St. Paul Street, Detroit, 1948

In the summertime and on days off school, the turn of the century houses disgorged children of assorted ages and types immediately after breakfast. An alley divided the block. Once a week, a horse-drawn wagon came down the alley with an old, black man calling out, “Shee-neee!” Mothers left what broken-but-maybe fixable household discards they had by the garbage cans, and the man would climb down and sort through them. If we wore our roller skates, we’d hold on to the back of the wagon and hitch a free ride.

Boys and girls avoided one another except for baseball games. The bigger kids commandeered the schoolyard, so those of us in the first or second grades played in the alley. The telephone pole on one side was first base. A garbage can placed in the center became second, and Mrs. Owens garbage can was third. Home plate was the water drain. I was sliding into home when the catcher stepped on my arm and cracked it. Not too bad. One night in the hospital and a cast that made me feel very important.

The Italian grocer on the corner of St. Paul and Concord Street made his own pasta. The long, U-shaped noodles were stored in a drawer, and when Grandma would ask for two pounds, he’d pick it up with his bare hands, drop it on the scale, and then wrap it in white paper. She never gave him money on a weekday. He would write her purchases in a school notebook, she would sign the book, and Grandpa paid him on Saturdays. A fifty pound bag of potatoes went for a dollar and made the half-block walk home in the back of the red wagon.

The owner of the soda shop on the other corner filled pleated paper Dixie cups with Kool-Aid, dropped a piece of change in them, almost always a penny, froze them, and sold them for a nickel. Every one guaranteed a prize, and the lucky duck who got the daily dime felt as if he’d won the lottery. He wasn’t much on hygiene, but he was a marketing genius.

Around the corner and a half block up on Concord, was the Odeon, the movie house. On Saturdays, the place was packed with the children from my neighborhood. With the exception of a few over-protective mothers, very few adults dared to brave the huge room full of squirming, squealing children. If my daddy was working overtime, he made sure I had a quarter. It cost ten cents to get in, ten cents for a box of popcorn, and five cents for a Coke. I’d see two and sometimes three movies, a half-dozen cartoons, a documentary, the Movietone news, a serial, Flash Gordon, a comic short, usually the Three Stooges. We were in the theatre for five or six hours.

Built during the days of Vaudeville, the Odeon had a real stage and from time to time, held a promotion. Once, I won a pie-eating contest. I got the cherry pie. I went after it with great gusto, and my pie may have been finished sooner than anyone else’s because most of it was on my face, hair, and dress. I won a dollar, so Grandma let me pass without a whipping.Many men think of viagra no prescription usa ED as major issue and needs especial treatment for recovery. Sometimes, women need to undergo cialis for woman surgical intervention. Mississippi has partisan divisions: Caucasian voters overwhelmingly voting Republican and African-American voters levitra 100mg overwhelmingly voting Democrat. Most of the individuals think that the only benefit of sex was pleasure, then sorry guys, you are mistaken. viagra levitra cialis

My friend, Lucy, lived in the house next door to us. It had a basement where the Italian grandma made wine. Sometimes, at night, you could hear popping sounds. Lucy said that if the corks weren’t pushed down far enough, the fermenting process would send them flying. It didn’t hurt the wine, but once a light bulb in the ceiling paid the price.

My friend Pauline, whose parents were Germans who came here after the war, taught me some words in German. I thought I’d learn to speak it fluently, but the constant gurgling made my throat tired, so I gave it up.

My Polish friend, Irene, was blonde haired and blue eyed like me, and people who didn’t know us thought we might be sisters. For a while we felt like it, but then her parents found a new house near their parents in Hamtramck and moved away. I cried for a week.

When the street lights came on, our time of freedom was over. The sidewalks of St. Paul and Concord emptied of children as quickly as it had filled in the morning. We hurried to get indoors before the father’s removed their belts or, in my case, Grandma sliced a branch off the willow tree.