One of the most important if not enduring images of the Great Depression is Dorothea Lange’s haunting portrait of a migrant worker cradling her two young children. Her eyes tell a personal story of quiet desperation, while the photo itself serves as a tragic commentary on a country in the throes of economic devastation so great that even its children were put in harms way.

Less familiar, but of equal importance, at least locally, are the images and stories of Inwood and points nearby, as the Crash of 1929 spread like a cancer through American society.

This is a story of tragedy and hardship, of coming together in time of need, of unemployment, public works, arts and ultimately survival.

While the scope of Great Depression seems unimaginable from a modern perspective, it is important to remember that this nation had been though a series of economic crises before the big crash. In 1907, 1910 and 1921 the nation endured other depressions, though at the time they were referred to as “panics.” To add to the chaos, the whole Kingsbridge area suffered terribly in 1922 when the Johnson Ironworks closed its doors on some 1,200 workers to make room for construction on the Spuyten Duyvil.

And while these “panics” and layoffs had a profound effect on Inwood, the Great Depression was a different animal all together. By 1926, working class New Yorkers had followed subway construction north, carving out a denser, apartment based community, where before existed mainly farmland. The landscape had changed. This time there would be casualties.

4740-46 Broadway at Thayer Street, 1936

Even through the eyes of a child the drawn out day to day downward spiral was evident and terrifying. Lifelong Inwood resident Peter Dongan, who sold newspapers after school to help support his family helps set the scene:

“I developed an acute awareness of the Great Depression in Inwood. I have vivid memories of seeing people’s possessions carried out of their homes and deposited on the curb, and usually without terrible preparation . The Sheriff would appear and say ‘you’re evicted’ and there was no time to pack. So you would have a tearful scene, with people sitting on the sidewalk amidst their belongings.

It was a practice for people to go around the neighborhood and ring doorbells and say ‘we’ve been thrown out of our house,’ and collect a dollar here, a dollar there, whatever people could give, and get themselves moved back in again.” (Source: You Must Remember This, Jeff Kisselhoff, 1989.)

Harlem River and West 207th Street colony, 1933.

But many from in and out of the neighborhood had no such generosity to rely on and set up clapboard shacks, tents or lived in derelict boats along the riverfront.

To the east, along the Harlem River sat one such community. By all accounts this floating Hooverville, in the vicinity of 207th Street, functioned in a fairly civilized manner with neighbors watching each others backs. Some even grew their own vegetables.

Author Helen Worden, who walked the perimeter of Manhattan in the early 1930′s while researching her book, “Round Manhattan’s Rim,” describes Inwood’s east side:

Harlem River and West 207th Street. 1933.

“A curiously individual group they are, these house-boat homes. The personal taste of the people who live in them is reflected in the shape, ornamentations and furnishings of the houseboats. All had porches, many flowers, and one boasted a stained-glass dining-room window.

Harlem River and W 207th Street colony, 1933.

A houseboat costs about eight hundred dollars. Ten dollars a month is the docking charge. The majority have telephones, electricity and water from the city. Year in and year out these boats anchor off Two Hundred and Seventh Street. All have names. Sunny is printed on the life preserver of John Olsen’s boat, and Jennie’s House appears on the side of a neighbor’s dwelling. Sailors handiwork in the form of rope-knotted curtains, carved frames and silk-embroidered flags dress up the rooms.

Harlem River and West 207th Street ,1933.

Jess Thomas is the guardian angel of the houseboat settlement. He is a great, tall, blue-black Negro from Binnettsville, South Carolina, with a friendly smile and a pride in his neighborhood. He reminded me of the descendants of the African chieftains who live on Edisto Island off the coast of South Carolina.

Harlem River and West 207th Street colony, 1933.

It is Jess’s sweet-potato patch and peanut crop that has made a farming community of this locality in a city of six million. ‘Shucks, they told me peanuts and sweet potatoes can’t be grown up here!, he chuckled. ‘But look at ‘em.’ He pointed to the healthy plants. ‘After frost hits the vines I’ll be able to dig ‘em.’”

