The Low Cost of Living

Everything is relative. My father’s salary in the 40s and early 50’s ranged between forty and fifty dollars a week, supplemented by his superintendent’s pay of thirty dollars a month; you need to take that into consideration when I tell you how the money was spent and what things cost. I can scarcely remember my parents talking about money, or the risk of us living close to the edge of poverty. They saw money as an avenue to the things most important in life, never as an end in itself. Perhaps that is why I never worried about money, or to overestimate its ability to create happiness in my life.

Education. My high school tuition in Aquinas High School was fifteen dollars a month for the first two years and twenty dollars a month for the last two. Seems like a pittance today, but my tuition alone represented five to nine percent of my parents annual income. At the same time that I was in high school, my parents also paid tuition for Johnny in All Hallows High School, and Margaret and Jimmy in Our Lady of Mercy elementary school. Thomas, ever the brain, was on scholarship in All Hallows High School. Add to that the cost of books and fees, uniforms, class trips, bus passes, prom dresses and so on, and it would be easy to estimate that they put twenty-five percent of Dad’s annual income into education. How little did we value the sacrifices they made for our education when we were young!

In elementary school, we had a credit union. Each week, we would be given ten cents to bring to school. Each class would be called to line up outside the principal’s office where a stately woman would take our bank card, record the deposit, and occasionally the interest. After a First Holy Communion or a Confirmation, we might even have a few dollars to deposit. Slowly, we watched the number total to incredible amounts. The last amount I can recall on my card was an astronomical fourteen dollars!

Food Shopping for Mom: There was no skimping on food quantity or quality as we grew up. In recalling those days, I can remember only four stores worthy enough for my mother. Meats were bought at Louie’s Butcher Shop, produce at the Roxy market, milk and cold cuts at Rudy’s delicatessen, and staples like canned goods, coffee and bread at the A&P. Mom made weekly shopping trips to the A&P and Louie’s butcher shop on Tuesdays, the day after Dad got paid, We kids made almost daily trips to Rudy’s delicatessen on Kingsbridge Road, and the Roxy Market. In those pre-freezer days, one of us would have to go back to Louie’s on Saturday for the weekend meats. At Rudy’s deli, we would typically ask for twenty-five cents of liverwurst, twenty-five cents of boloney, a loaf of bread, and two bottles of milk. Total cost might be a little over a dollar which we charged to our account. Rudy would tally the cost in a split second on a brown paper bag, and record the total on a paper receipt, which he would slap onto a spike in back of him. On Tuesday or Wednesday, one of us would ask Rudy for the bill for the week. Again, he would add it all up on a bag that he would fill with that day’s purchases. Barely ever was there a dispute between what Rudy said we owed and Mom’s estimate. All disputes were settled with Rudy sending home the “receipts” which recorded only our name, a date and an amount. He was always right. The Roxy, just around the corner required a daily visit for the vegetables to be cooked that night. Mom was always a food snob. I guess growing up on a farm made her aware of what to look for in meats and fruits and vegetables. Nothing – I mean nothing – we ate didn’t undergo her scrutiny. She stands over my shoulder today when I am in the produce section and I try to select string beans – “Not those – see how easily they bend? They were picked a long time ago. And those, they’re not ripe enough. Yes, those. Just the right size and they’re not too stringy. And remember, cut them French style. They’ll be good and tender. Don’t overcook them either.” So, regardless of how hard times were, we ate well. Lots of protein in the form of great meat and dairy, (an apology here to the cardiologists of the world, and kudos to Dr. Atkins,) and lots of great vegetables, all cooked fresh. Only later in life, could she be persuaded that the convenience of frozen vegetables outweighed the value of fresh. But God, Mom, didn’t you ever learn to spell “dessert?” Yes, fresh fruit was always available. After dinner, if we were to have a sweet, it might be a cup of chocolate pudding, Jell-O, or a dish of canned fruit. On weekends, things looked up. She might make a dessert, and being a good cook, it would be worth waiting for. An apple pie – the best, and never to be duplicated, (although Margaret has come close,) a strawberry shortcake, a layer cake, (rare,) or muffins. On Sundays, she might send us to Cushman’s to buy a brick of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream. I can’t imagine how bad the moderate weight problems we have today would have been if she typically had added desserts to an already tempting menu.

