Philip Steinberg, born 1931
East Falls Historical Society – Oral History Interview
Interviewee: Philip Steinberg (PS)
Interviewer: Jenna Musket (JM)
Date: September 21, 2007
Below is an interview of East Falls resident Phil Steinberg. Here he reveals why he came to the East Falls area and what kept him there.
He also provides a personal insight to the many changes that took place in the neighborhood and the city of Philadelphia between the beginnings of his residency in East Falls in 1964 through present day. Lastly, Phil talks about his involvement in the community.
JM: Good morning, Phil.
PS: Good morning, Jenna.
JM: So we’re sitting here. Maybe we want to start. I usually start with very simple questions; you know maybe if you could just start with telling me your name and when and where you were born?
PS: My name is Phillip Steinberg, and I was born in Danville, Illinois, on April 4th, 1931.
JM: Wow. You're not a Fallser.
PS: I did not come to East Falls until 1964. That's when I moved, I moved to Midvale Avenue. So, I've been here close to forty-five, what's it forty-three, how long is that? It's a long time.
JM: It is a long time. What brought you to East Falls? Well actually before we get to that, because, it was awhile, you know, before you moved to East Falls, tell me a little bit about growing up in Danville.
PS: Well actually, my mother was from Danville and we lived in Mattoon, Illinois at the time. It's a small town south of Champagne, Illinois and what they call the Corn Belt out there. It's very agricultural. And I enjoyed very much growing up in this small town about 18,000 people. And I went to high school there. And you know, participated in sports and different activities in high school and then went to college in Indiana at a small school called DePauw.
JM: Sure
PS: In Green Castle, Indiana. And, then I had a, a scholarship for law school. I went to New York University and then…
JM: Wait, before you, what did you study at DePauw University?
PS: At DePauw, I was very interested in journalism. And was looking to a career in journalism. I majored in English; also political science - I had a double major. And then became interested in law, and decided to go to law school.
JM: Why? What do you think cultivated the interest in law school?
PS: Well I think it was always interested in the political processes, and in a way in public service and that type of thing, so I thought law would be a good background for that.
JM: Were your parents lawyers?
PS: No, no they were not.
JM: Tell me a little bit about your parents.
PS: Well, my mother had grown up in Danville, Illinois and, and she went to-
JM: And her name?
PS: Her name was Beulah, and she went to this school in Indiana, DePauw - where I went. She went for a couple of years - she didn't graduate and then she married my father in 1924.
My father was a little bit, quite a bit, older actually; he was thirteen years older than she. And he had been - his parents had come over from Germany and he was born in upstate New York. And then had moved with his father, who worked on a railroad, over to Chicago and then finally to downstate Illinois and Indiana. And he worked for a gravel company. And he had his education I think, stopped at the eighth grade which was not unusual in the early part of the nineteenth, no, the twentieth century.
JM: Uh hum
PS: A lot of people didn't graduate from high school. And so we lived there in this small town; I didn't have any brothers or sisters.
JM: What did, what did you do with the gravel company?
PS: My father - his title was the vice president, and manager of operations, it's a small gravel company. They have three what they call pits, gravel pits in Indiana and primarily provided gravel for road construction and also for the railroads. Railroads use gravel underneath their track. It’s called ballast, and whenever they repair their tracks - they put down gravel. They’re now putting down limestone and they have different techniques. So that’s what he did – he worked for this company and he traveled a bit, but it was a nice job.
JM: And your fathers first name?
PS: His name was Frederick. Frederick Phillip Steinberg. And his father’s name was John Steinberg and although it's a Jewish name, it’s not – he – they - were not Jewish. They were German, I guess Lutheran or whatever. We went to church in what they called a community church in Illinois. It's called Central Community Church which were more or less throughout the Midwest, the headquarters of the church was in Cleveland. And so the church was a fairly significant part of my early years. I went to Sunday school and sang in the choir and things like that.
JM: Ah, good voice?
PS: (laughs) I had a terrible voice!
JM: (unintelligible)
PS: They were looking for bodies.
JM: And you enjoyed it?
PS: I enjoyed it. Yeah.
JM: Good.
PS: I made a lot of friends that way.
JM: And was your mother also German?
PS: No, she was, her last name – maiden name - was Olmsted. And she was a distant relative of this landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, who was known for the design and construction of Central Park in New York, so we sort of followed the Olmsted genealogy. And they were English. They came from, I mean her father had been born on a farm and their derivation was English.
JM: You wouldn't happen to know where in England, what area?
PS: Well, there was, there is a family place over there called Olmsted House. It's to the north of London - I'm not sure exactly the closest city, but that place still, I think it still exists. Or Olmsted Hall.
JM: Yeah, I was just curious because - it’s not with this set of interviews, but with previous ones with the Methodist Church when they closed - many people were actually from the Manchester and Oxford England area and I was just curious if she might have come from that area.
PS: Yeah, yeah.
JM: Ok, so she married a fellow who was a little bit older than herself and you settled down in Danville and you went to DePauw. Which school did you go to for law?
PS: It was New York University School of Law. That was in Greenwich Village, the school building. When I went, was a fairly new building, it was on the south side of Washington Square. And I lived right on Washington Square in New York and had just a wonderful time living in New York.
JM: And where did you live when you were in New York?
PS: Well, I lived right on Washington Square. In 50 Washington Square and then I lived on the west side of Washington Square in a school dormitory called the Holly Chambers. It had been an apartment building and the school bought it and turned it into quarters for students at NYU.
JM: And so you were… what years were you at NYU?
PS: I was at NYU from 1953 to 1956. And those were years when New York was a very open place where you could travel on the subway at any time of the day or night, and the subway ride was fifteen cents. You could have a dinner at a halfway decent restaurant for a dollar, a dollar and a quarter, and so it was quite a different lifestyle.
JM: Hmm.
PS: And we enjoyed it. I was with a group of twenty other law students from different parts of the country that had this scholarship - it was called a Root-Tilden Scholarship. It paid all of our expenses and tuition, so it was a very nice kind of a scholarship to have.
JM: And how did you find out about the scholarship?
PS: Well, well at college they posted a notice on the bulletin board and I saw the notice and it caught my attention and they had this interview process.
JM: Okay so you were one of a group of twenty and, and after 1958?
PS: 1953.
JM: 1953. But you graduated...
PS: I graduated in 1956.
JM: '56. So 1956 when you graduated - what happened after that?
PS: In 1956 I had worked at a law firm in New York City on Wall Street and I decided - I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do because at that time the draft, all the young men were subject to the draft, and although you could get a deferral while you were going to school, as soon as you graduated you were than at the top of the list so I knew I would be drafted and I decided to stay in New York for a few months. Thought about going in as an officer but then decided that if you were drafted you were only in for two years.
And I decided to go ahead with that and I was drafted then out of my home in Illinois in November of 1956 and went into the Army and had basic training and then was sent after basic training in March of 1957 I was sent to Philadelphia. That was the first time I came really to Philadelphia.
I was stationed at the quarter master depot. The quarter master depot in Philadelphia was located in Twentieth and Oregon. In those days it was a very large operation with a great number of people from south Philadelphia working there sewing uniforms. Making uniforms for officers. Most of the noncommissioned officers and fatigues were made like that by contract but they did have a large number of
people who actually were putting together uniforms and also flags.
But it was primarily what you would call a storage depot, where clothing would be stored and then shipped out to camps as it was needed. And we were sent there with a group of other lawyers to review contracts that the Army had let during the Korean War to where there was fraud involved and we were looking for evidence of fraud. We did that for a period of perhaps six months and then we had reviewed all the contracts, so rather than letting us go someplace else, they decided they would use us in working with data processing and computers. And there were - they had IBM computers down there and they sent us to training on how to program a computer.
JM: Where did you go for training?
PS: For training, the IBM had an office at 15th and Locust Street in those days. And we would take classes there. I mean we wouldn't go in to work at the Quartermaster Depot. We'd get up in the morning; we'd take a subway or a bus down to 15th and Locust and learn about computers. We did that maybe like a week long course and then we would go back and try to apply that knowledge to what we were doing for the Army.
JM: So when you worked with them, what were the fruits of that? Did you get stationed to do something that would've brought computers and your legal skills together?
PS: Actually, they didn't, the legal skills didn't really enter into what we were doing with the computers. We were primarily assisting in the development in the program for the type of computer they had in those days. In those days a computer was a rarity, and it was, it filled up...
JM: Were they the large…..?
PS: Very large, there were two operated computers so they filled up a very large room which had to be kept at a very constant temperature. And it was a, it was a big project just learning about these computers and learning how to program and they had different techniques for programming in those days. But it was, you know, you were sort of on the, I guess, in the early stages of computing that I didn't really -
except in one case that I worked on later - I didn't find too many applications of the computer to law at that point because it wasn't sophisticated enough.
JM: Is that what kept you in Philadelphia then? What brought you to Philadelphia?
PS: That brought me to Philadelphia, then what happened was that I went to different churches and I went to a Presbyterian church at 2lst and Walnut, it's called The First Presbyterian Church. And while I was there I went to a young adult group and in that group I met my wife. And then we decided to get married and I got married really before I got out of the Army. And, although I thought I would go back to the Midwest, I ultimately decided to stay in Philadelphia. I had a friend, a couple of friends from Philadelphia - from law school, and I interviewed at where one of them was working and decided that that would be a place that I would probably want to work. And….