On the west side of Inwood along the Harlem River stood Camp Dyckman, another Hooverville, this one based on land. By the time Helen Worden visited the camp sometime before 1934 most of its residents, mainly World War I veterans, had relocated south to the infamous Camp Thomas Paine located on the Hudson in the West 70′s. Worden gave this description of what she witnessed looking west from Inwood Hill:

“Below a straggling settlement of shacks and lean-tos fringed the water.
A man swinging an ax hacked at a wood-pile near a house. We watched him with idle interest. A short distance away stood a soda-pop stand tended by a ragged aproned proprietor. Suddenly the wood-cutter stopped, gave a shout, picked up his ax and charged at the soda-stand owner, who dived out from his store like a frightened rabbit and scuttled down the shore-line to a small hut. He locked himself in just as the man with the ax arrived. After hanging around for a few minutes the big fellow went back to his wood-chopping.

Squatters Colony for unemployed workers (Camp Dyckman) Just north of Dyckman on the Hudson, 1934.

‘What is that settlement over there?’ we asked at Captain R. T. Windle’s boat shop when we reached Dyckman Street.

‘Used to be a B. E. F. village,’ some one volunteered.

‘It ain’t much of anything now. Why don’t you walk, up and take a look at it?’

We followed the shore, climbing over the cans, rocks and refuse to the wind-swept group of shacks. A man and a dog guarded the first one, the same man who had wielded the ax. He stared at us through surly eyes, but called to his dog to be quiet when it barked. Just beyond his house was a small tar-papered hut marked head-quarters. From the top of it waved a tattered American flag and posted up on the front in bold letters was this verse:

‘Hoover was the Engineer
Mellon rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
Then the country went to Hell.’”

Spuyten Duyvil Boxcar Camp near 225th Street, 1933.

In Marble Hill, just across the Spuyten Duyvil a remarkable woman named Sarah J. Atwood and her daughter Mavis, ran a boxcar village. Atwood, a widowed mother at the age of 22 was no stranger to the plight of the unemployed. A former employment agent, Atwood operated a food kitchen on Ellis Island during an economic downturn in 1914. She spent most of her adulthood espousing the same mantra– handouts only make matters worse–”Provide employment. That’s all. Make work. Make jobs.”

Testifying before Congress in 1916, more than a decade before the Great Depression , Atwood stated: “If there is employment made, and these men are taken and given good, wholesome, outdoor work, portable buildings can be put up, rock crushers can be started. Those men can be well fed, and in 90 days would learn the habit of industry, and some of them, perhaps, might begin a very different life.”

Spuyten Duyvil Boxcar Camp near 225th Street, 1933.

And while Atwood’s boxcar jungle was no walk in the park, it was, by all accounts well run and maintained. The fifty or so men living in the encampment were expected to contribute several dollars a week for room and board. The men slept four to a boxcar. Dinner likely featured Atwood’s signature “Mulligan stew,” a hearty pot of cabbage and other vegetables cooked over an open fire. While ammenities were obviously limited, each boxcar was equipped with a wood stove and nails to hang clothing. Idle hours were simply spent tossing horseshoes.

While running a Westchester railroad labor camp in 1941 Atwood was killed in an automobile accident. By then the 72 year old firebrand had put some one million men to work.

WPA Workers in Inwood Hill Park, 1938.

New York Evening Post, Nov. 30, 1931

In the November of 1931,  Inwood Hill Park benefited from the financial calamity that had befallen the nation.  That fall, among the trees and old Indian paths, a gang of laborers set out to restore the site to its former splendor.  According to an account published in the New York Evening Post: “One thousand men, unemployed heads of families, were assigned to jobs today in Inwood Hill Park.

The work, made possible by Deputy Commissioner of Parks John M. Hart, was arranged by the work bureau of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, and the men will be paid $15 a week, for three day’s work a week, pending arrangements with the City Emergency Work Commission.

The men assigned to the project all have registered during the past month at the district offices of the work bureau.  All are men with families or dependents, who, the work bureau said, were considered the most needy of the applicants for emergency work.

Commissioner Hart explained that the work would consist of clearing undeveloped land, cutting dead trees, grading, laying new trails for the use of the public and repairing old ones.  The work is being supervised by foremen assigned from the Park Department.  Whenever possible, dead trees will be salvaged for firewood to be distributed to needy families of men on the work bureau payroll.”

By the mid-1930′s Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began using W.P.A. funds and labor to build bridges, swimming pools, parks and playgrounds around the city. In Inwood Hill Park labor gangs set quickly to work demolishing old structures; derelict, but once beautiful mansions from a previous gilded age, and began carving out the familiar trails hikers enjoy today. Joining them in the Depression labor pool were workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal public relief program whose workers often included teenagers eager to learn a trade.

