PART 3

Let’s go back a ways to Fisher Avenue. I can’t remember much about school, except the following year. I took Rose to kindergarten, and while waiting for registration, she began to cry. I waited and waited and she kept it up. So, I said, “Come on, Rose, let’s go home.”

We went.

Arriving home, Mamma said, “What are you doing here?”

I explained.

And she said, “Go right back and finish registering.”

That was that.

Mamma was a graduate of Horner College, and qualified to teach in the New York State schools, and she did that after all of us five kids were in schools.

Another thing I remember about Fisher Avenue was that I fell down the stairs and cut my chin and that caused a loss of a lot of blood. And, finally the doctor came and sewed it up. That’s one thing.

And the other thing was, one of the youngsters was—I don’t know which one it was, I don’t remember now—but, she crawled out of the bedroom window, which was over the porch roof, and she climbed out of that, got on the roof, and she sat there looking around until somebody saw her and then sort of kind of got things organized and got her back into the house.

Now, we belonged to the Ridgeview Congregational Church, and on my seventh birthday the minister, William Danna Street, gave everyone on their seventh birthday, every child a Bible, which I still have today.

There was quite a few other things down there on Fisher Avenue: Both houses, both 120 and 122, were built sort of on a slight slope. And they could accommodate a cellar door, which opened straight out like a kitchen door or a front door. And one of the other things I remember, was the fact that the Aunties used to buy half a dozen—half a case—of eggs at one time, and put them in crack filled with water glass. That’s the first I’ve heard, and the last time I’ve heard of water glass in many years. But, that was evidentially very good preservative mixture.

Well, we left Fisher Avenue and moved to Rathmound Avenue and that was few years later. And, Rathmound Avenue had several events that were sort of not too happy.

Ruth got scrabbling around somewhere on the kitchen floor. And it wasn’t a very good floor, and she got big splinter in her leg and they had to get the doctor to get it out of there because it was a terrible thing. Well, the very next day, the owner of the house—it was two-family house, really, side-by-side—he immediately tore up the kitchen floor and put a new floor in, which was quite a help to us as well.

And it had a back yard, and we had a croquet set. And we were playing croquet, and I swung the mallet, and the head came off. And, instead of being careful of how I swung it, it happened to be right at Rose, my sister Rose. And it hit her in the mouth and broke one of the front teeth off, which was a bad thing as far as I was concerned, and I guess it was for her too.

But, I don’t remember anything else much about that.

PART 2.2

This is some more 107 South Broadway:

I got up into the first year high school, and by that time Mamma was a substitute teacher, and I was the only one up to that point that didn’t have her as substitute teacher, in one of the classes. But, I finally got one; I got her in study hall. And, of course, I had to behave myself, being called down once or twice by the other teachers to say, “what would say if you cut up like that in your mother’s class.” Well, I had no answer to that.

But, uh, the freshman year there wasn’t much going on. I wasn’t too big to go out for any high school sports or anything like that. But, at the end of my freshman year I took an examination for entrance into the New York State Nautical School, which was on the ship, the Newport. And they were supposed to call us to duty in May sometime, and, of course, I didn’t go back to school, then knowing when I was going to get out of there. But, they evidentially found out that it’d be better to wait until the school year was over. So, it wasn’t until June that we got a call to come. Well, it’s like everything else, you get into a new school you need a uniforms, you needed clothing, and there was no money involved in the thing, but you sort of had to make your own. And you were allowed only 50 dollars, is what you were allowed. And we immediately got on board, and the ship pulled out into Long Island Sound and up into Gardener’s Bay, which was near the end of it for the sort of shakedown. Well, Newport had had her boilers condemned for being unsafe, and they were only allowed to generate 50 pounds of steam. Well, that was enough to run the generators. So, we continued on that, and then onto the cruise. And the cruise that year was to take us to Grave’s End Bay. But, in the meantime we had small boat drills on Gardener’s Bay there, and I didn’t have enough sense to keep covered, and I got a terrific sunburn. And the sunburn was such that I had to sleep on mess bench, which was narrow enough between the shoulders. I had to do that because of the fact that the burn was so bad that it was like sheets of skin coming off. Really a bad burn. But anyway we got hardened to that and most of the skin came off on the way. We had split the crew, the cadets, the deckhands and also the engineers. The deck didn’t interest me, so much as the engineers did. Because we had a triple expansion engine there as an auxiliary, but not being able to generate enough steam to run it. We made the cruise on the sail.