(tape cuts off)
JM: Which was where?
PS: That was a firm; the name of the firm was called Drinker, Biddle, and Reath. It was, in those days, it was considered a fairly large firm - it had 35 lawyers. And it had a very nice stable of clients and a very nice group of men that worked there. There were no women there at the time.
JM: Did that change after, how long did you stay there?
PS: I stayed there for 40 years.
JM: So did you see changes over the years?
PS: I saw many, many changes.
JM: In terms of gender, like women coming in?
PS: Women coming in, and also discrimination not only against women but also against ethnic and religious - I mean Catholic and Jewish men found it very difficult to obtain employment with what you would call a Main Line law firm. And I think that was not only true with law firms, but Main Line businesses, generally. If you were wanting to work for a bank in Philadelphia and you wanted to move up the ladder it would be hard if you… it helped a lot of you were an Episcopalian Main Line resident. It didn't help if you were Jewish or Catholic or from South Philadelphia. I mean, I’m being honest about it.
JM: No, I'm aware of that. I teach Race, Class and Gender up at the college, so it's a familiar scene, until the country and different communities started doing structural changes to make integration occur or open the doors for people to…
PS: One of the interesting things was, when the Civil Rights act of 1964 was being debated and it was, originally, they didn't have sex in there as a discrimination item. And one of the southern senators added sex, as you know, to the list, thinking that a lot of the northerners would vote against it because they didn't want to have - they didn't want to prohibit sex discrimination. But of course everybody voted for it and that's why sex discrimination was made unlawful. Before 1964 there was nothing unlawful about discriminating on the basis of sex, religion or color. It's hard, I mean people may find that hard to believe but that's the way it was.
JM: Yeah. No. It is stories like yours that are actually eyewitness accounts, talking about the reality of it on a day-to-day kind of basis so it's not an abstract.
PS: It wasn't an abstract thing at all.
JM: And it's not ancient history; it's not that old.
PS: You're talking forty years ago.
JM: But in the 1960's then, when, when the Act was passed, is that when you began to see major changes?
PS: No. It didn't happen that quickly. No, it took quite a bit longer. I’d say women, I think maybe the first woman that was actually hired to work there as a lawyer was in about 1971 or 72 and that wasn't unusual at the other law firms either. And of course it took even longer for a woman to become a partner. Or a black.
JM: But that also changed over time?
PS: That changed over time, yeah. Now I think law firms do a much better job. They're forced by, really their clients, to be more open because many of the large clients won't do business with companies or firms that have any kind of discriminatory policy. They don't want to be associated with that. The public perception is so strong.
JM: Well even if there's little representation or diversity within the firm that reflects that.
PS: Yeah.
JM: So you stayed there for forty years, so that's what kept you in Philadelphia.
PS: That's what kept me in Philadelphia. I worked there from 1958.
JM: Well that and marrying a young woman from the Presbyterian Church.
PS: Yeah, yeah.
JM: So tell me a little bit about her, what's her name and-
PS: Her name is Doris. Her last name was Blank. And we lived on Spruce Street when we first got married. 18th and Spruce. Which was…we had an apartment, a fourth floor walk-up apartment and lived there for a couple of years and then we moved over to 22 and Chestnut into another apartment building called the Coronado, which is still there and it's been converted now into condominiums. And then one of the lawyers that I knew at Drinker Biddle moved out to East Falls and he bought a house on Midvale at Stokley. And he had us out for dinner and it really was the first time I'd really looked at it- East Falls - and to tell the truth, I liked the neighborhood - in many ways the neighborhood reminded me of this town I’d grew up in in Illinois.
JM: How so?
PS: Well the streets were tree-lined and the houses were similar you know, the
residential houses and it seemed like a very congenial community. So we began, we then -our wife became pregnant and we had a child and we were living in this apartment in Center City and decided that it would be a good time to look for a house. I think a lot of young people do that today; they live in Center City and then have children and find it difficult maybe to raise children right in Center City. People are doing it, but it's not the easiest thing.
JM: Uh huh.
PS: So having visited our friend here, we began to look down here and in 1963, towards the end of the year, we made an offer on a house near Fox and Midvale. And at that time housing was quite a bit more reasonable than it is now.
JM: I'm surprised at how it's escalated, I'm here 13 years and I'm surprised at how it's escalated in the 13 years. But you mentioned meeting your wife Doris, can you talk a little bit about her? Who was she and-
PS: Well she was - she had a job at the Atlantic - what was then called the Atlantic Refining Company. And I think she worked in the personnel department, at that time. I think she worked in different places. But their offices were at Broad and Spruce, so she could walk to work when we lived in the apartment and then I could walk to work where I lived, where I worked. And her background, she was born in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, which is a small town north of Philadelphia and she had gone to Temple University and then stayed in Center City Philadelphia after her graduation and had taken this job. I think she had worked primarily at Atlantic Refining because I know she had been there over ten years when she left and she retired, or left there, probably in the early 1960's. So she probably worked there for from the time she got out of college until she decided to stop working when we moved- when we had children.
JM: And what did she do when she was at Atlantic Refinery?
PS: I think she just worked in personnel. People would come in and I think they gave them some kind of a test - you know, an aptitude test and different kinds of tests. I think she administered those types of tests.
JM: Okay.
PS: It was a, it was an administrative, secretarial type job.
JM: So when you came to dinner to your friends in East Falls was your wife also responsive to the prospect?
PS: Yes, she liked it, she liked the prospect. And I also always felt that I wanted to live in the city rather than moving into a suburb. Many of the lawyers down there at Drinker, Biddle and Reath lived in suburbs, and they did that for school reasons and also I think a lot of people, for whatever reason, felt the city was unsafe and you know even in those days and they didn't want to be - they wanted not to have anything to do with Philadelphia. People still have that attitude.
JM: And what year was this that you moved to East Falls?
PS: Well, we bought the house at the end of ‘63, we actually moved here in January 1964, at the end of January. And it really was a big - the houses are quite large, there on Midvale. Above Henry Avenue, most of the houses are built, what you might call sidewise, sideways on the lot. So that the front of the house faces the - you know the lots are not that big but the houses are pretty good size. It was - they were all I think developed about the same time, either in the late - early nineteen twenties or a little earlier, and they’re built with stone, many of them. They look alike. I think they must may have been built by the same builder.
JM: Same quarry?
PS: Same floor plan. There are various, you know, little floor plans - they're different But I’ve been in a number of homes up that way; I've been in a lot of those houses. There's a lot of similarity between them. It was a quarry I think not too far from East Falls where a lot of the stone came from.
JM: I think Ridge Avenue somewhere.
PS: I think so.
JM: Because the building of many of things at the bottom of the hill came from the quarries as well. I think Dave McClenahan had talked about that. I found it interesting that you talked about thinking about the choice of staying in the city or going to the suburbs because in the sixties that was right around the time of suburbanization happening out in the areas.
PS: That's right.
JM: To make the area bigger.
PS: Big, big growth in the suburbs then.
JM: And not too long after that, maybe the building of the expressway, you know, Route 1 taking out — but even the notion of, I guess, whether you stay in the city or move to the suburbs, it's interesting that you chose to stay, you know, in …
PS: Well I thought you could be part of your community more if you lived in the city. You could have more effect on it in some way. And also the other thing that's appealing about East Falls is the excellent transportation. Both train and…all the years that I worked downtown I took the Chestnut Hill Local from Queen Lane which was closer to — I was closer to that station then to the East Falls station.
JM: So very acceptable transportation-wise. So if you moved in in the sixties, into East Falls - that's actually being a resident here quite long.
PS: It is a long time. ‘64 to two thousand — that'd be forty three years.
JM: So in forty three years I imagine you might have seen a lot of changes in this neighborhood?
PS: I've seen a lot — a think quite of number of changes. You know when we first moved in, Midvale Avenue - the lower part of Midvale Avenue, had a lot of stores and there was a movie theater where - I think it's where the bank is now - was the movie theater. There was a little super market down on Midvale.
JM: It's a shame that moved (laughs).
PS: It is, yeah, I forgot the name of that super market. It was a small one but it was right across from McIlvaine’s (funeral home). It was on the same side of the street as McIlvaine’s. Down that way. It may have been further down.
JM: So, part of the changes that you said - many businesses and industries are moving - moved out of the neighborhood?
PS: They moved out of the neighborhood, yeah.
Emilio and Sandy Straface
East Falls Oral History Interview
Interviewee: Emilio Straface (ES), with his sister Sandy Straface (SS)
Interviewers: Steve Fillmore (SF) and Carolyn Sullivan (CS)
Date of Interview: Feb. 22, 2012
Location: Home of Emilio and Sandy Straface (3600 block of Fisk Ave)
First Interview:
ES: Where do you want to start?
SF: We can talk about the [half-ball] tournament first, since that's the focus of the article.
ES: Sandy, would you get the pictures? She's got pictures of the tournament - about 50
or so.
