Bill Donnelly's Bromley

AFTER POSTING ONE OR TWO ITEMS ON BROMLEY, I RECEIVED A COUPLE OF E-MAILS FROM BROMLEY NATIVE BILL DONNELLY. BILL HAS VERY CONCISE MEMORIES OF GROWING UP IN THE BROMLEY NEIGHBORHOOD. BILL WRITES:


Today, if you can stand it, I'd like to tell you about growing up. I was born on Roberts Avenue, in 1936, the second of 6 children. Later a cousin came to live with us after her mother died. So seven kids and 2 adults lived in a 4 room row house. No central heat and no bath-tub. The toilet was in an unheated shed attached to the back of the house. Bathing was accomplished standing on a chair, by the kitchen sink. My father, a fantastic artist, earned little money by lettering signs. He painted lots of beautiful scenes on bar mirrors, all over Trenton. But that was just for drinks.
As I mentioned earlier, Roberts Avenue, except for the poverty, was a terrific place to grow up. My grandparents lived just up the street, among the colored people. After they died, the house was bought by a colored family, one of whom was a young motorcycle cop who grew up to become police chief, Ernie Williams. They eventually sold the house to the Baxter family. Lennon Baxter became one of my best friends. Lennie's favorite activity was jumping off the back porch roof (About 12 feet up). He liked to pretend that he was a paratrooper. He used to visit me when he was in town. But I haven't seen him in about 20 years.
Marrius Bonnacci (AAA Trucking) lived just down the alley from us and he was a big time deep sea fisherman.
Mr Bonnacci would catch tuna fish, bigger than a boy my age, and bring it home and dump it in the alley. Then he would make one phone call, and within minutes everyone knew about it, and all the moms would be there with a kitchen knife and a plate, and take a big treat home to their family. That fish never ending up stinking. It was gone very quickly.
One of the notable landmarks at Nottingham and E. State (By my reckoning, the center of Bromley, (and therefore the center of the universe), was George's Candy Store. Not penny candies. The REAL STUFF. The Gods smiled down on us one day....George had a fire. A bad fire. The firemen came and broke all the windows and tossed ALL THAT CANDY out onto the sidewalk. More candy than we could carry. So my best friend and I just went and layed down in it and feasted for as long as our stomach would take it. No, we did not get sick. 64 years later I can still taste it and enjoy that experience.
One of our main playgrounds was the Thermoid dump, in Whiteheads. They threw anything that wasn't up to specs out back and burned them. There were all sorts of hoses and fan belts by the thousand. Later, I got through tech school selling reject fan belts to all the local gas stations. But, I digress. The thousand and thousands of pounds of rubber/fibre products would smolder for weeks. Two feet high, the top layers of ash were actually cool to the touch. Inside, at ground level was molten fire. You would never believe it. One day I stepped in the ashes/fire. My foot was out immediately. My shoe remained in the fire. I ran down to the assunpink and put my right foot in the water. I walked like that all the way to Hetzel field (More than a mile). There I picked up the Bromley Creek, and walked in it to about 1/2 a block from my house(Another 3/4 of a mile). From there I ran home. Mom spent a solid pound of butter on it and it finally cooled down. Today, we know that the butter was the wrong thing to do. However, Not only was there no scarring. I didn't suffer another minute of discomfort from it.
Well, that's enough for now. If you aren't bored to tears, next time I tell you a little bit about the teen years, 1949-1953.
At ten years old, Richie DeHart was my best friend. Richie lived about 10 houses up the street from me. Somehow I had come into possession of a wooden broomstick. A most valuable commodity for a 10 year old. Somehow it had gotten into the hands of my best friend, and he was not about to give it back. When the situation became very ugly, Richie took off running for home. I took off in rapid pursuit, about 20 feet behind him. he ran down the street, flew up his stairs and across the porch and hit the door...........................IT WAS LOCKED!!! Richie turned, and here comes me up the steps. I guess he didn't have much choice. He raised that broomstick and brought it down right across my back. The stick broke totally in two. So now, nobody had it. The stream of profanity that I unleashed on Richie would have made a drunken sailor proud. But it was missing something. The N word was not part of my vocabulary. Years later I thought, "Boy, I could have really got him if I used that word."
I told you about riding the inside doors to a refrigerator down a stream. At about 12, my buddy Red Burns and I went out to Panelyte and got 2 door panels and rode down the Assunpink, toward Whitehead Falls. Part way there a storm started blowing, the water got very choppy and we started taking on water. Red made it to shore, but I did not. About 15 feet out my "boat" went under. That means no more forward progress and the boat starts rocking down. So it goes six inches forward and 4 inches down. Then 6 inches back and 4 inches down, and so on. Fortubately for me, there was a man on shore washing his car. This strange man sprang into action. He removed his shoes and carefully placed then on a concrete wall. Then he took off his pants, folded them neatly and placed them also on the wall. Next came his socks, which had to be placed correctly side by side, then folded and paced on top of his pants. All this time I'm watching as my boat goes deeper and deeper, and by now I'm actually standing on it.
