A Thousand Miles Away

From the Mt. Auburn Years



A Thousand Miles Away



After we’d sold our house on Sander Street to the University, we moved to Mt. Auburn, 123 Inwood Place, about a mile from our old house.

In 1957, the little white houses on Inwood Place stood neat and proud down the left side of the narrow street. On the right side, was the Children’s Convalescent Home with its jail-like metal fence to keep the pale, sickly kids from escaping onto our street.

Several years ago, Gary and I drove to Inwood Place  to get a photo for my albums, and this is what we saw.

123 Inwood Place, over 40 years later

I was shocked that the street and its houses had deteriorated to this degree.  Driving to the end of the street toward Inwood Park, the place began appearing like a war-torn foreign village.

When we’d first moved here, I remember thinking of one of my favorite fifties’ tunes “A Thousand Miles Away,” and that’s how I felt, so far away from my old home and my childhood friends, all the kids in my class at St. George School.

I was still a child when we moved. It didn’t take long for me to turn into a street-savvy teenager here in this new neighborhood.

I remember having the daylights scared out of me on one of my first walks through the park on my way home from school when a tall boy with a blond crewcut, looking about 18, stepped out in front of me on the path and put his hand on my shoulder.

The path through the park led down from Hollister Street into a hollow and then back up to the baseball field and steps leading up to Inwood Place.  My attacker must have been lurking in some of the bushes.

It didn’t take me but a second to do what I’d been taught: I screamed at the top of my lungs, aimed my knee toward his groin, and took off running for all I was worth.

As I was sprinting up the hill, a troop of Brownies with their leader were walking down the path. I didn’t pause to explain why I’d just screamed. I never slowed down one bit. I just flew by them and ran across the baseball field and up the steps and didn’t stop until I was inside my front door.

I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten in trouble crossing through the park. My new friend, Jackie, up the street from us on Inwood Place, had a man expose himself to her as she was walking the path. Even my father got jumped late one night in the same spot and came home minus his wallet and with a bloody nose.

Life had moved up a notch on the danger scale with our move from Sander Street.

Nice as our little street looked, one street over, behind our back yards, was Glencoe Place and tenement houses occupied by poor families, and a little grocery store where my mother shopped on credit.

Rats come up from there, through our back yards. One big one made its way into our kitchen bread drawer, and when my mom went to open it one morning to make toast, the ugly rodent jumped out.

Mom made my father nail the drawer shut, never to be opened again, the entire time we lived there.


My new teenage friends in Mt. Auburn hung out at Dunbar’s Drugstore, across the street from Christ Hospital.  We drank cherry Cokes and real chocolate malts at the soda fountain and hung out on the corner by the mailbox.  The guys in the crowd had their own hot rod club, the “Dragon Wagons.” We girls were the “Dragonettes.” I am not kidding.

Yes, the boys wore black leather jackets and sported duck-tail hair styles. The girls wore jeans and big, white, man-size shirts  Girls were still required to wear dresses or skirts in school and at church, but we lived in Levi’s at all other times.

One Saturday afternoon my friend Jackie and I were drinking our Cokes at Dunbar’s, when two little girls came in, one older than the other. The biggest girl looked to be about 9 or 10, the little one about 5 or 6. The oldest girl helped the small one onto a red leather stool, ordered her a chocolate malt and pushed a quarter across the counter.

The small girl nearly inhaled the malt, and the older girl helped her down, took her hand and started to leave.  Then the older girl fell to the floor.

Jackie and I and the clerk rushed to the fainted girl, and before we could do anything, she opened her eyes and began to sit up.

In spite of our trying to keep her from moving, she said she and her sister had to get home, and she tried to stand up. Obviously she was still weak, and Jackie, a robust girl, well developed for her age, scooped the girl off the floor, and I took the smaller girl’s hand. The older girl directed us to one of the narrow, red-brick tenement houses on Glencoe Place.

When we arrived at their apartment, there no one was home. The place was shocking. Bare mattresses on the floor, an empty whiskey bottle on the stove and a pizza box dangerously close to the stove’s burners. Trash overflowing from a garbage bin onto the floor.

Jackie asked where the girls’ mother was, and the older girl said she didn’t know, nor had her mother been home in several days. Pretty soon we learned the girls had not eaten since they finished the pizza their mother left for them.  The older girl  held onto a quarter for an emergency and finally took her little sister to get the malt.  Jackie and I later cried, but not then.  Not in front of this amazing big sister.

We didn’t want to leave these girls, but we weren't sure what we should do.

Then Jackie said, “I know what to do. Come on.”

We told the girls to stay put, and we’d be back.

Then we ran to Jackie’s house and told her father, but he would not allow us to go back. He said it was a dangerous situation, and someone might come home and find us there and cause trouble. Instead, he went himself, after making a phone call to someone, probably the police or some public agency.

He made sure the girls were taken somewhere to be cared for.

We never saw them again, but I’ve never forgotten them, or the horrible conditions they’d been living in, with no food and no supervision. It was the first time I’d seen that side of life. We were poor, but we lived like rich people compared to how some of the people on the next street lived.

Glencoe Place in 2008, after a remodel.   Inwood Place started where the street sign is posted on the right and then curves to the left and runs behind the tenement houses. =

The fall after we moved to Sander Street, on October 4, 1957, the Russians sent Sputnik up into the earth’s orbit.  A bitter pill for America to swallow.   I turned 15 and had my first date and my first broken heart.

