Ida by Olympia Simonetti Normandy -6-My mother used to sit outside on the stoop on Conselyea Street with that white apron on. Once one of the neighbors came over and said to her, "You know, I just saw your daughter, Olympia, in the park with a fellow. Gee, all the boys seem to go around your daughter." Momma said, "She's very lovable to the boys." In Italian it sounds very different, more like "they adore her." She said, "I can't help it if all the boys like my daughter." The boys would never go near the neighbor's daughter. She couldn't move away from the door. Her mother had a store and the poor thing had to sit near her mother while her mother crocheted. She couldn't come to the park with us.
We would meet the boys on the sly when we went to McCarren Park which went from around Nassau Avenue, to Bayard and Leonard Streets and North 12th in Greenpoint. We used to go in the park around Lorimer and Driggs.Agnes got out once and got the beating of her life. Poor Agnes never got married. There was Cooper Park, too, over by Maspeth and Morgan Avenues near Greenpoint Hospital, but if you were ever caught in Cooper's Park, God forbid, they would think you were the biggest bum in the world. It had a bad reputation.
I did a lot of things. I played baseball. I used to fight. If two girls were having a fight, who do you think would go between them and separate them? Me! I was real rough.
There weren't any supermarkets back when I was growing up, but there were all the stores you wanted. You would go to Grand Street where all the food was outside on the sidewalk. The clothing was outside, too. It was like the way garage sales are now. Other stores had just vegetables. There were all the stores you wanted. All you needed was the money. When Batterman's had a sale and when Hearn's had a sale nobody in the family would go down the subway. I was the only brave one to go down the subway.
Margaret used to say, "Buy me a spread if it's on sale for a dollar. Buy me a tablecloth." I think Jean still has a couple of those old dollar lace ones that she puts out sometimes. I used to buy all their clothes for them. Four little suits for a dollar. Who wouldn't buy them? When I'd come home Margaret would say, "Oh, they are so nice, give me two for my Louie." She used to say, "Two for you, two for me." I said, "Sure." I used to share everything. That's one thing, we got along great. We were sisters who never had an argument. We never fought like some people you hear of who don't see each other for years.
Bobbie used to go to work and she wore the most beautiful clothes and was so neat. All my sisters were very fussy and neat. Bobbie always wore the prettiest skirts and white blouses all the time. I wanted to be a show off and would steal their clothes. Her skirts were too long on me so I would tie it up with a string. I've told her this story so many times. "I was the one who did the dirty tricks," I told her.
I used to want to be the best dressed one in class and look sharp. I'd wear her clothes to school and then when I came home, I would take them off and iron them. We used to have the old fashioned iron that was always on the stove keeping hot. Now one day she said, "I ironed this skirt and I don't know what happened to it. And my blouse that was on the chair. Did you touch them?" "Me?" I said, "I don't know." "What do you mean you don't know. You said you wore a blouse today. What blouse? I'll bet you wore my blouse!" I said, "Don't hit me. Don't hit me. I wanted to wear it to school." She gave me a slap I'll never forget.
I even wore her gold chain and locket that Momma had given her. We don't know what happened to that locket either. Bobbie was so fussy. Even now, we always said she keeps her house so beautiful, like a little doll house. So that was the story of another dirty trick I did because I wanted to be a showoff.
Everybody was so poor. We had to wash our dress at night and wear it again in the morning. That's why the irons were always on the stove.
Momma used to sew and made us all nightgowns and bloomers that tied in the back and the front. To go to the bathroom you had to untie it both places! They were so big and full of lace. I hated them and used to sneak and take them off. One day my mother noticed that I was wearing Margaret's underwear and got mad. Momma was very fussy and said we were only supposed to wear our own! In later years she got a little fancy and had a dressmaker.
My mother took in washing at one time, too. Every little bit of money that came in helped. I remember baskets and baskets of clothes, all to be washed by hand. I had the job of picking them up and delivering them. Then my mother got to know a very wealthy Jewish woman who liked the way she did her laundry. She really paid my mother good.
On Saturdays, we took turns to scrub our wooden floor on our knees. We would get splinters in our knees. Margaret once got a deep splinter in her can. Jennie used to tell her, "Margaret, when you were little, you had a splinter in your can that nobody could get out except me."
I know you wonder about how bathrooms were back when I was a girl. Well, we had no bathroom. There was water outside in the hall, but it froze and then you were out of luck and had no water. Now the toilets, they were outside in the yard. You had to come down a whole stairway, open the hall door and go out and freeze your can. You couldn't sit on the toilet because it was frozen. I can just picture it today, coming down that stairs. We couldn't go alone so my father had to come along holding the candle. We didn't have light. Who was going to spend 25 cents for gaslight to go take a crap?
