Lincoln Avenue Memories: Our House in the 1950s

  

Me next to the foundation 1950.  Lincoln Ave. Ext. is below, the city of 
Greensburg in the background.  The one large building is Westmoreland
Hospital, where I was born in 1946.

In 1949, we moved just beyond the Greensburg city limits into Hempfield Township.  We lived in what we called “the foundation.”  It was essentially a basement before there was a house on top of it.  I don’t know how common it was, but it did happen that people moved into their foundation while they saved to build their house, and while the house was being built.  Our neighbor on one side (the Coles) lived in their foundation at the same time we did.  Maybe on both sides, though I seem to recall the Robinsons were in their brick house first.

 Our foundation was on a north-south street between the east-west West Newton Road to the north and the Carbon Road to the south.  It was set on a fairly steep hill, facing east, and therefore the downtown of Greensburg.  From that door, it looked like a direct line to the golden dome of the Westmoreland County Court House.  

The street was called Lincoln Avenue Extension then.  There was a Lincoln Avenue on the other side of the West Newton Road, though not exactly in a straight line.  Below us (to the east) was Maryland Avenue, and then a steep hill to Jack’s Run and a little beyond that, Hamilton Avenue, very near where the Severinis had lived on Stone Street.  In fact, in about the middle of Lincoln Ave. Ext. was the outlet of Grove Street, eventually paved for the short block from Lincoln down to Maryland.  At the time, it continued as a steep, unpaved, rutted and impassable stretch that ended at the old bridge over Jack’s Run.  But in a straight line ahead was Grove Street in Greensburg, a block west of Stone Street.

 Lincoln Avenue Ext. at this time wasn’t paved.  There were not many houses on it as yet in 1949.  It was built near the peak of the hill from just west of Hamilton Avenue--a hill higher than Lincoln Avenue itself-- that had been extended with landfill.  Our foundation was on that landfill, likely at the hill’s highest point, though the land extended behind us for what would be several blocks at roughly our level. 

Photos from 1950 show a landscape of loose rocks, like the moon.  There were all kinds of rocks, and some coal as well, in the land beneath and around us.  It was meant to be land for new housing in the postwar boom.  In a way, it was part of the beginning of suburbia, though the city limits of Greensburg were the distance of a city block or two away.

Even the foundation was high on the hill, with an impressive view of Greensburg from the front yard (and later, the picture window.)  At first some of those huge rocks excavated by bulldozers were used to construct a long series of steps from the house to the road.  It would be years before it was replaced with cement steps.

 We lived in a space that was somewhat less than half of the cement block foundation, separated by thin walls.  There was a small bedroom at the east end, bordered by a plasterboard wall, then a kitchen that was not separated by a wall from the living room. I don’t have a clear recollection of my bed, except that perhaps it was just outside the bedroom wall. 

  This apartment was separated from the rest of the basement by a plasterboard wall and a door.  Beyond the door far to the right was the bathroom (with plasterboard walls and a wooden door) and beyond that, the door to the outside.

 There are photos taken at Christmastime 1949 inside.  The walls were concrete blocks painted white.  There were high windows, with curtains.  Furniture—including the blue couch and chair—came from College Avenue.  (The books, too.)  In addition to my parents, the guests there are my mother’s cousins  (Aunt Pearl’s daughters) Jenny and Mary Romasco, and their husbands Tom Butina and Jim Armella. Another of Aunt Pearl’s daughters, Jo-Ann (formally Joan) and her husband Doyle Gillespie may also have been there.

 Just weeks later, my sister Kathy Joann Kowinski was born in Pittsburgh.  It was January 14, 1950, in the midst of a snowstorm.  At some time—perhaps just before or after this—the basement was seriously flooded.  For years, the brown outline of the water remained a foot above the floor on the last remaining plasterboard wall.  