Korea. People Didn't Care

Been reading up on the Korean War and the communism fear of the 1950s, because my Uncle Frank "Junior" was in that war.  I've been told it was one of the most bloody wars yet.  Hard to imagine, remembering Vietnam.  But I just read that nearly 5 million people died, more than half of them civilians.

Also noted on History.com  that the "... rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II’s and Vietnam’s. Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded."

Corporal Frank E. Dean, U.S. Army, Korea

Uncle "Junior" was Grandma's youngest, and I remember her worrying about him, just like she worried about her two older sons, my Dad and Uncle Norb, when they served in WWII.  

I was worried about Uncle Junior.  I was also worried about "the bomb" the adults kept talking about coming for us from Russia.  It was a scary time for a kid who didn't understand everything on the nightly news.  

I watched a YouTube today by a Korean War vet describing the Homecoming, who said when he came home, people in the U.S. really weren't interested in hearing about the war.  It was five years since WWII, and Korea was a different war that didn't get all the same publicity or interest.  

I found that sad.

But then, I find war sad, period.  Still, I'm proud of my Dean family heritage of helping protect our country.  And I thank God they all returned home in one piece.

Pinterest Genealogy

Just found out Geneabloggers is on Pinterest.  Must have been snoozing, or had my head buried too deep in my Family History Book!  Sure glad I found it though.  It's beyond expectations.

I had to pry myself away there's so much interesting, but before I unstuck myself I had to check out the  Geneabloggers Social Media board.  One of the pages here has some good info about Facebook, whether you do genealogy or not.  Always finding things we didn't know...

Friday Finds: Scrivener for Family History

I love Feedly.  I always find articles that are perfect for something I'm presently working on or interested in.  And I've been writing my family history book on Scrivener, and this is one of the things I found today from The Book Designer.

"How to Publish Your eBook from Word to Kindle in under Ten Minutes--  Ed Ditto, an experienced author and ghostwriter, has developed an extremely fast way of moving his books from Word, through Scrivener, and into the Amazon Kindle’s Mobi format for uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing. Here he steps you through the process so you can do it, too."

Besides Feedly, I also love Scrivener.  Writers everywhere are attesting to its honors.  The programmers who wrote Scrivener are up there with Evernote geeks.  We have such geniuses in our midst these days! 

Since I started using Scrivener last year, after learning about it from Lynn of Armchair Genealogy, I pretty much got the hang of it, especially thanks to Lynn and her YouTube presentation.  However, I haven't gone beyond the point that I'm currently at--still editing my manuscript and adding new stories when they surface, usually from the addition of a new cousin or aunt who has found me on the web.  

So when I looked at Book Designer's post today, I started seeing my finished project closer than too far at the end of the tunnel.  I hadn't even learned of Kindlegen.  

"Step ten: Finish up by installing Kindlegen

Time required: varies, but nonetheless quite speedy, and only has to be done once

If this is the first time you’ve used Scrivener, the final step in your compilation will be to install KindleGen, which is essentially an intermediary application that helps Scrivener produce .mobi-format e-books. KindleGen is a “set it and forget it” app..."

I can't wait to get to Step Ten!



Here is another good Friday Find, which I'd already found on an earlier Friday.  Author Sarah Corbett Morgan tells how she used Scrivener to write her memoir as a series of scenes.  I also use the Scrivener's corkboard for this.


If you're not familiar with Scrivener yet, check out the above links and see for yourself.

Summers on Sander Street: Cooling on the Stoop

The side porch at 2606 Sander Street.  Circa 1950.  From Left:  Linda, Phyllis, Me, Donna

The 1950s in our neck of the concrete jungle, summers were spent on the front stoop if you didn’t have a front porch. Our house on Sander Street had a long, narrow side porch which just couldn't ever be called a stoop. The front edge of the old wood porch, on the sidewalk, is where the kitchen chairs were placed in a semi-circle. It was a daily and nightly “bring your own kitchen chair” affair. We kids sat on the curb, or on the end of the porch, our version of the stoop, which I always claimed so I could be close to the chairs and hear what the adults talked about.

Aunt Vera, Uncle Norb, Linda, and Terry

That where I learned about the Great Depression and the various ways poor people survived, the wars fought, the one in Korea still being fought and how my Uncle Frank was doing in that war, the plans for the bomb the Russians planned to drop on us, the monstrous floods my people lived through, the best president the United States ever had whose name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and how he pulled our country out of the mud, favorite movie stars and who they were divorcing and marrying, and last but not least what was going on with the rest of the Dean family.

Maybe I always knew I’d write all this stuff down.

Temperatures went up early on summer days in the city, unless it rained and then we’d get up and out in our bathing suits to dance in the street. After we tired of exercising, we’d crouch in the gutters and build dams with paper wrappers, bags, twisted cigarette wrappers, whatever was available.

On rainless days, we still got up earlier than most kids today on summer vacation from school. As soon as the temps climbed  toward the 80s, it was time to get outside. And we stayed outside most all day. Houses were just too hot. Plus we didn’t have daytime television most of those years. The boob tube was still new.