He was a good father. What parents we had. You don't see them like that today. I think my son, Buddy, is like that. He is so good like that. We hated the frozen outhouses. There were two of them for four families. Of course, there were chamberpots under the beds, too, but we tried to leave them for Momma and Poppa. Some didn't even have covers, so Poppa would make covers out of cardboard with a cork in the middle so you could pick it up. Do you think we had toilet paper? No. We used the telephone book! Or newspaper! Sometimes oranges would come in nice tissue paper and we would iron it out and take it down to the outhouse. Now I'll tell you something that I think is really disgusting. Years ago, some people used to use rags for toilet paper and then wash them. Isn't that awful?
I remember Margaret's mother-in-law, may she rest in peace. Well, she was an angel. If she didn't go to heaven, I don't think anybody would go. She was such a religious woman and so, so good. I went to her toilet once and I saw a rag with a mess on it and I said "Oh my God, what do they do this for?" Margaret said, "Why do you think they have so many rags? They wash them."
When the girls had their period, they used to use diapers. The whole thing. For that little bit in the middle they wore that big bulky thing between their legs. Then of course, they had to soak them at night in cold water to get the blood out. We were five girls, there was Jennie, Bobbie, Margaret, me and Susie. Everybody had to wash their own. That's how it was. My mother learned it from her mother and passed it on to her daughters. That's just the way it was then.
The worst thing to endure was the cold. Poppa had to shovel his way out the door sometimes. We never had a car. Jennie worked for Rockwood Chocolates and my Dad worked with animal skins, tanning pelts. He had to get up at five o'clock, get my sisters up, wrap his legs in the potato sacks, and take my sister, Bobbie by the hand to go to work to make that lousy six dollars a week.
When Margaret went to work, she worked in the silk mills. She was dating Mike DePrisco, but they always had to take me along. When they went to the movies they would sit me up front and they would go in the back.
I was nineteen when I met my husband, Jack. Sebastian Sylvester Normandia. He was twenty-four. I was going to work one morning and there was a big bunch of fellows on the corner of Lorimer and Conselyea. They all used to hang out at that candy store on the corner. When I passed those boys, they would whistle and all.
I worked right around the corner in the shirt factory on Metropolitan Avenue where they made army shirts. The factories were in big lofts. One day one of the boys said, "I'm going to ask Ida out." "Oh no, you're not. I am," Jack said. They argued back and forth. When I got out of work at five o'clock and was walking home, Jack stopped me and said, "Hey, listen, how about giving me a date?" I said, "No, I can't. I'm not allowed out." He said, "Your parents know me."
It seems that his parents and my parents came over from Italy on the same ship. They knew each other when they all lived near Naples. Now the Normandias, Jack's family, were very wealthy and mostly lawyers. My family was very poor. The two families were good friends in Italy though, and kept up the friendship when they moved to America.
Jack always came home for lunch because his family lived over the store and his mother, Giovannina, or Jennie as they called her, would fix his lunch. He was always in his overalls, covered with paint. But they let me go out with him. Now I had been told not to go out with Jack because he goes out with Mary, a married woman with a baby. I didn't care.
My parents were happy that I was dating a Normandia boy. They considered Mrs. Normandia a "comma'." [A compatriot, someone from the same town in Italy.] They felt the Normandias were well-known people in Europe and it wasn't so bad that I was going out with someone who came from a very good family.
Now, when I used to go to work on another job, Jack would be out on his own truck that said "Normandy and Sons, Painting and Decorating." [They changed it to Normandy with a "y" for the business.] Jack would come to where I was. My father would make me sandwiches of ricotta and provolone. That's why I still like that combination.
You know, my father came from the town of cheeses. That's how he got the name, "Big Cheese." They had a contest to see who could make the biggest cheese and my father won and became the "Big Cheese."
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Now Playing: "Ida"
Ida (Sweet As Apple Cider)
Ida, sweet as apple cider
Sweeter than all I know
Come out! In the silvery moonlight
Of love we'll whisper so soft and low!
Seems though, can't live without you
Listen, oh Honey do!
Ida, I idolize ya
I love you, Ida, 'deed I doIn the region where the roses always bloom
Breathing out upon the air their sweet perfume
Lives a dusky maid I long to call my own
For I know my love for her will never die
When the sun is sinkin' in that golden westWhen the moon comes stealing up behind the hill
Everything around me seems so calm and still
Save the gentle calling of the whippoorwill
Then I long to hold her little hand in mine
Through the trees the winds are sighin' soft and lowLittle Robin Redbreasts gone to seek their nests
Then I sneak down to that place I love the best
Every evening there alone I sigh
Seem to come and whisper that your love is true
Come and be my own now, Sweetheart, do! Oh do!
Then my life will seem almost divineIda, sweet as apple cider
Sweeter than all I know
Come out! In the silvery moonlight
Of love we'll whisper so soft and low!
Seems though, can't live without you
Listen, oh Honey do!
Ida, I idolize ya
I love you, Ida, 'deed I doWords and Music by Eddie Leonard
From "Roly Boly Eyes" a musical by John Cort, 1903Next Page | Previous Page | Go Higher |Family Album|Return to Mystic Planet
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