Now, the Newport was a barkintine (sp. 214) rig, which was a square rigger and mammoth, foremost, I mean, and a fore and aft and a main and a mizzen. We did alright. We had a skipper, who was very good sailor. We had a boatzan, who was very good at handling all sails and so forth. Well, of course we had to learn all the gear and the post and where they were and the bland pins had to sort of a number on them. There was no number, but you had to learn where that pin went, where the hallus (222), where the out-hauls, clue lines went, and all that business. And they really drilled -- tried to get you to learn that fast because they were going to sail then. Well, after, must have been a week, two weeks, I think it was, we pulled into Grave’s End Bay, which was sort of a protocol to London. And we got a chance to go a shore there. And one of the things on the way (laughs), which I think I must have started it myself, I got the barber to cut my hair all off. It was some crazy thing. When some of the other guys saw that, they got it done. Well, the skipper didn’t like that at all because he thought it be sort of a signal of a combat ship or a ship that had a bunch of renegades on board. But it wasn’t that, it was just the fact that he didn’t like that, and I don’t blame him now, of course. It was a crazy thing to do.

But anyway, we go into Grave’s End Bay; they split they ship’s personnel into two different groups. Because they had to have a group on for emergencies in case something happened, in case something came up like either a fire or a wind store or some such thing where we needed a crew to handle it, the operations. So that happened, and we what we saw was typical English port, so to speak (246). And we didn’t see too much. Although we did get a good idea of what it was like there. So, we left there and went across the Bay of Biscay. Went down through the Channel and back down through the coast of Africa to the Bay of Biscay. That was the most treacherous runs that we had, cause the wind was blowing stiff all time and the waves were pretty high. We all got a little touch of motion sickness, so to speak (laughs). And we got across it to a point, to a port they call Pelos, Spain. Pelos is a port that Columbus set sail from many years before on his discovery of the new world, so to speak. And there is sort of a spire or a monument there. But nothing much else, however, some of the guys went a shore – we all went a shore a little ways – but, didn’t go too far. But some of the fellas found a gin mill, and they got a little too much of it. So that was nothing as far as we were concerned; it didn’t bother us any. So from there we went on down around the coast to the Canary Islands. And Canary Islands was the Tenor Reef (273). And there we took on water and we took on coal because she was a coal fired, hand fired, boilers, they had two boilers in it, and we took on a little supplies as well. And from there they decided the routine would be down across the southern route towards South America. The southern route took us through the Doldrums (281), and boy we were in the doldrums there for a while. And instead of the log line going stern, she went athorpchips, indicated no travel at all, no headway. Well, we were in there a couple of weeks, and finally we got to a point where there was a little headway and that brought us around to Bermuda. Well we stopped in Bermuda then; we didn’t do too much because there wasn’t… I don’t really recall exactly why we stopped there; we stopped anyway. Then we went up the coast. We got a good breeze up the coast until we came into port into New York.

We stayed on Bedlows Island. That was the place, instead of staying in a regular birth somewhere, they shuddered us over to Bedlows Island. Well, you know, the Statue of Liberty is on Bedlows, and there wasn’t much else over there. Except, there was sort of an army detachment there and there. And there was nothing to do on the island except climb up into the Statue’s head and look and see what you could find. Well, that sore of acted as exercise as well for us guys. We also had some classes there, and the classes were not very much except for the fundamentals of engineering: the pumps, and engines and the boilers – the boiler stuff was mostly safety. And, later on I took, I went to school for that, again. I went to McCounties Institute. But, after I got off in October, the second cruise – I went on two cruises in that. The second one, they had replaced the faulty plates on the boilers, which they moved the boilers out into the navy yard – we were stationed in the navy yare for awhile while they were fixing the boilers up. While we were in the navy yard, we were builded on the Pueblo, which was the navy receiving ship there. And I was playing the bugle at the time so I shared the buglers job – buglers calls riverlay (323) and taps and whatever else was necessary – with a another fella as long as we stayed there. Well, we were a work crew, we got the boiler’s in boiler shop; we did the chipping and scrapping of the boiler plates to put them in shape to where they were good enough to back in the ship and build the steam up to 125 pounds. That’s when they put the engine – the triple expansion engine – in service as an auxiliary, and that gave us guys, who was in the black gang, a chance to run and also a chance to feed the boilers.

