40 Main Street
I think we went to Main Street after other cellar we lived in when we went to Queensbury School.
I'm still not sure of the order but I'm working on it. I know from here we moved down to the house behind the trees we planted in the field across from the new High School. That was Division Street. I say we, but actually it was my science class that planted them and we were moving that day so I wasn't with them.
At Main Street I went to the old high school on Main. It was called the JR-SR then. I believe Millie and Anna went to the new High School which is where it is today but later on they built a new JR-SR and the one on Main was sold and I think demolished to make way for a drug store.
The Main Street apartment was tiny and old. It was finished off nice inside when we first moved in there. I'm not sure where we all slept. I think Anna and Millie shared a room and me and Sue and Enid shared another. I think our parents slept in what was supposed to be the living room with Nancy in a small bed there too. This was the room you walked into from the Hall door. This was a long room that reached to the front of the building where we could and did sit in the windows and watch the goings on in the street below.
We were on the second floor over an antique shop owned by the man we rented from. I think his name was Sterling.
There was another apartment across the hall from us with a crazy lady and her husband. I say she was crazy but after talking it over with Sue we came to the conclusion she was "lost in her mind" because she had lost so many babies.
Sue had a big baby doll she called Peter and if my memory is correct she let the woman hold it and we had an awful time getting it back from her.
We had more of a normal life here. There was no stopping us. We had to walk to school. I think we could ride the bus at least it picked up the little kids and took them to either Maple Street Elementary of Dix Avenue Elementary. As I was now in JR high, I could walk to my school because it wasn't that far away.
The apartment block we were in was all on one section of Main Street within a short distance of the corner of John and Main. There were bars all around. Sometimes Mom and Dad went to one.
If you were to make an imaginary square and divide it into fourths and label them from the left on the top to the right on the top and the bottom the same way, you'd have four corners, 1 being the corner where Kipp's bar was and 2 being the corner where a big old fashioned yellow house sat, 3 where Cindy's apartment was with ours close by and then 4 where Moran's Sporting Goods was with the butcher shop near but not next away from it and more bars beyond that towards the middle of Hudson Falls.
That big yellow house on corner 2 was thought to be owned at that time by the GE Corporation. Mom said she thought in earlier times that huge parties had been held there to entertain the ones she called "high mucky mucks."
In the apartments on the right side of us if we were in ours and faced Main Street lived Cindy. Cindy was alone with 3 kids, Ronnie, Carol and Timothy. Tim was very retarded. He was also her baby if you know what I mean.
One day her brother was supposed to be watching the kids while she worked. Tim somehow got on the window sill and crawled out on it. This was on the back side and was a little bit over our back porch that we shared with the crazy lady.
Mom was out there and caught him when he fell.
Cindy was our friend forever after that. I'm not sure but I think her brother was gay and he definitely was a drunk and was passed out on the couch at the time.
One afternoon Sue was looking out the window watching the cars and people come and go. She told mom she saw a man flying. Mom didn't believe her at first but down stairs in the street a man had been walking across the street and was hit by a car. He flew up in the air and then landed back in the street. I think he just got up and brushed his pants off and walked away. It did hit the papers, though.
I had some friends here but none really close. The closest was a young girl named Collette whose parents had a small store, a "Mom and Pop" they call them now. It was about 2 or 3 blocks down from John Street corner towards Burgoyne Avenue. Collette would sometimes take me home with her after school but her parents didn't think I was good enough to associate with her. She didn't care. She liked me. She would play records that she bought but her mom would come in the room and remind her in front of me that I was not to touch the machine. I always felt funny when I was there. Not funny but like I needed to leave quickly because I wasn't wanted there. It was like feeling an evil black cloud surrounding you. I still liked Collette but I didn't like her home.
We often were sent by Mom to this store and some others to get things for her. We could get things like bread and milk and cookies and other food things there.