After lunch, Aunt Vera and Mom would drag their chairs and Pepsi Colas out to the sidewalk to cool off and exchange gossip, call out and wave to other stay-at-home moms, which most all of the women on our street were, and just relax until time to go inside and start dinner.

Mid-afternoons, the music-box tune of the ice cream truck would sound from the next street, and there began the high tension of getting your money ready and waiting in front of the house, already knowing who you would share your popsicle with. Occasionally our moms had enough cash to let us buy a fudgesicle or creamsicle that didn’t have to be shared, or my favorite, the Eskimo pie.

Sometimes Aunt Vera sent me to the little neighborhood store around the corner for a pack of her favorite Pall Mall cigarettes. Usually she’d give me enough money that I’d have a penny or two in change for some candy. Our store was one of those with a long glass showcase filled with candy priced at a penny, or two for a penny. One of our big pastimes back then was standing with our noses to the glass with a penny in our sweaty fists. The choice was deadly serious. It was everything. You never knew when you’d get another penny.

In the evenings, when dinner was finished and cleaned up, the chairs went out on the stoop again, and the grownups would drink beer or Pepsi Colas, smoke, and laugh and tell stories.

While the other kids played, I lurked in the shadows listening and watching. One of the reasons why I remember stories that I write now.

Maybe I always thought this day would come.

Occasionally Grandma walked down from McMillan Street for a visit. Some of the neighbors dropped by. A couple of times, I remember a priest from St. George walking down the block to visit. When we saw the priests at school and at mass in the mornings, they were serious figures. Hearing them laugh outside on our sidewalk while our dads drank beer was just plain strange.

By this time, television at night offered some good shows, and if you had a decent fan in a window, you might be able to turn the volume up over the noise of the fan and enjoy I Love Lucy, Milton Berle, or the Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason.

I loved nights outside on Sander Street. If I sat quietly on the stoop and listened, not reminding anyone I was still there, I’d hear the stories and learn what the grownups cared about, thought about, and hoped for.

I've Been Nominated!

I can't believe I've been nominated for an award!  But thanks to Debra Newton-Carter, and her blog, In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy, I am a nominee for this Wonderful Team Member Readership Award.

"As bloggers, we are also readers. That is a part of blogging as listening is a part of speaking.”

Members of the Geneabloggers nominate other members who have followed their blogs, leaving comments, and in general supporting their fellow bloggers.

I haven't been a member of Geneabloggers for too long, but in that short time I've learned so much from the member blogger sites I've visited.  I'm excited to be part of this huge group of phenomenal researchers and writers of not only their family histories but of world history overall.  Because our ancestors lived in the real world and are part of history's timeline.

I can't nominate as many Wonderful Team Member Readers as others because of my short time in this group, but below are my choices for those who have supported me and my blog the past year.

• The same person who nominated me, Debra Newton-Carter, who divulged on her blog that nowhere in the rules of this award does it say you cannot nominate your own nominator.  My first visit to Debra's blog, In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy, I learned enough good stuff that I had no trouble commenting and continuing to follow up with her.  Thank you again, Debra.

• Jacqi Stevens, A Family Tapestry, whose blog design caught my eye, I let her know, and she came on over to my own blog.  Thanks, Jacqi.

• Kathryn Smith Lockhard, her blog Reflections, I nominate because she has followed me, and I like her blog and her quote which I've used: 

 "We become who we are because of those who came before."

According to the rules, I've got a whole week to nominate some more members, and I plan to  do just that.  Looks like I'm going to have a fun week of reading and commenting...and nominating!  

The Passion of Nellie

Great Grandmother Nellie Cramer Dean and Daughter Etta
Circa 1904

My cousin Debbie sent me the photo several years ago in a batch of scans from her mother's (my Aunt Dot's) collection.  At Aunt Dot's funeral, my cousins and I talked about our wayward and disappearing Grandfather Frank Dean.  As the oldest cousin and grandchild, I was the only one, we assumed, who'd ever seen the mysterious man in person, and I was the only one who "knew the stories."  We talked about the book I'd already started fooling with.  I hadn't gotten too serious up until then.

Leaving the funeral, I knew I would work harder on this pet project.  For my family.  I wanted to tell the story for them and their children and grandchildren, as well as my own descendants.

But first I had to discover the rest of the story.  Where did Grandfather Frank go after my father threw him out of the home?  We all knew that story.  The "big fight."

Where did he go?  The word among the adults, Grandma and my aunts and uncles, was that he remarried and had "new" children.  For my Grandma, a strict Catholic, divorce was not an option, and Frank was labeled a bigamist.

I've written these stories here on the blog, even up to my finding my grandfather's new family this past year. I've already written about his parents, John and Nellie, a documented recitation of the facts.  I lacked more personal stories for these particular characters in my story.

As I continued the research on this part of my family, I became more interested in Nellie, more than any of the other ancestors.  I'm not sure why.  I can only say I've had a passion to "know" her.

Maybe because she was the mother of the grandfather who was forced to go missing before I ever knew him.  The only person I'd ever known to be a bigamist.  The man who had the audacity to hurt my Grandma.  Who forced my father to be brutal and feel guilty about it the rest of his life.

The man not even a priest thought worthy of forgiveness when he was dying.  Wasn't every human worthy of  forgiveness?  That's what we learned in Catholic school.  Was this grandfather so evil  that a priest would not visit his death bed?