SS: It's 85, and I have them on Facebook.
SF: Is that how you met the guys to bring them together for the tournament?
ES: I sort of got a hold of a couple people and they got a hold of a couple people.
(looking at photos on Sandy’s computer) There we are, getting ready.
SF: So this is what? October? (2011)
ES: Yeah, I think it was the 15th?
SF: And is that the second time you've done this?
ES: This is the first time.
CS: And your family came here to East Falls?
ES: Actually we came; we lived in Nutley, N.J. for about 8 or 9 months. We lived with
my grandparents. And then we moved down here. My uncle lived here. And then we took over the store. (Frank’s Pizza, 3600 Fisk Avenue, East Falls)
CS: Is it an interesting place to live here, East Falls, as opposed to all the Italian
families, where'd they go? South Philly, places like that. how'd that happen?
SS: My uncle. Well, we had other relatives that were living in the area. That's why.
Marinos (?).
ES: Charlie?
SS: No, not Charlie. Kowalski.
ES: Oh, the Kowlaskis. Yeah.
SS: Virginia. She was here first.
ES: Yeah. They lived on Calumet Street.
SS: Right.
ES: Yeah; they were cousins of ours.
CS: Kowlaski?
ES: Yeah, Polish. Right.
SS: Actually Grandpop went to Niagara Falls first, that's where they lived.
SF: How long were they up there?
SS: I'd say maybe 10 years.
CS: But all your memories were from here?
ES: Oh yeah.
CS: You went to school at St. Bridget’s?
ES: Yes.
SS: We ended up here because my uncle came to visit his cousin here and he met his
wife here. So that's how he ended up here - and my uncle had the store, the grocery
store, for a number of years.
SF: So it was a grocery store and you turned it into a pizza place?
ES: Yeah.
SF: And how long ago did you turn it into a pizza place?
ES: About 24, 25 years ago - so we moved here in '54 or '55. 55?
SS: It would be 55 because 54 is when we came over from Italy.
CS: That's kind of late, 55. So halfball was already here?
ES: Oh sure. We picked it up because everyone else was doing it.
SS: And they broke lots of windows too! MY house. The grocery store was small. It
was just a front room and behind the store we had a living room, kitchen, and
bedrooms upstairs. So we lived behind the grocery store.
CS: But in front of the grocery store is where the games went down?
ES: We played right here in the street. When the batter was up and he let go of the
bat. There was about 5 windows there, they were broken many a time.
SF: So the tournament will be in October again? It's always going to be the same
month?
ES: We're going to try and have it during the summer this time.
(Looking at photos on the computer)
ES: There are some of the guys.
SS: These two used to live in the neighborhood. That's one of my cousins. She still
lives here.
ES: Yeah. That guy, he was a principal down at St. Bridget's and Mifflin.
SS: St Bridget's?
ES: Yeah. He was principal. Ritchie. Yeah both. He was there when Jackmon (sp?)
was there.
SF: So you haven't seen some of these guys in a while?
ES: Yeah. Some I haven't seen in 40 years. (back to pictures) - that guy there. He was an accountant for the city and we have another guy—he's a sportswriter for the Inquirer. Yeah, we had a pretty good turnout.
SF: Looked like a good day for it.
SS: Yeah; it was a perfect day.
ES: It was in the 70s or 80s....we're going to have a meeting pretty soon to get ready
for the next one.
CS: Was it a thrill seeing so many people?
SS: I haven't seen some of them for 30 or 40 years.
CS: You were able to get a good turnout without too much advertising. Some
Facebook; email?
SS: Some from Facebook.
CS: And there's a halfball league around. Right?
ES: Right. Most of it was people telling people.
SS: I went onto the internet to find some of their info and when they heard from me
they called their friends.
SF: So this year, you'll plan it a little more?
ES: Yeah. This year we expect to have more.
SS: There were a lot of people who found out about it too late last year and they had
already made plans.
SF: Was it an all-day thing? You started in the morning and went the whole day?
SS: It was pretty much all day.
ES: And all night too.
SS: Oh, they had a blast.
ES: It was so good. Nobody got out of hand. Nobody got drunk or did anything crazy.
CS: The pictures just look like community and family.
ES: Right.
CS: And there's a lot of exercise.
ES: A lot of us were very sore the next day. That's when you realize you aren't 18
years old anymore!
SF: The pictures are great. Call we copy them somehow?
CS: Well we can just friend you on Facebook, right?
SF: Yeah, those pictures would be a great way to tie in the half ball angle and the
history of the neighborhood. Because the rules varied from neighborhood to
neighborhood, right?
ES: Yeah, from block to block there were different rules. Everybody around here
played, but we had our own rules.
SF: So how did you play your version? Did you use a broomstick?
ES: Yeah, we had broomsticks but most other places they played halfball, they threw
it underhand, but we threw sidearm. And sidearm is so much harder to hit.
SF: And you can really make it move right?
ES: You can make it do all kinds of things.
CS: (motions to photo of “Pretzel Man”)
ES: Oh yeah, that guy. It was like the 60s or 70s. He's the pretzel guy. He used to
walk all the way from Roxborough - all the way down here pushing that cart of
pretzels. And he had a jar of mustard.
SF: How much did they cost?
ES: They were about a dime. Three for a quarter. Something like that. He walked up
and down those hills from Roxborough to here. (Loaf of bread was 26 cents, sardines
15 cents)
CS: Amazing that that could be a job.
ES: He must've made a good living from it because that's all he did.
SF: So you said you could make the ball do all sorts of thing?
ES: Yeah, like you could throw it so that the ball's a little bit off the ground and all of a sudden it comes up. Just sails up.
SF: So did you have an umpire?
ES: No. You only got one swing, if you missed, you were out. Unless you fouled it.
Of course if you had a catcher and he caught it, you were out too. Most of the time we
did have a catcher so if you tipped a ball, you were going to be out usually.
SF: And what about hits?
ES: You had to hit it past the pitcher's mound. Past the mound was a single. And then
we had boundaries, like the curb was a double. The fireplug was a triple. Past a pole was a home run.
SF: And you used the pimple ball.
ES: Yeah we cut them in half.
SF: Where did you get them?
ES: We went to a place in Allentown. They had a ball that was similar to the pimple
ball. It was rubber. Same kind. The only thing missing, was the pimples. You were
able to do the same things as with a pimple ball. We'd go up there and get about 3
dozen. And the place, they sold bats and they had a field. A halfball field. No bases.
No running bases. You just hit it.
SF: So when a guy gets a hit that's a single, you just say there's someone on first
base but no one is there?
ES: Right. If the next guy gets a hit you move him up the number of bases. You score
him if it's a triple, like that. No running. And I'm more than sixty years old. No
running. But ifs really hard to hit that ball. It looks easy but it's not. My neighbor
Jimmy Thomas - we were friends all our lives - he could hit that ball. Some of the
young kids out here think they can beat us but once we start playing our way, they
couldn't hit us. So then we had to change the game. We had to change to underhand. I
said, this is minor league now.
SF: You always played on this corner here, right? You never played anywhere
else?
ES: No, we played here. Everybody else in the Falls had their own place. Years ago
there used to be a store called Carmela’s. They had their own rules. It was between
Calumet Street and the entrance to the Falls, the projects. They knocked about 3 or 4
houses down. So that was their field, where they'd taken out those houses. And they
used levels on the wall to determine hits. Then there were places like the other side,
that's what we called it, over by Indian Queen Lane, they played against a warehouse.
SF: So this field in Allentown?
ES: It was like the field of dreams, like in the movie. They had a pitcher's mound. A
batter's box. And we played on it. The guys who worked there came out to watch us
because they'd never seen halfball played that way. We were saying this is the way
you should play. We were throwing the ball hard. They loved it.
SF: How about the players? You have a pitcher. You have a batter. Fielders?
ES: You could have as many guys as you want, but it's usually 2 or 3 other guys. But
we used to play for hours out here - till it got dark. We did that all of our lives. We
used to track how many wins pitchers had. How many homers hitters had. Batting
average? Forget about it, because if you hit .100 you were lucky. You strike out most
of the time. Yeah, the ball came in fast and it moved. I told you about the curves. You
get fooled cause you're sure it’s going one way and it goes another. You could throw
a slider. That was the best pitch. It comes right at you and dives down and away.
SF: Did you have a bunch of pitches? Were you considered a pitcher?
ES: Yeah, I was a pitcher. I could throw lefty and righty. It was so hard. I was able to
pitch to a right-handed batter, most everybody was right-handed. If a lefty came up. I
couldn't pitch to him – I’d hit him if I did, All my pitches broke in relation to righties.
But I haven't thrown lefty in years. Sort of gave up on it. And l'm right handed. But
we had a great time. We'd pick 4 or 5 different teams and we'd play till somebody
won.
SF: So the pitchers were the most valuable players?
ES: Yeah. You wanted somebody with control. Makes the game drag on too long if
you're throwing the ball in the ground. You want somebody who can get it over the
plate with some stuff on it.
SF: And did you play 9 innings?
ES: Most of the time, but it could go fast. You get three swing you get three outs.
SF: So this is going to be the second tournament and you're looking to do it in
the summer. Later in the summer?