My hero then wades out into six inches of water and pushes Red's boat out for me to grab onto. I grabbed it, and he pulled it back in and I was rescued. I wish I had a good punch line for this true story. I don't. But I'll never forget watching this meticulous man take such care of his things while I was about to drown.
As a young teen, in summer, all life was centered around Bromley field. The routine was: Get up early. Have a quick breakfast and get over there before the teams were picked. A baseball game would go on all day. No one counted innings. If you missed the picking, you had to sit and wait until someone got hurt (almost never happened) or had to go home. That could be a bathroom break, doctor appointmentt, date with mom. So there was a possibility, but one had to be very patient. We played baseball until dark, every day, and never got enough. Occasionally someone else had the field and was playing a game, so we had to wait. They usually only played 9 innings. The break was good. It allowed a little non-competitive socializing. It was during these "social periods " that I met Joseph Turpin. Joe was (I think) the same age as the rest of us, but he was a Downs Syndrom child. Joe, like the rest of us, liked to laugh. At us. At himself. It didn't matter. He often referred to himself as "Joseph B. Benjamin Turpentine Junior, Big ass." Everybody laughed at that. Here's a lesson. "You can't laugh at a guy who's laughing at himself. You can only laugh with him." Joe's parents lived on Park Lane, so all he had to do was go out the back door, and he was there. I have always wanted to tell them, or Joe's siblings (If he had any) that we all loved Joe, and he loved all of us. Joe was perfectly safe with us. Certainly none of us would harm him, and we were always around so nobody else could either. Looking back, it was strange. Joe was a "Downs Kid", but he was just one of the guys. No dicussion of Bromley field is complete without mentioning the Bromley Creek. It was clean water. We caught hundreds of crawfish there. You place a coffee can behind him and move something slowly in front of him, and he will back up slowly right into the can. Mom cooked them up and we loved to eat them. The creek served another purpose as well. Anyone guilty of the slightest transgression, on a boring day, could be tossed into the creek. It was only a foot or two deep. Not many passed through there that didn't eventually test the depth and temperature of the water. The creek served another purpose as well. Anyone guilty of the slightest transgression, on a boring day, could be tossed into the creek. It was only a foot or two deep. Not many passed through there that didn't eventually test the depth and temperature of the water. After dinner, all the guys would congregate on the creek bridge. The brownstone walls were only about two feet high. Also about two feet wide. A perfect place to sit. "All the guys" included: Butch Sweeney, John Pietowski, Rich Korchma, Gary Paul, Jock Cullen, myself, Walt Whalen, occasionally my brother, John, and a variety of other occasionals. Note, on the map, that the creek bridge is adjacent to Louie The Greek's restaurant. Also note that with the angle of the building, one could pretty much look directly into the side (Kitchen) window. Long before air conditioning became popular, that kitchen window was always open. We would go to Johnnie Rices' Car lot and get handfuls of those little white landscaping stones. We would sit on the bridge, with back to the road and try to throw those little stones into the big pot of soup that Louie always had on the stove. Many people enjoyed that stone soup without knowing all the ingredients. I don't know why we enjoyed tormenting Louie. He was not a bad guy. But he did have a nervous problem. He had little groups of salt, pepper, sugar and napkins on the counter. Every 5 minutes he had to re-arrange them, just switching them around, endlessly. One dark evening when I came around the corner, the guys were all excited. They had thought of a good trick to play on Louie. They would carry me into the restaurant and lay me down on the floor, telling Louie that I got hit by a car and was hurt real bad. They carried me in with my eyes closed and then dropped me on the floor. I knew something was wrong. I looked up and here comes Louie with a pot of hot water. I barely got out on time. Afterward, my friends told me I was the fourth one to enjoy that game that night. Louie got his revenge on me. Although not intentional. One evening, after it had snowed real good, someone in my grandmothers house asked me to go to Cleary's drug store. I was more than willing. It gave me a chance to go out with my sled, and belly flop all the way there and back. Louie, out of concern for his customers safety, spread nice white ashes on the snow in front of his place of business. In the dim light the ashes looked just like the snow. When that sled hit that ash it might as well have been welded to the sidewalk. I, however, was not so attached. I slid forward on my face, off the sled and across those ashes. When I got home, they thought I'd been in a fight with Joe Lewis.
I keep telling you what a great neighborhood I grew up in. When I was about 8 years old, my father fell off our porch roof and fractured his pelvis. He spent 6 months in a cast up to his waste. Money got tighter than usual. We lived on a diet of almost all potatoes. Mom could make them a hundred different ways.
The Hamilton Fire Company had a Bingo once a week. I went, and I played, and what do you think happened? I won a huge box of food. Everything you could imagine. Do you think that could have been rigged? Nah! I was just lucky.
Mrs Harris was a wonderful, beautiful lady who lived next door to my Grandparents. My cousin, Bob, and I loved to play on their grape arbors. But they were pretty flimsy and got broken a lot. Mrs Harris never seemed to mind. I don't remember ever seeing Mr Harris, but he must have been a mean old man. Every now and then, Mrs Harris would say "You boys better go home. Mr Harris is on his way" Do you think that sweet woman lied to us? Nah, she wouldn't do that.
Fascinating stories, Bill. Thanks for sending this to me. It will be incorporated in the BROMLEY files.