WPA Workers in Inwood Hill Park, 1938. (Note Henry Hudson Bridge in background)

In June of 1935 workers began construction on the Henry Hudson Bridge. The bridge, first promised in 1909, was a source of bitter debate and protest. Many felt the bridge would mar the natural beauty of the area, but Moses ignored the local outcry. By December of the following year his bridge was complete. The project came in five million dollars under budget.

Much like the Parks Department, the arts also benefitted from the pool of unemployed talent created by the Great Depression.

Harold Faye, WPA 1938-39 , "Last Train", shows MTA station at Spuyten Duyvil.

Artists including H.A. Weiss and Harold Faye were brought on board by Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) to document the fruits of Inwood’s labor on canvas. They quickly turned their eyes to the Spuyten Duyvil, which was and remains a source of inspiration for countless artists.

"Spuyten Duyvil Bridge" by H.A. Weiss.

While the ill effects of the Depression would be felt until World War II, the residents of Inwood learned to adapt and overcome. In some pockets a barter system was created for the exchange of goods and services.

Inwood Mutual Exchange System coupon from 1933.

Scarred, a little battered, but otherwise intact, Inwood had survived the Great Depression.

Author’s request: If you or someone you know have depression era stories you would like to share I encourage you to leave a comment below.

Library books and old newspaper articles provide wonderful glimpses into the history of any neighborhood. That said, those who grew up and lived in Inwood can provide a much more intimate portrait of what life was really like.

In this latestest installment of My Inwood Memories, former Inwood resident Herb Maruska takes us into the old neighborhood in the days and years following World War II. His memories and photos of growing up on Vermilyea Avenue provide a rare snap-shot of Inwood in the 1940’s and early 50′s.

Take it from here Herb…

“I was born on July 17, 1944 in Seagoville, Texas, in an internment camp for German-Americans rounded up by the United States Government as potential threats to democracy, just as Japanese-Americans were confined to prison camps.

I was just a little new born baby, and in my opinion hardly a threat to society, but here is picture of me in the camp, apparently ready to cause mischief.

Herb Maruska's Seagoville, Texas Internment Camp birth certificate.

A U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service list of Civilian Alien Enemies in Custody on December 31, 1944 at the Seagoville Internment Camp, included little me, my father and my mother (who was a United States citizen). Oh well.

After the war we were sent back to New York City.

Here I am in my high chair in 1945.

My parents, Paul Maximilian  and Emma Maruska, soon found themselves in apartment 2-C at 157-159 Vermilyea Avenue in the Inwood Section of Manhattan.

Inwood was pretty much divided east and west by Broadway. On the west side were generally more affluent people who lived in nicer apartment houses. Most of these people were Jewish. On the east side of Broadway the apartment houses were older and more run down. Here most of the residents were Irish.

It was certainly difficult to find an apartment in New York City in 1946 when all of the victorious American soldiers came home and married their sweethearts, and to make matters worse, my parents did not have good references, having just arrived from the internment camp in Texas. So they could not afford to be very choosy.

Herb Maruska's building, 157-159 Vermilyea Ave, in 1964

157-159 Vermilyea Avenue was squarely in the Irish part of town, but it was owned by Mrs. Lichtenstein, who was Jewish. Because both my parents were Bohemian-style intellectuals, they fit in more easily with Jews than with simple working-class Catholics.

So my father lived in a house owned by a Jewish lady and worked as a salesman for a dairy business owned by a Jewish man named Charles Schreiber. I think that these facts show that despite having been interned by the U.S. government on suspicion of being an “enemy alien,” Jewish people did not consider him to have been a Nazi, which of course he never was. Otherwise we would not have had so many Jewish friends.

It is impossible for me to remember the details of the first few years of my life. As best as I can figure, my father went off to work every day as a dairy food salesman and my mother stayed home with me.

The front of the apartment house faced west, and when you entered our main door from the hall, you were facing north. All of the windows of apartment 2-C were facing north. We lived on the second floor overlooking a courtyard. We never got any sunshine in this little apartment. Our building had running water, bathrooms with toilets and steam heat. They clearly represented state-of-the-art construction in 1910.

