Former Neighborhood April 2009

After living in a number of hotels and a rooming house, we settled in an apartment in a wood frame house just off Claremont Park sometime in 1956. I had found the site a couple of years ago but the house was gone and the property had been turned into a community organic vegetable garden. Now I could not find it at all. There has however been a lot of new construction. We subsequently moved to a nice apartment building on Nelson Ave but that building is also gone. In fair weather there was always a gaggle of old timers shooting the breeze in German in front of the building. Mostly Jewish refugees. It felt so good to hear the language of home in this alien land. Used to pick up my father's shirts from the Chinese hand laundry. The proprietor wore a black silk kaftan and had a long pigtail. Didn't speak a word of English but here we were on an equal footing because neither did I. Went down there once to pick up the shirts but had forgotten the laundry ticket. "No tickee no shirty". I had to go home and fetch the ticket. City life was totally alien to me and I longed for the green meadows of the Saxon farming communities that had been home to me. Learning English was difficult because no attempt was made to teach you the language in school. You were completely on your own except for the voluntary assistance some teachers extended. For his help in this regard I am grateful for the help of Brother Arthur. He would draw me little comics and label them in German and English. From the little bit of vocabulary I picked up I was able to go to the library and basically memorize the dictionary. This apparently was normal procedure in the schools until the government decided to greatly assist Spanish speakers but only Spanish speakers in learning the language. Portuguese speakers and everyone else was excluded from this kind of assistance. I wish that someone would explain this neglect of everyone except Spanish speakers.

Former Neighborhood April 2009