ES: We'd like to have it maybe in July. Anybody who wants to play, just call Frank's.
We want to get as many people as possible. Last year we did everything in a hurry.
Even though, it was good. We could've had more things for the kids. And I didn't
charge anything. I paid for it myself but almost everybody wanted to give me money
for it. I told them next year we'll all throw in for it. And it's good. The whole
neighborhood gets involved. Young kids, old people, and the street is open here. If
there aren't cars, it’s beautiful. That was the biggest thing when we were growing up
was the cars around. Even though there weren't that many cars then. We used to play
football too and we used to run into cars all the time. We'd put out signs the day
before a game not to park there the next day. But we had somebody parked in the
middle of the field and we couldn't find out who it was. But that's the way it was.
Wouldn't be halfball if you didn't have a car in the way!
SF: Less damaging than football though.
ES: Yeah, except when you let the bat go. My father used to scream "Get out of the
street!" all the time. "Get out of the street, you're going to break my window!" and
that's a part of the game. You have to have somebody screaming.
SF: And you used broomsticks and just cut them?
ES: Yeah, everybody had their own broomstick. Anyone looking for a broomstick, we
had 'em. There used to be about 10 broomsticks in the corner of the store. But we had
fun. Kids today don't get it. They wonder about a halfball. They say 'Why half? Can't
you get a whole one?" But halfball probably started out in cities like Philadelphia and
Boston and New York because you can't play baseball in the street. The cars. The
Houses. You couldn't do it, so halfball was an ideal game.
SF: And what's the difference between halfball and a game like stickball?
ES: I think stickball is played with a round ball. You don't cut it in half. We used to
play that up in the schoolyard. There you could play stickball because you could
throw harder and you weren't going to break anything.
SF: Any buzz yet about the next one?
ES: We've had lots of calls about it. A lot of them heard about it from people who
were here the last time.
SF: To get back to your family history, you arrived in the 50s?
ES: About 1955.
SF: And Frank's opened?
ES: About 24 years ago. When my parents retired. My brother actually started the
pizza shop. We talked about it when we were kids.
SF: Is that where the name comes from?
ES: Yeah, my brother's named Frank. He owned it about 2 or 3 years and then I
bought it off him.
SF: And you'd talked about it since you were kids?
ES: Yeah, when we were kids, we had no place to go to buy a steak or a hoagie. You
either had to go to Roxborough or to Allegheny, when it was a nice place.
SF: And there was no other place in this area for that? Frank's was the first?
ES: No. Apollo's was here before us. Maybe 7 or 8 years before us. I'm trying to
think if there was another pizza shop. Now, store like ours, there were a lot of those.
SF: The storefront?
ES: Yeah.
SF: They were more like delis?
ES: Right. Lunchmeat, bread, canned stuff. You had one of those stores on almost
every corner before the big supermarkets moved in and put them out of business. You
could pay almost half at those markets than you would at corner stores. And bigger
selection. Storeowners would be making pennies if they tried to keep up.
SF: So when you opened Frank's did either or both of you have cooking
experience? Or experience with a pizza shop?
ES: I worked for Apollos for several years.
SS: I worked there too for a short time. Delivery person.
ES: When I started at Apollos I didn't know anything. I couldn't even boil water. But
then I learned. At Frank's I got to do everything. You learned because you had to.
Learned to make steaks. Learned to do everything.
SF: Does your family work with you?
ES: I got two sons there. One delivers the other one works in the store. He's got
another job so he helps me out when he can. We make our own pizzas. Make fresh
dough every day. We used to buy the dough but as we grew I started investing more
in it, so we got the doughmaker.....
(Removed - brief discussion about St Bridget's protest).
ES: We've had family members in St. Bridget's for 70 years. And it's still going. My
one son has 3 kids there.
(Removed - further discussion about St Bridget's protest).
SS: My parents built this house in 1980 and before that it was just a hill with huge
rocks jutting out of the ground. After the kids finished their sodas, they would throw
the bottle on this hill, aiming for the rocks. And I'm still finding glass in the soil.
(Sandy shows a black & white photo of Eugene “Gene” Straface - Emilio and Sandy's father. Sandy took the photo in the early 70s)
ES: That's my father in the store.
SF: What's his name?
ES: Gene. Short for Eugenio.
CS: (To Emilio) Are you named after anyone?
ES: No.
SS: You're the only one who isn't named after somebody.
ES: I'm an oddball.
SS: He's the middle child.
ES: Yeah, not named after anyone but Emilio is a popular name over there (Italy).
You hated saying it here cause nobody got it.
SS: My real name is Santa. So you can imagine how hard that was growing up. Santa
Claus.
ES: When we went to school we had to learn everything ourselves. We picked up
English pretty quickly. I remember speaking English in first grade.
SS: When you're young it's so much easier to pick up language.
ES: We didn't have anybody to correct us. We learned it by making mistakes, that's
all.
SS: When our family first moved here, when they had the grocery store, they couldn't
speak any English. Thank goodness the neighbors were honest enough. When they
came in to buy something, they would give our parents what is cost. But my parents
had to learn fast too.
(Discussion - about learning language (my brother in Germany)
SF: So when did Gene open the store?
ES: 1955. We lived with my uncle for three months while my dad negotiated to buy
the store. Wish I still had the picture the people who owned the store before gave my
dad. It was a picture of what the place looked like when they bought it. There were
dirt streets and a horse and buggy out front. But, once my dad bought the place, we
moved into the back of it. And we've been there ever since. After him, then my
brother had it. Now I have it. When he had it there were numbers on the shelves.
(Sandy points to a picture of “the Hill” that their current house was built on)
SS: That's where we are now.
CS: On soda pop rock.
SS: They used to burn Christmas trees on the hill too.
ES: We used to gather all the Christmas trees in the neighborhood and light ‘em up.
SS: And we think the kids are bad today.
SF: And your father built this house?
ES: Yes, he did in 1980. And my brother Frank and his crew helped.
SS: Yeah, he was in construction. Actually we all had our hand in building the house.
SF: Has the street changed since you've been here?
ES: The only new house is this one. Everything else is pretty much the same.
SF: How about at the top of the street. Was that always PhiIly University or
Textile?
ES: That was a private school, Ravenhill Academy, where Grace Kelly went.
SF: That stone structure up there near the soccer field - that was the only
building there, right?
ES: Right. They used to have mothers teaching there. Like in a religious order?
Mother Superior, like that.
SF: And that soccer field was open then?
ES: Right. We used to play ball there.
SF: And then Textile (Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science) bought it?
ES: Yeah, much later. In the '80s.
SF: Did you play stickball up there?
ES: We played baseball up there. And softball, football. At one time, every year in the
50s and 60s, we used to have what we called the married men's game. It was a
softball tournament, the married men against the single guys. We used to go up to that
field. Got a big turnout too.
SF: Kind of like the halfball tournament.
ES: Yeah, after the game. People around here would have an open house and have
things to eat and drink. And if you won the game you'd have bragging rights.
SF: Would it involve people from the immediate area or all around?
ES: No just the immediate area.
SF: And how often was it?
ES: Once a year. But there was always lots of things like that going on. But I
remember every year there was the trash talking before it. "We're gonna beat your
asses", stuff like that.
SF: And what about the football?
ES: We played that every Sunday. We used to pick teams and play other parts of the
city. We used to go up to the northeast a lot to play.
SF: How'd you find other teams?
ES: People knew. Guys we played with used to tell other guys who lived around
town.
SF: Was that tackle?
ES: No. That was touch.
(Sandy refers back to the photo of Gene sweeping the store)
SS: Took that photo in the early 70s because I was in photography school.
SF: Where'd you take the classes?
SS: Antonelli.
SF: Is that a local school?
SS: Used to be. Now they're in Glenside but they used to be in center city on Broad
Street.
SF: How'd you get into that?
SS: All through high school I used to take photographs. And then I found the school.
ES: I wish I had kept the photos I took in 7th grade of our classrooms. I was 12. Don't
know what happened to them, whether we threw them out or whatever.
SS: I have some of my classrooms.
CS: You should see the demolition photos.
SF: And what's that building?
SS: The old hi-rise projects. There was a party in the neighborhood when it came
down... I've got photos of the dust even as it came up the street. That was 1996.
ES: I've got a big piece of rock from it. Flew all the way up to my yard when I lived
on Merrick.
SS: Windows were broken all around too.
SF: What was the name of the projects?
SS: East Falls projects. (note: Schuylkill Falls)
ES: They'd been there since the time we moved in.
SF: Must've been great to see the city.
ES: The projects blocked so much.
SS: One night I saw these lights and I wasn't sure what they were. Turns out they
were the headlights on the Schuylkill Expressway.
CS: I bet the property values shot up after they demolition.
SS: I wish we'd bought more property.
(Sandy offers dried figs from fig trees in the Straface’s back yard)
ES: So you live over in the condos?
SF: Yeah, we're looking to move somewhere in East Falls.
ES: There used to be nothing but woods over there at one time. I used to play in those
woods.
SF: And they were built in the 70s; right?
