I’ve been dipping into genealogy for the past few years, trying to gather those with whom I share my genes. Ancestry.com has been a library in which I searched diligently for my Smithwick and Champion ancestors. Wandering around in data from the last century and before has been fun but until recently, information about the recent past has been sparse.
I did look up the Smithwicks in Brooklyn in 1940 and found that I wasn’t yet there but my parents were already at 332 -55th street, most probably awaiting my arrival. I have pointed memories of that little apartment in which we all lived until I was about 5, the apartment that was, for all intents and purposes my whole world.
It was only very recently that the next census was available for searching.
Today I opened the 1950 Census record of people who lived on 55th Street in Brooklyn and it brought back memories so strong and clear, I could hear the voices of my childhood friends calling me to play.
There they were, the names of family and friends, validating those long-ago memories of my youth. When the census was taken, I was 9 years old. I was a student at Our Lady of Perpetual Help parochial school on 6th Avenue. We went to Mass every day, sitting with our classmates and singing a solemn high requiem mass in Latin. Our classes were large, a typical classroom held 60. We wore uniforms and wrote with wooden straight pens, nibs attached to dip into the inkwells on our wooden desks.
There were those friends that lived close by on our block, our “village”. The Gillens, and the census shows their names, Kathleen and Maureen, would join us playing school, using the steps of our stoop as a classroom, or we would put chalk marks on the broken sidewalk in front of our house to outline the squares that were needed to play potsie, a variation of hopscotch that uses a pink spaldine ball. We might, if we had the pennies, walk down the street, past the building where when the doors were open you could see rows of women at sewing machines, to “Pops” store on the corner to get candy. Mary Janes, wax lips, chocolate covered caramels, dots of candy attached to strips of paper, all the sweetness that a penny could buy.
The O’Brien family lived two doors down on the third floor. John was a few years older than me and Jimmy was the same age. I and my female siblings really never played with them because they were boys and boys played different games, street games that we were forbidden to play. But there was the gender neutral game of ring-a- leeveo, a Brooklyn version of what my grandsons call Kick the Can, that put us all into the mix of fun until the street lights came on when it was time to go home.
One year, and maybe it was 1950, I don’t remember, but Brooklyn was inundated with snow, so much so that traffic came to a halt and the street became a playground. It was then open season for everyone as we worked together to build a fort made of snow. I still can see that edifice in front of our house, as wonderful a building that was ever built by children. The boys built openings to throw snowballs and the girls built a table and chairs for eating a dinner made of snow. A childhood version of division of labor.
Everyone had roller skates that you attached to your shoes with a skate key, if you could find one. Most of us had some kind of bicycle, ours were unique in that they didn’t have brakes. Why? I have no idea.
Eddie Macdonald lived next door. He was my brother’s friend. They spent most of their time playing with their faux pistols, my brother showing off his pistol that “smoked” when you pulled the trigger, courtesy of the addition of baby powder to the cap chamber.
The rule was that you could play outside as long as the street lights were off or your mother called you to eat. Ah, eating. Our neighbor on the other side was Mr. Ferucchi, one of the cooks on the Adrea Doria (yes, the one that sank, but he wasn’t on It that time) … he taught my mother how to make spaghetti and for this English-Irish family that ate things like liver and tripe and chicken feet …it was a gastronomic revelation. I am forever grateful to Mr. Ferucchi.
My aunts and uncles and my cousins’ names were on that 1950 census too. Most lived across the street, next door to each other. Uncle Joe and Aunt Jane lived across the street too, but further down the block nearer to third avenue. They were always on watch but in truth all of us were neighbors who watched out for each other. If you read over the census data, most were blue collar or aspirational white-collar workers. We shared common values. It was the proverbial community, that village, about which we have heard so much. Even with all of the vagaries of urban life, it was a safe time, a wonderful time and place to grow up.
When the next federal census was taken, our lives had changed in so many ways. We had moved to lake Carmel, New York. I had graduated from the local high school and was then enrolled at Syracuse University. The family faced serious illnesses, deaths and significant financial challenges. In ten years, our idyllic urban life became a different kind of idyl, a country life with its own wonders and benefits.
The 1950 census is like a window into the past laid out in the scratchy handwriting of the census taker, capturing the players of a happy childhood.