And there was several things you have to be careful of in regards to lubricating that engine. It had what they called Steverson Link Motion (339). That particular type of link motion, you had to feel the pillow box and the cranks as she turned and feed it by hand. Well, I caught my finger – I still have that in there – I caught me finger in one of the shins which was not trimmed correctly and ripped a big piece out of it. Fortunately, the doctor on board stuck it back on (laughs). It healed up alright; there wasn’t any problem there.

Another incident on the second cruise, we took a fellow by the name of Bridgeman, who was the publisher of Brooklyn Daily Eagle, on. And also the skipper had his wife and three children on. So, they had passengers ride on that. But, in the meantime, poor old fella, Bridgeman, died. And the doctor had to, you know, take care of the body and we put him in the freezer there for awhile until we could get to Bermuda. And, when we got to Bermuda they had him embalmed, and they put him on – and we had to stand to watch on the gun deck, cause they put the coffin on the gun deck, and they had the guard all the way up the coast until we got into New York again. And they removed the body for proper burial.

And the kids of course. He had two sons – Resinberg, the skipper –had two sons and a daughter. And the three kids were, they weren’t allowed to mingle too much, but they were having a lot of fun. They were pretty well supervised there. Resinberg was quite a skipper (384). Not only was he a skipper, but he was also, he was a civil engineer. After that trip we found out that he supervised, or was a resident engineer on a project when they built Columbian Presbyterian Medical Center, in the heights there.

There are a couple of items that I left out, that I guess, in the previous.

In August 1922, uh, I went to the CMTC, which was the Coast Artillery Core of the Army, to Fort Hancock as a reserved reader. And, there were three courses: the red, white and blue course. Of course the first year I took the red course. And that lasted for a month, in August 1922. And we came back from August, and went to the high school. And there was a point there in the high school that there was no -- as I mentioned -- there was no organized athletics, but there was a football team. And which I went out for football in the fall, and I went out for basketball, and also baseball in the spring, and also got a bid to belong to Phi Lambda fraternity in high school. In that time fraternities were legal, and they were like a club so to speak. And they got as many people as they could as far as athletes concerned to join up, which included, of course, initiations and stuff of that nature. That’s before I went on the Newport in ’23.

That Newport cruise – two cruises there were – and, as I mentioned part of it before, there was a bunch of cadets, and also a professional crew to operate the ship; the cadets didn’t know enough about it.

Also, I might mention in high school, the organization in high school, they had a field that was away from the school. And we used to walk; we very seldom had transportation except for walking to the Burke Foundation, where we did practice on their field there. And that, also, the equipment wasn’t so good. And a lot of times we’d went and practice and scrimmage and which the football team they didn’t have enough helmets to go around. They did have enough pads, padding and so forth (laughs). When we used to go in the game we used to swap the helmets. The fellow that came out used to give the fellow that came in – the substitute – his helmet. So, there’d be some protection there anyway. And that went on all season. We used to walk from the high school, where we’d change clothes, and went up to the Burke Relief Foundation to do the practice thing and so forth, and then back. Day after day. And we had some games, and, of course, we’d follow a team, a high school team that was unbeaten – 11 or 12, or maybe there was 16 men. Both ways. And they were unbeaten that year. And, of course, the fellows graduated, and the coach left. And (laughs) we were left as a bunch of kids that they took (laughs) their revenge on something. They beat us every single game that year. But, that didn’t make much difference.

The basketball team was the same. We didn’t have too many good basketball players there. But they did have, more or less of a iffy schedule, which went on alright.

Then baseball started, of course, in the spring, and that was the year that I was going to go on the Newport, which was the New York State Nautical School at that time. And right now it is known as the New York State Maritime College, and it’s a four-year course. When we took it was only two years. But, we finished the two years in a little less time on account of a reorganization taking place at that time. But, today that school is a four year course in engineering, and also deck management and all the marine side of the whole business. And, it’s quite a school now; it’s a college, really, recognized by the New York State curriculum, so forth.

PART 5

Ah, see, what else?

Cross Street School: there was no grass around it; it was really bare. Schools at that time did not have any landscaping so to speak. They was sort of boxy type and red brick front and back and sides. And they were sort of common type of architecture. There were two stories to it, and they got most of the grades in that type.