 I have a few hazy memories of living in the foundation, and one very clear one. Because my father was fascinated by new electronics, he often was an “early adopter,” so we had a television set in 1950 or 1951, when I was four or five.  I was watching the Dick Tracy show.  In this episode, the bad guys got the drop on Tracy and took away his gun.  But he outsmarted them, because he had a second gun they didn’t find.  I remember going out the door to the bathroom thinking about this clever ploy.  

Walt holding Kathy, me;
foundation front entrance

Construction on the house itself began in 1950, probably that spring or summer.  By November 1950 (and the Thanksgiving “Big Snow”), it was partially built, but we were still living in the foundation that Christmas.  Even though I was just four years old when the house was being built, it was a big new experience, and I guess I was old enough to retain a few memories of watching the house go up.

 

house under construction, Nov. 1950,
the Big Snow of Thanksgiving.

I remember seeing the blueprints—the scrawny white lines on the strange dark blue paper—unfolded and examined on the foundation’s flat black roof.   I remember the mystery of the skinny wooden forms that marked out where the rooms would be, that seemed too flimsy to hold up a house.

 The house was made of brick, and I remember how they smelled in the sun (though I would have plenty of opportunities in later years to know that odor.)  I wasn’t allowed to hang around when the work was being done but saw it afterwards—the cement that sloshed in long metal tubs now between the bricks, making walls to hold the house up.  Later the smell of the plaster swirled onto the walls, the hardwood hammered on the floors with very thin nails, and especially the black goo in the kitchen as the dark green and yellow patterned linoleum was laid down, as well as the gray patterned tile in the bathroom.  

 We must have moved into the house proper by sometime in 1951.  My mother had explained the rooms and what they were for.  There was the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the bathroom, and three bedrooms.  Kathy and I would each have our own bedroom, at least until I got a brother or she got a sister. 

My bedroom was a decent size, with a closet and a window onto the back yard, or in later years, the brick patio. The room was eventually painted yellow.  I had my own double bed, covered with a Roy Rogers spread.  The hardwood floor was covered by linoleum in shades of brown, with various cowboy scenes.

 

 But above my bed the theme changed—the light fixture was a golden ship’s wheel, with a kind of luminous compass as the shade.

 In my room would be my toybox—likely this Hopalong Cassidy one.

 

 Over the 1950s my possessions would include a Howdy Doody Phono-Doodle, then Davy Crockett socks (wrapped with a cardboard backing that had all the lyrics to “The Ballad of Davy Crockett”), a Captain Midnight decoder ring, and my Superman membership button and secret code book (which I kept between the mattress and the springs.)

 I had my Golden Books and records (Tubby the Tuba was a favorite. I still have the much-scratched but very tough 78.) As I progressed in school, I would get a couple of bookshelves with a globe and a radio on them (as well as books) above an old wooden desk.

My room was my sanctuary, and the place I ran to when I was upset, which as I recall was pretty often. Occasionally I would permit my sister Kathy to come in.  I recall once when we played Mass.  

 Just outside the door to the right of my room but at right angles was the door to Kathy’s room, which later she shared with Debbie, who was born on September 25, 1954, at the Westmoreland Hospital. Their room was opposite our parents’ room.  Mine was more or less opposite the bathroom.  They were all connected by a small hallway.

 

 

toilet, sink and tub were like this, but not the rug etc.

Apart from its gray floor tile, the bathroom was blue: to the left as you entered, past the high cupboards and the door under them that hinged from the top so it could swing inward (where we would pitch dirty clothes), was the blue ceramic sink and blue toilet (called the commode.) Opposite them, not many feet away, was the blue bathtub, with shower.  The tiles on the walls were in shades of blue. 

bath tile this color

 

The bathroom had the usual products: my father's electric shaver, Old Spice and later Mennen's aftershave, Ivory soap and later fashions like Dial, and for awhile when I was in prime Free Range Kid age, spending my days in the dirt and grass and in the trees, on the sink there would be a can of Boraxo--rough grains of white powder to scrub my hands, from the 20 Mule Team Borax company.  It was advertised particularly on Death Valley Days, the first TV anthology series, western stories introduced by the Old Ranger, and later by Ronald Reagan.  The commercials I remember featured Rosemary DeCamp, though Reagan pitched Boraxo, too.  

