As I said earlier, I was born on Stanton Street in Pawcatuck. The house was owned by our landlady, Annie Bell, who was a schoolteacher in West Broad Street School, whose yard fronted our house. When I went to school there my mother used to run across the street with milk and cookies during recess. Annie lived in the downstairs apartment with her father, Grandpa Bell, whom I remember as an old man with a long white beard, usually stained with tobacco juice. A niece, Ruth Bell, lived with her until marriage, when she moved to NEW YORK, the BIG CITY! We lived there until 1925, when my father built a house. I have several memories of my first seven years. One was the telephone on the wall. Westerly (for all our services we depended on the Rhode Island town) was one of the first locations in the country to have dial phones, and I remember being quite proud of that modern convenience. I also remember playing in the small back yard, and being told by Jim Spellman, a neighbor a few years older than I, that coal was made when leaves were buried in the ground. I carefully buried one, and was disappointed when I dug it up a few minutes later and found that it was still a leaf. My dignified grandfather Pat took me for walks once in a great while, but always reported to my mother that I ran around too much. I can recall going to Watch Hill on the trolley, and I remember passing the "Switch", where the Watch Hill cars separated from the line going to Misquamicut and Weekapaug. The lines were abandoned in 1925, and all the rolling stock was assembled at that Switch, the wooden bodies burned, and the steel parts salvaged. The ashes remained for many months. The Interurban to New London was also abandoned that year. Uncle John was a motorman on the New London line, and on one occasion took me and his son, my cousin Lawrence, for a ride to New London. I remember passing over the little bridge at Wequetequock, a bridge which still remained well past my high school days, and only fell down in quite recent years. There was great sadness in the family when John was motorman when a car ran over and killed a man at Poquonnock Bridge in Groton. Nobody's fault, but it depressed him. Portions of track imbedded in pavement were still to be seen after I came to Syracuse. The trolley to Ashaway survived a year or so more. Many of the workers at the mills in Potter Hill, Ashaway, and Hopkinton lived in Westerly, and that was the only way to get there. My father had bought a lot on Beach Street in Westerly, and for a year or so used to grow vegetables on it. He really had quite a good-sized garden. I believe it was at that time I lost any interest in growing green things, and never developed a green thumb. He built a house into which we moved in 1925. I remember my fascination with the steam (literally) shovel which excavated the basement. It was a nice cute cottage with living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs, (the telephone was in the kitchen--still a wall model--and the phone number was (3231), three bedrooms and bath upstairs. One bedroom was for my parents, one for me, and one for my grandfather Pat, who lived with us. He worked right up to his final illness, and dutifully paid board. He underwent an operation for "pipe cancer", as it was called in those days. The operation was successful, but he came down with pneumonia, for which there was little treatment. He died in May, 1927. Funeral homes were not universally popular, and he was waked at home. The cottage was shingled, the shingles being stained brown, with white trim. I saw it several years ago and almost didn't recognize it. It is now painted a proper white, and surrounded by good-sized trees. One of them I helped my father plant. It was in, I think, 1925, right after we moved in. Mrs. Cella, who live with her husband John, (daughter Irene and her husband John Kitchen, of whom more later, lived upstairs) gave us a sapling--maple, I believe--which we planted in the front yard. It is now a towering tree and looks as if it has been there forever. I saw it in September 1990 when I visited Westerly for my 55th high-school reunion. There was an empty lot, now with a house, directly north of us. Then an old farmhouse, still there, occupied by the Breen family. Tom Breen and his brother, John, Mrs. Tom, and their daughter Viola, married to a real nice guy named Roy Howard. They had three sons--Roy Jr., Harold, and Teddy. Roy was just about my age, and the others were younger. We were friends. A few years later the Howards built a house next to ours, southerly. It was Teddy, I think (or was it Harold?) who was killed in action during WWII. South of the Howard house was another owned, I think, by a Kenyon????? Then a big square Littlefield house. The Littlefields had four daughters, The oldest, Blanche, being my age. Pretty, in a flapperish way. She died young. The second, Florence, or Teddy, developed into a very pretty and nice girl. I discovered her during my Senior year in high school, and during