One of the things while we were in Cross Street School, we worked after school. And I worked with a couple other kids from school on the Daily Reporter. Those fellas used to run –- it was a hand folder so to speak –- and, there was several treacherous angles, and which you gotta be careful you didn’t cut your hand on the paper. And it really happened. It was a funny thing, but that was it. So, used to run the folder, fold the papers, and then stack them to different routes that they had. And one that I used run it sometimes. But most of the time I had a route that used to supply the stores in town. I had made a little money then, so I finally bought a bike and put a carrier on it, and delivered it that way. And, of course, having the stores, the competition wasn’t much in a sense that when you delivered five or ten papers or more to a store, you built up a volume. So, they had a contest there, and I won a second or third prize and was able to take my pick of certain prizes, and of course, what did I do? I picked a gun, a Daisy air rifle, which consequently got me into trouble right away cause I started to shoot at a squirrel in a back yard, but it was in somebody else’s backyard. And, that didn’t last too good. That didn’t do me any good either.

So, another time, around Easter time: we had, somebody had given us a pair of Belgian Hares. Rabbits. And nobody said anything about one of the rabbits being pregnant. Finally, one day we built a hutch for it –- a little box and all that. They didn’t go for it because they usually dug out. But this time we got up one day and looked, and there were a bunch of little rabbits in there. Well, we made the mistake of trying to help the mother out by placing them in a certain area close by. But then, see, eventually they all died and it was a sad situation there. But we had no experience in taking care of these animals, so eventually wherever we got them from, I don’t know, they took them back and put them back in the store.

PART 4

Another couple of years went by, and we moved from Fisher Avenue School to a post road school. We all went there. And I remember one thing about that post road school. I was in the sixth or seventh grade, I don’t know which, but I had a teacher by the name of Ms. O’Rourke. She was…very…she wasn’t too heavy. She was kind of thin, but a real true Riesman. But I had trouble with one of the fellows in the class, he was cutting up and raising the devil. And she got a hold of that guy and slammed him against the board, black board, and gave him a roughing up. Really, I was surprised that she had the power to do that because he was a big husky guy. But, that kinda sorta put us on notice to behave ourselves and so forth, which I guess I wasn’t too good at it at that time.

Then the next thing, I think, the folks must have build two houses, 107 and 109 South Broadway. And which they rented 109 to the Wellers; that was two sisters and a mother there, I think. And we occupied 107. We were all school-age there, and we went to the cross-street school, the grade school. And we walked there; there was no other transportation, no junior high, no eighth grade; eighth grade was in the high school on Main Street. So, the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth were in the high school. Only one, that’s the only one there was at that time. There was no athletic programs in the high school. No softball, sort of stickball there was. Being a short piece of broom stick, sharp at both ends, it looked like a fat cigar, played like baseball. Threw, the puck so to speak. up and you swung the broom stick to hit. And so forth and so on, and that was sort of like what stickball became later.

One of the things else along there, we used to have a can with wire on it that we could swing. We built a fire in it and a got a fire going pretty good and used to put a potato in it and roast it. When it was done we used to eat the potato.

PART 3

Let’s go back a ways to Fisher Avenue. I can’t remember much about school, except the following year. I took Rose to kindergarten, and while waiting for registration, she began to cry. I waited and waited and she kept it up. So, I said, “Come on, Rose, let’s go home.”

We went.

Arriving home, Mamma said, “What are you doing here?”

I explained.

And she said, “Go right back and finish registering.”

That was that.

Mamma was a graduate of Horner College, and qualified to teach in the New York State schools, and she did that after all of us five kids were in schools.

Another thing I remember about Fisher Avenue was that I fell down the stairs and cut my chin and that caused a loss of a lot of blood. And, finally the doctor came and sewed it up. That’s one thing.

And the other thing was, one of the youngsters was—I don’t know which one it was, I don’t remember now—but, she crawled out of the bedroom window, which was over the porch roof, and she climbed out of that, got on the roof, and she sat there looking around until somebody saw her and then sort of kind of got things organized and got her back into the house.

Now, we belonged to the Ridgeview Congregational Church, and on my seventh birthday the minister, William Danna Street, gave everyone on their seventh birthday, every child a Bible, which I still have today.

There was quite a few other things down there on Fisher Avenue: Both houses, both 120 and 122, were built sort of on a slight slope. And they could accommodate a cellar door, which opened straight out like a kitchen door or a front door. And one of the other things I remember, was the fact that the Aunties used to buy half a dozen—half a case—of eggs at one time, and put them in crack filled with water glass. That’s the first I’ve heard, and the last time I’ve heard of water glass in many years. But, that was evidentially very good preservative mixture.

Well, we left Fisher Avenue and moved to Rathmound Avenue and that was few years later. And, Rathmound Avenue had several events that were sort of not too happy.

