Never A Teenager: The Life & Adventures of a First Generation Italian-American Boy

NEVER TEENAGERA BY DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. THE LIFE & ADVENTURES OF A FIRST GENERATION ITALIAN-AMERICAN BOY

Copyright © 2022 Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: courtney@designcrft.com.

PREFACE This is the autobiography of my father, Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. It was recorded in his own words toward the end of his life while he was in his late eighties. This is how my father saw his life. There are people who would dispute some of the contents, but Pop outlived them all and we are left with his version. Grammar and writing style do not follow established literary standards. Nonetheless, the reader will agree, this autobiography contains a unique representation of the author, not merely a story. The life story of Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. is written in his words; dictated and recorded by him, in the vernacular of Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr.. All original cassette tapes have been preserved and are in the possession of Dominick R. Vitale, Jr. — Russell Vitale, Sr.

Portrait of Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr., aged 16, 1922

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Born in Newark 7 Chapter 2: Move to Winslow 15 Chapter 3: Pete the Mule 25 Chapter 4: Train Hits Wagon 27 Chapter 5: Train Wreck of 1922 29 Chapter 6: My Dog Charlie 31 Chapter 7: Building the White Horse Pike 33 Chapter 8: My First Car 39 Chapter 9: Winslow’s Baseball Team 41 Chapter 10: Phyllis and Me 45 Chapter 11: Mickey the Baker 57 Chapter 12: Starting Over in Philadelphia 65 Chapter 13: First Meeting Catherine 71 Chapter 14: Mickey’s Restaurant Established 87 Chapter 15: Helping the Homeless 93 Chapter 16: Cass’ Beauty Parlor 95 Chapter 17: Divorced Again 101 Chapter 18: Loneliness 105 Chapter 19: Still Got It 113 Chapter 20: Move to Vegas 117 Chapter 21: Florida Caretaker 123 Chapter 22: Back to Vegas 127

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Iwas born on November 19th, 1906 in Newark, New Jersey. My mother and father came from Na ples, Italy in 1901. My father went to work on the Pennsylvania Railroad as a track walker from Newark to Elizabeth, New Jersey. They lived in a two-story wooden house. It was a four-family house and it belonged to the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was located at City Line at the end of Newark. In 1902, my sister was born. Her name is Anna. In 1904, my mother had a second child, and they named him Dominick, but about three or four months after he was born, he died. In 1906, I was born, so they named me Dominick. This is a true story of my life — my life as a very poor Italian boy. In 1911, at the age of five, I started school in the first grade. The school was on Dayton Street. It was a little wooden, two-story, two-room school house. It looked like a church. The first, second, and third grade was on the first floor. The fourth, fifth and sixth grade was on the second floor. I remember my first day in school, and also my teacher’s name: it was Miss Ackoff. From where we lived, we had to walk about a mile to school. Where we lived, there was a big field and my sister and I used to walk through the field as a shortcut to the school. In the summer, there used to be ten or fifteen covered wagons of gypsies. They came every summer and would stay about two months. After that time, they would leave. When they were there, my mother would not let us go near there. She said that the gypsies would steal us. At that time, they stole little kids. IN NEWARK

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Chapter 1 BORN

The house that we lived in didn’t have any water or electric. We had kerosene lights and we had a well about 50 feet from the house. The well had two wooden buckets with a pulley. One bucket would go down empty and one would come up full. One or two days a week, my mother and two of the other ladies would wash clothes. I loved to watch them. They would build a fire by the well, and they would boil the white clothes in a copper tub and then they would scrub them on a scrubbing board. Then the clothes were hung out to dry. It was a very nice place to live, just like living in the country.Nearby, there was a Star & Burant Motor Company, and they used to make small tanks. We had a big ditch near our house, and they used to come and try the tanks out there. They had a big fence around the place. At night when they were done working, they swept the floors and they took all the trash outside and burned it.

