That first house of ours, the house where I was born, was in the city – on the west end fringe of the city proper. It was small: a side by side semi-detached two story house that was built during a building boom in the post World War One years. It had a small kitchen, a tiny bathroom, an unfinished cellar – they called them cellars in those days. A coal shute with an attached bin plus shovel and grate for the coal burning furnace. On the main floor there was a relatively large dining room adjacent to the country style kitchen, which was attached to a very small living room. The dining room and the kitchen were the real living rooms in those days because that was where all of the familial drama occurred. Upstairs were three bedrooms, the largest for my parents, the masters of course. Two smaller bedrooms were in the back of the house separated by the small bathroom. I don’t remember having a bathtub, as we were washed in an old tin tub with water heated in the kitchen. Our ice box was just that, an ice box. I can still remember how the iceman cameth to our place from time to time clawing straw caked blocks of pure blue tinged ice from the horse drawn carriage; and the iceman himself with his large brown iron ice tongs.
My two sisters shared one bedroom and the other I shared with my brother. It was a modest but cozy house, across the road from a small park or parkette. We were not rich by any stretch or even well off yet we were the first house on the block to have a TV. Why? Because my dad was an avid baseball fan and he desperately wanted one, as all of the major league baseball games of the day were beginning to be televised. He could watch a game every Saturday afternoon while my mom was outside cutting the grass with our state of the art, hand powered push mower. He got a TV and serendipitously I got a nickname that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Gilly, as in Junior Gilliam, a baseball star of the day whom my dad had great respect for. Given that my dad’s name was John and I was named John, I was John Junior of course; and since my dad loved Junior Gilliam and I was also a junior I got the Gilliam moniker. I could have handled Gilliam but Gilly? And parents being parents or grownup adults think that other kids are really stupid but they’re not. They picked up on the Junior Gilliam moniker immediately and faster than you could say “take me out to the ball game” I was called Gilly – for ever and ever, for eternity, or for as long as I lived. A parent’s logic never fails to amaze me and the unintended consequences associated with their dumb-ass decisions in name calling. You have no idea how many black eyes can be attributed to that one lapse of judgment on my parent’s part. Sooo cute eh Gilly? Gilly, Gilly, Gilly! Yeah right. Wham, Wallop!…