Who was his mother?  If she'd not died at age 42, would it have made a difference in Frank's life?  If his only sibling wasn't placed in an institution for the "feeble minded," would that have impacted Frank's life?

I've wondered a lot about Nellie.  I tried to picture her in my mind.  What did she look like?  Would I be able to know anything about her if I could see what she looked like?

And then, out of nowhere, I found out.

About a week ago, digging through the digital images on my hard drive, the ones my cousin Debbie sent me, I happened on one in particular that I hadn’t been able to identify and never went back to.  A woman kneeling beside a child with a round, chubby face and dark hair.  I thought it was a pic of my cousin Terry Dean.  But who was the woman?  I didn't recognize her.

I clicked and brought the photo to life and immediately saw the caption “Etta and Mother.” 

I’d found Nellie.

This was obviously a photo left to Grandfather Frank when his mother, Nellie, passed away, and ended up in my Grandma’s possession when Frank was thrown out.  When Grandma died, my Aunt Dot became it’s owner. 

How could I have missed this? 

And hadn’t I, just days before, thought how much it would mean to me if I could just see a picture of Nellie?  Was this some kind of eerie intention sent into the universe, or a wish granted by God? 

I stared at the face of my Great Grandmother a long time, studying every feature for clues.  The building in the background suggested to me this was taken on the grounds of the Columbus Institute where Etta had been placed.  Blowing the image up, I could see figures walking along a path in front of the building, young people who seemed not able to walk by themselves.  One of the figure's legs were twisted. . And they looked like they were wearing black hats similar to those worn by Amish men and boys.

Was Etta living in the institution then, and her mother was visiting her?  Who took the picture?

In 1910, according to the census, Etta was living with her mother and brother and new step-father. Etta is 8 years old, brother Frank, is 12.  They are listed as step-children of head of house, Joseph O'Flaherty, an Irishman, a plumber by trade.  They lived on Cutter Street in Cincinnati's West End, where today modern, middle-class condominiums now stand.  

The children's father, John Dean, had died sometime after marrying Nellie in 1900 and the birth of Etta in 1902.  Nellie and John had to postpone their marriage until John got a divorce from his first wife, by which time their son Frank was two years old. 

In one of the city directories, Nellie was living with her son (Frank) as a widow.  Her last name is listed as Dean.  Then in 1910, about a month before the 1910 census, Nellie became Mrs. O'Flaherty.

If Etta was living with her mother and step-father in 1910, when she was eight, is it possible that she was in the Columbus Institute off and on, that she lived at home and had to return to the institution sometimes?  Was there out-patient care?  

Research of the institution shows that the inmates, or patients, were being educated, the main focus being on self-care and occupational training, like a trade school.  These were typically children who couldn't learn in a regular public school.  

Nellie died on June 4, 1918.  Etta would have been 16.  The Columbus Institute census for 1920 lists Etta as a resident at age 18.  My grandfather was 22 when his mother died, and a year later would marry my grandmother, on May 7, 1919.  

The longer I studied Nellie’s face in this photo, the more the story came to light.  This was the hard countenance of a woman who had been hurt by life more than once.  She became pregnant with her first child by a married man, living with her mother and five sisters plus her illegitimate son and an extra boarder, in a crowded, poor inner-city apartment.  She was a mother who gave birth to a second child, a daughter, who had to be institutionalized as mentally impaired.  Life had been hard on Nellie.  

Maybe she made wrong decisions, paid the consequences of bad mistakes. Maybe she was a good woman, a good mother who loved the wrong man at the wrong time.  Maybe those mistakes affected my grandfather and contributed to his lifestyle.  Possibly his alcoholism was passed down from his father John.  

The photo doesn't answer all of these questions, but I think I know enough to add to Nellie's original story, to add some personal feelings, write a few human scenes to bring her to life on the page for her descendants.  

So it is with writing these stories.  You get the chance to go back and fix things up if you're not over-zealous to be done with the book.  

Stories for Pictures

New Year, New Pictures!  New Discoveries.  New Stories.

My Uncle Bill in Cincinnati celebrated his 90th Birthday last month with a big family party.  I was blessed to meet up with cousins I hadn't seen since the 1960s, before I moved to Tennessee.  What an awesome experience.  I'm still riding high from that meet-up.

One of my cousins, Kenny, and I discovered our mutual interest in family history at the party, and he has started sending me old family photos.  I had no idea these treasures existed.  Since losing all of my parents' pictures to a brother who took off with them, I've been sad just thinking about all of those memories Mom kept in that old box in the china cabinet drawer.

Here's one of the scans Kenny sent recentlyl.

From Left Top:  Mom, cousin Terry, Aunt Vera holding Kenny
From Left Bottom:  My sister Donna, Me ("Legs") holding brother Ray, cousin Cathy, my sister Nancy.
Not sure where my sister Phyllis and cousin Linda are.

Kenny is the youngest of Uncle Norbert (my Dad's brother) and Aunt Vera, who lived upstairs from us on Sander Street.  

The above photo was taken in approximately 1954.  I can tell this because Ray, my little brother, sitting on my lap, was born when I was 10 years old.  Ray looks to be about a year old in this picture, so I was about 11.  Math and deduction abilities help a lot here.

My cousin Kenny, pictured in his mother's lap, looks to be about one year too, and he and Ray were born around the same time.  