ES: I think so. I lived over on Merrick at one time. My brother Frank built that
house and three others there. He and my cousin went into construction. My brother
was a good bricklayer. They did good for themselves. But Frank moved out to the
Northeast, Cottman Avenue I think, to find something else and he did. He makes
tomato pie.
SF: That's not the ones up at Brothers Deli? The gaeta's pies?
ES: That's the one. Yeah, Brothers Deli. Frank's son's wife owns that. And Frank
makes the tomato pies for there.
CS: They love those pies on Yelp. Frank's is not on Yelp though. You should get on there.
ES: People can find us on Google. We get some pretty good writeups.
SF: We're glad we found you. Another reason I like East Falls so much.
ES: It's a good community. It's close. That's why everybody's so heartbroken about
St Bridget’s.
SF: So you say the condos were just woods at one time?
SS: Yeah, from Merrick all the way over to the condos was open land at one time.
We were happy that Textile bought the land around Ravenhill and not a developer.
ES: It's a great neighborhood. I'm not going anywhere.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
3/4/12 - Second Interview
Locations: 1. Street corner of Fisk and Dobson 2. Frank's Pizza
Participants:
ES: Emilio Straface
SF: Steve Fillmore
Interview begins at street corner outside Frank's - the "halfball field. ES and SF
are standing in the middle of Fisk street where "pitcher's mound will be. As
recording starts, ES has just identified "batter's box" approximately 15' feet
away (toward Calumet). The spot is marked by its proximity to a telephone pole.
SF: So past the pitcher's mound is a single?
ES: Right. And there's a sewer over here (about 10 feet away – toward Merrick - right where the car is—that's a double. And the curb there (about 10 feet further toward Merrick) is a triple. And the fire plug (another 10 feet) is a home run.
SF: And you said no base runners.
ES: Yup.
(Steve Fillmore takes photos of Emilio Straface demonstrating various halfball grips and pitching motions).
ES: Here's a straight ball. And then if want to throw a curve, you just put a lot
of English on it.
SF: And they're all thrown sidearm?
ES: Al! sidearm. And then if you want to throw that submarine pitch, you come up
from the side like this.
SF: That's that pitch that rises?
ES: Right.
SF: Like Kent Tekulve (former Phillies pitcher) used to throw.
ES: Yeah.
SF: I have one or two more questions about our previous interview.
ES: Sure. Come on inside (Frank's) – I’ll give you a slice of pizza.
They enter Frank’s.
SF: You mentioned that you were planning more kids' activities for this year's
tournament? Will the kids actually play? Will they have their own teams?
ES: Yeah, we pick teams when we play. 3 or 4 people to a team.
SF: So you can include different ages on teams? They're not age specific?
ES: Right now anyone can play. You can have any aged person on your team.
SF: Any uniforms or shirts?
ES: Yeah we did have shirts printed up last year. We're going to get different ones
this year. We had a halfball and crossed halfball bats on it last year but we're going to
design it better this year.
SF: Do you use a local printer for that?
ES: Yeah, we use Mix Sports in Roxborough.
Steve Fillmore takes photos of halfball.
ES: I've got the bats downstairs. You want me to get those?
SF: Sure.
Emilio Straface returns with 2 bats – one made from a broomstick. The other is an “official” halfball bat from the same store in Allentown where Emilio Straface gets the halfballs (see interview part 1). Emilio Straface steps outside to position bats and halfball against red pole at entrance to store.
ES: This is the pole Grace Kelly used to run around when she was a kid. She used to
live up on Henry Avenue. If you go up Calumet Street to the light, she used to live on
the left-hand side. Right by McMichael Park.
SF: So she played out here?
ES: Yeah she used to play with the girls she went to school with. They used to play
around that pole.
SF: How old were they?
ES: About 5 or 6.
SF: That's amazing. Did she go to St. Bridget's?
ES: Uh.
SF: She went to Ravenhill.
ES: Well, later, she went to Ravenhill when she was older but she might’ve started at St. Bridget’s. She did get married there.
Unidentified customer: St. Bridget claims her.
ES: I got the story from people who owned the store before us (in the ‘40’s) and they knew her really well. Grace used to hang around with their kids. They’d play on the corner there. They (former owners) couldn’t believe that pole was still there.
END
Dick Webb, 100 years old
East Falls Historical Society Oral History Interview
Interviewee: Dick Webb (DW) - 100 years old
Randy Webb (RW), Dick’s son, was present
Interviewers: Wendy Moody (WM) and Bob McClenahan (BM)
Transcriber: Wendy Moody
Date: August 8, 2019
____________________________________________________________________
Note: This interview of Dick Webb was conducted when he was 100 years at Bishop White Lodge at Cathedral Village. Because of his advanced age, Mr. Webb had difficulty both hearing and remembering, resulting in a somewhat disjointed interview. But his wry sense of humor was still intact!
WM: This is Wendy Moody and Bob McClenahan interviewing Dick Webb on August 8, 2019 at Bishop White (Cathedral Village).
DW: I used to live up on Netherfield.
WM: What was your address on Netherfield? Which house?
DW: Not the main house but the one behind it.
WM: Over by Textiles?
BM: He worked for a rich guy and he lived on the guy’s property.
WM: What was his name?
DW: Buckley.
BM: Buckley, yeah, yeah, yeah.
WM: Which house was that?
BM: Well, I don’t know where the original was. The only Buckley’s I ever knew lived where you come around Netherfield and like this (hand motion) and right about there - there was a house up there, and there were Buckley’s who lived there. But I think there was another big house that the Buckley’s had too.
WM: Dick, Where were you born?
DW: 1334 Netherfield Road. I mean 1334 71st Avenue in Oak Lane.
WM: Oh, you were born in Oak Lane. Can you tell us a little bit about growing up? What your dad did?
DW: I was only 6 years old when I was down there.
WM: Ok. And where did you go to school?
DW: Abington.
WM: And when did you come to East Falls?
DW: About 30 years ago, I think it was.
RW: 1958.
WM: Ok. What was East Falls like when you first moved there?
DW: What?
WM: What was it like back in 1958? Has it changed?
DW: More people living there.
RW: I was 14 years old.
WM: Tell us about what kind of work you did.
DW: Maintenance up at Philadelphia University.
WM: Can you describe what that job was like?
DW: It was alright. I did 39 years up there.
WM: What kind of things did you do?
DW: Maintenance all over the place. Repairs.
WM: Who was in charge of the University back then?
RW: I forget what his name was.
DW: I went through five presidents.
WM: Did you? Do you remember their names?
RW: There’s Pendleton, there’s Partridge, there’s Hayward – Hayward may have been before his time.
WM: Gallagher?
RW: Gallagher! He was there when the guy Steve – I forget his name
WM: Spinelli?
RW: Spinelli, yeah.
WM: Oh, he was still there?
RW: Yeah, Spinelli had a 98th birthday party for him in his house.
WM: Wow. So what was the University like back then in 1958?
DW: What was it like?
RW: Oh, he won’t know. He wasn’t involved until mid ‘70s.
WM: He worked somewhere else before then?
RW: For Mr. Buckley. That’s why we lived there. We never would have afforded to live in there.
WM: So you were living on Netherfield on the property?
RW: We lived on Buckley’s property. Yeah.
BM: When did you start working at the college, Dick?
DW: 39 years ago.
BM: At the college?
RW: Well, 39 plus his retirement years. 46 years ago?
DW: I worked for an outfit called Philco. Did you ever hear of that?
BM: Oh yeah, sure.
DW: I worked for the head man there.
BM: Did you? A very good friend of mine worked for Philco.
RW: Didn’t you work at Standard Pressed Steel?
DW: Yeah.
RW: Over in Jenkintown.
BM: Ok.
WM: Who did you work for at Textile? Who was your boss?
DW: I don’t remember.
BM: Well for a long time it was (Walter) Bucky Harris.
DW: Bucky Harris.
WM: What was he like?
RW: (laughs) That’s a whole other interview.
WM: I’d like to hear. What do you remember about him, Randy?
RW: He was a character.
WM: In what way?
RW: Well he was a Marine in WWII and he had a lot of Marine attitude.
BM: Hard-driving.
WM: Was he a hard boss Dick? Bucky Harris, was he hard to work for?
BM: (pause) …You had your times with him, I know. (laughter)
RW: But he thought the world of you, I’ll tell you.
DW: When Philco owned the place, there was money all over the place.
BM: Bucky Harris was sort of a legendary basketball coach when he started at Textile. And after he got out of that, then he became head of the buildings and grounds. Maintenance. (Physical Plant)
RW: Among other hats. (laughter)
BM: Oh yeah. He did a lot for that college. He was a little hard to get along with, but he did an awful lot for that college. He worked all kinds of hours.
WM: Really. Was he a good coach?
BM: Oh yeah. He’s still the second greatest legend there. Herbie McGee’s outdone him by a lot of years.
RW: He coached Herb.
BM: Yeah he coached Herb. He wore red socks - to every basketball game he wore bright red socks. Remember that - Bucky Harris wearing the red socks for the basketball games?
DW: Yeah.
WM: How did you meet your wife? What’s your wife’s name and how did you meet her?
DW: Mrs Webb. (note: Frances)
WM: Mrs. Webb! (laughter) How did you meet her?
