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."