One afternoon after school when I had ridden the bus home and got off at John Street corner, she and I and some others started walking down the block towards her house. On one corner some of the boys got into a tussle. I wouldn't call it a fight because I don't remember fists flying. One of the boys called the other one a prick. Maybe it wasn't that word but a similar one. It doesn't quite sound the same. The point of this is that I didn't know what that word meant. I had no idea. I asked Collette. She was very embarrassed but she told me. She thought I was an idiot because I didn't know. I think I was 15 then. One of the boys was Tom Binnetti. I probably spelled that wrong. I had a mini-crush on him later. I just thought he was good looking and he treated me like I was a friend which was rare for me.
Both Tom and Collette were Catholics. One day Collette asked me if I wanted to go down to the center of town with her. She said she had to do something and she wanted me along for company. The center of town was much as it is today with a triangle of land in the center that is a park of sorts and the traffic goes in a circle around it. It's one way around the circle but from there on the three streets are two way. We walked up from John on Main. If we kept going straight we would head for Kingsbury. If we turned at the short top of the triangle and went down the hill we were headed towards Glens Falls. If we continued around the circle it was back to Main Street and heading towards Fort Edward.
She headed for the Catholic Church and took me inside. She took a hanky and put on my head and told me to just do what she did and kneel where she did. I was embarrassed being there. It was all wrong. I wasn't Catholic and I was sure someone would throw me out when they found out. She stopped outside the doors into the inside of the church and explained the holy water thing and how she had to dab some on her but I didn't have to. Inside she went down to a pew row and knelt outside of it before entering it. I did the same but I really felt like a fool doing it. So we sat there a bit and nothing happened. After about ten minutes we got up and left and I took the hanky off my head so I wouldn't look like an idiot outside. We stopped at one of the drug stores and had a soda pop. She confessed her mom said she had to go to mass and so she did but there was no mass while we were there. She said she promised to go to the church and that's what she did. She didn't promise to stay for the mass.
There was another little Mom and Pop that we went to sometimes for penny candy. We bought penny candy in almost any store around there. This store was farther away. I can't remember the name. I think it was owned by a German couple. Mom didn't like them. I'm seeing the name Anna Parrot in my mind but it's not clear enough that I can say it was the lady's name. Maybe she had a parrot? I don't know. Mom didn't like us going there.
When Cindy would go over to Kipp's bar to see Al, whose apartment was upstairs, she'd often take Timmy in with her to the bar while she waited for him. Timmy would waddle up to any guy and the place and hold up his little arms crowing, "Daddy!" He didn't know or care who they were.
Another store was across the road from us on the other side of Main Street. It was a butcher shop but he also sold other things. We bought penny candy here too but mostly Mom would send me across whenever the sign went up that pork chops were on sale. I remember they were 49 cents a pound.
I recall one hot summer night going down stairs to sit with Mom and Cindy for a while. A man whom Cindy knew came up and asked her if her pants were felt. She said "No" and he reached down and felt her leg up and replied, "They are now!"
Cindy worked in one of the dry cleaner places and then spent her off hours or at least most of them in Kipp's bar on the corner of John and Main. She had a boyfriend who lived upstairs there called Albert Fornier but he pronounced it Forn yea. I never liked him. He didn't like any of us but he did like Cindy and young Timmy. He hated the other two kids. I don't know why. I wondered at first if maybe Timmy was his but Mom said no.
Eventually Al took Cindy and the kids to Delaware Avenue off of lower John St to live with him in a house he bought there. Mom told us later in life that Timmy was the son of the man that Cindy was forced to marry after that man's older brother got her pregnant. There was even talk of maybe the father of those men being the father of the baby who was Ron but I never knew the truth as far as I know and it didn't really matter. Mom liked all of the kids and loved Cindy. Timmy was a real spoiled brat and got a gazillion times worse when Cindy lived with Al. Al would buy cookies and candy and keep it for Tim only. The other kids never got any. The other kids had chores to do but never Timmy.
