Chapter 13
Older brother Frankie graduates PRHS and Albie tags along as Frankie starts a softball team and becomes involved in community sports when home from college. The NY State Thruway and Palisades Parkway bring in new residents - including policemen and firemen - who commute to the City.
Chapter 14
The mid fifties - a rough time for the Dawsons. Uncle Al dies, and financial difficulties force the Dawsons to leave Pearl River and move to the family homestead in Spring Valley.
Chapter 15
The family returns to Pearl River, renting a place on Central Avenue. Albie is having trouble in school and gets a lecture from Uncle Ira (Shuttleworth). He doesn’t listen and quits school in September, 1958. Dad orders him to find a job immediately and Albie goes to work for Feisal’s Express.
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Chapter 13
The summer that Frankie graduated from school, he and some of his friends started a softball team and entered the team into the Pearl River Softball League; the team was The Campus, which was a soda shop across from the high school on Central Avenue. All the students hung out there and Bill King, the owner was glad to sponsor the boys to play ball. They played in the evenings, right on the field in front of the high school. The teams were made up of local merchants that sponsored them and also played. It started to draw some pretty good crowds to watch the games on the summer nights. The league was small, only four teams to start with, but the games became very competitive and as time passed, other teams outside Pearl River wanted to join the league. The county was growing rapidly now, because of two things, one thing was the bridge over the Hudson River.
The Tappan Zee BRIDGE crossed the HUDSON RIVER at Nyack NY. , and ended at Tarrytown, NY. Separating Rockland from Westchester County The crossing was part of the NEW YORK STATE THRUWAY road system and made it an easy commute from Orange and Rockland Counties, into New York City. After the bridge was completed in 1955, many people moved to our town and others in Rockland, to get out of the city. The environment was better for the children, the schools were safer and the housing was reasonable. A lot of these people were city cops and fireman; they had good jobs and could afford to bring their families up in the safe suburbs. They would commute by car, local buses or even trains to their jobs.
Shortly after the Tappan Zee Bridge opened for traffic, the PALASADES INTERSTATE PARKWAY opened in August of 1958. This was another major route to the city and ran from the Orange County line into NEW JERSEY, to the GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE. This was also an easy commute. A lot of these police officers that moved to our town from the city, played softball there, and wanted to have a team in our league. Well the league grew and we went from playing, not only evening games, but started to play on Sunday mornings also. We had to use more school fields to do this, and the Town of Orangetown Recreation Department, and the school system, said ok to our plans and we were using four different fields every Sunday. The new police team was called Reese Beer Sales, and they were good and became heavy rivals with the young Campus team.
The young Campus team started to get a few young players fresh out of other high schools and even some, still in school, and started playing softball in other leagues throughout Rockland County. They would enter fast pitch and slow pitch leagues, where ever they could. Frank was getting a reputation as a very good fast pitch, or windmill pitcher as it was called, and other teams sought him out to play for their team. He was tall, with a blond, flat top crew cut and they all called him by his nick-name DIXIE, which he picked up in high school. He commanded a large presents from the pitchers rubber, standing at 6”foot 6 inches tall and weighing about two hundred pounds. This playing softball, and working for a roofer at Rockland State Hospital took up most of his time, in the summer, before he was to leave for college.
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After the first year away at school, Frank came home to work on the roofs again.This kept him in shape to play more softball, and also play basketball in a summer league at BEAR MOUNTAIN STATE PARK. There were about ten teams entered, they would play at night, outside, and the court was all lit up with big lights. They had some big crowds come to watch the teams play. They came from all over the state and some from NY City. Dixie’s team was good, all from Rockland County, men that he had played agents in high school. They were not quite good enough. They met their match agent’s two teams from the city, all black players, and could they play the game. They would run and run, up and down the court, and shoot the ball and before the ball cleared the net, they would be on their way back down the court. They were really good and brother said that he learned a lot about the game from those teams. He had a pretty full summer that year. He would take me with him to Bear Mountain some nights, to watch the games. They sometimes had three games in a night and if he played the early game, I could go, that way I’d be home early, because I was only thirteen and mom wanted me home before eleven at night. I looked up to my big brother, and loved him very much. He never hurt me or abused me in any way, and I tried to understand why I couldn’t hang around with him more often. I was just too young.
I often think how it would have been, if were only a year apart in age, and if we played on the same teams together, how it would have turned out. I was not the athlete that he was.