Ruth got scrabbling around somewhere on the kitchen floor. And it wasn’t a very good floor, and she got big splinter in her leg and they had to get the doctor to get it out of there because it was a terrible thing. Well, the very next day, the owner of the house—it was two-family house, really, side-by-side—he immediately tore up the kitchen floor and put a new floor in, which was quite a help to us as well.

And it had a back yard, and we had a croquet set. And we were playing croquet, and I swung the mallet, and the head came off. And, instead of being careful of how I swung it, it happened to be right at Rose, my sister Rose. And it hit her in the mouth and broke one of the front teeth off, which was a bad thing as far as I was concerned, and I guess it was for her too.

But, I don’t remember anything else much about that.

Part 2

I attended the White Plains Grammar School System from nineteen-five to 1919. Then I went from White Plains High, as a freshman, from 1919-1920. Following that, they sent me to Newton Academy, which was a military background, at 1920-1922, then back to White Plains High School in 1922 or1923, where I went out for football, basketball and baseball.

Now, August of 1922, I went to army CMT- Sea Coast Artillery Defense System, which was a 30-day red course. There was a white course and a blue course following, but that was the end of that as far as I was concerned.

July 23rd, in ’23, I attended the New York State Nautical School, which was run on the U.S.S. Newport. And then to graduate October 16, 1924. From there, the first job I had was on the Leviathan, the U.S.S. Leviathan.

November 1924 to May 1925 as an oilier. Where we made five round trips from New York to Sherbet, South Hampton and back. Then I got off the Leviathan because it was so big that I missed the small complete J. Say or operation of a small inter-coastal, which I wanted the American Hawaiian line on the Ion, was on it from May 25 to November 2, 1925. That was the New York City to Seattle round trip, where we went through the Panama Canal.

In December 1925 to March 3, 1926, I worked for the New York Central Railroad in their power plant at Port Morris Bronx. From March 26 to May 29 I was in the Edison Distribution Station System. And from May 1929 to November 1929, Barrot Airways. Then I played in a dance band from November ’29 to July 1930.

October 28, 1930, started in the Metropolitan Life home office engineers division. And I retired October 1969 after 39 years.

During the War, I enlisted in the U.S. army ordnance, December 1942 which was called to active duty March 22, 1943 and was in it ‘til November 11, 1945. I spent about a year overseas in ETO and returned to the Met December 1945 to continue employment there. We were lucky to be able to be taken back by the company when we left.

This was an outline – approximately -- of what happened up to that time. Well, we’ll go into to the details later when I can get together some of the information during the times that we started. That’s all for now.

FROM POPPA. PART 1

It’s dry and cold and because of this my arms itch, precisely on and around the shoulders. I notice, as I lift my shirt’s sleeve to scratch, that I’ve concentrated on the tattoo that’s on my right shoulder.

The tattoo is a symbol, a signature, initials really. They are of my grandfather, who died just before I moved to Portland. Last month he had a birthday; he would have been 103. I remembered it and decided to call my grandmother; well into her nineties, she is still living. It was a sweet thing to do, I was told by my mother. The thing was it felt sweet but it also created a another feeling, one that won’t be satisfied with a scratch. It created a pressure in a place that’s somewhere between my left nostril and my left eyeball. You might call it the tear duct. The pressure I feel there isn’t me crying—though I’d like to—it’s just a pressure that feels tender and real.

A while back I pulled out a Radio Shack brand cassette tape recorder from a box that was my grandfather’s, Poppa, we call him. I listened to his life story—the first part of it anyway -- as told by the man himself, William Keil Jr.

Tape 1, Side A is marked in his handwriting JAN 05 to WWII. I decided that I would transcribe what I heard and have typed it. On the tape were written APR-MAY, JUNE ’99, the months of recording.

I guess the best way to begin this is to say when I was born, which was January 25, nineteen five to William Keil Sr. and Frieda Schneider Keil. And we lived at 113 East 83rd Street in New York City.

I was baptized May, 28, nineteen five in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Shortly thereafter – I think it was about a year – the family moved to White Plains, where they had built two houses, I believe. Number 120 Fisher Avenue and number 122 Fisher Avenue. We lived at 122 and our aunties, Aunt Anna, Aunt Bessie and Aunt Phoebe, three of Pappa’s sisters, lived next door, 120.

The family increased to Rose, Ruth, Marian and Edward. And we moved from Fisher Avenue to Rathmond Avenue and then to South Broadway, 107."