Later Mom got a job babysitting some other kids while there mom worked and Cindy asked her to watch Timmy in the morning and get him on the bus in the afternoon for kindergarten. Mom had me with her one day down there. She handed Timmy the shirt he was to wear to school that day. This was early in the morning. When it came time for the bus she had to extricate him from the hanger. He had put his head through the neck of the shirt leaving it buttoned up. His arms weren't in the sleeves and the hanger was still in the neck of the shirt. Somehow she got him on the bus. It wasn't long after that when the school decided he was really retarded and put him in a special class.
While we lived here, Uncle Roger had married an old lady called Hattie. I think it was the first and only time he ever married. I don't know why we didn't like her but we were very bad. She would buy those sandwich creme cookies and try to get us to sit in her living room and eat them. We did if mom was with us but other times we walk by the house and yell out "had a bug but she lost it". It was from a commercial for a roach killer. Yep, we had learned to be brats. Maybe it was always in us.
At my school I really enjoyed going to classes. This would soon change. I had art classes and had another mini crush on the art teacher. It was a man and he complimented me on the things I did and encouraged me. Nobody in school ever did that before.
We had a lot of those days when the visual arts machines would come in our class and we'd get to watch educational stuff. I loved those times because I could nap in class if no one caught me.
I enjoyed climbing the stone steps to go to different rooms for different teachers and classes.
I loved math class not because I loved math but because there were boys there who were constantly goofing off and it was funny.
One boy was Tommy Maillie. I know I spelled that wrong. He had blond curls and all the girls had crushes on him. I didn't because I knew he was a trouble maker. One day he came to class wearing a black leather jacket and cap. He thought he was hot stuff. The teacher called him to the front of the room. She reached up and snatched his hat off his head and smacked him with it. Then she sent him to the principal's office. I laughed inside for days over that.
I used to sit in class and look out the window and watch fluffy white stuff flying by the window. It wasn't snow. It was fluff from the blooming trees outside. I got yelled at a few times for not paying attention. Ok, I got yelled at for this a lot. Even today, in my mind I can see those new yellow green leaves on the trees and those white puffs flying through the air. It was a beautiful sight.
I was not fond of music class. I love music but music class was a chore. We had to learn how to dance. This I really hated. I also had a mini-crush on another boy here. His name was Joe Laroux. It was pronounced la rue. He became a pro bowler I think.
I'm trying to remember the teachers name but I've forgotten it. She was a nice lady but she made me dance with him. My hands were all sweaty and I just knew the other kids were laughing at me.
I was put in Glee Club here and that turned out to be a bad thing. I never told mom what I did but one day in science class I discovered they had live frogs that they were going to kill and cut apart. I wasn't having any of that but then it was the other class higher up that mine who was going to do it. I snuck in there with another kid, a boy, and stole the shoe box with the live frogs in it. I took it with me to glee club because I had no safe place to put it. I thought I would take them home on the bus and then let them loose in the grass outside. I had tied one of my shoe laces around the box. I put it by my feet while we lined up to sing. I was so scared and so nervous. We were attempting to sing the way she wanted us to when there was a small movement down by my feet. I didn't dare look. The box got open somehow. Suddenly there were frogs everywhere and girls screaming and guys laughing and yelling. I got out of there fast leaving the frogs and box behind. People afterwards suspected me, especially when the other kid ratted me out but there was no proof. I was asked to leave glee club. In the words of Joanne Worley on "Laugh In" I was a little too gleeful. I was relieved to be out of dance class.
While we lived in this apartment a lot of strange things happened. Once Grand ma Russell and Judy came for Thanksgiving. Judy was a little brat. She was the illegitimate daughter of Uncle Arty and his girlfriend Alice. When Alice had her in the hospital she refused to take her home. Grandma took her instead. Probably because Arty was her favorite. Maybe just to replace the daughter that died years before. God knows she never treated Mom like a daughter should have been treated.
Judy had a bag with her. She would go around the house snatching up things and take them in the bedroom to Grandma and tell her we gave them to her. We never did. Grandma would say, "Put it in Judy's bag." We told Mom and she snuck them back out when no one was looking.