Leaving the bathroom, straight ahead past the hall closet on the right (for coats, umbrellas, etc.) was the living room. On your right, the living room had an enormous picture window facing east, with a dramatic view of the city of Greensburg.  The same blue sofa from College Avenue and the foundation was placed in front of it (though there would be two or three living room suites that replaced it over the years.)  I remember spending what seemed like hours lying across that sofa’s fat, scratchy cushions, sprawled over the top of the sofa, to look out that window—to imagine the Court House as Captain Midnight’s secret headquarters, or a church spire as Rocky Jones’ Orbit Jet spaceship, or to imagine Lone Ranger chase scenes in the mountain ranges of clouds.  On clearer days, I could see the actual mountains in the distance, rounded, wooded and blue, etched in gold sunlight. 

living room 1954. Old chair (l), new TV (r),
curtain at r. edge of picture window

 Soon the sofa was moved to face the fireplace and mantle which were in the center of the north wall, but more strategically, the sofa faced the television set.  At first the TV lived in the corner closest to the curved arch leading into the dining room.  Later TVs—like the blond wood set—were placed in the other corner of that north wall, towards the picture window.

The fireplace worked, though the few fires lit in it were for decorative purposes. It was hard keeping it burning so it got some enhancements from time to time. We mostly enjoyed looking into those fires, and we even tried to roast marshmallows a few times.

 The picture window was probably another reason the sofa was moved: that big window was easier to clean without the sofa in the way.  My mother washed it inside and out, which caused a certain suspense for me and Kathy.  At first there was no front porch—just a drop down to the cellar door.  We watched my mother inch along the ledge outside to wash as much of the outside as she could. 

Kathy in her dark blue velvet dress in 1957. The room has
acquired hi-fi components, a 45 rpm record changer on
a bookcase.  And the sunburst clock. 

Wherever the sofa was, there were matching wood end tables on both sides of it, with matching lamps with gold colored bases and white shades, and a wood coffee table in front of the sofa. Later one or two modern style floor lamps were added. There were lots of ashtrays, including one that had a kind of beanbag base but a metal top that you pressed down so the ashes disappeared inside the bag.  Almost everyone smoked.  Ashtrays of all shapes and sizes--almost art objects--were everywhere.

 On the walls, there were matching small lamps with gold colored shades on either side of the fireplace. Just as furniture moved around, so did wall decorations.

At one point a gold sunburst clock was above the fireplace. At another, a large reproduced photograph or painting of a stream running through a snowy landscape was there, then on the west wall (with my bedroom on the other side). 

Debbie and Kathy 

The Christmas tree migrated from place to place over the years, from a corner of the living room to the far wall of the dining room to in front of the picture window.  At first we had real trees, and I recall one time I went with my father to select it in a grove of living trees.  Then we got a silver artificial one, and finally one that had green branches like a real tree but was assembled with color-coded parts.

Apart from watching television (our most frequent family activity by far), we might play cards or board games in the living room or the dining room.  I remember playing checkers with my mother and grandfather, a few times with my father and later my sisters.  My mother and (when they were old enough) my sisters joined in occasional games of Scrabble.  I still have--and still use--the same Scrabble set from those years.

We had other board games for kids I don't recall, and standards like Monopoly.  I was fascinated by the games my mother had for adults, though I doubt they were played often.  I believe we played them at least a few times as I got older.  One was Jotto, a word game.  

We had a game called Hi-Q, a version of peg solitaire apparently.  I played it enough times that I remember the red plastic pieces.

