CHAPTER 25 1949 -1952
How did Santa Claus ever find me?
Of course in the December of my ninth year, with the help of Iva Darlington, I got the answer to that question. (See Chapter 19 of Swamp Rat.)
My dad had changed jobs.
After two years hauling milk for Hines, he took a job with
Atkinson Trucking, headquartered in the steep hills of Manayunk, Pennsylvania. He switched jobs for the money. Atkinson must have paid very well in comparison, because leaving Hines meant losing that rent-free house in the swamp. I think dad told me he went from $50 a month to $50 a week. That still was far below the average salary in 1950, $23 a week below it actually (Average annual salary in 1950 was $3,800 annually.). Minimum wage was $.75 an hour or $30 a week. My dad was basically on the job 120 hours a week, and that works out to 41 cents an hour.
Dad took me into Manayunk to the Atkinson terminal a few times. I remember one time we went in toward the end of day. I no longer recall street names, but we left the Schuylkill Expressway at some point and we had to go down this long and steep street. At the bottom it took a sharp turn onto a bridge. Dad talked about how if the brakes failed or if there was ice on the road how easily it would be to smash full speed into the bridge abutment, a tale not designed to put me at ease. Once across this narrow bridge we followed a series of narrow and hilly streets until we came to our destination. It was also a narrow street, seemingly much too narrow for a truck terminal, but there it was. He went inside and left me waiting in the cab. It was well into evening now and growing cold, dark and deserted except for shadows I stared at and distrusted, until he finally reappeared and we left for home. He hardly said a word during this trip other than describing the dangers of that long and steep entry street.
Dad hauled sugar from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh for Atkinson. All he needed was the cereal to go with the milk and sugar, but it wasn’t cereal he backhauled. It was steel. The change of cargo didn’t change his schedule. He still wasn’t home much. The photo on the right is
the old Sugar House Plant of the Pennsylvania Sugar Division of the National Sugar Refining Company where dad picked up cargo for Quaker Brand, Jack Frost and Arbuckle sugar. It was in what is known as the Fishtown area of Philadelphia. The Sugar House Casino took over the sight, but is known today as the the BetRivers Casino.
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh is 300 plus miles. You’re talking,
especially in those days, of six hours of driving one way because at the beginning it was older roads, especially up through the
mountains. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Extension between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh wasn’t fully up and useable until December of 1950. When that happened it made his driving safer, but didn’t cut the time much.
Dad set off early Monday on an average week. He’d pick up the
sugar at the plant in Philadelphia and head west. He’d stop at a greasy spoon or a HoJo’s (Howard Johnson’s – this chain had a monopoly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike during the 1950s) along the way for lunch. That might kill a half hour. He might have to pull through a weigh station for inspection, which farther delayed the run. Truckers hated those weight stations. You were only allowed so much weight or faced a fine. The trucking companies were notorious cheaters, slipping on a few extra pounds unbeknown to the drivers, or so dad claimed. If he made his delivery point by late afternoon there would be time to offload same day. Otherwise he would sleep in his truck for offloading in the morning and then highball it to Butler for his steel. If he did get offloaded the day he arrived he might have made Butler Monday night. This would be nice because then he could get a hot meal and sleep in the large truck stop bunkhouse located there.
The earlier he was at the steel mill the better. If he was later there would be a long line of trucks waiting at the gate and it might take all morning to get his backhaul. Then everything would go into reverse and he’d make the six-hour or so drive to a drop off site around Philly. Usually he would arrive too late to offload and have to sleep over by the plant to be first in the morning. He’d pick up the next payload of Sugar and stop home in the afternoon.
This would be Wednesday and he’d stick around long enough for dinner at home before heading west again. Wednesday evening he would drive for several hours, then pull over on the shoulder and sleep in his cab. Drive, load, drive, sleep, unload and do it all over again. He generally rolled home Friday evening. Sometimes he didn’t get home until Saturday morning. Sometimes he left Sunday night. All I can say is I didn’t see a lot of him as a boy and I was comfortable.
Dad’s trucking companies, cargos and destinations changed many
times over his life, but that basic schedule stayed the same until he was seventy-six. I don’t know how he endured, except he just loved to drive. He gave up his Class A CDL in 1991 and got a Class B license. He kept on truckin’ so to speak, except now he drove a school bus for another 14 years, until they decided 88 was too aged to haul little kids around.
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I always joked dad’s coffin would have to come equipped with a steering wheel or he wouldn’t go. The doctors took the steering wheel out of his hands at age 90 and told him because of a heart condition he was a risk on the road. Driving anything any more was not allowed. This meant he had to also quit his then current job as Sexton (maintenance and cleaning) at his church. Seventy-three years of almost never being home and now at 92 he couldn’t leave the house.
With the loss of the Swamp House we all moved back with my maternal grandparents. As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” I’m back in my old bedroom and it is the Christmas season once more. I’m able to look out my window and see the houses on Whiteland Avenue lit up for the holidays. The one house is all in red lights; another all in blue. I stare at the blue house and find it makes me feel melancholy.
I don’t have a playroom anymore. I’m back to playing on the dining room floor, but I don’t like being in plain sight; it inhibits me.
For instance, I imagined I ran a grocery store one day. I clipped pictures of boxes and bottles from the ads in mom’s old magazines. I sat on the floor and pretended there were shelves and I stocked these with my cutouts. I had a little toy cash register I had gotten for Christmas, which is probably why I got the idea to play store in the first place. It had working buttons and a little window where numbers popped up. I don’t know if it actually added correctly, but it did have a no sale sign that sometimes appeared and a cash drawer that opened. It served as a bank, too. There was a slot near the top and a little lever on the side that allowed the coin to drop into the drawer.
I was playing away, serving my make-believe customers when my grandmother passed by me between living room and kitchen. She stopped and her face got red. She was upset about something. She bent over and snatched up a couple of my cutouts, snapping, “You don’t want those things.” She gave no explanation, just took them out to the kitchen trashcan.
I was shaken and wondering what I did wrong. These pictures were
no different than any of the others I displayed, just some pretend product on my pretend shelves, no different than my ones of Wheaties or Kleenex. I had no idea what Tampax and Kotex were, except now I thought they must be evil or illegal, but then why were they in my mom’s magazines. (Left above, a German Tampax ad; right, a 1950 magazine Kotex ad. I would have cut out the little picture of the boxes at the bottom to use in my “store”.)
People didn’t speak of certain subjects in the 1950s, especially to children. There was a great conspiracy to protect our innocence. Thus I didn’t understand my grandfather’s bathing suit joke about two Band-Aids and a cork nor my grandmothers angry reaction to it and to these little ad boxes I had cut out.
This secrecy would have consequences later on.
After New Year school began again and I was back at East Ward Elementary for the last half year of Third Grade. I don’t remember my third-grade teacher at West Whiteland, but I do remember that teacher at East Ward. Her name was Elizabeth Ezrah and she was to have a more positive effect on my future than the strange secrets of Tampax, Kotex and sex would.
The photo on the left is Miss Elizabeth Ezrah in our Third Grade
picture. As if by fate, I am standing before her right next to my grade school heartthrob, Mary Jane Chudleigh
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