RW: Mary and Wally Bindrum introduced you.
DW: Oh did they?
BM: I remember Dick’s wife, kinda; it’s been a while.
WM: 2002, Randy said she died. Did she work?
RW: At the School Board.
WM: For the School District of Philadelphia?
RW: Yes.
WM: Dick, tell us your involvement with the (Falls) Presbyterian Church.
DW: What do you want to know about it? We had services every Sunday! (laughter)
BM: We miss you! We need you to get back there!
WM: Who was pastor when you first started going there?
RW: The lady from Alabama? The preacher from Alabama?
BM: Katherine Rick-Miller.
RW: Yeah.
WM: Who was the man before her?
DW: What was her name? I forget.
BM: Katherine Rick-Miller was the pastor.
WM: The one before – the man…
BM: That was Logan Potts.
WM: That’s it.
BM: But I don’t know if Dick was coming then…
WM: Were you involved at the church, Dick, besides going to services? Did you serve on their Council?
DW: No.
BM: You did a lot of work for the church, didn’t you?
DW: When I had a problem walking, some people would, after services, walk me home. But nobody walked me over to the church (laughter)
WM: You did that yourself.
DW: I had a terrible time.
BM: You used to do all kinds of maintenance jobs at the church.
DW: Did I?
BM: Oh yeah! You did all kinds of things. That was when Bucky Harris was also President on the Board of Trustees at the church.
WM: Oh really?
BM: Oh yeah. So when Bucky needed a job done at the church, he’d call Dick. He was there and he took care of it.
WM: So what kind of things could you do? Mechanical things?
DW: Yeah.
WM: Painting? Plumbing?
BM: Plumbing, no.
RW: Not really painting. Just fixing things.
DW: I didn’t do plumbing. I had trouble with my own bathroom at home (laughter)…. $2000 bucks!
WM: So when did you move from Netherfield to Midvale?
RW: ‘78
WM: Do you remember your neighbors back then on Midvale?
DW: Remember what?
RW: Charlie Scavetti on your one side.
DW: Scavetti.
BM: Scavetti on the upper side.
RW: The other side I don’t know.
BM: You know Charlotte Scavetti? Charlotte Dobson?
WM: Oh yeah, is that her maiden name?
BM: She was Charlotte Scavetti.
WM: I didn’t know that.
BM: She and her family lived right next to Dick.
RW: I know who was in the attached house to Dad’s – I think the Slaterbacks lived there when we first moved there. I don’t remember where Jim worked, but Gay worked at the school with my mom. May be how they found the house.
DW: The guy I worked for – Buckley – in the daytime he used to have trouble sleeping and all, and
when it was dark I used to go over and bring him the newspaper. I went there one morning and he was dead.
WM: Oh my.
DW: And the next morning the doctor pronounced him dead and he asked – he said “Who’s prepared to pay me the $200 your father owed me?”
RW: The doctor said it to the son or daughter.
DW: His name was Kleinman.
BM: Doctor Kleinman; I remember him.
RW: He lived down on Indian Queen Lane.
BM: Right next to one of my aunts.
WM: Really. Who was that?
BM: My Aunt Anna, who by the way, was here (note: Cathedral Village).
WM: Oh, that’s the one you mentioned.
BM: She lived at 3595 Indian Queen Lane for a while. Then she moved to Ainslie Street.
WM: What was Mr. Buckley’s first name?
DW: Mr.
WM: Come on! (laughter)
RW: James.
DW: James.
WM: What was his business?
DW: He was head of Philco.
WM: Oh, he was head of Philco.
RW: And Head of Goodwill Industries.
BM: Who was Russell?
RW: That was his son.
BM: That was his son. Ok.
RW: Russell and Ethel were the two kids. And they each had a house there on Netherfield also.
WM: Is it the house where Chaka Fattah lives?
RW: Yes. That’s the house Buckley had.
WM: That’s a beautiful house. Can you describe that house? What was that house like inside?
DW: Very nice.
RW: It was big.
BM: He had money. Lots of money. He was a big benefactor to the Methodist Church. They sort of revered the Buckley name for a long time.
WM: Were you involved in anything in East Falls? In the community?
DW: No.
WM: How have you seen East Falls change over the years?
DW: I really don’t know.
WM: Do you have brothers and sisters?
DW: Yeah, I had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. I had abrother and 2 sisters.
WM: Did they grow up in Oak Lane?
DW: No, they weren’t down here.
RW: Until they moved.
DW: Elkins Park.
WM: Do you have any stories about the church (Falls Presbyterian) you could tell us? Anything you remember?
DW: God was there.
WM: That’s important. Anything that happened there that you remember?
DW: Not really.
WM: We’re trying to get memories of the neighborhood, so anything you could remember would help us.
DW: I mind my own business.
WM: How about at Textiles? Do you remember anything happening there? Any big events?
DW: Lot of things happened. 39 years.
WM: What are some of the events you planned?
DW: I don’t really know.
WM: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
DW: Today’s Thursday.
WM: That’s correct.
BM: Are you getting along better now?
DW: I want to get out of here. That’s what I want to do. I want to go home.
BM: Obviously. Sure you do.
DW: I do.
BM: Are they giving you therapy exercise?
DW: Oh yeah. They give you a balloon – they throw a balloon at you and you’re supposed to bounce it back and stuff like that.
BM: Do you remember my aunt, Anna McClenahan?
DW: Who?
BM: My aunt Anna McClenahan – in the church.
RW: Names aren’t his forte. Never were.
BM: Her brother was Bill, who was blind. She lived here. She lived in her regular apartment down there.
RW: Independent living?
BM: Yeah, until she had her heart operation and then, in her recovery, was such that they decided - she came here for therapy. And after a while they decided she was going to stay.
DW: The first day I came to work for Buckley he took me up to the house I was going to move into and he started to hand me stuff. Hand me stuff. Hand me stuff. Good stuff. I never had anything happen to me in my life like that before. Oh… I thought I better stop here because I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what was going on. He just kept handing me stuff…
WM: What kind of stuff?
DW: Hand me hand me. He liked cars. He liked Cadillac cars. I used to take him down to the Union League and he used to tell me “Before you pick me up tonight, stop down and pick the car up.” I asked the salesmen one time “How many cars has he bought in one year?” What was his best year for buying cars? How many do you think he bought in his best year?
BM: What did he say?
DW: How much! How many cars?
BM: I don’t know.
DW: Take a guess!
WM: Four?
DW: Fourteen!
WM: Did he have a big garage in that house?
DW: Yes.
WM: How many cars fit?
RW: Two.
BM: So this was old Mr. Buckley you’re talking about now?
DW: Yeah.
BM: I don’t remember Russell much at all – there were two boys…
RW: They had three boys – Russell had three boys – Jim, Bob and - I forget the middle guy’s name. The daughter, Ethel, had three - two girls and a boy. Don, Donna, and Eileen.
WM (to RW): So did you live on Netherfield and Midvale?
RW: Yeah.
WM: Who do you remember living on Netherfield? Were the Dodson’s across the street - Adam Dodson?
RW: There were no kids - that’s what I remember.
WM: Did you know Toby Dodson?
RW: No, I don’t remember any Dodson’s. There were Lochran’s. The Lochran’s had four kids, I guess. The Broughs – do you remember the Broughs? Eric Brough? They had two kids but they were all so much older than me.
WM: So there was no-one your age to play with. Where did you play?
RW: I guess at school.
WM: Where did you go?
RW: Mifflin.
WM: Not the same time as Bob – much later. What was Mifflin like then? Did you enjoy it?
RW: More than Roxborough (High School). The four years at Roxborough were the worse four years of my life. I think it was just being a teenager.
WM: Did you know Bob went to Mifflin too? And his brother.
RW: Did you?
BM: I almost finished the 8th grade. I didn’t finish because my parents took me out to a private school on City Line. Friends Central.
RW: My mom went there.
BM: But they were staggered in such a way, that in order to start a year there, I had to drop off the last semester of Mifflin, so I never graduated from Mifflin. I used to be able to name all the teachers that were at Mifflin. I can still name some, about twenty.
WM: I have some of them in your interview, Bob. Well Dick, thank you for giving us all the information. Anything else you want to say?
DW: I don’t think I gave you enough.
WM: Anything else you remember?
DW: Today’s Thursday, isn’t it?????
BM: All day!
END
David West, born 1931
East Falls Historical Society Oral History Interview
Interviewee: David West (DW)
Interviewer: Katy Hineline (KH)
Date of Interview: June 26, 2013 at Foulkeways Retirement Village
KH: Where were you born and where were your parents born?
DW: My mother was born in England, Yorkshire, 1902. My father was born in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia 1899. I was born in 1931 in East Falls in Woman’s Medical College Hospital
KH: When did your parents move to East Falls?
DW: They moved to East Falls soon after they were married in 1929. They moved to lower Queen Lane, the 3400 block of Queen Lane proper, just before
you get to the corner of 35th Street and Thomas Mifflin School. When those houses were built they bought a brick row house - 3461 Queen Lane.
KH: When did your parents move to Penn Street?