the summer of 1935 could have fallen in love. It never got beyond a couple of walks in the park, and that fall I left for college. I often wonder what happened to her. South of the Littlefield house was a large field used by a rather famous dahlia grower. It's still there today, having been purchased many years ago by Smith Flower Shop. This florist, a friend of my parents, was one Farquhar (unusual name!) Smith--many years gone. Across the street was River Bend Cemetery, THE Protestant cemetery in Westerly. Just north of that was the Beach Street School, which I attended in third and fourth grades. Next to that was the Archie house. The Archies had two kids about my age--Addison Jr., and Virginia. Addison was about a year older than I, and something of a blowhard, but smart enough, I suppose. Virginia was my age, and another girl I admired; very pretty, very nice. I wonder what became of them. Oh, well, I suppose that I couldn't have much of a love affair at the age of ten. I'm being prodded to reply to the question: Was there a television? No. Nor was there a radio. The telephone was the only modern bit of machinery in the house. We had, literally, an icebox, which required some attention; the pan underneath it had to be emptied daily. I do remember, well, our first kitchen appliance. I was informed that we were going to have a toaster, and I was in the front yard, waiting, when my father came home with it. It was a trapezoidal affair with swinging gates on either side. You put two pieces of bread in, and when the first side was done (anyone's guess) you opened the gate, and the bread slid down and reversed itself when the gate was closed. Marvelous! There was plenty of yard room. The back yard extended to a line of forest about 300 yards behind the house. The was a big boulder imbedded in the ground on which I used to sit and meditate on the joys of the world. I also, on one occasion, tried unsuccessfully to set off a .22 caliber bullet which I had found. Failed, fortunately. Going back into the woods (there was a rickety lane, now a full-fledged paved street, which ran up the hill) and turning right brought us to a favorite playground. There was an outcropping of REALLY BIG rocks over which we could clamber and play mountain climber, caveman, and pioneer. I have no idea if they're still there. In 1928 my father sold the house. I never knew why, but it probably was the burden of mortgage payments. We moved to 25 Washington Street, just up the block from the Stanton Street birthplace. Originally we lived in a second-floor apartment (later first-floor) typical of those in the town: living room, dining room, two bedrooms, bathroom, and pantry. The landlady was a Mrs. Raffenne, a native of the south of France. Mr. Raffenne was long deceased. She had a daughter in Chester, Pennsylvania, and a few friends around the community, but seemed to consider my mother her close confidant. Every morning she came down to talk, and while I loved to hear her, whenever I wasn't in school, she turned out to be an annoyance to my mother. I can understand that now. She was very helpful to me when I later studied French in high school. So it was back to West Broad Street School, where I stayed through the ninth grade in what was becoming to be known as Junior High School. Miss Sullivan in the sixth grade, Mrs. Brown in the seventh, and I forget whom in the eighth. By the way, the school functioned nicely with a teacher for each grade, a principal, and a janitor. There were no secretaries, class advisors, teachers' assistants, or any of the overhead which seems to clog the learning process nowadays. The teachers, almost all of them female, were not unionized. And everyone--EVERYONE--learned to read, write, and cipher. Many years later I heard talk about "remedial reading", and had to ask what it was. When I read mention of "progress" I wonder if we’ve really made any.

There weren't all that many children my age in the neighborhood when we lived on Stanton Street. On Beach Street I've already mentioned the Howards. Up in the woods behind the house lived the McCalls. They were the Jukes and Kallikaks of Westerly, Rhode Island. If they lived in the South they'd have been called hillbillies, except that would be defaming the term hillbilly. I don't to this day know what Mr. McCall did, other than father children, but he did that very well. There were about six of them; John was about my age, and so was Phyllis. They dressed in ragged overalls. Not blue jeans, but overalls, complete with bib. Their noses always ran, and were never wiped. They had all the social graces of a passel of hogs. Nevertheless, they were part of my childhood friends, along with Addison Archie, who was, comparatively, an aristocrat. On Stanton Street I best recall Daniel Singer. Daniel was my age, Jewish, fat, and monied. We were great friends. The Singers lived in a big house on West Broad Street in Pawcatuck, with an Irish maid, and a big, mean mastiff which I never learned to get along with.

