I'm sitting here listening to Willie Nelson and thinking about Mr. Vitalo, ALWAYS On My MIND...so here it was summer and I was walking baby brother Jimmy. Fourth avenue was quiet, no sign of Mr. Vitalo so I turned the carriage around and headed down the block when I hear a whistle. Ignoring it I then hear a male voice which I would never, could never mistake, Hey MAC! he called. He never heard my heart beating or saw my smile bursting from inside, but I think he knew just a little that I had a crush as I answered an innocent, oh hi Mr. Vitalo!
He had a swagger about him like no other, and the way he carried himself, like his head, he'd tilt to one side just a little, look down then up quickly, thinking, always thinking. I stopped as he said, so is this what you've done with your summer, walk a baby carriage? Going on without waiting for an answer he said, I hope that kid appreciates you when he grows up. I just smiled and said, yeah, he will. Mr Vitalo waved a little shake of his hand, said, I better be off, supper is waiting, see ya MAC! I watched him as he walked away but first pretending I walked away too. I could never walk away without seeing him leave first. I used to wonder, what his family was like and what his wife looked like, why he loved her and all that kid crush stuff.
Before I knew it, we were shopping for clothes for school, all seven of us and my father. He was just better at money stuff which he never passed to us girls, just the older boys-for a while that is. Oh I forgot to mention, we moved that summer to fifty-sixth street between fourth and fifth avenue's. Now we had to walk three and a half blocks to school which I loved. No longer was I in sight of the menacing monster, my father. My parents were told we had to move by the city, that they needed to tear down apartment buildings to make room for a play ground. At that time, we paid twenty-eight dollars a month rent. Now remember we were eight kids, and we moved into an old brownstone, half the size of our old apartment.
The new landlady didn't want us there at first since we were so many and she thought we'd be noisy. After her husband Frank talked her into it saying hey Madeline, come on, I came from a big family. She took a drag of her cigarette and walked away saying okay Frank, this is yours. Now we were paying eighty-five a month and the city and the playground? That didn't happen for many years later. I bet someone had a padded pocket.
I sure missed that old block. On fifty-ninth street, we had a pirate who wore a patch in my building, Zorro across the street, a priest, a nun, some college kids who roomed together, an old fruit wagon with a horse named Dominic, an ice truck, an old woman who sat day after day in her window, the longest hair I ever saw and all she ever did was shake her head yes and no, never spoke. We also had the man across the hall who called his cats every day to feed them loads of cat food. His name was Pete and he called all the kids, you little monkey you, and he was disgusting with a giant beer belly that I thought would explode one day. Pete lived with his Aunt Helen who looked like Albert Einstein, poor old woman. I never saw her in clothes. She wore a long while slip all year long with her white hair standing on end. There was Tony, a kid who loved to build train tracks and his mo with fire red hair, hefty, big bosom like in the old paintings. Somehow she was matched so very well with her husband, a smaller man in stature, half bald, a cigarette every night hanging from one corner of his mouth, carrying a mental lunch pail under one arm as he embraced his curly headed son. I think they were the nicest family on the block, unlike the Gypsy woman, who I won't say much about other than her son punched my best doll's face in and she laughed. That's how bullies are made not born.
I can't forget the sounds and smells of the coal trucks, garbage cans filled with ash, the chinese laundry with that smell of freshly laundered shirts, starched so stiff, they could stand alone. We had the best bakeries close to us, Italian and Norwegian, and the greatest butcher shop. Joe, what guy! Then there were the drug store soda fountains. I stopped every Sunday after Church, and in seventh grade sometimes if I was fast enough, once during the week. That was when Mr. Vitalo and I had our first problem.
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