Earliest Memories Of The Ridge Avenue House

• Being in a crib on the third floor bedroom of my grandparents house on Ridge Avenue in the East Falls Section of Philadelphia. I remember my older brother was in the room with me and I also remember being frighten over a noise in the closet. My brother ran downstairs and left me in the crib. I cried but no one heard me.
  
• Watching my grandmother climb out a bedroom window to grab my brother off the second story roof.
  
• Watching my grandmother grab my brother off the back yard fence as he was climbing over it.
  
• Remembering the bed frame breaking in the second story back bedroom of my grandparents' house. I believe it was the bed my Aunt slept in. I also believe my brother was jumping on it.
  
• Sitting on a chair in my grandmother's kitchen watching her roll out dough to bake a pie. I remember she wore a house dress and the front of it was covered in flour.
  
• Watching my grandmother wash clothes using a ringer washer. She told me not to get too close or I could get my arm caught in the ringer. I used to have visions of losing my arm in that ringer.
  
• Sitting on the basement steps watching my grandfather shovel coal into a furnace. I remember the high flames, a result of the hot burning coals.
  
• Spending summer evenings sitting on the front steps of my grandparents' house and looking over to the cemetery (Laurel Hill) across the street and seeing the bats flying out of the trees.
  
• Sometimes the Charles truck would come around and my uncles would buy chips and pretzels and surprise me with cookies.
  
• Sitting on the front steps of my grandparents' house talking with my grandmother or taking a walk up to the drug store on Allegheny Avenue to buy an ice cream with my grandfather.


• Remembering the Avon lady pushing a baby carriage with her products. I believe she was the victim of polio.


• Watching the twilight zone on a television with a little black & white screen and thinking the creature on the television could climb out of the set and get me.


• Watching Uncle Bill & grandmom getting into an argument over a woman Uncle Bill was seeing and witnessing Uncle Bill running down the stairs holding onto the banister on his way out the front door. The argument was about the woman being a divorcee. Uncle Bill would later marry that woman and have two children.