I'm told - I don't remember - that I had a doll called "Mikey" when I was about two years old. That would be the summer my father took a cottage at the beach, in Misquamicut. In 1920 the trolley ran frequently, and he took it back and forth to work. The first toy I can recall--and recall very well--was an electric train set which was set up in the unused third floor of the Stanton Street house. It was a simple thing, as electric trains go today, just an oval of track. The set was standard gauge, three-rail. The locomotive was designed along the lines of the famous bi-polar electrics used at that time by the Milwaukee Railroad through the Cascades. I was not hard on toys, and my playroom was always neatly picked up. I always wanted a toy steam shovel; I never got it. I always wanted—but this was in the realm of daydreams--one of those child-size autos propelled by feet working a crank mechanism. When I was seven years old my mother decided that I should learn to play the piano, and Annie McMahon was duly engaged to teach me. She was a good teacher, if a little bit short-tempered, and charged all of fifty cents per lesson. For that price I had to go to her house. Her husband, Jimmie, worked at the post office, and was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Her oldest child, Jimmy, was several years older that I, but her daughter, Louise, was in my class. She was something of a gawky girl, and my friends called her "swivel-hips". They were anything but. I suppose she's somebody's great-grandmother now. I (unfortunately, as I regarded it at the time) was studying while the pianist-statesman Ignace Paderewski was still alive; he had been Premier of Poland. My mother used to tell me, and tell me, and tell me, that Even Now Paderewski practiced six hours every day. I could hardly refuse to put in one hour, although I tried. It paid off; at the end of a year I played with Annie McMahon's students at the yearly recital held in the Perry house, something of a social event. I played, and not badly at that, Paderewski's Minuet, that hardy old warhorse with which millions of first-year students have had to cope. I ended up taking music lessons for four years, and while I never did achieve concert capabilities beyond the Perry drawing room, I subconsciously became fond of the piano, and when I was about fifteen, took it up again. Somehow, somewhere, I had picked up playing by ear, and over a lifetime it has given me much satisfaction. Some of my friends today, who, I suspect, have tin ears, think I play well.

I know I had a scooter, although for the life of me I can't remember when. But the bicycle I remember very well. It lasted a long time. In those days it had to. It was a standard model--nothing fancy. Only one speed, and a brake activated by reversing pressure on the pedals. The yard behind Raffenne's house was large. There was a garden immediately behind the rear lawn, and another stretch, usually gardened, at right angles. Down this stretch there was an old and decrepit tool shed, where I garaged my bike. There was a lock on it which wouldn't have baffled a grammar school kid, but I always used it. Over the years I painted it again and again. One Christmas I got a headlight and battery case for it, and felt like the most modern kid in town. The usual repair was for a flat tire. This was beyond my abilities, and I used to have to take it down to Kelleher's. Mr. Kelleher ran a shop down at the end of Cogswell Street, and charged, I think, about a quarter. There was only one accident. I had carelessly left the bike leaning, not against, but over, the curb in front of the library on Broad Street. A car (I forget whether it was chauffeur-driven) owned by Mr. Pendleton, of the Elm Street Pendletons, drove over it. Mr. Pendleton was most gracious.  He could easily have blamed me for the whole thing. On the other hand, he could easily pay for it, and offered to do so. This confirmed my early impressions that the rich were much nicer than the poor. A go-cart? I think of this as a child-propelled vehicle, driven by pushing and pulling a lever connected to a crank, and steering with the feet. I'd have liked one, but it never took the place in my wants of a foot-powered auto. I had roller skates, of course. They were not today's plastic-wheeled speeders, but metal clamp-ons. They never held on tightly for very long, and the user's shoes soon showed the results of clamping them on. Ice-skating was my forte. These were also available as clamp-ons, but the sophisticated youngster always had shoe skates. There were four kinds: plain old shoe skates, "tube" skates, reinforced with a metal tubular structure, racing skates, with the blade somewhat narrower and longer than regular, and figure skates, with a rocker blade, and a serration in front. I usually had tube skates, but I had a pair of racing skates in later years. Skating I was good at. Some of my friends formed hockey teams, but I had little interest in that. Owen Sherry was the only guy who stood out from the others. We were all good, and used to go out every night the ice would hold us. During those early years my father had two 1922 Chevrolets. The first was a "touring" car, as they were called--four passenger, folding top, and side curtains which did little to keep out the weather. There was a rail across the back of the front seat which was designed to, and did, hold a heavy car blanket. Heaters were unknown, and would have been useless in the open automobiles of the time. In 1925, after moving into the cottage, Dad upgraded to a closed model. It was a peculiar-looking thing; high roof, rear seat barely able to hold two, and a storage compartment on the left side of the seat--shoulder high. I thought this the height of convenience, and was forever thinking up some reason to peer into it.

