The Old Gray House

 Three years old in tears on a poor confused horse in front of the Old Gray House

 

            When my daughter Michele volunteered to help “Extreme Home makeover” rebuild a number of homes on the West side, I had a chance to renew my early childhood memories of a dingy old two-story flat which my parents rented just one block away.  “I lived there”? I asked myself as I climbed the lopsided wooden stairs and peeked in the windows framed by well-worn rotting wood and held by slanted boards (hoping they wouldn’t see me).  While Buffalo volunteers were shouting, “move that bus”, I stood there staring, allowing the past to flood from my vault of childhood memories.  As a little girl, there were many times I sat on the lower step, watching the streetcars whiz by, waiting for daddy to get home from his job at the Ford Plant.  Arriving at my little corner, he would throw two pennies into my expectant hands for my daily candy fix from Frank’s drug store next door.  Looking down the alley, I laughingly remembered when my brother Sam, complete with Superman suit, jumped into a garbage can, I also recalled  the many friends who often gathered to play jacks and complain about the ruffians in the school yard at PS 77. Mom first worked in a laundry and later was a dynamo saleswoman for Avon and then a local dress shop. No one ever said “no” to MY mother when confronted with her extraordinary sales pitch. (She could have co-authored The Art of Persuasion!)

            It was in that modest living room filled with brown mohair furniture that Sammy and I fought, wrestled, jumped from chair to chair and danced. Yes, with radio blaring, we never stopped choreographing on couches encouraging mom to enroll us in the best West Side dance studio where lucky Sam joined a boy-girl class of elegance. I was thrown in with other fledglings trying to find fifth position.

The houses, with a generous two feet in between (there were no building codes) allowed much unwanted intimacy between neighbors. There was no need for gossip – we heard it all! Our conservative, hard-working parents, were determined, as dad put it, to ”get us out of the hole”. We eventually opened a real Italian restaurant, and with Mom’s famous spaghetti and dad’s quick grill service, we saved enough cash to buy our own “broken down home” on the upper west side which dad turned into a mini palace. My daddy could do anything – paint, wallpaper, do carpentry, plumbing, electrical, roofing, welding, tiling and of course sling burgers. At one point, he even invented a wallpaper machine; his philosophy- “Anything you can do, I can do better” (before the song was written).

            Mom and dad worked for hours stretching curtains to earn extra money during difficult times  and yet made sure we had the joy of an outing for ice cream on weekends in the old black Ford.  We somehow managed to have enough to eat even if it was pasta and greens every night. Later when both had jobs, my mom, a great cook made luscious meals. Even her fried liver wasn’t bad. I know that Sammy and I still argued over which one of us was scheduled to help with the dishes, however a more wonderful remembrance was my daddy holding me in his arms each night at eight years old, teaching me to read, allowing me to skip third grade and go on to a lifetime of love for literature and learning.

            My escape from the lower West side to middle class Black Rock and after marriage, a jump leap to Orchard Park, has never erased the memories embedded in that longstanding home of twelve years. 

.           Oops, someone saw me peeking in the window. “Sorry, I used to live here.  Do you mind if I take a peek?”