Joe Presti’s barbershop was on one side of us, and the home of Joe Wojciechowski, a stevedore foreman, was on the other. Later, our family made a mini-move up the alley and over to 1238 Hull Street – a three-story row house. His nickname was “Porky.” He had a problem, however: wetting the bed! His older brother Jerry would enjoy breaking his chops about it by bellowing out for all the world to hear: “Listen, the pig’s a-pissing!” Sometimes, it wasn’t easy being a kid.
Golden hour time may 26 2019 baltimore how to#
We learned how to swim in the harbor together at the foot of Hull Street. I think they had seven kids!īilly Bloom, one of their children, was one of my main childhood buddies. The father, Thomas, was Jewish, and the mother, Mary McHale, was of Irish stock. Next to us on Haubert St., at 1235, was the Bloom family. It was like a symphony, orchestrated not by a Mozart, but by a then-vibrant nation showing off its immense industrial might. I recall once listening to a neighbor, Eddie King, a natural talent and fine tenor, belting out a ballad in Krepp’s saloon.ĭay and night, the sounds from the coal-burning engines on the freight trains the ocean-going vessels, assisted by the tug boats, whistles blaring away, entering and leaving the harbor and the loud-banging noise from the cargo, especially the steel pipes made locally at the Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point plant, as they were loaded onto the ships, reverberated up our alley.
Golden hour time may 26 2019 baltimore windows#
There were seven kids in our family one of whom was my fraternal twin brother–Jim.īefore air conditioning, the doors and windows for the saloons – there seemed to be one on every block in Locust Point – would be left wide open during the dog days of summer. When dad came home much later that night, we were in bed, but I could hear my Irish mother reading him the riot act. It had a back door entrance, which faced the alley. We found out later, that he had made his way over to Krepp’s saloon to have a few beers. I remember my father, Richard “Dick” Hughes, who was a boss on the waterfront for the Alcoa Steamship Company, going outside to use the toilet one wintery night.
Just imagine going to the “head” in the middle of snowy January night! In those early days, each home’s toilet was located in the back yard, enclosed in a crude wooden shed. They had rats there the size of a full-grown cat! If you spotted one while walking home with half-a-load on, you would sober up in a hurry.
But, you couldn’t say the same for the alleys near the Grain Elevator. I’m pleased to note that we never had any significant rat problems in our alley. The Locust Point (formerly Whetstone Point) neighborhood was itself surrounded by the rail tracks of the legendary B&O Railroad. Marriott Street, which had a railroad track running through the middle of it, was the alley’s northern boundary. Beason Street was at the southern end of the alley, only a few blocks west of the then B&O R/R’s Grain Elevator, nka “Silo Point,” and about a mile or so from historic Fort McHenry. The centerpiece of this commentary is a long alleyway that separated Haubert from Hull Street (see photo). At that time, my family was residing at 1237 Haubert Street, in a two-story row house. The union hall was located in Locust Point in the 1200 block of Hull Street, directly across the street from Buck Krepp’s Saloon, nka “The Hull Street Blues Cafe.” Buck’s wife, Marie, was a Krueger and a sister of my uncle, Herman “The German” Krueger. (It was later superseded by ILA Local 333.) Little did I know then, waking up in the back room of our house that faced an alley, that in eight short years, I myself would become a member of that fabled ILA local. This pre-dated its wider notoriety in the 1954 movie, “On the Waterfront,” that made the actor Marlon Brando a household name.
This process was known as the “shape-up” on the Baltimore docks, a day when men showed up for unknown assignments, if any. His blast went something like this: “Gassie & 21 men for Pier 3, Locust Point Iggy & 20 men for Canton, Pier 1 and Swankie and 21 men for Davison Chemical, Curtis Bay.” I was ten years old in 1947, and one of my fondest memories was how the business agent for the International Longshoremen’s Association, (ILA), Local 829, Pete Rossbach, would bark through a loudspeaker the work orders for the stevedores just after daybreak.
0 kommentar(er)
