Scrapes with the kids on the block
Late in 1944, mom and I moved into a brand new, boxy little
house on Dowdy Street. We’d spent the previous year and a half
living with her parents, waiting for my father’s return from naval
duty in the South Pacific. But the war had stretched on, and with
no apparent end in sight, it was time to find a place of our own.
Unbeknownst to us then, yet another year would go by, before Dad
finally came home.
Scrapes with the kids on the block
Late in 1944, mom and I moved into a brand new, boxy little house on Dowdy Street. We’d spent the previous year and a half living with her parents, waiting for my father’s return from naval duty in the South Pacific. But the war had stretched on, and with no apparent end in sight, it was time to find a place of our own. Unbeknownst to us then, yet another year would go by, before Dad finally came home.
Our new house was located two doors away from the southwest corner of Fifth and Dowdy streets. The house next to us seemed to change residents by the year. Briefly, there was a family with three little girls about my age, but I wasn’t allowed to play with them because mom said their parents were Communist sympathizers. Later, the Rubino family moved in. Mr. Rubino for several years was Gilroy’s one-man-plus-one-helper garbage collection company. He worked six days per week, hauling his single dump truck up and down Gilroy’s alleys along a specified route. In those pre-back-support days, the men would lift and dump by hand every galvanized metal garbage can left out at back gates.
A couple of doors down from my house was a little boy named Billy.
Billy was fascinating to us neighborhood kids because of his birthmark, a port wine stain that covered the entire right side of his face. Our parents urged us to be nice to Billy, and I think we tried hard not to stare.
He was a shy, quiet boy who kept his head hung down and looked up at people from beneath his eyebrows. Neither Billy, nor we kids in the neighborhood, ever mentioned the birthmark. But bashful Billy got me into the worst trouble of my life. During the latter part of Lent, around 1949, I learned one Sunday in church for the first time about the crucifixion of Jesus. I was stunned by the story and the next day ran to tell Billy all about it.
That afternoon, Billy’s mother made a quick trip to the store. During her 10-minute absence, he hurried out to the back yard. There he fashioned a wooden cross, had his little brother lie down on it and stretch out his arms. Grabbing a hammer and nails from his father’s tool chest, Billy started to crucify his little brother. By the time he got one nail partway through a palm, little brother figured out what was going on and let out a loud yelp.
When Mrs. Karp next door saw the commotion from her kitchen window, she phoned the police. Just as the boys’ mother returned from the store, both an ambulance, and a squad car had pulled up right behind her.
After the immediate shock settled in, Billy’s mother called my mother. I was ordered into the house, read the riot act for telling Billy about the crucifixion, and put to bed for the rest of the day.
A cute little boy named George, whom I had a crush on, lived at the far end of our block, at Sixth and Dowdy. Mornings, George would haul me up and down the sidewalk in his little red wagon, hitched up to the back of his bicycle. That is, until the day I tried to ride the bike unassisted, against George’s specific orders. I knocked the bike over, crashed it into the gutter, and dented the back fender. From then on, George banished me from our little daily journeys.
A Jewish family, who owned Gilroy Home Furnishers on Monterey Street, lived straight across from George. Even though our family was Episcopalian, sometimes mom and I attended synagogue with them in San Jose, because mom wanted me to understand about other religions, and how they were practiced.
The place straight across Dowdy Street from my house was occupied by a family whose parents I had to address as “Brother” and “Sister” because he was the minister of a very conservative local church. I played with their daughter Lucretia and daily we’d beat up on her younger brother, Victor, calling him “Vicky” just to make him mad.
The family was strictly vegetarian and very religious. I used to worry about Lucretia because she once told me her family only had meat at Thanksgiving, and even then it was just fish, not turkey. I went to Saturday Sabbath School with Lucretia a few times because, as with going to synagogue, mom wanted me to understand other belief systems.
The last house on the east side of Dowdy Street before the corner at Fifth was owned by a family who would leave their old green van running in the driveway for lengthy periods while they went back inside. One day the car chugged away for a very long time.
Outside, their son Jerry convinced his little brother that car exhaust smelled good. While little brother kept bending over and sniffing to see whether it was true, a crowd of neighborhood boys gathered to watch. Before long, four or five kids were taking turns, drawing deep breaths from the black plume funneling out of the exhaust pipe. Seeing this, Mom let out a big holler, dashed across the street, pulled the kids away, and hurried up the steps to find Jerry’s mother.
For a time, in those years immediately following the war, after the men returned and families grew, our neighborhood held 52 children in that one square block area. For us kids, life back then was full of bustle and fun. I often recall those simpler times, when the daily routine consisted of playing outdoors, getting into scrapes, and learning how other people lived and believed. And I’ve especially admired the way our multi-tasking moms could spring into action, rescuing us from such dangers as associating with Communists, being crucified and asphyxiating on exhaust fumes. Sometimes, indeed, I wonder that we made it to adulthood at all, only to go through the same trials and emergencies with our kids, as our moms did, with us.