I'm amazed my memories of Sander Street are so strong, and when I look at old pictures from this era, like the one above, more memories surface.  New stories are born.  Here is how one developed from this photo from Kenny.

I can't figure out what house we are sitting in front of in this photo  I've eliminated every house it can't be, because I remember all of them and have pictures of most.  I come to the conclusion this has to be Uncle Frank's house after he married Aunt Janice, after he came home from the Korean War.  I think that house was on Pulte Street in Fairmount.  Yes, I would have been about 11.  That works.

We had some cookouts there, at their house in Fairmount.  I also remember watching the very first Mickey Mouse Club on their TV, and I think it was on a Sunday evening.  A special program introducing the Mouseketeers.  But that was not a cookout day.  

That was a time when Uncle Frank came to Sander Street and took Mom and us kids to his house because Dad had stayed out all night.  He stayed out all night Saturday, and Mom called Uncle Frank Sunday morning, when Dad still wasn't home,.  I would have been at Uncle Frank's later that evening watching TV.    

That is not when the above picture was taken.  This must have been taken at one of Frank and Janice's  cookouts.

Usually when Mom wanted to leave our father, she called Grandpa, her father, and he came and got us and took us out to his farm.  But there must have been a reason she called Uncle Frank this time. I think I have figured out why.

Mom must have known that Uncle Frank would call his big brother, my Dad, and tell him his wife and kids were at his house, and maybe he would have lectured Dad, told him he needed to come home at night to his family, or they would leave, he would lose his family.  

Grandpa, on the other hand, would not have called my Dad.  He wouldn't have wanted us to go back home to his wayward son-in-law.  He was always too happy to have us stay with him.  

Did Uncle Frank do as Mom planned?  I remember we didn't spend the night there, so he must have drove us back home, and Dad made his promises to do better.  And things would have been fine for a little while.  Until he did it again.  

And I remember now being embarrassed at Uncle Frank's house that night.  The Mickey Mouse Club premiered in 1955, and I was 13 years old.  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable around the family I loved so much.  Because I was growing up.  And I was embarrassed.

And a new story is born to go with a memory.

Baseball at Crosley Field

Summers on Sander Street:  Baseball at Crosley Field

The old home field of the National League’s Cincinnati Reds from 1912 through 1970, was located on the west side of town  at the Findlay and Western intersection, what is today the Queensgate section, just off I-75 South at the Western Avenue Exit.  

Mid-season, June 24, 1970, the team moved to Riverfront Stadium, and old Crosley Field, built in 1884, was demolished. 

I’m one of the lucky ones to remember watching games played there with my father, mostly during the late 1940s and early ‘50s,  before I became a roaming inner-city teenager. 

I especially remember the night games with Dad, including the dark walks home over the lonesome inner-city streets, where my father would be either happy and joking for the win or quiet because our team lost. We always lived within walking distance of downtown, even if some of our homes were a mile or so away through old Over-the-Rhine streets. 

The night games were magical for me.  I remember the cool night air in the stands and the cold Coke in my hands, the hotdogs and popcorn, the strangely illuminated field and the dazzling bleached white of the players’uniforms. 

 Crosley's lights are visible in this photo, taken in the late 1940s.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosley_Field

 In 1948, I was just a little girl, when my favorite baseball star  was called up to start as first baseman, Ted Kluszewski.   Over the next few years, I watched “Big Klu” rise to super stardom.  It was a thrilling time in baseball, never to be recaptured.

                                                   Kluszewski showing his famous short sleeves

                                                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kluszewski

The Reds’ office didn’t like it a lot when Kluszewski cut the too-tight sleeves off his uniform, so he could bat freely, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.  When people got a look at those huge biceps, it was plain that this was one strong batter.  He told a reporter, “It was either that or change my swing—and I wasn’t about to change my swing.” 

When Leo Durocher, Hall of Fame manager, was asked to name five of the strongest players in baseball, he did not include Kluszewski, and when later asked why not, he answered, “Kluszewski? I’m talking about human beings!”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kluszewski)

An added fact about Big Klu, that I could personally brag about among my friends, was that he lived in the same subdivision, Kennedy Heights, as my Uncle Buford on my Mom’s side.  When we visited my uncle’s house for family occasions, it was a thrill just to know I was in my hero’s neighborhood.

If my father wasn’t sitting in the stadium for home games, he was glued to the TV at home with his Hudepohl beer.  It wasn’t as much fun watching the games on television as sitting in the stands, but in my house that’s what was playing.

Another favorite player during the 1950s, of course, was left-handed pitcher, Joe Nuxhall, a local from Hamilton, Ohio. He was only 15 years old when he broke into big league baseball with the Reds, for one game only, on June 10, 1944.  This was during World War II, when players were scarce.  Joe came back to the Reds in 1952 as a permanent player.

I think I remember Joe more as announcer for 40 years, beginning in 1967, when he retired as a player.  That was the same year Johnny Bench came to the team, whom my father loved, along with every other Cincinnati fan. 

I believe we kids had more Johnny Bench paraphernalia and shirts than any other Reds player, including Pete Rose.  Dad began working a second job for the Reds and was known to bring home pennants, bats, pictures, calendars, shirts, and whatever else he could get hold of for the kids and grandkids.  I still have the red Johnny Bench bat somewhere.  I wish I still had my Bench gray shirt.  One year I got a ladies Reds hat, kind of a bonnet-type thing.  It became faded in the sun when I wore it, and now wish I’d kept it safe in the plastic.  You do crazy stuff when you’re young.  At least I did.