Initially, the adults shared a standard double bed in the bedroom, while I slept in a crib in the same room. I figure that the bedroom was about 9 ft by 11 ft. You entered the bedroom through a glass panel door which had a semi-transparent curtain on it. My parent’s bed had a wooden headboard which was set up against the right (east) wall. This wall was the rear wall of the apartment, with another unit behind it. The far (north) wall was solid brick, the exterior wall of the building. The left wall had a window in the center which looked out into the courtyard. To the left of the window were stacked a trunk, and then two suitcases, filled with clothing and other possessions. To the right of the window was a chest of drawers, with five drawers. My father had the top drawer. He was very neat, and all of his under-clothes were carefully arranged in his drawer. He also kept his wallet and other papers in this drawer. My mother was totally messy. Her drawer looked like a rat’s nest! The bottom drawer was for sheets and towels. There were two other drawers: one for myself, and eventually one for my younger brother Rolly.

My parents never made any good friends in the neighborhood. They talked with the Polish people in the basement (Harry Konopka, the Super, and his wife Julia). And they said “hello” to some people with whom they crossed paths in the Park. But my mother’s only real friends seemed to be her three sisters. My father had several German friends. Most of these friends he met in the internment camp. His best friend was Otto Burkhardt, who, like my father, was a pastry chef.

Otto had a wife named Elfriede, but they never had any children. Somehow the Burkhardts were able to scrape together enough money to set up a bakery shop in Queens, at the intersection of Broadway and 31st Street. The Burkhardts worked exceedingly hard and made a great success out of their bakeshop. Since my father was a pastry chef by trade, Otto invited him to join the business. However, my father could not see himself toiling in front of a hot oven. He suffered from “big shot” tendencies, which in the end did him no good whatsoever. During Christmas season the bakery was extremely busy, and my father would make himself a little extra money by moonlighting there.

Paul Maximilian Maruska (center) with Otto Burckhardt (right) & the Schillers on McCreery Meadow in 1950.

Working in the bakeshop was no joke. My father would travel to the shop on Friday evening and sleep over in the Burkhardt’s apartment. They lived in the building over the bakery. The bakers had to be up and at it by 4 AM. They had to get the oven going, and then start making the cakes. Elfriede minded the store and dealt with the customers. By 2:00 pm all of the baking was complete and the bakers went to sleep. In later years as the business prospered, Otto employed several other bakers, always Germans, to help him on a regular basis. The Burkhardts did so well that they bought the entire apartment building. Then they bought themselves a house in New Jersey, and a house back in Germany

In the early years in Inwood, my father also knew people called Schiller and people called Rohner, camp buddies. However, as the years away from the camp grew longer, these friends drifted away.

He had one other important German friend, a woman named Martha Culkin. Culkin was her married name, but her husband was long gone. She was originally from Alsace-Lorraine, on the border between France and Germany, but she spoke German. She had no children, and lived in one of those single-room-occupancy hotels on the West Side around 90th Street. She visited our apartment frequently, and so she became “Aunt Martha.” Through the years, my mother and Martha became good friends.

Martha was a watchmaker by trade. She worked in the Bulova Watch Factory by Queens Plaza. She smoked endless cigarettes. Martha brought lots of presents for my birthday and Christmas, so she was a dear “Aunt.” She never learned how to cook, and ate all of her meals at a diner on Columbus Avenue. She would remain friends with the family until she died many years later.

My father pictured himself as a great political leader. Now that Hitler and his gang had been exterminated, Paul Maximilian felt that he would be especially useful back in Germany, to help the country re-establish itself after the devastation from the Second World War. He was extremely anti-Russian, and in fact referred to the cockroaches, which infested his apartment as “Russians.” Whenever he would step on a roach, he would curse and mutter, “Another Russian is dead!” He and Martha argued endlessly about the political situation in the world. My mother did not bother to listen to their ravings, and instead buried herself in the reading of history books. She was especially interested in books which confirmed her suspicion that Jesus was not really the Son of God.

Needless to say, I grew up without any positive religious convictions. Although both of my parents had been originally baptized as Catholics back in Europe, we never went to mass in Good Shepherd Church.

From December 26th-27th, 1947, there fell 26.4″ of snow in New York City. This would hold up as the largest recorded snowfall total in New York City until 2006. I believe that I can remember being taken over to Inwood Park that weekend and to my glee, the park benches were buried under the snow, and little Herbie was able to walk along the seats of the benches without having to climb up onto them.

My brother Roland was born on February 21, 1948. There was hardly enough money in the house to support three people, and now there were four! When little Rolly was brought home from the hospital, I had a cold and had to wear a handkerchief over my face to look at the new baby. We wound up with two cribs in the apartment, one in the bedroom, and one in the living room. You would have thought that at 3½, I would have been too big to fit in a crib, but somehow we survived.