My father read the newspaper in the living room (the Greensburg Evening Tribune), and if I wanted to read part of it, that's where the newspaper was kept.  I read the comics page every day, and branched out from there.  My parent subscribed to magazines which largely resided in the living room as well--my father's Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, my mother's Redbook, McCalls and Ladies Home Journal, as well as the glossy weeklies: Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post.    

In the 1950s the house had one black telephone in the living room.  For part of the time we were on a party line (with our neighbors the Coles for one) so calls could not come in or go out if the Coles were using the phone.  Our phone number was 3329-M. The number of the Singer Store on S. Main St. was simply 409.  To make calls, you lifted the receiver and waited for the operator to ask "Number, please," and you said the number you were calling.  

 In the dining room, high on the wall on the other side of that arch was a varnished wooden sign with sawtooth edges that read in red letters: God Bless Our Mortgaged Home.

 The dining room had double windows on the north wall. The dining room table dominated the room. I don't recall the original furniture.  I have a hazy idea that the table was of blond wood with a slight grain, and matching chairs that had upholstered seats.  But I'm not confident of this memory.  In any case, the table was often covered and seldom used, except for large family dinners, when it was entirely covered with a white tablecloth.  That white tablecloth stayed on the table throughout the Christmas holiday season, so cookies, nuts and other seasonal snacks could be kept out for company , along with holiday drinks made for the adults and desserts for visiting children.  The Christmas tree was set up in the dining room at least one year, along the wall shared with the kitchen.

 Otherwise the table was used when my mother did her lodge correspondence (as Corresponding Secretary) and other such tasks. A sewing machine was in this room from time to time; otherwise in my parent's bedroom.  In the early 50s this still would have been a mechanical sewing machine with a pedal, in its own table.  Later, an electric sewing machine was portable enough so my mother could use it on the dining room table itself, though afterward it would go into its case in a corner on the floor. 

  Past the dining room was the kitchen, with its green speckled countertops and shiny wooden built-in kitchen cabinets.  With two sinks side by side under a double window, it was all very modern.  

To the right of the sinks as you looked at them, the white gas stove took up most of the space along the wall the kitchen shared with the dining room.  Across the room from the sinks stood the white refrigerator, with its rounded-edged door and silver “Frigidare” name high above a strip of chrome on the front.  Any refrigerator could be referred to as “the frigidare” then, or even “the icebox.”  People of my grandparents’ age, or even of my parents’ age from childhood, would remember when such a white insulated appliance really was an icebox: kept cold by large blocks of ice carried in when the iceman cometh. The first affordable refrigerators were made in the 1930s by General Motors Frigidare.

 Inside the refrigerator was a freezer box, with aluminum ice cube trays, and a lever to break a little of the ice so the cubes would separate.

  To the right of the refrigerator as you faced it was a high stool with chrome legs and a dark green plastic-covered seat (that stuck to you in hot weather), which would eventually be under a wall phone. On the fridge’s left was a short metal table with shelf under it, then a narrow wood door (matching the cabinets) to a deep but narrow cupboard that hadn’t quite been finished. For awhile the cupboard didn’t have a back wall, and so it opened up on the closet in my room—therefore becoming my secret passageway. 

On top of the refrigerator was a ceramic cookie jar: a big yellow moon face, with figures below of the dish running away with the spoon, and the little dog who may have been laughing but was definitely playing a bass. On top of the lid was the cow.

These appliances got a second life in the cellar for awhile after they were replaced.  The stove was used for big family meals, and at least one year, to mass produce pizelles for Christmastime.  The refrigerator was plugged in for beverages during the holidays or for a specific event. But these large dinners and extended entertainment slowly diminished through the years, and the appliances finally disappeared. 

Apart from the refrigerator, the major appliance in the kitchen for us as kids was the pop-up toaster.

