Moving in
When Pennsylvania Avenue started going downhill, Mimi and I found an apartment in a two-family house in a nicer part of town, Highland Avenue in Newark’s North Ward. It was near Branch Brook Park and close to my job. For a few weeks before we moved in, I stopped by for a couple hours every day on my way home, painting and putting up wallpaper. The owners, Fred and Evelyn, lived in the upstairs apartment and were happy to see the downstairs looking nice again. Our rent was very reasonable, only $90 a month. A few years later, they raised it, apologetically, to $95.
The neighborhood
With some exceptions, our neighborhood was Italian, from the family-friendly bar at one end of the block to Celentano’s latticini food store and pasta works at the other. A fancy Italian bakery was a few blocks west on Bloomfield Avenue; small and casual Vesuvio’s restaurant was a half block east. A tiny grocery store, John’s, was in the middle of our block, two steps down into what was once someone’s cellar. On the narrow shelves along one wall, there was just enough room for four units of any item you might need to make a meal or do a load of laundry. After you left, John would go into the back room and restock the shelf.
One exception to the mostly-Italian rule lived a few doors down, an Irish gent so pale that our new neighbor Josie referred to him as Mozzarella Face. My family and I were also exceptions to the rule, the worst kind, new arrivals to the neighborhood. When the window of a garage behind our back fence had a rock thrown through it, the owner implied that our five-year-old was responsible, saying “There was never any trouble in this neighborhood until your kind moved in.” I asked my son about it later. He didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but he finally told me who threw the rock. I was happy to tell the garage owner that she might want to talk to little Carlo Parisi, a budding sociopath from the other end of the block.
The Saint
It’s true – you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone. One day we heard the sound of a brass band, and a religious procession began making its way down our cobblestone street. If you’ve watched the Sicilian funeral procession that opens Godfather II, you know what they sounded like. Our landlady Evelyn ran downstairs to announce “The Saint is coming!” and asked “Do you have your money ready!?” Mimi and I just looked at each other. By nature, I am a suspicious type, and I asked why we needed money. She said “For the Saint! To put on the Saint!”, as though it was the dumbest question she’d ever heard. Mimi was brought up Catholic, but this was a new one on her too, and we looked at each other again. Evelyn said “You have to, it’s bad luck if you don’t!”
So we located some cash and stepped outside. I hate making another Godfather comparison, but if you’ve seen the feast day procession in Godfather II during which Don Fanucci meets his end, you’ve seen the feast day procession of Saint Gerard too, Saint Gerard’s on a smaller scale of course. When the procession paused for a moment, someone gave us pins and we pinned our offering to the statue of Saint Gerard Majella, patron saint of motherhood, pregnancy, and those trying to conceive.
Summer fun
During the summer, portable kiddie rides like the Whip and the Ferris Wheel came by and parked for a few hours. Looking at the pictures now, the rides look pretty tame, but the smaller kids were crazy about them. A Good Humor or Mr. Softee ice cream truck usually tagged along.
For personal fun, Fred made radio-controlled airplanes in his cellar workshop, big buzzy ones with a four-foot wingspan. I went flying with him once out in the boondocks. It was fun, but I think he was disappointed that I wasn’t interested in taking it up as a hobby myself.
The North Ward seemed to be hosting the last hurrah of the horse and wagon. A wagon carrying fresh, green produce clopped down the street regularly, and every Friday a peddler of tripe, a local favorite, came by shouting “a-tree-po! a-tree-po!”. For anyone wondering, tripe is the stomach lining of a cow. I have not tried it. Occasionally the ragman’s sad wagon came by, with him calling out his offer to buy rags and old clothes.
I was making good money on my sales route, and we bought a window air conditioner, one of the first on the block. I put strips of red reflective tape on the sides so no one coming up the alley after dark would walk into it. With Fred’s blessing, I hired an electrician to add another circuit to our box downstairs. Under the air conditioner’s friendly hum, on Memorial Day 1964, Mimi and I made another baby.
Toward the end
The father who was treasurer of our son’s Cub Scout pack skipped town with the proceeds of a candy sale they held to finance a trip. I was elected the new treasurer. When I called Scout headquarters to ask what the Scouts could do about the stolen money, basically they said “Tough”, and that the kids were out of luck. So, the kids did not get to go on their trip, and justice was not served. I regret now that I didn’t threaten to notify the newspapers; that would have made them step up, I’m sure. Of course, nowadays the Scouts have bigger embarrassments to worry about.
A young Hispanic couple moved into the second floor of the building across the street. Their electricity wasn’t on yet, but I could see generally what was going on. She was leaning with folded arms on the windowsill, watching traffic. He stepped up behind her, flipped her dress over her back and together they christened their new apartment. I didn’t watch all of it, but it was sweet. May their first child be a masculine child.
While still on Highland Avenue, I finished computer school and got my first programming job, at Condé Nast Publications in New York City. Looking back, Condé was the best place I ever worked. I loved working there, but I didn’t love getting there — if it weren’t for the commute, I probably would have stayed there until they carried me out. Instead, I took a programming job at Hess Oil in Woodbridge, with the goal of eventually moving my family to the shore.
Moving out
While I worked at Hess, we took the next step. We found a winter rental at the shore and made it our base while we looked for what optimistic people call their “Forever Home”.
Our Newark neighbors, including Mozzarella Face, whose real name was Tom, helped us load the U-Haul.
I began commuting from the shore to Hess, 40 minutes each way, always keeping an eye out for a job closer to home.
