Dorothy - A Life in Stories, 2023

2512 North Natrona Street.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

– this was before refrigerators. The coal-man brought coal for the furnace. We shook the burnt coal ashes from the furnace and left them in a container out for the garbage men. The milkman brought milk that was left outside the

We had a car because my father needed it for work but if any of our neighbors had a car I don’t remem- ber it. You walked everywhere. There were no supermarkets, just neighbor- hood grocery stores, butcher shops,

race up and down the narrow alley- ways. We played a game called Jacks in which you tossed a ball and picked up the right number of jacks before the ball came down. I loved to play Jacks. Sometimes a merry-go-round would come down the street; it cost just a penny to ride. Once in a while an organ-grinder would come by with a monkey all dressed up and wearing a round little hat. When we would give the monkey a penny he would tip his cap. It was so cute. When the ice cream truck came by all the kids on the block would run out – that was the greatest treat. Fruit and vegetable peddlers also came by regularly with their horse-drawn wagons to sell their produce. We would play silly pranks – at the time there was a popular pipe tobacco named Prince Albert. Someone would call the drugstore and ask if they had Prince Albert in a can; when they said “yes” the prankster would say, “Well let him out.” 25

and bakeries. You walked to all the separate stores to shop. There was the deli, the drugstore, the fish market, the dairy store, the fruit market, candy

Our furniture was just the bare necessities, but poor as we were, my mother got us a piano and a piano teacher.

door of the house and when it was cold the cream would freeze in the narrow bottle neck and lift the cap right off the bottle. We played in the streets: jumped rope (Double Dutch was a way of jumping two ropes at a time. You had to be quick and very nimble to do it), played hop scotch and roller skated. I was a very good skater and would

store, and the barber shop. Then you had to carry everything home. The neighborhood was a kind of outdoor mall. You walked to school. You walked to visit relatives. You took walks after dinner and talked with neighbors sitting out on their front steps or on benches. You went to Fairmont Park for picnics. The iceman brought blocks of ice for the icebox

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