Chapter 14
The mid 50’s were not very good years for the Dawson family at all. They say bad things come in three’s, well it did for us. First, Giggy called from the city to tell mom that Al was dead, and could she come down. Apparently they were across the street, in their local hang out bar, drinking of course, they got into an argument and Al got pissed off and left. By then, according to Giggy, he was shit-faced, went across the street to their hotel, which was a one room flop house, to his room on the second floor. He went in and said something derogatory to the hotel clerk, and started up the stairs. Well he got to the first landing, lost his balance and fell backwards down the stairs to the bottom, and broke his neck. It being an accident, the police had to take the body to the Bell View Hospital Morgue, and it had to be identified by a family member. Well Giggy was too drunk to do it, so he called his baby sister. Mommy always was the one called, when poppy, or any of the boys got in trouble. She took over for her mom, after Elsie died. Mom was the rock that would not break, for both families. They informed mom that they would have to perform an autopsy on Al, because of the way he died. Mom informed the Veterans Authority that Al had died and where the body was taken. They told her that they would take care of burring him as soon as they were allowed to get the body from Bell View. This took a week and then the funeral was set, and he was buried by his father and brother Whitey, at New Hempstead. The doctor that performed the autopsy told mom that Al’s liver was 98% gone from the drinking and his hip was so deteriorated, that it was a wonder that he could walk at all , and that he must have been in a lot of pain. After the funeral, Giggy went back to the city and continued his same old life style.
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It is said that bad news travels in threes. This wasn’t true in our case. When the Tee Zee Bridge opened, and also the two parkways , heading south ,to get to the city, it not only made it an easy commute but it meant a lot more impact on Rockland County residents. Property and school taxes went up dramatically; all the rents for housing rose, and property and home prices went out of sight. We were renting the house on Ridge Street, and the owner wanted to sell it to dad, at a price that dad could not afford. The owner saw an opportunity to make a killing on the house, and he did.
We didn’t have much choice, dad had the homestead in Spring Valley, which he owned out right, which George left him, with income from the apartment up stairs and Frankie still in college, we had to cut corners and move to the Valley. Mom didn’t like this and we agreed that this was only until Frank jr. finished school at Cortland State. She was leaving all her friends, that she had made all those years on Ridge Street, and I was parting with my friends at school, and would have to finish my 8th grade and start my high school freshman year at Spring Valley. I wasn’t a happy camper either. Daddy was in a spot, and we knew it, and we all had to make the best of it. When dad remodeled the homestead, before George passed away, they added on a big room on the side of the house, not knowing what was going to happen. A good thing they did, now the downstairs apartment was three bedrooms, what we needed.
We moved and I transferred to the North Main Street Jr. High School which was only a short walk from Myrtle Avenue. I met some kids that I played base ball against, back when I played for Harry Jackson’s Red Bird team at the Memorial Park. We became friendly, but it wasn’t like my buddies in Pearl River. I would catch the bus and go down to P R on the week end nights, if something was going on , but mostly I stayed home with mom. She was a little depressed about the move; she never liked the homestead to begin with, and wasn’t thrilled about living in a house that had anything to do with Mary Dawson, dad’s mother, that never liked her from the beginning.
Like I said before, mom was a rock, and she sucked it up, she knew Frankie had to finish college. She knew dad was working hard to make the whole show go round and round. She was always looking out for me too, and if I needed a few bucks here and there, she’d slip me a couple and say, don’t tell your father. This is from your ‘best-est pal”, and she was that, my whole life.
Chapter 15
(unabridged)
We lived on Myrtle Ave. well into 1956, Dwight Eisenhower was the President of the UNITED STATES after Mr. Truman left office, and the country was rolling along fairly well. Eisenhower was in office, during and after the Korean War, and was faced with putting men coming home from the war, back to work. He started the INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM, which meant more new roads, and many more new jobs, for these men and boost our economy. Work wise, everything was going pretty well. I even got a part time job in a pool parlor, in town, grooming tables and racking balls for the heavy betting pool players. They liked me and I liked the money.
Mom became good friends with the Sullivan family across the street, and after a while she wasn’t so depressed. She looked forward to when Frankie would come home from school, for the holidays. It would give her a chance to cook a big meal, she was a fine cook, and every one of us told her so. Frank even brought his new girlfriend from college, home for Thanksgiving dinner.
THANKSGIVING and CHRISTMAS were big times for us. Frankie would come home, mom would cook and we would eat too much, of course, and we were happy. Dad had to get him another car to make it back to Cortland. Those two hundred and fifty mile trips, each way can make a good car, old quick. Dad got a good deal on 1951 mercury and Frank was back in business. It was a nice car and the payments weren’t too bad, of course he lied to mom about that. He always wanted to make sure Frank had a safe ride, no matter what. Dad said he had a Rabbi at the bank, and he did, a fellow he went to school with, and could get a loan when he needed it. One thing about dad, he had good credit, and paid his bills on time and taught us to do the same.