As the years went by, both Rolly and me got bigger and bigger. Obviously at some age I could no longer fit into a crib. As far as I can tell, a steel folding bed was acquired and placed in the living room along the east wall. This is where I slept, while little Rolly had his crib in the bedroom along with mom and dad. However, Rolly also got bigger, and finally he also outgrew a crib.Somewhere along the way, the whole bedroom was re-arranged. My parents threw out the old double bed and bought two new single beds. Rolly and I each got one of these new beds, which were placed in the bedroom. Rolly got the inner bed, along the north wall, while I got the outer bed, by the door.

Where did my parents sleep? This is difficult to figure out. There was a steel folding bed in the living room. There was also a standard sofa. So apparently one of them (probably my mother) slept on the sofa, and the other one slept on the bed. It seems a little strange, but I certainly remember a sofa in the living room placed along the south wall. There was also a large stuffed chair, known as the Green Chair, which sat along the west wall, next to the radiator.

The building had steam heat. The furnace in the basement had a boiler attached to it to generate hot water and steam. The steam went up through the building in pipes to provide heat in the winter. There were three pipes in the apartment, each pipe being maybe three inches in diameter, and a radiator in the living room. It got very hot, and if you touched it, you got badly burned. After many years, the heat given off by the radiator caused the Green Chair to dry up and fall apart. Then we got a new chair.

One day I was sitting upon the right arm of the sofa, making believe that it was a “horse,” and trying to get the “horse” to “gallop,” when the arm broke away from the sofa. Good grief, I’m sure that I got severely punished for that maneuver!

Look at the Christmastime picture below. We are sitting in the corner of the living room. My father’s bookcase is set against the wall which has the bedroom behind it. Notice the cloth stuck to the corner of the bookcase to prevent Little Rolly from slamming his head while running around the room. The Christmas tree is set up on a table which later was used as the meal table in the kitchen. The kitchen was very small, and this table was a little bit too large for the space it needed to set in.

Maruska Family December 25, 1949

Rosendo and Fe Palafox came to America from the Phillipines. They lived in Apartment 1-C. They looked Oriental.  During the Second World War, the Palafoxes had to walk down the streets of Inwood wearing signs around their necks stating “We are not Japanese” so that they would not be hauled off to a Japanese Internment Camp. This sort of behavior in America makes me very uncomfortable. What a shame. I don’t know what sort of business Mr. Palafox was in, but he liked to take pictures. He took all of the nice color photographs which I have. He did well for himself, and around 1950 or so the family bought a house and moved to Queens. We never saw them again.

Inwood Park Meadow Fe Palafox, Emma, Eddie, Rolly, Herbie 1949

The Palafoxes had relatives in Apartment 1-E named Garcia. The Garcia family members also wore signs around their necks disclaiming Japanese origins.   Pino Garcia and his family moved away around 1952.

They were not the only victims of misplaced hostility.

Years later, I attended PS 98, and all of my friends were Jewish. Our family name sounds Jewish (it is a Czech name). Because we never attended mass at Good Shepherd, the neighbors assumed we were Jewish. On several occasions I was over on the meadow in Inwood park with my little Jewish friends, when we were attacked by a bunch of Catholic guys. They beat us up, and I remember getting my face pushed into the mud, and all of that stuff. Also, there were times when Catholic kids chased me down the street, yelling, “Let’s get the Jew!” Ugh.

Finally, when I grew up, I joined the Catholic Church. I married a Catholic girl in a beautiful church wedding. We had our kids baptised. One day as an adult in my 20′s, I was sitting on the benches in the park, overlooking the salt marsh. The same old group of Catholic guys, who used to beat us up, came over and sat down by me. They said, “Oh, here is the Jew.” I said, “Actually, I am not a Jew, I am a Catholic just like you. Just because my parents chose not to attend mass, does not mean that you should attack me nor should you beat up my other Jewish friends. “Gosh,” said one of the guys, “We beat him up for nothing!” Then they all offered me their apologies, which I accepted.

The 157-159 Vermilyea Avenue building always had a janitor living in the basement. This person was known as the “Super,” which indicated he was the superintendent of the building. But the Super never supervised anything. The Super lived on the ground floor at the back of the building. This basement was built on the surface of the ground, which is why there were so many stairs in front up to the first floor, where rent-paying tenants lived. The basement contained all of the rooms which existed on the upper floors, but only a few of the rooms were livable. The rooms at the front of the building, by the street, were used for storage, including the storage of coal. Coal was delivered in a coal truck which pulled up on the sidewalk and dumped the chunks through a basement window. In the center of the basement there was located the furnace, which provided heat in the winter, and hot water all year around. The furnace burned the coal, which needed to be hauled back to the furnace in a wheelbarrow. Ugh! The furnace was located in the region of the basement directly below the living room of Apartment 2-C.

