Queensbury Cellar House
It was pretty bad there, in some ways much worse that Ortiz's Cellar house because we almost died here.
We were here in winter. I do not recall any time spent here when there wasn't snow on the ground.
There was a kitchen area with a tiny window to the left as you went in the door. I don't recall anything down stairs being boarded off into rooms except for a small closet type thing in the far end with shelves inside it. Mom kept stuff stored in here.
There was one room upstairs and a bathroom with a bathtub with hot running water. I remember taking a really hot bath here and loving it.
The one room upstairs became Anna's alone. Anna always thought she was Queen and deserved the best. She was allowed the room because she was the oldest. I really don't think our parents wanted us all alone downstairs in any case.
Down stairs was where the coal stove was. Dad had to tend it all night and Mom in the day time when Dad was gone to work.
I don't remember where he worked.
Mom had to cook and clean and feed us of course. How she did the laundry I don't know. I have photos of wet clothes hanging outside in the frigid air with snow on the ground.
I did not like this place. Off and on in life there would be a lot of places I didn't like.
One thing I did like was that we had a black and white TV here and if you moved the rabbit ears just right you got good reception. If not you got a fuzzy picture. When you got only spots they called it snow because that's what it looked like. While we were here we suddenly got reception for WAST channel 13 from Albany. I loved this because the picture was sharp and clear and they showed a lot of old movies. Other people I know had color TV's. I'd seen the ads in magazines.
When you first turned on a TV in those days, you got a test pattern image. You saw this if it was warming up but mostly you saw it if the station wasn't on yet. Station's didn't broadcast 24 hours a day. They had set times they came on and set times they went off the air.
News was what you saw first thing in the morning and last thing at night. News shows were really news shows then. It was just propaganda for whatever or whomever the station supported. There was no bias. You heard what they were "reporting" because there was no analyzing every thing. There may have been a show for that. I never saw it if there was. It would have been not a news show but rather a political one to make people think.
Other channels we got were WRGB channel 6 I think out of Schenectady. If the wind was blowing right, we would sometimes get a fuzzy reception for channel 10 or 11 or channel 3. Three was from Canada or Vermont I think. Sometimes we picked up a fuzzy version of both. I remember when we lived in the Kingsbury School House watching a show that was supposed to be from Canada.
We went to Queensbury School.
We had to walk up the street, a short hill, to catch the bus. All kids in this area rode the bus. There were no "Walkies". All kids in school ate the same meals. We took our lunches in brown paper bags the first day. They were taken away from us. We were told we'd get them back at the end of the day. I was shocked and scared. I didn't want to lose my lunch. It was a bologna sandwich and in those days I loved that stuff.
Lunches were provided by the school. Mothers volunteered to come in and cook them. The food was really bad. On Monday there was always vegetable soup. If you got a bean in yours you were lucky. For the most part it was hot and salty water with a slight green tinge to it. I'm pretty sure there was never meat in it.
Desert was more often than not some whipped Jell-O thing they called chiffon. It was supposed to be different fruit flavors and it was bright colors and we ate it. It was both sweet and tart.
Whatever else we had to eat there is pretty much forgotten.
I think I was 12 or 13 here.
I did not like this school. I had one sort of friend. A girl whose name I don't even remember.
At school, all kids had a half hour after lunch in the school gym. Someone played records while the older kids danced. I didn't dance. I stood off to the side hardly daring to talk to anyone. That other girl and I were misfits. We talked about other kids but nothing I can remember. We talked about teachers. We both hated gym class and the teacher of it. She was a short stocky woman and we both thought she was gay. I was terrified. I wasn't even sure what gay was and I sure didn't want her to touch me in any way.
One day she made me go in her office so she could talk to me. I was that terrified, I sat rigid and wouldn't talk to her. I don't remember what she said. I think she asked me if I was having problems at home or in school.
She never touched me but I was terrified of her from then on. I cried for days afterwards. She was very mean to a lot of us. I got detention because I wouldn't talk to her.
Detention was awful. I sat for a long time in this room with other kids and did my homework. Nobody said a word. It anyone made a noise the teacher would wrap his ruler hard on his desk and they would shut up. Yep, I was terrified.
