Newark and Fairmont

I thought it might be good to tell a story less than 40 years old:

About the year 2000 our family was traveling through New Jersey, so I persuaded them to tolerate me showing them the house I lived in  Newark from about age 5- 10.   It's the place I think of when I think of where I grew up.   88 Huntington Terrace, half way between Hawthorn and Lyons Avenue, almost backing up to Beth Israel Hospital.   We lived in the second floor of a two and a half....house with three floors, three apartments, the third one (the half) being the smallest.

The Goldbergs lived upstairs and the Macklisses (our landlords) lived downstairs. My father and I thought it was a pretty good joke to call them (not to their face) the Mackelberries.   (He also called the bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island the Verra Not So Bridgle.   He renamed the famous Russian compuser Dmitri Rip Your Corsets off.)

The Goldbergs were the first people I knew to get a TV.   That was sharp.  Our apt was bigger than the house we later moved to in Springfield.   It had a screened porch and a jalousied sun parlor, a walk in pantry, and a shower with black and white tile on the floor and nozzles that shot water at you from the sides.  I still own the bathroom cabinet under which I hid the books I retreated to read in the bathroom....usually when I was supposed to be practicing piano, or doing some chore.

This formerly Jewish neighborhood is now pretty much African American.   So the Becker clan drives by the house and we're all gawking out the window, moving pretty slow.   On the porch of 88 were 4-5 young men.   I could see we were getting their interest......white family, cruising their street, staring, etc.   So I called out, "I grew up in that house."   They said something like, "That's cool."   And then one of the young men saw our West Virginia license plate.   He said, " Are you from West Virginia."   I said, "Yes."   He said, "Cool, I'm from Fairmont."   And that was it.   Pretty amazing.