LIFE ON STEVENS STREET

The Leonard boys threw rocks at me from across the street. They all turned out to be lawyers. That was growing up on Stevens Street. I was little when I moved to Stevens Street. My mother always told me that I was put down on a chair and someone loaded the chair onto the moving truck. My father built the house on Stevens Street and I loved it. It had an up stairs piazza which looked out over the cemetery. I had my play yard in the back of the house and I could sit on the slide to watch the funerals. I thought it was fun. The house had a pergola in the back. My brother and sister slept on the upstairs porch in the summer time put I didn't, I wasn't invited. The street cars went by the house. At first it was a dirt road. Me and Kenny Lugi went down to the end of the street and lit the field on fire. I don't remember getting punished unless that was the day when I could put in the closet under the stairs. I remember finding a piece of chalk in there and writing all over the walls. We really had nice neighbors except for the one who was crazy. We all got the warning not to bother her as she wouldn't understand. She might throw things at us. There were 4 or 5 boys in the Leonard family until they finally had a girl named Margaret but she was always called sister by everyone. One day my sister Ruth and my brother Ralph went up on the roof and peed on the roof which ran off onto workmen. My mother would send me to bed at seven o'clock when it was bright light. I could hear the voices of children laughing and the adults talking and walking up and down the street. My brother and sister would not have to go to bed as early as I did. No wonder I don't like to go to bed now. To hear the feet, the laughter of grownups and the sound of older children still playing made me not want to sleep. My father once brought me a little wheelbarrow or cart which I used up and down the street to pick horse buns. I don't remember what I did with them after I picked them up. A lot of horses used to go by at that time as cars were just starting to spring into view. We always had a car of one kind or another. My mother and I walked down town a lot. It often got too far for me. All the houses along the way had stone walls that I would walk on. By the year 1918 my mother would point out every house that had a gold star in the window. There were lots of stores downtown. Their were several clothing stores. I think there were grocery stores in the area and of course my mother would use the telephone to call her order in and it would be delivered. Kennedy's was the butter and cheese store but I don't remember when that opened. As the years went by we would stop in a soda shop on the main street. We had a woman, Phoebe, who came into the house to do the housework and the laundry. She was built like a truck, I liked Phoebe. She had worked for the army during the war. My mother had help from early on, she was considered not very strong. I think my daddy took very good care of her. My mother and father would visit with friends on Stevens Street, maybe the Maynards. One of the families had boisterous boys in it. It was a good neighborhood to grow up in. Not many girls lived on Stevens Street until Lucille LaPoint moved in. Her father was a businessman. Mr Lyon lived in one of the big houses, he was not a bad man but my mother didn't want her girls associating with him. The Rabys lived on the street and they were a very substantial family, they were banking people. I went to the Harbor School on Lake Street which then became the Crowley School. We moved from Stevens Street because my father did not want his children going to the inner city schools. That was when my father built the house on Chester Street and we went to Mt. Pleasant Street School. The children from Crown Hill went to school where we would have gone before moving. Many of them did not speak English and they had a whole class which was taught in their language - French or Polish. People think that it is new to have to teach kids in different languages but it isn't. We went to Main Street Methodist and would usually walk. We would all go to Sunday school and then to church. After awhile it seemed to me that we always went out to eat after church. One place was the Ideal Restaurant. It was my mother's treat not to have to make dinner. And on Sunday we often went on what to me were gruesome Sunday afternoon rides - I wold get sick to my stomach. We could not play any games or have physical type activity on a Sunday. We could cut pictures of people from the Sears Catalogue and make paper dolls or we could read but we could not play games where there would be a forfeit at the end. So actually going for a ride was better even if I did get sick. My brother would have to chop wood for the furnace in the cellar. I moved from Stevens Street when I was about 11 years old, I remember I had had my tenth birthday Stevens Street.