They had spent the weekend with us starting on Wednesday. They shared the bedroom with us younger girls and we doubled up in our beds. That morning after we got up we heard noises coming from the bedroom. One of us looked in to see little Judy standing on the bed with her foot in Grandma's back while she pulled her corset strings to tighten the darn thing. It was so funny it stuck with us all this time.
At the dinner table, Judy refused to eat red Jell-O and spit it back out. We were all disgusted.
While we lived here Anna worked for Aunt Jean in her "restaurant". It was really a Stewart's ice cream shop, but they made coffee and breakfast I think. Aunt Jean made Anna dress up fancy. We thought she looked like a tramp. We had seen lots of tramps at night when the bars were open and we looked out the windows. Aunt Jean told her she would get more tips that way and she did. Anna was not even 18 yet.
She kept her tip money in a either a Kleenex box or a shoe box in the bedroom. Even when Mom needed money for something, Anna would not part with it. When she'd left one day for work, Millie stole some out of the box and gave to Mom. We never told. Anna never said anything. We thought maybe she just didn't know how much she had in there. Anyway, I have told now, but I somehow doubt Anna will ever read this.
Mom got real sick here. Dr. Robert Homer was our Doc. He made house calls then. I remember him coming in the apartment with a huge black bag. On TV and in the movies you see a doctor having a small black bag but he had a huge one. It was maybe a foot and a half wide if not two feet. It was about two and a half feet long and stood about 2 feet high. It opened up with the top part split into two sections where I think he kept his medicines.
Mom was in the big bed in the living room. He examined her and said he needed to do something called hypnotism on her. We had a vague idea what that was but we weren't allowed to watch. We were all banished to the big girl's room or the back porch. I forget which. When he left Mom seemed better and she got better quickly. I don't know what was wrong with her.
Once while we lived her she had something in her throat. I think now she had that yucky stuff you get on your tonsils when they get infected. She came home from Doctor Homer’s and asked me to find out what "Thrip" was because the doctor said she had it. I looked in up the library and the only thing I could find was an insect and I figured she couldn't have that in her throat. When I told her what I found she told everyone she had an insect in her throat making her sick. I gave up.
I thought Nancy started Kindergarten here but now I think not. I think she wasn't old enough until we got to Kingsbury. Mom took a lot of photographs here but I only have a few of them. Nancy had a little pleated skirt that had to be dry cleaned. I think the bigger girls had those pleated "Pendleton Plaid" skirts but I'm not sure if it was while we lived here. They all came with a big horse blanket pin on the side.
One day Mom took Nancy's to the dry cleaner and it came back shrunk so small it could have fit a doll. Mom was really mad and made them fix it back but it never looked the same afterwards.
While we lived here Mom used to start layaways for Christmas stuff at W.T. Grants which was at that time on the side of the triangle where all the drug stores were. One day she went in there and found a huge doll for Nancy. It was a manikin they were selling but it looked like a doll. Mom got it at what she thought was a cheap price. Now I am not sure if she got it while we were living here or someplace else but I do remember it was at that store. For some reason they called it Geordie. I don't know if that was Mom's idea or Nancy's. The doll was about as tall as she was. She may have got this doll when we lived in Kingsbury. I think this memory is in the wrong place but I'm not sure.
I remember different people coming to visit us here. Uncle Benny brought a girlfriend once. It was not Aunt Jeannette and I'm sure they were married still. I think Jeannette left him for a while and went back to live with her parents. I think it was Viola Colvin. There was a baby boy and Uncle Benny swung him up over his head and smacked the poor kids head on the ceiling bars that are between rooms. I felt sorry for that kid. I could have this mixed up and it may have been Uncle Artie but I'm pretty sure it was Uncle Benny.
I do remember some Colvin people visiting Mom here. There was one lady who sent her son out to buy some treats for us, cookies I think. We may have been at her home at the time. She gave the kid a bill and told him not to spend it all. Then she turned to Mom and said "I hate to trust the kid with a fifty dollar bill." Mom said later it was only a twenty and she'd lied.
