Rats in the river in Newark

I have no idea what the association was that lead to this memory.   I was sitting at the computer on Facebook listening to some incredible diatonic accordion playing by a Quebecois musician. 

The memory was of being in an apartment we lived in briefly on Broadway.   I believe Broadway was the border between Newark and Belleville.  Hospital aside, I was born in Belleville and lived with my mother and grandfather over my grandfather's grocery store until my father came back from Europe in 1946.  Part of that time my aunt Marion was also there with my older cousin Steve.

I'm also thinking that we probably had to move because my grandfather's little grocery store went out of business due to pressure from the new phenomenon of supermarkets.   We lived in an upstairs apartment on Broadway.   Out the side window we could see that the apartment house was perched over a stream or small river.   So the memory is just a fragment.....,my grandfather pointing me out the river and telling me that rats lived down there.   I doubt I knew much about rats, but I could sense the gravity in the statement, and it wasn't pleasant.   In fact it was kind of dark and scary as memories go.   Why did this little fragment stay so long so close to consciousness, so easily recalled?  Other moments are lodged in there among the neurons and synapses.   But the rat fragment remains prominent.    Hmmmmm.