I had a mostly pet less childhood. During part of the time at Beach Street I had a collie named Nip. When we moved we gave him away to the Binn family, I think, who had a farm up near Bradford. I have always regretted not having more pets, and have tried to make up for it in later life. Matter of fact, I wish we had one now.

I've mentioned school previously. Living on Stanton Street I went across the road to West Broad Street School, starting in kindergarten, which I thought was a waste of time. The teacher was pretty, though. Some of my friends attended St. Michael's parochial school. Since Annie Spellman was our landlady, there didn't seem to be any doubt that I would go to her school. There was no pressure whatever from the local clergy to send me to St. Michael's. I think it may have been that the school was small, and could not have accommodated all the Catholic youngsters anyway. I hopped from the first grade to the third. I was tutored by my aunt Jane, who taught at the Chestnut Street School in Westerly. I actually attended that little school for awhile. After moving to Beach Street I attended the Beach Street School, almost across the road from the house. That was a two-grade school, with a room for each grade. Teacher--Miss Stott. Back in Pawcatuck in 1928, I returned to West Broad Street School. That would have been in the sixth grade. Miss Sullivan was the teacher. Seventh grade was Mrs. Brown (?), whom I still confuse with a teacher in a younger grade. Julia Stahle taught eighth grade. This is a good time to mention that all these women had, at best, what used to be called a Normal School education--two years. Yet they were both competent and dedicated. I can't help comparing them with some of the highly unionized teachers today, with their array of assistants, counselors, secretaries, school nurses, etc. And we learned! Did we ever learn! I am reminded of this when I hear young people try to read something simple like AA's twelve steps, and stumble. Or when so many of them cannot talk without interjecting, "Y'know", "I mean", or something else irrelevant. What with having started school at five, even with kindergarten, and having skipped a grade, I got out of elementary school before my thirteenth birthday, which meant that I finished high school at sixteen and college at twenty. The concept of Junior High School was just coming into being, and I stayed at West Broad Street School for the first year of High School. A new teacher was imported--Sally Elion. Miss Elion (said to be Eliofsky) was a sophisticated lady whom I greatly admired. She was so worldly that at the end of the school year she went to EUROPE! She even sent me a postcard from Salzburg. This was in 1932, in the Depression. The only other person I knew who had gone to Europe was my cousin John Lawless, who went in 1931. I have good memories of all my teachers, but I think I most admired the principal of West Broad Street School, Katherine Crandall. Mrs. Crandall was strict, and had a broad strap for enforcement. It was applied across the flat of the hand, and withdrawing your hand was not allowed.

There really wasn't anything to "belong" to in those early years. There was no Cub Scout organization, and one had to be twelve to join the Boy Scouts. There was no Boys' Club, and no children's choir at church. We had no secret societies, so my organized activities didn't start until later. I don't think this was a bad thing. I have the feeling that nowadays children have to be entertained, and that they feel neglected unless they're being scheduled into activities.