This installment of my articles about life as we knew it in Frankford as I grew up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s contains some somewhat “racy” material. Names have been left out, “to protect the guilty,” and adult readers may want to refrain from encouraging the kids to read this one.
There were nine of us kids, in our Wakeling Street house across from Frankford Stadium. If we wanted spending money, we had to work.
THE HARRISON QUICK SHOP
So, beginning in 1965, when I was 12, I worked after school and on Saturdays at the Harrison Quick Shop, a Unity Frankford grocery store at 1100 Harrison Street on the southeast corner of Harrison and Large Street. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Matus, were a German-speaking couple from Czechoslovakia. They taught me to do everything at the store. By the age of 16, I was filling in the Unity Frankford wholesale order sheet, unloading the truck, “doing the count” to square the invoice with what was delivered, stocking shelves, filling customer orders, delivering groceries, cutting lunch meats, cutting steaks and chickens, and manning the cash register.
Mr. Matus’ English was about 80%, with a heavy German accent. He would sound like this: “Peee-TAIR, get ten dozen ahx from duh vall-kin bahx” — “Peter, get 10 dozen eggs from the walk-in box,” the big walk-in refrigerator. He knew that sometimes he was hard to understand, and he would have fun with that.
THE SPECIAL IRISH LADY
The people were generous with their tips. We delivery boys all shared the big tippers. There was one house the older guys never shared with me, though, until one day one of them said, “Do you think that Pete’s old enough for the Irish lady’s house.” “Yeah,” said the other, “I think he’ll survive.” I was about 14 at the time. I thought, “What are they talking about?”
The Irish lady’s house was a home in the middle of the block of Harrison Street opposite Frankford High School. I carefully lifted the large box of groceries off the bike, walked up the steps, knocked on the door, and an Irish lady in her thirties, completely au naturel from the waist up, answered the door. And, sheesh, was there ever a lot there for a young man to see and be concerned about!
Inside the house there were all of these little kids running around in their underwear or naked as jay birds. The woman’s state of dress left no doubts about how there came to be so many.
I carried the groceries into the kitchen, pretending that there was nothing about the lady to gape at, received the money for the groceries and my tip, and left. There was another residence like that. The girl, a pretty lady about 10 years older than me, was always fully dressed when I delivered groceries, but she knew when I would be passing her home at night, while walking the dog, and she would often stand in window “in the buff.” I was just too naïve to do anything about it, to tell the truth — a good thing, correct?
Continue reading Miracle of The Re-Appearing Loaf of Bread