 My parents received a full set of Fiestaware as a wedding present.  We used those dishes in the early 50s, but even when the plates were replaced with other sets, some of the Fiestaware items remained in use for many years, such as the blue and yellow salt and pepper shakers, the green gravy boat and the yellow pitcher.  But one by one, the Fiestaware cups were broken. Some of the plates survived. Other seldom-used items, like the lazy susan, survived in near pristine condition.

 

The chairs are right, except for the white diagonal
stripe, and the table is the right color.

The mint green Formica and chrome table with matching chairs was under a window, directly across from the back door.  Somewhere in this area, a wooden high chair would reside from time to time.

 This kitchen table is where my mother entertained daytime visitors, primarily with coffee from the percolator on the stove, later replaced by an electric percolator.  But we must have had the stovetop version for a long time, because my mother taught me how to use it.  You waited until the coffee perked, then turned the gas down low and let it perk for five minutes, then it was done.  With the electric perculator that sat on the kitchen counter nearest the kitchen table just under the cupboard, it was all automatic. 

 

This is what the table looked like, but not
exactly these chairs

Almost everyone drank their coffee with milk and sugar.  Although cups and saucers were not unknown, coffee mugs were more likely on these occasions.  The ones I remember were a slightly translucent green.  (At my grandmother’s, more likely the off-white ceramic mugs or cups.)

 

Those visitors to our house included relatives (my grandmother Severini, Aunt Carmella, Aunt Beatty, Aunt Rella Kowinski) and neighbors (Lucy Coccioletti, and especially Dorothy Cole, who walked across the field between our houses every day, opened the back door without knocking, and visited with my mother.)  Sometimes they were both neighbors and relatives, like Vita Vitace, when Louis Vitace and his family (daughter Carol, a year older than me, and young Ralphie) moved to a new house on Vermont, the street above John St. 

My parents sometimes entertained in the evenings, usually relatives or my father's coworkers at Singers and their wives.  They sometimes played card games.  I recall my mother liked Canasta.

 Many of these visitors to the kitchen and the living room also required ashtrays.  So many of my mother’s friends smoked that she eventually started, in the mid to late 50s.  Her brand was L&M.  

 

Cigarettes were everywhere then.  We even played with the empty packs.  I saw a lot of Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Camel packs during evenings in United or days in Youngwood. (My Kowinski grandfather also smoked a pipe.)  I think my father smoked Chesterfields at one time, and later Kents.  Boxes of cigars were reasonable Christmas gifts, and boys got the empty cigar boxes for their treasures.  I had at least one.

 The visitor I was most interested in was my Uncle Carl, who always talked to me and often played ball with me in the backyard before he left.

 Visits by Uncle Carl prompted a realization when I was perhaps 4 or 5.  At first his visits were usually unheralded, during the day. Once a strange thought occurred to me: that when he went away, he did things and saw things I couldn’t see; that he had a life even when he wasn’t in my presence, separate from me.  I must have known this in principle, or in general.  But understanding it was a new idea. I almost grasped it, then couldn’t quite understand it, then finally realized it was true. I began to see that there was a world separate from me.  

 The kitchen table was also where we had our family meals. (The dining room was for special occasions.)  Breakfast was usually cereal or cinnamon toast and hot chocolate.  But sometimes, especially weekends, it might be bacon and scrambled eggs, pancakes, waffles or French Toast.  

chipped ham

The noontime meal was sometimes called dinner, but at school they called it lunch. Lunches at home would often feature minced ham or chipped ham sandwiches on sliced white bread spread with Miracle Whip salad dressing (which my mother preferred to mayonnaise) with lettuce and maybe tomato.  Other sandwiches featured tuna fish, baloney, salami or egg, and variations like tuna salad and egg salad. (Canned tuna also went into the spaghetti sauce if we had it on Fridays. In the 50s, Catholics who knowingly ate meat on Fridays risked going to hell.)

 

“Chipped ham,” I later found, was a distinctly western Pennsylvania habit (although parts of Ohio where Isaly's originated were also addicted.)   It was apparently created by Isaly’s, famous for its meat counters as well as its ice cream and its other major invention: the Klondike ice cream bar.

