Thought I'd tell ya a little more about my grandma Sophie and grandfather Frederick. Here tell that Frederick got sick of Sophie's parties and seances. Sophie said "fuck you" in German. They had horrible fights. Every dish in the house would be broken. Think the fight between Connie and Carlo, before they took Sonny out on the causeway. Maybe worse.
Grandma was too strong willed. Frederick gave in and would go off on trips months at a time. Many times he took the train west with my father. My dad was born in 1912. They made their trips in the twenties. Do you know how cool the West was at that time? It was still very wild in many, many places. HMS was old school so he didn't talk a heck of a lot. Just a few stories here & there. Really wish I heard a lot more.
When the depression hit my father had to quit school at the age of 17. Never got his diploma. Jesus, it didn't mean that much. You could either do the work or not. He ended up delivering big ice blocks up and down tenement stairs in Brooklyn. He had a promising future in baseball playing for a minor league team in Cedarhurst. I guess it was the "pre-Yankee" place to be. HMS had the nickname "rubberlegs." Well, he ended up taking a pretty bad fall down one of those crappy stairwells and messed up his back for life. Something probably fixed by surgery now.
That's just a very small part of the things our parents and grandparents lived. I think they're pretty cool.
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