By this time, the late ‘60s, Sander Street was just a memory, Dad having moved the family to Mt. Auburn in 1957, and then to Klotter Avenue, back in the Clifton neighborhood, in 1963, the same year hometown boy Pete Rose joined the Reds and won Rookie of the Year. 

Imagine my surprise when Dad informed me of the new start's name that year, and I recalled one of my Catholic high school classmates, Karolyn Englehardt, going steady with Pete Rose. Sure enough, when I saw Karolyn on TV and in the news, I knew it was her.  Her personality was unmistakable.  

I followed Pete's story along throughout his career...and the end of his career.  And I always thought of Karolyn riding the city bus home from school every day, swaying back and forth in middle of the aisle, leading us in singing late '50s hit songs. 

Free and happy times, good memories of being young and loving the excitement.  But the thrills end sometimes in divorce, as both she and I experienced. She married a baseball star; I married a blues musician.      We both grew up one day in different parts of the country.

The Reds continued playing Crosley Field until two years after I moved to Tennessee in 1968.  I knew there was talk of  building a new stadium, but it was still a shock when I heard it was final.  There were so many memories for us.  Old Cincinnati was changing.  The building of Riverfront was one of the first reminders. 

And I was living in Tennessee.  I felt I was losing my sense of home.

The mid-‘50s, when Dad was taking me to the ball games, Crosley Field had already began its decline, mostly  due to its location in the dense West End.  The field was bounded on three sides by factories, and with the increase of automobiles as the new main mode of transportation, parking was a huge factor. 

Additionally, the West End was a major crime area, especially for night games.  We could see the changes in the landscape, the slow deterioration of the city streets, walking home from downtown and West End.  But I guess we just figured everything would stay the same in these old neighborhoods both my father and I had grown up in. 

And there were other factors which demanded the need for a new home for the Reds, including the Bengals football team being granted an American Football League franchise, with the reservation that an appropriate facility be built by the start of the 1970 season.  

The Reds then agreed to build a new stadium on the city’s dilapidated riverfront section, and plans were in place for the last game at Crosley Field. 

The last home game on September 28, 1969, against the Houston Astros was to be the final game at Crosley, but delays in Riverfront’s construction caused the Reds to open the 1970 season in the old location against the Montreal Expos.  New team additions included manager Sparky Anderson and shortstop Dave Concepción.

The last game ended up being on June 24, 1970, against the San Francisco Giants, which the Reds won, and then fans watched mayor Gene Ruehlmann take home plate out of the ground at Crosley and transport it by helicopter, which landed on the field, to Riverfront Stadium and then install it in the new turf.

The first game at Riverfront was on June 30, 1970, against the Atlanta Braves, and the Reds lost 8-2, with Hank Aaron hitting the first ever home run at Riverfront.

Today, Crosley's old left field is now a parking lot, and one can still see the “terrace” area there, next to York Street, probably one of the most famous Crosley Field features. 

Notorious Left Field Terrace ~ 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosley_Field            

Sander Street Summers: Coney Island Babies

The absolute funnest day of the year, besides Christmas, the day we waited for all year, was St. George Day at Coney Island, Cincinnati's version of the famous New York’s amusement park.  Our Coney Island was on the Ohio River, in the neighborhood of California, about 10 miles from downtown Cincinnati.

When you're a little kid, that 10 miles seems like an entire state away.

http://www.coneyislandcentral.com/photo/displayimage.php?album=31&pos=11

Coney Island Day started the night before, when Mom and Aunt Vera began frying the chicken, baking the beans, and Aunt Vera upstairs fixing her German potato salad and Mom downstairs mixing up the creamy mayonnaise version.  We'd lay our sundresses and sunsuits out for morning, and go to bed early and try to sleep, mostly drifting off in the early morning hours just before daybreak.

After our normal breakfast of cereal and hot tea and toast, Dad and Uncle Norb picked up the heavy picnic baskets loaded with the cold fried chicken lunch, and the cooler full of iced pop and beer, and carried them up the block to the school, where everyone in the parish stood outside waiting for the three city buses assigned to haul the families out to Coney Island.  

The bus ride was a good way to start the celebration with singalongs, usually my father as song leader for our bus.  He and the other men harmonized “The Old Mill Stream,” and a few more old songs of our parents’ era.  

We’d eventually get to “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on The Wall,” and usually never got to "no more bottles of beer on the wall," before we arrived at the bus parking area at Coney.  Once the bus doors opened, yelping children swarmed out onto the covered picnic grounds, the first stop on the way to our version of the Magic Kingdom.  

While the moms spread the flowered and checked cotton cloths over the long wooden picnic tables, the men dug their first beers out of the coolers to whet their appetite for the feast, while the revved-up children yelled to go immediately to the Midway rides.  

We never, in all the years I remember, pursueded the adults to give in on this point.  It was lunch first.  No discussion.  No amount of pouting won out.

After properly fed, we'd run ahead of our fathers in the direction of the tall roller coaster tracks and ferris wheel, while the moms stayed behind and enjoyed a few extra minutes of clean picnic tables and peace, while they sipped a cold Coke or Pepsi.  They'd join their husbands in due time to enjoy the children's fun and excitement.  