 The evening meal was always called supper.  We had a big, heavy silver iron griddle that was used for pork chops and hamburgers as well as bacon, sausages and pancakes. My mother made baked and mashed potatoes, home fries on the stove and homemade French fries in a fryer. She made chicken (baked and fried), roasts, stews and occasional casseroles. Only my father liked pork and beans, but we tolerated it if the meal included hot dogs.

We had forks etc. with
black handles like these

 And of course, she made spaghetti, as well as “elbows” (sometimes with bits of ground beef and peppers mixed in), “sewer pipes” (rigatoni), “springs,” “washboards” and other pasta. For these she mostly used the store-brought pastas from the blue and white Muellers boxes. Though she used sauce from  my grandmother’s, my mother made her own sauce as well.  For special extended family meals and other times she might make her pasta from scratch, at least in the early 50s.  

She also made ravioli, which were always filled with ground beef, and the occasional lasagna.  Macaroni and cheese had its own sauce, and became a more frequent dish when it began appearing in boxes which contained both the macaroni and the makings of the cheese.

 Vegetables usually came from a can: corn or peas being the most likely.  Also cooked spinach and string beans, though not so much.  But often we had salads, served after the main course: lettuce with tomato chunks, peppers, celery and sometimes cucumber and carrots. 

 In summers we had corn on the cob, watermelon and cantaloupe. In cooler months, we ate a lot of chicken soup (either Campbell’s out of a can, or Lipton’s out of an envelope) and a quota of vegetable soups.  Soup was usually accompanied by Saltines, either crumbled from the Saltines box, or the so-called oyster crackers.

 

We children drank milk, juice or Kool-Aid out of various vessels, including metal tumblers from a set with many colors. 

 

Around age 5 I developed an aversion to white milk and would only drink chocolate. Even in school at Sacred Heart, when we had little milk cartons sitting on the window sill for our break, mine was chocolate.  But my mother drew the line at spending extra money for regular chocolate milk at home.  So I used a lot of Hershey’s syrup and cocoa powder, Bosco, Ovaltine and later Nestles Quik.  

We drank orange juice (Minute Maid, for instance), and occasionally some exotic juices like apple, pineapple, or apricot, but our favorite was grape juice, Welch’s the very favorite.  My mother tried to get us to drink tomato juice or V-8 but without much success. And then, of course, there was Tang--a powdered orange drink introduced in 1959.

 

My mother baked cakes (very big in the 1950s), at first from scratch (I still have her big Betty Crocker cook book), then from Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Duncan Hines or other cake mixes.  Yellow, chocolate and spice cakes were the standards, with the occasional white cake, marble cake, apple walnut or angel food, which required a special pan. 

Icings were mostly chocolate or vanilla, with occasional variations like strawberry or orange. White cakes might also include coconut frosting.  There were almost always two layers, with icing on top and between the layers.  They were baked in round cake pans.  We had cupcake pans, too.

 

Cakes were her specialty, and then cookies. I remember oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip and my favorite: her snickerdoodles.  She made brownies and occasionally fudge. More often she made a date and nut bread, especially at Christmastime.

She also baked pies—apple pie and lemon meringue were her specialties. She made her own pie crust dough.  She also made cream pies (probably with pudding) with graham cracker crust.  Occasionally she made donuts in the fryer.  Her shortening of choice for everything was Crisco.

 But for most daily desserts she made Jell-o or puddings from a box: chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, and coconut cream were the favorites.  

For manual mixing and so on, she had a set of early Pyrex bowls, different sizes in different bright primary colors.  Some survived and were used for decades.  I especially recall the red and blue ones. I remember the yellow one as brighter than this, and can barely recall the green one.

 

To mix batter, mash potatoes and perform similar tasks, my mother had a heavy Mixmaster mixer, white with a black base, which I still have, and which still works.  As the oldest child, I learned to do basic cooking, and even made a cake from scratch---once.

