My mother was trained as a registered nurse in the Kaiserswert Institute. Reportedly the place got it’s name from a remark made by Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse in a civilized tongue). He was so struck by the natural beauty of the place that he remarked, “Dies ist des Kaiser’s wert” (this is worthy of the Kaiser). She said that she had gotten a full scholarship to study there but her parents refused to sign the permission slip, so once again, my mother simply forged her father’s signature. This seems to have gotten to be a habit of hers, not that I can blame her.
My mother struggled to learn enough English and finally took and passed the exam to become accredited as a registered nurse while we lived in Cliffside Park, NJ. She then got a job as the staff nurse at an orphanage in Thornwood, NY, called the Millbank home. An apartment came with the job and we moved there. After a year, Millbank closed and we moved to an upstairs apartment on 7 Emmalon Ave in North White Plains. After a year we moved on to the first floor apartment at 1 Emmalon Ave. This was a roughly C shaped apartment. The only source of heat was a gas heater at one end of the C. My room was at the other end of the C and received no heat whatsoever. To remedy this deficiency, my father installed a wood stove. Fortunately there was an unused chimney there. Supplying fuel was my job entirely and I would scour the woods behind the house for anything I could burn. I learned my skills with an axe and sledgehammer and wedge from my father. I also learned certain practical skills from him that obviated the need to use an axe. He had a fast and dirty method of reducing firewood to manageable size without using an axe of saw. Using his method, you would whack a branch up to maybe 5 inches in diameter over the edge of a sharp rock and break off usable sized chunks of wood. Much less work than using an axe of saw. I taught these methods to my children also but they will probably never need to use them.
I noticed that two new houses were built at the end of Emmalon Ave, so that what was 1 Emmalon is now 3 and the former 7 Emmalon is now 9. The area though has hardly changed. There is a little shopping district in Valhalla but if you were driving by and you blinked, you would miss it. There is a large Indian restaurant. Back when we lived there, Indian food was something that they presumably ate in India. We never saw it. A nice cigar store (I bought one). The owner was proud that they imported the cigar leaves from the Dominican Republic and rolled their own cigars. I told him that we have a similar cigar store in my neighborhood in Manhattan but that they also keep fighting cocks in the back. He seemed a little taken aback and said that they do not do such things in Valhalla. “Pity” I said.
While living at 1 Emmalon Ave, my parents gave my brother, Michael, a Labrador Retriever, Susy, for a birthday present. The dog always hated him though, as did our cats. I wonder if this reflected wisdom and insight on the part of the animals? My brother was after all a selfish and self indulgent slacker all his life. Probably he did vicious and painful things to the animals when no one was looking.
From 1 Emmalon Ave, we moved across the Hudson to New Jersey again, when my parents bought their first house in the lakeside community of Cupsaw Lake in Ringwood, NJ. This would have been in 1963.