When it was over with we filed out to the late bus. It was winter and already dark out. I didn't know anyone. I got on the bus and sat clutching my books close to my chest. It was taking an awful long time to get home. First we went to some other school and picked up more kids, older kids, cheerleaders and sport guys, jocks we'd call them today. Then it was on and on letting kids off in the dark here in there. I really thought I was never getting home and I started to cry again. Not out loud but tears were streaming down my face. One of the cheerleaders came over and sat in the empty seat beside me. She asked me what was wrong and I some how told her. She held my hand and said it would be alright and not to worry and sure enough, a few stops later I was let off at the top of our street. I trudged home as fast as I could trying not to slide on my butt down the icy hill. I never forgot the kindness of that stranger and I never saw her again.
One morning the bus pulled into school and parked in front of the school entrance as it always did with other buses of kids in front of us and more pulling in behind. We were not allowed to get off the buses. At first no one knew why. We sat and waited with everyone talking loudly and saying nothing.
Finally it filtered back to us along with other rumors. There was a bomb in the school. We sat there numb with horror. I wondered if the bomb went off would the buses we were on be blown away? I think a part of me hoped the school blew up because I hated it so but I didn't want any of us to die with it.
Eventually, we were allowed off the bus and could go in. No bomb was found. I think now it was just a prank call. It seems that one school, Argyle, that we had just left also had a bomb scare and now this one did and a few weeks later another school Hudson Falls, that we would go to also had a bomb scare. It seemed it was the thing that happened in those days.
Inside the school we found all our lockers open with our things all over the hall way floors. It was shocking in a way to think about everybody knowing what was in each others lockers which before that I'd always thought of as private. Little did I know that not much in this world is private.
My locker there was a mess as most of my life my lockers would be messes. Our possions were scattered all over the hall like they had been thrown. You were lucky if you got all your stuff back. I heard later they even had a dog in there but I'd never heard of bomb sniffing dogs back then.
My locker here was also a torture. You had a key not a combination. If you lost your key you had to pay a dollar for a new one. If you lost it again it was two dollars and on and on. I lost it once and had to ask mom for money for it. I lost it again and gave up. I had all of my books at home and carried them back and forth anyway. There was nothing in there I wanted or needed. Since the bomb scare, I'd never leave anything for fear of losing it.
When we came to this school for some reason the older girls transcripts did not follow them. All the time we were here they were never on the honor roll. I, on the other hand was on the honor roll until that unfortunate encounter with the gym teacher resulting in my being on detention. It seems you couldn't be on the honor roll no matter how good your marks were once you had spent time in detention.
I was in a Home Ec class here which I think makes me about 13. It was the first one I'd ever had. Through out my school times I have never liked Home Ec, never been good at it and never allowed to do anything of importance in it. Here we had two projects. The first was to make a simple apron. The second was to make a stuffed toy for a baby. I liked making them but I got poor marks for both projects. I was told my work was sloppy. Mom was embarrassed but she looked at the apron and said it was fine to her. I think with the stuffed animal I had reached my limit of trying to get along and didn't even finish it.
I have one other memory of going to school here. We were on the bus. I think it was morning and we heard on the radio that the plane that Richie Valens was on had crashed. I think that's what his name was. The Big Bopper was on the same plane. They were all killed. Some stupid young girl in a few eats ahead of us was bawling her head off claiming that she and Richie were secretly engaged. I secretly, ok not so secretly thought she was demented but I didn't know that word then. I just thought she made the whole thing up.
Shortly before we left here a very bad thing happened.
One night I woke up thinking I had to pee. I stood up and started for the stairs. Then I felt like I was going to throw up. I reached the can Dad used to put his cigarette butts into. I promptly passed out hitting my forehead on the cement floor. That disturbed somebody else and I think Millie fainted to but I'm not sure she was the one. Seconds later we were all being tossed out into the snow with Dad opening the windows letting the cold air inside.
What had happened was that the coal fire puts out carbon monoxide gas that normally goes up the chimney and if we'd known it then only does harm to the ozone. But if your stove pipe is not angled right the smoke and gas comes back into the house and that is what can kill you. Its a kind of silent killer in that you just fall asleep. So if I hadn't thought I had to pee and come partially awake and then made noise passing out we might have all died. Mom said God was watching over us.
Dad fixed the pipe. I think we may have had a dog then that barked when I fell on the floor but I'm not sure. It was soooo cold out there in the snow.
At the top of the hill where we waited for the bus was the Fire Department. In school when they found out what happened people would ask us why we didn't call the Fire Dept. We didn't have a phone and all Dad could think about was getting us out doors. He didn't really like making a fuss if he didn't have to do that. I think it was the way he was raised.
On to the photos but there aren't many.