 I was also the first to get dish-washing duty, which I did not like.  However, I do have pleasant memories of conversations with my mother at our double sinks, as she washed and I dried.

 We very seldom if ever ate in restaurants, except on vacation.  My father might bring home a pizza, or on Fridays he might buy fish sandwiches from a bar on the other Lincoln Avenue: breaded cod on thick locally baked Italian buns.  Breaded and fried fish was about the only kind my father liked, so we seldom had fish at home except for breaded fried shrimp, and the inevitable fish sticks.

Later in the 50s, when frozen food got cheaper and my mother was working, we ate a lot of pot pies and frozen vegetables, along with those fish sticks.

 Pizza was just becoming an American obsession in the 1950s, but it was not part of the culinary tradition of Manoppello, so we only had pizza from the growing number of pizzerias.  Fortunately, it was part of (or adopted by) other Italian traditions, and Greensburg had varieties of good pizza.

Special treats on a Friday evening were fish sandwiches from a nearby bar/restaurant.  Big semi-hard buns of excellent Italian bread surrounded quantities of fried cod.  This is the only "take-out" I recall, at least as a repeated meal. 

On trips to downtown we might visit Isaly's for a skyscraper ice cream cone, or a Klondike, or even stop at a lunch counter for a soft drink and snack, maybe even a hamburger.  In the mid 50s when we took family drives as recreation, we might stop at Frozen Custard stands for cones.    

 Our snacks at home as children, often consumed in front of the TV, were various, but they included apples, pears, bananas, peaches in season; carrots, celery slathered with peanut butter.  We ate graham crackers (straight or with butter between two sections), and later the kind that came topped with cinnamon; Saltines crackers (with butter or peanut butter), peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, raisins, and bowls of cereal: corn flakes were the staple, but we tried everything as new (ever sweeter) varieties came out—and were advertised on television.

Boxes of cereal were kept inside a door, on the lower shelf in the cabinet under the counter and directly to the left of the sink.  On the shelf just above the cereal in this same compartment were crackers--Saltines and graham crackers, etc. and my father's Cheez-Its.  Packaged cookies could be there or on the very bottom drawer under the counter, directly right of the sinks.  That was the bread drawer, with a silver lining and a sliding wood top.  There might be sliced or unsliced Italian bread in white wrappers, maybe even some Roman Meal multigrain bread, but mostly sliced white bread, at first from local bakeries, Schallers or Braun's Town Talk bread, and then sometimes the heavily advertised Wonder Bread, which we might make into little balls, it was so soft and squishy. In the early 50s, bread and other packaged baked goods might be delivered by a bread truck, similar to Mr. Cole's milk truck.

 The one 1950s family snack ritual I remember was only for a year or so, when we had popcorn that my mother made on the stove, in front of the TV on Friday nights as “I Remember Mama” was followed by “The Life of Riley.”  Once in awhile (never often enough for my sisters and I) my mother made Rice Krispies Treats, or caramel apples.

 In the early 1950s, my mother might call in “an order” of groceries to Anderson Market (on Grove Street) and they would deliver it. (In later years I would occasionally be sent down there to pick up a needed item or two, when there was no closer store.) When the supermarkets arrived, going grocery shopping became a family activity.  We shopped at Kroger’s and Thorofare, occasionally an A&P, and local stores like Davis’.  

1942

 An occasional visitor to 228 S. Lincoln in the 1950s was a Benedictine priest I knew as Father Dunstan.  William Dunstan Debes was born in 1910 and ordained in 1939 at the age of 29. In the mid-1950s he was pastor of St. Mary’s in Bolivar, a town in northern Westmoreland County, and taught at St. Vincent Prep. He had known my mother a long time, perhaps from Holy Cross church in Youngwood, where the pastor was also a Benedictine.  He baptized me, and there’s some possibility that I was named after him, at least partially.