Lots of times in the summer we would sit on the stone stoops of the closed up stores down stairs and watch the drunks going in and out of the bars. Mostly it was Mom and Cindy and Millie and sometimes the rest of us too. One time Nancy had her milk bottle there and she dropped it. It broke and milk ran down the side walk. Cindy came along and sat there on the stoop. Some guy came along and asked her if she wet herself.
We did have some fun times here. It didn't seem like it was dangerous to sit there at night. There were a lot of people who came down from their apartments to get away from the heat of summer.
Mom and Dad were friends with another couple who lived above the bar on the opposite side of the street. I don't remember much about them, though.
I do remember a woman who lived with her husband a few apartments away from us. Mom said she was a bar fly. She wore fancy dress when she went out drinking with her husband. I think his name was Bob. I don't remember hers. I do remember they got into a hell of a fight one night when they got home from drinking. We could hear them screaming from our apartment. The next day she brought over the dress she wore that night and asked mom to fix it. It was a bright blue gauzy net thing with silver stars glued on to it. He had ripped it off of her. She was still crying and mom sewed it up for her as best she could.
In the back behind our apartments was the porch with stairs leading down to a small alley where people parked their cars. On the opposite side of that lived an old woman. Sue used to take her dolls over there and play with the woman. She was nice I think.
One person who was not nice was the man who owned the news store on our side of the street. Sue took some chalk down one day and drew on the side walk. I don't really know what she wrote or even if she knew what the word meant but that man came out and gave her hell and told her she had to clean it up or he was having her arrested. Mom got real upset over this and Sue was scared. I think she told me she cleaned it up.
The man who owned the Antique store was a crook if you ask me. Mom had a huge stack of real old Farmers Almanacs from the 1800's though the early 1900's. She left them with him to sell on consignment. He told her later they were gone and he didn't know what happened to them but he didn't sell them so she got nothing. She thought he was lying.
One day we discovered there was an attic with an opening in our ceiling. We went up there and it was only a crawl space. I found a very old Sears Roebuck catalogue that I loved looking through. I think it was Millie that found the long package bigger than two bricks. She brought it down and Mom opened a corner and gold powder came out. She said it was the stuff that antique dealers used to paint on frames to make them look like they were made of gold. She showed it to Uncle Artie and he gave her money for it so he could mix it with paint and paint the car he was building at the time.
One day it was announced on the news that the apartments and the bar called Kipp's was being torn down. It later became a Pizza Hut. When the building came down all the roaches that lived there migrated across the road to our building. Shortly after that dad found us yet another place to live. We couldn't live with the roaches.
I remember getting up in the night to get a drink of water and turning on the light in the kitchen. They were swarming all over like an invading army. I was screaming my lungs out when mom got up and got me back to bed.
In school I was in a show where I was to recite a poem. Mine was the story of Billy the Kid. I knew my part well but as it turned out Dad wouldn't let us go. He said we did enough school in the daytime.
It was the end of the school year and we were moving.
The day they handed out our awards we got dressed up. It was the first fancy dress Mom had bought me. Mom bought Anna and Millie fancy dresses from Pender's but I'd never gotten one till now. It was a dark emerald green and I liked the color. After I'd warn it all day and then walked home it was stuck to me. I took it off and everywhere the dress touched I was stained dark green.
I went down town the next day for something. I wore a sheath dress that someone had given us. It had threads of silver and gold running through it. I was not putting on that green dress again. Mom piled my hair on top of my head and I was off. When I got in front of the school I ran into Joe Laroux and he stopped me and we chatted a bit. I was elated but I never saw him again until we got to the new high school at 8th graders. He was in my algebra class with Mr. Detrick.
The next day my class was planting the little fir tree seedlings they got for free as long as they planted them. We were moving so I didn't get to do it with them. Dad would have said no in any case. The house we moved to from there was directly in back of the place they were planting. It was on Division Street.
These next are the photos I have that were mostly taken by Mom while we lived on Main Street.