The Cost of Things. I remember going to the candy store to buy my father his cigarettes – Chesterfields, (“Regular,” we would have to add when those fancy king size and filter tips were introduced in the 50s.) He would give us a quarter and tell us to keep the change. I remember the pack costing nineteen cents, which left us six cents for the penny candy, always on array behind the glass counter. What to buy, what to buy? Nips, those yummy wax bottles containing flavored sugar water at two for a penny? Or, candy cigarettes? Or maybe, Dots, tiny candy dots on a paper roll of about three inches wide and sold for two cents a foot? Maybe Nannas, a yellow, crescent-shaped marshmallow affair, supposedly tasting like banana? We could consume a good five minutes of the owner’s time as we thought how our precious pennies would be spent. Occasionally, we might have enough for an ice cream soda (twenty-five cents,) or a sundae (thirty cents,) That meant a trip to Krums, the best ice cream parlor on the east coast, or at least in the Fordham area.

Movies were an affordable treat, especially in the cold weather. We’d plan our trip to the RKO, the Valentine, The Grand or Loew’s Paradise Theater early in the week, basing our decision on whether we wanted to see a cowboy movie, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges or a thriller. For twenty-five cents, (until we turned twelve,) we would see a fifteen-minute newsreel, and two features separated by a few cartoons. Our parents would bid us goodbye at about 11:30 AM and wouldn’t see us again until 4 PM. We lived across the street from the stage entrance to the Windsor Theater. On Saturdays, they occasionally had morning specials that started at 10 AM where we could see three films and a live vaudeville show of about 20 minutes for twelve cents. The first hundred children might even get a comic book or another souvenir. How desperate could the owners have been to make a buck??

Saving for movies involved being industrious. Soda bottles had a deposit of two cents, beer bottles a deposit of five cents. There would never be enough of both types of bottles in the course of a week for all of us to go, so we had to scramble to get whatever deposit money we could and beg the rest from our parents. Candy money was a bonus when it came our way.

Bus or train transportation, was available a short walk from our doorstep and only cost a dime. It could bring us to Tibbitts Brook Pool in Yonkers, or Orchard Beach in the summer. The train took us to Central Park where we skated in Wolman Rink for twenty-five cents, with twenty cents for the skate rental. If we had no money, we could always walk to the Bronx Zoo, which then and now is one of the best zoos in the United States, the Bronx Botanical Gardens or Saint James Park. On Wednesday evenings we could walk to Poe Park and watch the dorky adults dance to live music coming from the bandstand. On particularly hot summer evenings, all the tenants emptied out of the apartments onto the streets or roofs where the children played and adults talked, sometimes past eleven PM, until the temperature dropped or when fatigue would allow us to fall asleep. On those nights, we said secret prayers that the Good Humor man would hit Bainbridge Avenue, and we’d hear the jingling of change as our fathers reached for a dime for a Twinsickle – a frozen, fruit flavored ice contraption that could be broken into two separate pops for sharing, or fifteen cents for a Creamsickle.

Free Pleasures. Until I was about ten years old we had an icebox, not a refrigerator. Food was put on the shelves in the bottom two thirds of the box and ice was placed in a compartment on the top. As the ice melted, it would collect in a tray on the bottom of the icebox. Depending on the time of year, once or twice a week an iceman would arrive in an open truck with large blocks of ice covered in straw. He would then take an ice pick and carve out a block large enough to fit into the ice compartment. As he cut the blocks, we waited patiently for the shards to jump off so that we could grab them. What exquisite pleasure to have one of those shards on a hot, hot day!

On the worst days of summer, some adult would grab a wrench and open a fire hydrant where we would get drenched, sometimes not even stopping to run home and change into a bathing suit. In our basement yard, my father would suspend a hose from the back steps of the tenement and we would have our own private sprinkler system.

In the back yard of our building on Bainbridge Avenue some previous superintendent had built a one-room screen house, complete with a door and windows. I cannot count the hours that my friends and I used that house, transforming it to anything our imaginations would permit. We had a schoolhouse, a home, a library, a doll hospital or any other number of structures. The screen house was always in demand and my friends and I had to make sure we had established turf before my brothers took it over for their war games. My mother often had to intervene and call a deadline for the transfer of title to either the boys or the girls.

We lived next door to the Fordham Public Library. When I was about eight years old, I discovered a love of reading. Access to the library created an opportunity that eventually shaped me as a lifelong reader. I remember applying for my first library card when I was in first grade and having to read aloud a promise to “abide” by all the laws of the library. A kindly woman allowed for my stumbling reading of the promise and issued me my card anyway. The best passport I was ever issued!

Perpendicular to Bainbridge Avenue, was a dirt road, actually a hill, called Cole’s Lane. This road cut across from Bainbridge to Briggs Avenue and had a street running off it to the north called Poe Place. Both roads were traffic-free and we had freedom to sleigh ride, invent and play games, like Ringaleevio, I Declare War, Tag, Hide and Go Seek, and any games our imagination would allow.

The best things in life really are free.