 

Father Dunstan and me in Youngwood. Notice
the Mixmaster under the tree. 

I remember on one of his visits, we sat on the blue sofa in the living room, and on a piece of paper on the coffee table, he drew for me two diagrams illustrating the differences between blimps and dirigibles.  In the mid-50s he arrived a couple of times carrying a bag of groceries, which seemed odd.  Once he made dinner for my sisters and I.  It included sauerbraten, which none of us liked.  Perhaps this offended him, for we didn’t see him again.

 This may have been during a difficult financial time for Walt and Flora.  Since January 1950—starting just a few days after Kathy’s birth--Walter had worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company in Greensburg.  From what I understood, he repaired but mostly sold sewing machines.  It was when I learned the words “salary” and “commission.”  He was gone all day, and sometimes in the evenings after supper he went back out on “calls.”  From conversations I overheard, these might involve repairs, demonstrating and trying to sell a product, or trying to collect a bill or repossess a sewing machine or “sweeper” (vacuum cleaner.) 

In the spring of 1952, he quit Singer’s and began selling cars for a car dealership.  He kept this job for just under a year, and returned to Singer’s in Greensburg in 1953.  By 1957 he was promoted to assistant manager of the store, and for a few years after that, he was sent around to several smaller stores as their manager: first to Braddock in 1958, Latrobe in 1959, and Jeannette in 1960.  He then became manager of the Greensburg store in 1963.  He would spend probably a year as the manager of the Greengate Mall store after Singer’s relocated there, before leaving in late 1966 for a job as factory representative for the Hoover Company.

 But finances must have been tight in 1955 or so.  Around the time of Father Dunstan’s grocery bag visits, strange nondescript labels on gold cans started turning up in the pantry—something called “surplus food,” which my mother said we got because my father “knew somebody,” and for that reason we weren’t supposed to mention it to anyone.  It probably included big bricks of butter and cheese, but what I most clearly remember is the canned roast beef, which tasted distinctly of the can.  We also seemed to be having pancakes for supper more often.  Once my father made some with sliced bananas in them.

 At some point my mother had gone back to work for awhile at the Rubber Works in Jeannette, but in the mid to late 50s, she got a full time job at Westmoreland Hospital, doing office work on the night shift, (“posting” she called it), probably in the billing department. She worked there with Vida Vitace and Grace Semenko. Eventually Flora left the night shift and worked her way up into administrative management in the 1960s. On several occasions, women she had supervised in her department told me how much they admired her.

recent photo of 228. Railings were wrought iron,
no trellis on side steps, otherwise pretty much
the house as it was, many winters ago.

 Beyond the kitchen table was the door to the cellar. We no longer called it the foundation.  The part of it where we had lived we called “the other side.”  In the cellar was the washing machine: in the early 50s, essentially a big tub with wringer attached. 

 Some clothes were dried on a line near the washer, but mostly taken outside.  For awhile the clotheslines were strung on the north side of the house facing the Robinson’s.  This was a small yard area before it dropped down some cement steps to what would eventually be the driveway. Later the clotheslines were strung from the house to several poles in the backyard. 

 Back to the cellar: a white ceramic laundry sink near the washer. Off towards the cellar door was the coal furnace, though at some point a new gas furnace was installed.  

 The steps down to the cellar were wood planks, without backs, and so a little scary.  Even more scary however was something kept under those steps, eventually moved to a corner.  It was a large bottle of gold liquid my mother called “acid,” and warned me I must never go near because it was very dangerous.  I was frightened of that silent bottle with its sinister color, even of its shape. I had nightmares about it.  The steps were later replaced with more solid ones with backs, painted gray.

top: Kathy and Debbie 1960, backyard outside
the kitchen. Bottom: Kathy between grandmother
and grandfather Severini in 1957, on our
patio just outside my room, on the occasion of
her First Communion.