DW: They stayed on Queen Lane and moved to 3019 Queen Lane in May of 1943. I was born in 1931 and moved when I was 12 years old but it was still in East Falls.
KH: What was the age of those houses at that time, were they built in the early 1900’s?
DW: Yes, they were, I don’t remember the exact date, I might be able to look it up, but it was the early 1900’s. It was not a new house but we bought it from its original owner (Roy Miller)
KH: How did they happen to choose East Falls as a place to live?
DW: There were lots of reasons. My dad was an electrical engineer and he worked for the Electric Storage Battery Company at 19th and Allegheny so it was not that far away and it was a nice place. It was a new neighborhood, new houses, and there were lots of friends there and family because my dad’s father lived on Wayne Avenue right near Coulter Street so they were not that far away and my mother’s parents lived up in Mt. Airy near Carpenter Woods.
KH: Tell me about your family, did you have siblings, what did your Dad do….What was life like in your house?
DW: Dad, as I said, was an electrical engineer. He had gone to Germantown Friends School and graduated in 1918. He took courses at what is now Drexel. At the same time he got a job at Electric Storage Battery Company and stayed there 25 years. My mother had been an executive secretary. She was the secretary at the British Consulate in Philadelphia. And they both had lots of family still in England. All four of my grandparents were born in England. One time when dad was a bachelor and going over to visit his family as a young man, he had to get a visa in those days at the British Consulate, he met this young secretary and that was my mother.
In my family, I am the oldest of three boys. My brother, Gordon, is a year and a half younger than I am and Edward (Ted) is six years younger than that, and no sisters.
KH: What sorts of activities did you engage in as a young boy in East Falls?
DW: In those days nobody went very far. Our family was pretty much middle class. We went to the New Jersey seashore in the summer. As a small boy my Grandfather West used to rent a cottage in Connecticut. Vacation became very nice when my grandfather began to rent a cottage. That was great for us. He was a widower by that time. He put up with having my mother and three small boys in the house with him. He wanted company, I’m not quite sure why he wanted company, our company, but he did.
Activities around the neighborhood were very focused. I like to think of Midvale and Coulter Street as being the axis of my early life. We lived at the end of Queen Lane. The axis extended all the way to Germantown Friends School where I went to school and to St Luke’s Episcopal Church across Germantown Ave. from it, where my paternal grandfather was the organist and choirmaster for 55 years. We boys sang in his choir which was, in its time, the finest English men and boys’ choir in Philadelphia. So we went from one to the other. Being in the choir was a very demanding thing. Because, except during summer vacations, we had rehearsals Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at 4:30 and Friday night with men from 7:30 to 9. And two services on Sunday, 11 o’clock and evensong at 4:30 or 8:00 depending on the season. That took up a lot of time but that was a great activity. And very, very good training. Certainly by the time I got to Germantown Friends School, Mary Brewer {ed. note. Mary Brewer was the long time Choral director at GFS} was very glad to see me. I think it was because I knew what I was doing in the choir and I eventually became the president of the choir. But, so that was one thing,
The other activities were largely kind of around the neighborhood, what we did as boys. There were several vacant lots in in East Falls that we used to frequent. There was one behind the church at the corner of Penn Street and Conrad. I think it’s a Baptist church that sits on the corner at Midvale so that was a place that we played, There was another vacant lot, now built on, at the corner of Vaux Street and Midvale Avenue.
KH: What did you do on those vacant lots?
DW: Well, on the church lot we played baseball, we played ball games. The other one was a kind of wild lot, all overgrown. Big trees and we used to climb the trees and we had adventures there. We played cowboys and Indians and things like that (small gang games)
KH: Were your friends from up and down the block?
DW: Friends were from up and down the block, yes, and we went to the library, my mother took us early on to the East Falls Library on the corner of Warden Drive and Midvale and got us membership cards and enrolled us in summer reading programs which helped to make us pretty good readers, actually from an early age, actually before GFS.
Then we played in the back alleys. On those blocks the houses had a central alley leading to the garages. That’s where we played stickball. Or halfball as it is called. Played with a broomstick. You take a tennis ball, or a small rubber ball and cut it in half. And you pitch it and you make it soar and you have to hit it straight up the alley because if it goes in a yard it’s an out. That was a very active game and it was played… in those days we had bubblegum cards of baseball players. We chewed a lot of gum just to get the cards, and then we made up the teams from ones that we had been fortunate enough to get and we would trade them to get rare ones. Everyone wanted to get Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson so there was a lot of trading and you made up your team of 9 players picked from the best cards you had and you played pretending you were Stan Musial and so on. That was a big summer fun activity.
KH: Did you ever go to the Bathey?
DW: No, I don’t ever remember going there. Swimming, we went to Alden Park, the pool there had summer memberships, for well-behaved kids. Somehow my mother got us in there. That’s where we went. It’s an indoor pool with a roll back top, or it was in those days so it was kind of half in-half out. They could fully cover it over and use it in the winter which we never did for we were only interested in using it in the summer.
KH: Have you stayed in touch with any of the boys you played stick ball with?
DW: Oh, sure. Across the back fence on Penn Street, across the alley, we had the Richardson boys - Dickie, was my age, a year older actually. And his brother Tony was my brother Gordie’s age. We were very close to them. Jimmy Trimble, who later became an Episcopal priest and for some years was the chaplain at Episcopal Academy, very nice guy. The Tolan family lived up at the top of the hill and the Boyer family, Jack Boyer, and these were close-by people.
Now, once school started for me, I went to GFS in Kindergarten so Sept. 1936 my dad put me in the Model A and drove me over to take me to kindergarten and we drove up in front of Miss Comfort’s kindergarten and I jumped out and ran in and that was certainly where I wanted to be. I couldn’t understand the little girl who was lying outside on the flagstones, kicking and screaming that she didn’t want to be left there. She got over it. So, school became a very occupying thing.
KH: How did you get back and forth to school?
DW: Dad dropped us off. As got a little bit older we became patrons of the PRT, Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company later the PTC and the 52 trolley. That was a trolley car in those days that went from Ridge Avenue over Midvale and Coulter, turned up Wayne Avenue to Chelten then went east on Chelten and I think after that after a long time, it fell off the edge of the earth I never knew where it went ultimately.
When it got to Wayne Ave it shared the tracks with the 53 trolley which was a newer, more modern trolley. The 52s were old boxes. The 53 went all the way up Wayne Avenue from Wayne Junction to Mt. Airy and at the end of that line was where my maternal grandparents near Carpenter Woods so we used that one.
KH: But you had a model A…
DW: Yes, it was a model A, Ford, of course, a 1936. Because what happened was that my Grandfather West bought a new car every several years and they passed the old one down. First to my father and then to his younger brother who lived up in New Jersey. A lot of mileage on a car…a lot of time on a car.
KH: Did you walk a lot?
DW: Oh yes, because we would get off the trolley car at the corner of Wayne and Coulter and walk across Green Street to get to school. And back the other way. Rode the trolley.
It was fun. I always tell my kids, you know, we were isolated in those days dealing with the depression and the war people didn’t move around a lot. Gas rationing and the roads weren’t that good, I remember driving to Connecticut. That was a long trip. They did start to build the Merritt Parkway before that and we used that and I remember each year when Gordon and I were small, so we’re talking about the 1930’s and 40’s here, each year when we went up we were excited to see how much further they had gone moving north and east toward New England. We always decided what was the best looking bridge.
I should say that East Falls had a dividing line in our lives, it was 35th Street, Conrad Street, pretty much. We didn’t go down and play below that. When they built the Mifflin School we used to play in the lot there, the playground, quite a lot.
KH: Do you remember what was in place of the Mifflin School?
DW: I don’t remember what was there before.
KH: Did you shop in the lower Falls?
DW: Yes, shopping went sort of like this…There was Matragrano, the tailor and dry cleaner down below the station on the left hand side. There was the place my father was always going, Falls Hardware that was on the corner of Ridge and Midvale, a big old building that is still there. That was the Falls Hardware. That was a really good hardware store. There was no Home Depot or anything like that. Sears was out in the northeast. That was a long trip, if you wanted hardware that was where you went.
Food shopping was interesting in those days. There weren’t any super markets. I remember when Penn Fruit came along at Chelten and Wayne. And there was something called the American Store which became Acme. My mother did our shopping. There was a store named Sowden family store, down 35th street it was getting close to where the Hohenadel brewery was, does that mean anything to you? (affirmative noises) That was my first beer, a Hohenadel beer. Mother used to go down there to shop and the Sowden family knew her. And took good care of her. A younger son, Edward Sowden was breaking into the business and he was the delivery guy. He would bring mother’s order back. So, that was groceries except that the huckster came around with a truck up the back alleys once a week. He would beep the horn and people knew he would be there because he came at the same time each week. Mother would go out and pick over everything that was on the truck if it was good, fresh produce.
Another place for shopping, there was a bakery, called Haasis it was over Queen Lane between Morris and Pulaski and it was a good bakery and had very good ice cream. Milk, our milk was delivered by Holiday Dairy, the Dearnley family which had GFS connections and they owned the Dearnley Mill on East Chelten Avenue but they also owned a dairy farm somewhere out in Montgomery County. They had a delivery fellow named Bob and Bob drove the truck and brought the milk and the bottles were delivered to the back door.
