Earliest Memories

EARLIEST MEMORIES

1338 East Sharpneck Street,

Philadelphia, PA
1957-1961

I was born in 1955 and lived in North Philadelphia until August 1962.  I had just turned 7 at the time of the move.  These are the few memories of I have of this time in my life.

• Starting first grade at St. Raymond’s Grade School in West oak Lane.  Sister Angela Marie was my teacher and I thought she was beautiful.
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• My dad bought a 1957 Plymouth Chrysler in 1960. It was olive green and mint green. It had big fins in the back and the 8 of us would ride in that thing.  My dad drove, as my mother didn’t have a license. She held a baby.  Kathy, the oldest, sat in the middle front seat and the other four sat in the back seat.  There were no seat belts.  And when our grandparents joined us. Tow of us had to stand in the back and hold on to the front seat headrests.
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• Playing pinkie ball against the garage doors in the alleyways.
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• Christmas mornings: my parents barracked the top of the steps and made us have breakfast before we were allowed to run downstairs and rip all of the gifts apart.  That breakfast was just torturous.
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• Pulling gum off the sidewalk and chewing it. The gun was filled with dirt and grit and filthy but that didn’t matter to me.
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•  I had very long, blonde hair.  It was down to my waist and so blonde, it was almost white.  People constantly touched my hair, ran their fingers through it and played with it without any thought of invading my space. One time, an older girl scooped me up and told me she was going to run off with me and my hair.  I was frightened so I squirmed until I could bite her to release me. She squealed and dropped me so fast. And I ran home. Her mother came over and showed my mother the bite and my mother cut my hair that afternoon.
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• My uncle was a US Marine.  He was tall, blonde and handsome. He would come to visit us on rare occasions and he would be in uniform and I would be so happy to see him.
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• Betty Devlin was my best friend.
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• Cindy Bashian was Jewish and had much older brothers and everyone saw this family as so different because they were not Catholic like the rest of us.
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• My father spent time with me to teach me some basic math skills. I remember being just a bit ahead of my class in that first couple of weeks of first grade.
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• Betty Devlin went to kindergarten but I didn’t because my mother thought I was too short to start school.
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• My grandparents had a blue car and my grandfather let me sit in the front seat with him.
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• Bathing with my siblings in the tub. One kid would jump in and jump out and another kid would take his place.
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• The four girls shared a room.  Each of us had a bed against a wall, our only private space in the world.  Kathy, the oldest, sang to us every night.  Mostly she sang I’m’ A Traveling Man by Ricky Nelson. I loved that song.  Other times, she sang show tunes. 

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