So one day, my sister and I were close to the gypsies. One of them started to come towards us and we started to run home. I fell and I hit my head on a stone. My mother took me to a hospital and I had four stitches put in my right forehead.

My mother used to let us go to bed early, so did our neighbor, who had about three children our age. Then they would wake us up about 11:00PM and we used to go where they burned the trash and get all the copper. My mother sold it to the junkman.

8 NEVER A TEENAGER

Back in those days, if a man wanted to go to a different state, he would come to the freight yard and hop a freight train. There weren’t many buses. You had to go by train. If you had no money, you had to ride a freight train. When a rich couple got married, and went on a honeymoon, they would have the reception on the train. When they came by the freight yard, they had to slow up. Some times they would stop, and they would give my Dad sandwiches and silverware. He would bring them home to us.

Across from the railroad there was a big graveyard. When they had a funeral, we would go and watch the horses. Back in the 1900s, they had horse-drawn coaches. We also had fire houses not too far away. The fire bell would ring and the horses were trained. They would go to their places in front of the engines and a man would pull a rope and the harness would come down. They would hook up the harness and they would go. The faster they would run, the more steam they would make. And by the time they would get to the fire, they would have enough steam to pump the water.

About three or four hundred feet away from our house, there was the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. They had about ten or twelve tracks. Two were for the passenger trains, and the rest were for the freight trains. They used to shift cars there, and that is where my father worked.

Up on the corner of City Line and Frelinghuysen Avenue there was a store. My Dad had a dinner pale with the top that he used to put coffee in. On Fridays he would send us to the bar to get a pint of beer. It was only 10¢ back then. I think that dinner pale was about a gallon. The bartender would

My Dad couldn’t speak English too well, so I would go with him. So one day we went to South Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was five or six blocks away. My father and I got a train and we went to Jersey City to the main office. I was about eight years old. We asked a couple of people where the office was and went there. I asked for the main boss and a man came out and took me and my father into a room. He asked us what the trouble was. I told him that my father had worked on the railroad since he came here from Italy, and that he was a track walker from Newark

In the morning before I went to school, I would take the goat to an empty lot and tie her to a tree. She would eat the grass there. When I got out of school, I would go and get her and take her home.Soon

moved to Newark, my mother had five children, one girl, Anna, and four boys, myself, Joe, Albert, and Tony. We moved from Aster Street to 196 Parkhurst Street. It was a two-story wood en house with a big yard. My Dad bought a black goat that my mother would milk. We would use the milk for our coffee.

When I told my mother what had happened, she started to cry. I don’t know what happened in the doctor’s office, but my Dad was a lot worse. He said the doctor gave him a needle. After a week or two my Dad said he was going to the main office of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey City, to see if they could give him a different job. He wasn’t able to walk the tracks anymore.

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THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. fill the pail full of beer and the top full of clam chowder all for 10¢. We would eat the soup and my Mom and Dad would drink the beer.

my brother Carmen was born. He was a pretty baby. About three weeks after he was born, they christened him and they had a big party. Shortly after my brother Carmen was born, my Dad got sick. He could not work. So one day my mother told him to go to see a doctor. So my Dad and I went to see a doctor on South Street near Broad. His name was Dr. Mitchell. That is one day I can’t forget.We went into his office and the doctor made me sit in the office, while he took my father in a room. He was in this room a long time, then, the doctor came out and asked me where we lived. I told him we lived at 196 Parkhurst Street. That was about ten or twelve blocks away. He said he didn’t think my father would be able to walk, and that my father had gotten real sick in the back room. The doctor called us a cab, and he didn’t charge my Dad any money. The doctor paid the cab and we went home.