Time was flying by and the winter of 1956 was ending and the winter of 1957 had begun. That January was cold and Frank said that they had so much snow in Courtland, this winter, that they ran out of places to put it all, and that they couldn’t find six or seven cars buried under the snow until spring. He was busy playing basketball his final senior year, to worry about the snow. He also informed his mother that he had a new girl, and that this was the one. Wedding bells were in the future for sure, he said. Well mom got sad, her boy was getting ready to fly the nest, and she hadn’t seen him that much during the summer time, with him playing basketball at Bear Mountain every summer, and playing softball at nights and weekends. She had missed missed his growing up years, but was glad that he’d grown to be a fine young man.
Mom always said, trust in GOD, HE will always be there for you, and she was right. While Frank was in his last year at Cortland, things started getting tight, money wise with dad. With the Mercury car payment, and all the bills, he was thinking of mortgaging the homestead. He talked it over with mom. Mommy told me about it and I told her to tell dad to use some of the money that Uncle George left to me, when he died. She knew that the chances of me going to college were poor; I did not like school that much and they both knew it. They also talked about selling the house. That’s when mom got her brain storm.
She called her friend Gertrude, and told her to look in the local paper about any apartments for rent in Pearl River. She had already talked to Mrs. Sullivan, across the street, and asked if she knew anybody that would be interested in buying the homestead. Well the Sullivan’s had a few bucks, and their son was getting married in the summer and they thought that it would be a great investment for the whole family, and the newlyweds would have an apartment to start off with, right across the street from his mother. Mommy did all this conniving behind dads back of course. She hopped on the bus to Pearl River, met her friend and they looked at two apartments, both on Central Avenue, in the middle of town. The one she picked wasn’t going to be empty for two more months and that was perfect. She gave the owner of the building a deposit on it, and the deal was done. Now all she had to do was tell dad, and for him to get together with Mr. Sullivan, to buy the house.
Well for mom, the LORD did move in mysterious ways. She broke the news to dad. First I thought he was going to have a canary. After a short while, he combed down and thought it over. She told him that she didn’t like it in this house, and in this town. She missed her friends from Ridge Street and she knew that Alvie, that’s what she called me, missed his friends too. She also told him that his oldest son, Frank, had plans of getting married when he finished school. Mom hit him with this all at once, and like a general going to war, she went for the kill, and told him that the Sullivan’s were ready to talk price on the house, and that she had put a deposit on an apartment already. He almost baulked, but then she sent in the clincher, and told him that she and I were going with, or without him. I told you, she was the family rock and when she put her foot down, that was it.
The Sullivan’s bought the house, not for the price dad wanted, but at least he liked them, and he felt better knowing that the house went to friends. Now there was no worry about Frankie finishing school and we were getting ready to move back home. Mom was excited, and so was I. She called Gertrude and told her the good news. I helped mom pack up some boxes and dad set a few nights aside to paint the new place, to get it all ready. It turned out that dad knew the owner of the building and had done some plumbing work for him in the past. The man’s name was Bill Rowan and he owned the bar on the ground floor of the building.
The apartment was a good size one, living room, kitchen and three bedrooms. We had to park in the back of the building. In a lot where the bar costumers parked. There was a back door that led to our hall way and stairs, up to the second floor. It was great, and the driveway to the lot was right next to the original Muddy Brook, the town was named after. We finally returned to where we belonged, PEARL RIVER, and mommy was happy at last. I got back into school and was with my old friends, some things had changed, the CAMPUS, across the street had a new owner, Steve, a real nice guy, and he would and he would remind us that we had to get back to school, and not be caught skipping. He was like a big brother to us all.
I wasn’t doing to good in school, screwing off, missing classes and giving teachers a hard time. A lot of them had my brother in their classes and would compare me with him. He was a good student and I was the opposite. It was September of 1958; I was out for football and trying to make the team. All my friends were playing and I wanted to be there with them. This was not to be. I had gotten into some trouble in school, sent to the office where Uncle Ira, who was the assistant Principal, at that time, read me the riot act and tried to give me the good advice that I needed. Well I didn’t listen to him, I got pissed off and went home and told mom that I had enough of school and I was quitting. She was not happy with me, and told me not to tell dad what had happened at school. A few days passed, I hadn’t changed my mind and now I had to tell my father the bad news. Mom had fixed dinner and we sat down to the table and he asked me how things were going at school. I didn’t lie to him, I told him that I quit, and he just looked at me. He said that he had heard that up at the paper store that morning and wanted to hear it from me. He said that he was disappointed, but if that’s what I wanted to do, it was ok with him except for one thing. This is Thursday night, and you will have a job by Monday at dinner time, or we won’t be expecting you at the dinner table that night. Dad didn’t want me to become a bum, and told me that he didn’t want any room and board from me, but he would not feed somebody that wouldn’t go to work. Monday, at dinner time, we were sitting at the table and he asked me if I had a job, and I told him that I got one at Feisal’s Express, moving furniture, forty hours a week. All he said to that was, ‘let’s eat’. We dropped it right there.