KH: So it wasn’t delivered by horse?
DW: We had horse drawn things but I know the milk was delivered by truck. It had to come a rather long distance.
KH: Where was the Dearnley Mill?
DW: East Chelten Avenue, east of Germantown Avenue, about where the Reading Railroad crosses, just before or just after that, the bridge
KH: What kind of mill was it?
DW: It was sort of a textile mill. My mother’s younger brother became their plant manager after some years and stayed with them for quite a while. I think Betty Dearnley was at GFS in the early to mid 40’s.
One of the things that happened in those early years when we were playing around was the almost annual polio scare. That was really terrible because we couldn’t go to the swimming pool and school didn’t open. So, my mother and father encouraged us to go into the newspaper business. I made you copies of three editions, It is called The Suburban Weekly and we charged 2 cents per copy. I was editor this week, there are two of mine here. We took turns being editor between Jimmy Trimble myself and my brother Gordon.
This one was September 12, 1941 so I was delayed going into fifth grade, Miss Katherine Dobson’s fifth grade. Delayed because:
“Schools Delay Opening
Many schools in and around Philadelphia are postponing the opening of the first term as a precaution to prevent any further spread of infantile paralysis. Penn Charter and Germantown Friends’ School will open on the 24th instead of the 17th. Pupils of Mifflin School who have had their parents’ permission sent to the school office, are allowed to remain out until September 19.”
We started to do this. We collected the information and wrote it up. My mother did the typing for us (we tried to do it). Then we would hop in the car with my dad. (She would type this on a stencil) and we would drive over to St. Luke’s Church, to the office where Mrs. Curet (sp, pronounced Cure-ay) would let us print copies of this newspaper. Then we would come home and go around and sell them for 2 cents.
We collected information and interviewed people at the same time we were selling the newspapers and delivering them. A one-stop operation! (chuckle) Anyway, that was typical of a couple of summers. When we needed something to do at the end of the summer and some of our other activities were curtailed. Mr. Ed, (Sowden) who delivered our groceries is mentioned in there, his wife had a baby.
{ed note: Copies of this newspaper are included in the paper file along with this transcript}
KH: Tell us about your career. What did you do after you finished at GFS?
DW: I went to Princeton. I was enrolled in the Holliway program of the Navy ROTC. Which was very generous because they paid all of my tuition, all my fees, my books and 50 bucks a month which was quite a lot of money in those days. In exchange for that, at the end of my four years at Princeton I was commissioned and served 2 years in the navy.
Sue and I became married and we lived in Newport, Rhode Island because that’s where the destroyer base was. Then we began to have children and when I was out of the Navy we came back to Philadelphia. We lived in Plymouth Meeting, her parents lived in Blue Bell so we were close to them and I went to work for Philadelphia National Bank. I went to Wharton School at night to learn accounting and commercial law and things.
I was in the commercial lending department of Philadelphia National Bank and used to commute back and forth on the bus. That seemed sort of slow moving and so after two years I left. I had a lot of friends in the Pharmaceutical industry and Smith, Klein and French was a very good company in those days and so I was persuaded to apply and went to work for Smith Klein. I went into market research which was a pretty new field at that time and they were very far ahead in that, as were other pharmaceuticals. Got introduced to computers at the very beginning stage, then.
And after a couple of years of that, four of us decided to, had an opportunity to, take over a small company and run it and it was market research in the pharmaceutical industry. It belonged to Sydney Lea who was GFS class of 1928 or 29. He was a very wealthy guy. He just wanted an office to go to and gave us control of the company and let us run it. He was a wonderful guy. Unfortunately he died after a while but the four of us took care of the company and eventually sold it to a larger company. I think two good things came together in that business. One was market research, which was the discipline and field of business after WWII, and computers. One thing we did that helped to make us was that we began to computerize our reports and then we syndicated the sales of our reports to all different companies. We did different kinds of research so we did product research and we did opinion research eventually audited sales for wholesale outlets, there was plenty of that to do. First we rented time on the U of P computers and then we moved to The Franklin Institute and then we got big enough to buy our own computer and we moved our business out of Chestnut Hill and into Flourtown where we bought a building belonging to the Keasbey and Madison Company. Then eventually we sold the company to a larger global company that still exists, IMS. When I got out of it, I didn’t really want to work for a third company. I got out of it when Dun & Bradstreet bought IMS. Time to go.
KH: What about your brothers?
DW: Well, Gordon worked for Corning Glass. He went to Trinity College and then went to Wharton School and then to Corning Glass in the early days of television making television tubes out of glass. And then after a time, he got tired of living in Corning, New York which I can well understand, and he wanted to come back to Philadelphia, so Sydney Lea knew Otto Haas and got my brother a job at Rohm & Haas where he stayed for a number of years, he’s retired now.
Younger brother did a whole lot of things. He was not successful at GFS, he was a little distracted by the presence of so many females. My mother and Burton Fowler {ed. Note: headmaster at GFS} eventually decided he would be better off somewhere else. So one of our back fence neighbors was Jack Gummere (headmaster at Penn Charter) who had that tennis court (we could use that tennis court) and so Dad went over and talked to him and Dr. Gummere said, “Send him over, I’ll talk to him.” So we sent Ted over there and then Dr. Gummere said, “I’ll take him!” And that was the admissions process. He did all right, he graduated and he went to Penn. And then he did a variety of things after that, but he was never really well physically and eventually he developed diabetes and he died in ’05 which was 8 years ago.
The tennis court ran between three houses, the Gummere’s and the one between you and the Gummere’s (ed. That would be behind 3026 and 3024 and 3020 Midvale)
KH: I thought that was part of the development of the whole block when those houses were built, called Queen Lane Manor.
DW: Queen Lane Manor, I refer to that in the newspaper we referred to Queen Lane Manor, my parents did, with no precise definition, but I would say, it included al the newer houses and that was the dividing line at 35st street. And the other side would be Wissahickon and as far as School Lane. Anything with in that somebody might have called Queen Lane Manor but I never saw it on a map.
I’ll tell you another interesting thing we did. We did the newspaper. One of our neighbor’s families were the Kelly’s. Jack Kelly, (John B) and his lovely family of children including Grace who was a little older than we are. She didn’t pay attention to us although we used to sneak in and use their basketball court and that was okay but she never came out. But during the war John B. Kelly was appointed to something considered to be important, he was leader of the Philadelphia area Home Defense when we got into WWII. He was supposed to coordinate all of these efforts. There were air raid wardens. My father was active in something called the Chestnut Hill Home Defense which met at the CH Academy where they actually had a pistol and rifle range. He used to go up there and practice and pretend so that if the Germans came they could take care of them. And they bought new bicycles which I was very jealous because they had gear shifts and I never had a bike with a gear shift before and they had headlights on them and they had a green plastic thing on the top so that if the German planes came over the light wouldn’t shine up tell them they were there. And lots of stuff like that.
At any rate, we thought this was very important and one of the things we ought to do with our newspaper is that we ought to interview this man. So my father had some connection with him through Chestnut Hill Home Defense and he arranged for us one Saturday morning to go up and see Mr. Kelly. So a little band of us, I think three of us, (Dick Richardson, myself and probably Gordon) walked up to the Kelly red brick house. We rang the bell and it was opened and we asked if we could see Mr. Kelly and we were escorted in to the sitting room and there he was and we sat down and we talked to him. And we asked him what he was doing with his Home Defense and he went on and on and on. I’m sorry that I don’t have a copy, but we had a nice time talking to him and he was very nice to us and he saw us out and we went home and wrote up our scoop. We scooped the Ledger, the Philadelphia evening paper. We scooped them because the next week the Ledger had more or less the same article that we had about Mr. Kelly and the Home Defense.
KH: What else do you remember about life in East Falls during the war?
DW: Well, gas rationing was very limiting to everyone’s range of motion. So we didn’t go to Connecticut in the summer. My parents, my grandparents had a lot of family in England involved in the war and I remember that my Grandfather West had a great big radio with a short wave thing on it and he listened to the news and he listened every evening to hear Big Ben tolling, probably 7pm, listened to the news. It was an addition to the news.
My Grandmother Tattersfield, my mother’s mother, and all the ladies in the family belonged to Daughters of the British Empire and they tried to do good things during the war. One of the things they did was arrange hospitality for British sailors who were coming into Philadelphia, both warships and traders and we had some of those people come and stay with us. One fellow, I remember, Fred Moore, was a lieutenant on a merchant ship and he came back several times. I think he was interested in my aunt. But we never saw him after the war. One of the exciting things was a British Navy cruiser, the HMS Exeter came into Philadelphia one time and was open to touring. Our family went down to visit the Exeter and it was not long after that the Exeter and two of her smaller light cruiser escorts, the HMS Ajax and the Achilles sank the German battleship the Graf Spec and drove it into Montevideo where it was scuttled and the commanding officer of the Graf Spec committed suicide in Montevideo. It was tremendously exciting we were on that ship a month or so before. So we followed the Exeter. Eventually it was sent out to the Pacific and was found and sunk by the Japanese.