Parishoners were able to buy tickets at our school prior to Coney Island Day, and I remember Dad and his big roll of tickets, about the size of a 33-1/3 record, an album – remember those?   Dad got many laughs when people saw him walking around the midway carrying this giant roll of perforated tickets.  

We got to ride everything, and Dad rode the older kids' and adult rides with me after Mom joined him to supervise my younger sisters.  

He was fearless. He talked me into the front seat of the Shooting Star roller coaster, where we let go of the steel restraining bar and held our arms straight up, and I screamed until I was hoarse.  

Then we joined all my classmates on the “Rotor.”  I had the only parent  brave enough to tackle this strange ride.

Interior of the Rotor at Luna Park Sydney. The ride is in mid-cycle, and the riders are stuck to the wall of the barrel by the force of friction due to centrifugal force. The yellow lines on the barrel wall indicate the level the floor is at during different points of the ride; the higher line is level with the floor when the ride begins. ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_(ride)

I remember the year the Rotor was new at the park, and Dad positioned himself upside down against the wall, and all the coins and keys in his pants pockets fell out.  My friends were screaming and laughing and trying to unstick their hands from the spinning wall to point to him.  

I also remember not realizing at first that the floor would disappear from under my feet as centrifugal force took over.  My breath literally got taken away.  But I rode again.  And again and again.  And so did Dad.

Since one of my brothers inherited all of the family pictures, I don’t have any to post, but Dad took his camera every year and snapped shots of the little ones riding in miniature cars, the airplanes and tiny Jolly Roger boats. 

Strange as it seems, my mother only enjoyed one ride, the “Lost River,”  also referred to as the “Tunnel of Love,” where boats would coast gently through a dark, cool tunnel, gently bumping against decorated walls until the tunnel's light at the end, whereupon the boat you sat in plunged straight down into a small lake, drenching you in a giant splash.  

For someone who was afraid of roller coasters and such, Mom and Dad always rode the Lost River while I watched my sisters, and I wondered if this took my mother back to those carefree years as a young girl, perhaps drifting  through the tunnel with a romantic beau, perhaps my father, before all the children, the work, the bills, heartaches.  She never said, but her eyes would mist over when she talked about her favorite attraction on the Midway. 

Some years we’d go swimming in the "Sunlite Pool."  The year I’d passed my beginner’s swimming class at the Friar’s Club in Clifton, Dad picked me up and tossed me into the 10-foot end of the pool so he could, as he said, see if I could really swim.   Lucky for me, I could.

At day’s end, when the St. George parishoners began loading onto the buses  to carry us back to the school, the whining children protested leaving magical Coney Island land, but allowed themselves to be ushered  onto the leather bus seats, where sleepy eyes gazed out the windows and hands cradled small glass bowls of prize goldfish or Kewpie dolls, while their parents wiped sweat from their foreheads, commented on the humidity and longed to get home to the front porch or stoop and a cold glass of beer.

There will never be days like St. George at Coney Island again.  Some things in life linger only for a while and never return.  I am blessed enough to have it as a well-kept memory.  

Sander Street Summers: Concrete Yard Stories

Sander Street Porch.  L-R:  Linda, Phyllis, Me, Donna

Summertime in the late 1940s and early ‘50s were spent outside, for the most part.   Television was still new, and programs were televised only in the evenings.   No computers of course.  Moms liked kids out of the house.  One way to accomplish that was to let you know, if you stayed inside, you would be given chores.  We’d practically bust the door down getting out of the house.

Even when it rained…especially when it rained, when the sidewalks could fry eggs, we stayed out, amusing ourselves from  morning to sundown.  I don’t remember what all we did, but I also don’t remember being bored.  We didn’t know what that was. 

Our backyard was half concrete and half grass.  The grassy part backed up to a building on Jefferson Avenue, the next street over, going up toward Vine Street…now called “Short Vine.” 

On either side of us were houses, so we were pretty much enclosed in the back yard.  A low steel fence separated our yard from the one on the left.  There was no yard on the right, just the side of the neighbor's tall house which extended along our side yard and a short row of concrete steps leading to a side door.  

The concrete side yard is where we had family parties, what you would call today “cookouts.”  Mom and Aunt Vera cooked the food inside.  We didn’t grill out.  The prepared picnic food would be spread on a long, narrow table borrowed from the school’s cafeteria.   Dad and Uncle Norb would have a big ice barrel for beer and pop. 

Leading up to street level was a wide concrete staircase, separated in the middle by an iron pipe handrail.  A big landing was halfway up the steps.  It was a perfect spot for us to put on live plays. Neighborhood kids including my siblings and cousins upstairs would act out the scenes which I wrote.  Another one of the older kids would be the director.  

Two Potato Salads

The concrete yard parties were mostly held to celebrate either a church related event, like a first communion or eighth grade graduation, sometimes a baby’s baptism.  We looked forward to these fun get-togethers.  

Everything centered around the food.  It was a chance to  get some of Aunt Vera’s German potato salad.  Mom made her American potato salad too, which was always one of the best of any of the neighborhood moms. 

I was a picky eater, but I filled up a plate with the two potato salads and maybe just a small piece of Mom’s cold friend chicken.  Other than cakes and pies and cookies, that’s all I ate. 