The two rear apartments were joined together. These formed a large apartment where the Super lived. When I was a little boy, the Super was an old man from Poland called Harry Konopka. He had a wife named Julia Konopka. They had a daughter named Olga. Harry was a tall lean man with a thin white mustache, while Julia was short and round. They looked like your typical image of old time Polish peasants. My parents were friendly with the Konopka’s because they also came from north-central Europe. I called Mr. Konopka “Wujeku” (pronounce oo-yuh-koo) and I called Mrs. Konopka “Ciotka” (pronounced set-ka). These words mean uncle and aunt in Polish.

A word here about the “dumbwaiters” in the building. Apparently back in 1910 when the buildings were constructed, people felt that it was too much trouble to carry their garbage down to the basement. So each apartment was outfitted with a dumbwaiter. The dumbwaiter was a box located in a shaft which ran from the basement up to the roof. There was a pulley system for each dumbwaiter located in the portion of the shaft that protruded out of the roof. Our dumbwaiter shaft was located in the kitchen, but it was no longer in use. It had been nailed shut. The dumbwaiter shaft was 2 feet, 5 inches wide, and about 2 feet deep. But the dumbwaiter in the back hallway was still in operation. It was a public dumbwaiter. When you wanted to dispose of a bag of trash, you went down the hallway to the dumbwaiter and opened the door. Typically a foul stench exuded from the shaft. You pulled on a thick rope, and with a groan, the dumbwaiter would start its squeaky ascent from the basement. The box would arrive at the door, and you put your garbage inside. Then you sent the box back down to the basement.

In the basement, the dumbwaiter box arrived in the central utility area. Wujeku had to unload each bag of garbage. Being a man from Europe who lived by the code, “Waste not, want not,” he sifted through each bag of trash. Any scraps of food were thrown to Butchy and Jacky, the basement guard dogs. I would guess that their real names were Polish, but that’s what they sounded like to me as a young boy. Butchy was dark black, with long thick fur. Butchy barked at you and seemed to be threatening. Jacky was kind of orange-brown and just slunk around in the background. Jacky was probably much more dangerous. Anyway, these ugly dogs were not allowed inside the Konopka’s apartment.

Harry Konopka gathered and collected any and all useful items that were thrown out by tenants. He maintained shelves on the side of the utility room where he stored all of these treasures. When my father’s wind-up alarm clock failed, my mother went down to the basement and selected a replacement from the Konopka treasure trove. Little Herbie wanted a fish tank? A bird cage? These things were all available in the basement. Since I was just a little boy, I don’t know what Wujeku charged my mother for these items.

In their kitchen, the Konopka’s had a huge cage with a large parrot. The parrot was very beautiful, and it spoke fluent Polish, which I could not understand. I was warned never to put my fingers near the wires of the cage or the parrot would just bite them off. The outside door to the utility room was never locked. You could just walk right in. Of course, the sight of Butchy and Jacky snarling viciously in the utility room was enough to frighten unwelcome guests away. Once inside, we would ring the bell of the Konopka’s apartment. They were always home. Harry Konopka enjoyed drinking alcohol, but somehow he managed to keep the building in order.

There were 46 feet of open space behind our building. Up against the structure there was concrete paving, maybe 16 feet wide, but then there was a lovely garden. I would say that the garden was 50 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. There was stone wall separating the garden from the concrete walkway. In the center of the garden was a huge cherry tree which Wujeku had planted many years before. He also had a lovely white birch tree. There was a shed along the inside of the stone wall where Ciotka kept all of her gardening supplies. She filled the back yard with flowers and vegetables when springtime arrived. She had a raft of morning-glory vines growing on clotheslines which stretched from the stone wall back to her four rear windows of the apartment. What a lovely site. You can see the garden wall and the morning-glory vines in the photo below. Ciotka even created a small flower garden for me. When my mother needed to go somewhere in daytime when my father was at work, she would leave me in the garden where she knew that I was safe. I amused myself by digging little holes in the ground. Oh what a life! But then I got to be six years old, and I had to go to school…”

A special thanks to Herb Maruska for making this post possible. If you are reading this and have stories or photos you’d like to contribute, please drop me a line.

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