our time together.
We roamed the woods in back of our house, swinging well out on vines hanging from trees on the steep slope. We knew the rock ledges where bands of garter snakes would sun themselves to warm up, and built loop snares at the end of a stick to catch them. Occasionally we would skin them, having visions of drying them and making snake-skin pouches.
In the early spring, we would always take paper bags and walk up to the country club area to pick the smaller, tender dandelions before they had blossomed. Sometimes we ate them fresh as a salad with onions and an oil and vinegar Italian dressing. Dad like them boiled and well drained, then mixed with cut-up hard-boiled eggs. At that time, we didn't know that dandelions are one of the richest sources of vitamins and minerals among vegetables. We picked them because they were free, filled us up, and we liked the taste.
There were also some concrete abutments standing which probably held water tanks at one time. The field was slightly overgrown with weeds and some small trees, but had a fairly flat portion where we often played regular football. Occasionally, we would play a football game there against another group of kids in the area.
Unbelievably, the same thing happened about a week later even though Mom had told us to be more careful. Dad was home this time and Mom was upset and she told him about the previous accident. Dad looked sternly at us and told us to fix it again, and to put a board in front of the window.
I had grown up so used to using scuffed or tape baseballs that at first, I had a hard time learning to throw with the shiny new baseballs we used when I played for the high school team.
One of the jobs I always disliked was cutting our yard with a reel-type push mower. Most of our lawn was quite hilly and difficult to cut, especially if it was let to grow a little high. Sometimes we had to push hard, and then back up and push again to gradually cut our way through. Dad would regularly sharpen the blades, but looking back, we should have raised a couple of goats to keep it grazed down.
My mother' s father lived next door to us with his wife and her two step-sisters, Margaret and Kathryn. Grandpa Vogini was a great guy. He raised chickens and every morning he would take the eggs to his son Jack's store. Lou told me that he would sometimes meet him on the way to school, and Grandpa would give him a dime or more. I can remember many times he would call me to the side yard and slip me a quarter so we boys could go to the movies.
Aunts Kay and Margaret often bought little presents for us when they took their trips by trolly to Pittsburgh to shop. On one their trips, before I had started school, they came back with yellow slickers for Tony and Lou to wear to school on rainy days. I can remember crying because I didn't get one. On their next trip ( which I think was a special one), they came home with one for me. They were always good and very special people for the rest of their lives.