From 1928 until 1933
I lived at 332 Herman Street between Fillmore and Steiner. It was my world outside of school. On one side
of our little flat an Italian family lived... on the other side, an Armenian.
Karoon was my best friend and his mother always had Armenian bread baking
in the oven. It smelled wonderful and we always got some when we out to
play.
The Italian family made red wine in
their basement. You could smell it all over the neighborhood.
At the corner was Moe's Grocery Store.
The Moe kids were friends of mine too. I went there every day to buy things
for my mother. We didn't have a car or a refrigerator so shopping was a
daily affair. Milk was ten cents a quart and bread ten cents a loaf, unsliced.
The milk went in a cooler on the back porch that stuck out from the house.
Every week an old man driving a horse
and wagon would come down the street, crying out... "Rags, bottles, sacks... any rags,
bottles, sacks." Housewives would bring him items and receive a few pennies.
When he started up again we hung over the rear gate of the wagon
getting a short ride, but the horse knew he was pulling some extra weight
and would always stop. The man would turn around and snap his whip at us
and we'd run away laughing.
Across from my house was a firehouse
and we knew all the firemen. When the fire bell rang inside the house...
bing... bing... bing, bing, bing, they knew the intersection to go to. As soon as we heard the first bell
we ran to the front door and looked in. We watched them slide down the
pole, start up the hook and ladder and roar out. They never closed the
doors.
As soon as they were gone we all ran
inside the firehouse. We went in the kitchen, opened kettles on the
stove to see what they were cooking... looked at the playing cards still
laid on the table. Newspapers opened to the sports page... time had
frozen.
Then we ran up the spiral iron staircase
to their living quarters. They had iron beds on each side of the room. Next to
each a steel closet. We never touched anything.
But we did slide down that pole...
again and again; until we heard the hook and ladder bell ring slowly as
the truck approached Fillmore Street. Then we raced out the door to the
corner and waited as they stopped to let a 22 line street car pass.
We'd look up hopefully at the tiller-man.
(he steered the back wheels of the hook and ladder.)
"OK, come on kids." We all hopped
on the side steps of the hook and ladder, hung on for dear life, and started
on a magical journey of a hundred feet to the firehouse.
Bill