The potato salads were not anything alike.  Aunt Vera’s had a sweet-sour vinegar dressing and bacon. 

Mom’s was extremely creamy with mayonnaise and the only other ingredient was celery.  Because Dad detested onions, we were not allowed to use them in any cooking.  Aunt Vera pretty much told him where he could go and he didn’t have to eat her potato salad.  Everybody thought that was funny because after a few beers, Dad would be eating and raving about that German potato salad with onions.

If Mom had put onions in anything she cooked, we’d all hear about it.  The whole neighborhood would hear about it.  I grew up learning to cook from an early age and never used an onion all those years.  Dad said he was “allergic” to onions, but we’d see him eat them not only in Aunt Vera’s potato salad but White Castle hamburgers and even, when he was really partying, a five-way chili. 

When he came to visit me after I got married, I had to be careful to not have any onion odor in the house.  He’d walk in my house and say, “I smell onions.”  Mom and I would just look at each other and roll our eyes.

The yard parties would last usually an entire day, until the sun stated going down, and after we cousins were getting tired from playing so hard all day.  Me,  Phyllis, Terry, Linda, Marylou, Tommy, and Ruthie were the oldest of the cousins and were allowed to roam around the neighborhood.  I’d take them down the street to my friends’ houses and we’d play tag, hide and seek, and sometimes just running up and down the street enjoying  abandon wildness.  Everybody got along just fine.  Including the adults, the aunts and uncles. 

The Cutting

On the left side of the backyard, where the yards were separated  by the fence, a little girl named Linda lived.  Her mother’s name was Celeste.  My cousin who lived upstairs from us was also Linda, Aunt Vera and Uncle Norb's daughter. 

The reason I remember Celeste is because she was one of the few women who could go up against my Aunt Vera.  They had similar personalities that said, "You don’t push me around."

The other Linda next door was very, very spoiled.  She had long blond hair and clothes a lot nicer than me or my sisters and cousins. 

My job was to watch the little kids when we were out in the yard.  Terry was almost as old as me, but I was definitely in charge, according to Aunt Vera.  Besides Terry, there was Linda, about the same age as my sister Phyllis, and my cousin Cathy, who was about the same age as my sister Donna.  My sister Nancy was a new baby.  My brother Ray wasn’t born yet, nor Aunt’s Vera’s boy Kenny.

This particular day, watching the kids play outside in the yard, I noticed my cousin Linda talking over the fence with the other Linda.  Then an argument broke out, but I just watched.  Then  the other Linda went into her house, and our Linda began playing with the other kids. 

A few minutes later, I saw the other Linda come back out and climb over the fence.  She seemed to be mixing with the other kids, so I didn’t think there was a problem.  I was swinging Donna around in circles, making her laugh. 

Then our Linda ran over to the fence, and the other Linda ran after her, got up behind her and did something with her hand on Linda’s back.  My cousin Linda, was wearing one of those little sundresses with the elastic at the time and a strap that tied at the back of the neck.  Her whole back, in other words, was pretty much exposed. 

I didn’t think anything was wrong until the other Linda moved away, and I saw a red line running from one shoulder town toward the other side of her back, stopping at the top of her dress.  I remember being confused about the red line, but only for a few seconds.  The red line began getting wider and fresh blood began running down Linda’s back.  I ran to the fence, where the other Linda was climbing back across the fence  to her own yard.  I screamed.  I remember screaming.  I didn’t know what to do but just scream for help.  I must have screamed loud enough, or Terry ran upstairs to get his mom, because Aunt Vera was suddenly there. 

Of course, her shocked eyes rested on me only for a second, but I understood I was in trouble for allowing something to happen to one of the children.  I said nothing, but when I looked down at the wood crosswise rail of the fence, there lay a razor blade.  The same kind my dad used in his razor when he shaved. 

Then my cousin Linda began to wail, the other kids began to cry too, and Aunt Vera yelled so loud, “What happened,”  that Celeste opened her door and came out.  My mother had heard the commotion and ran back inside for a towel, which Aunt Vera took and began applying pressure to Linda's sliced-open back.  

I showed Aunt Vera the blade and told her quickly what had happened.  She looked over at Celeste and began chewing her out for having such a sicko kid.  Celeste spat back that her little girl wouldn’t have done anything like that unless she was hurt first.  I had to relay to Celeste, on Aunt Vera’s orders, what I’d witnessed.  Aunt Vera picked up the razor blade and showed it to Celeste, who looked shocked.  She could not see our Linda’s back, but Aunt Vera spun her daughter around and showed her as she held the blade up.  Celeste turned and went back into her house and closed the door.

Linda had to have stitches, but I don’t remember how many.  That cut was the meanest looking thing any of us had ever seen.  I still remember that incident and how unbelievable it was, like seeing it in a nightmare, which I did more than once, waking in middle of the night and being glad it hadn’t happened again for real.

Cousin Linda Dean

Needless to say, Aunt Vera, and really none of the other neighborhood women, were friends with Celeste after that, and none of the other kids would play with her Linda.  They were too afraid.  They didn’t need to be told not to get around her.    

The other Linda was a little smaller than my cousin, so she was maybe five or six.  She was scary.

I believe that's the goriest thing I've ever watched, that cutting.  One of those memories you don't forget.