In 1914, we moved to Newark on Aster Street. We only lived there a short while. On Miller Street, a few blocks away, there was a market. There were wholesale commission houses and I would go there before I went to school in the morning. I would pick up the fruit and vegetables that they would drop and throw away. I would take them home to my mother and she would clean them and we would eat them. This would save us a lot of money. My Dad was making one dollar and 3¢ a day at theWhentime.we

A short time later, my father took sick again, and he could not work. My mother started taking

10 NEVER A TEENAGER to Elizabeth. I explained that he was sick and couldn’t walk the tracks anymore.

When we got to the street where these kids used to upset our wagon, sure enough they were waiting for us. When my sister got the hose and started to swing it, she hit one kid and he started to bleed. Blood started to run down his face. The rest of them ran away. After that day they would call us names, but they would not come out into the street. My sister would have the hose in her hand until we got out of that neighborhood.

A couple of days later, a man came to our house. After talking to my father, he said they would give him a job taking care of railroad gates at Bigelow Street in Newark. So my father started to work again.It was a small street, and there was only two tracks for freight trains. They used to shift cars for a coal yard that was nearby. Across the street there was a chewing gum factory and a chocolate factory. My father made my sister and I a wagon out of iron wheel barrel wheels. When they would shift the coal cars, coal would fall off and he would pick it up and put it in bags. When he had two or three bags, he would tell us that night when he came home. On Saturday, my sister and I would take the wagon and go to where my father was working, and he would put the coal in the wagon for us. We would then take it home. It was always on a Saturday, because we went to school. From where my father worked to our house on Parkhurst Street, it was about a mile, and it was all city. We had to go through an Irish neighborhood. The first Saturday we were coming home with the wagon full of coal, I was up front pulling and my sister was in the back pushing. When we got to this neighborhood, we were minding our own business when all of a sudden five or six Irish kids came out of an alley and started calling us names, “ginny, ginny, dago, dago.” We didn’t pay any attention to them, so they ran out in the street and upset our wagon. The coal went all over, and they ran away. We started to cry. So we picked up all the coal and went home. The next Saturday, we had to go up to my father’s again. But we didn’t think the same thing would happen. But it did, at the same place. So when we got home, my sister, who was about twelve years old said, “We’ll fix them the next time.” So the next time we went to get the coal, my sister took a piece of rubber hose about three feet long and put it in the wagon where she could get at it fast.

What I mean by walking the tracks is that he had to carry a lantern and a time clock. He would walk in the middle of the tracks facing the train. He would make sure that the tracks weren’t broken. About every mile he would have to punch his clock so as to make sure that he was doing his job. It was all night work.

The man was very nice to us and asked me a lot of questions. I told him we didn’t have any mon ey. I explained we were six children that I was the oldest boy and I was eight years old. He asked me if I could make it home all right and I told him I could. So he gave us two railroad passes to get home. He said he would send someone to the house to see us and see what he could do.

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THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. in washings by hand on a scrubbing board. Across the street there was a grocery store. The lady that owned it knew my mother and she felt sorry for her. Back in those days, there was no such thing as welfare or food stamps. If you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. But if someone was sick in the family, your neighbors would help, as was our case. The lady’s name was Sadie. So she told my mother she could come over and help her clean the house and the store, and she would give my mother the fruit and vegetables that were starting to go bad and she couldn’t sell. My mother took in a border, but I don’t remember how much money he paid. My sister and I went to South Street School. It was three blocks away. Most of the people then in that neighborhood were Italian. One of my boyfriends, his name was Tony, would go shine shoes after school. He would make 50¢ or 60¢ from 3:30PM to 7:00PM So he told me that he was going to ask my mother to buy me a shoe shine box and polish, and he would teach me to shine shoes. So he talked to my mother and he took her to buy what I needed. He was twelve years old and I was 8. He was very smart and he came from a very poor family. He would take me with him and show me how to shine and where to go. He would start at South Street Station and go in and out of the saloons until we got to Canal Street. Then he would turn around and come back and shine shoes on the way back from Canal Street. By the time we would get back to South Street, it would be about 7:00PM and it was time to go home. I went with Tony about a week, then he said he thought I was good enough to go out and shine on my own. So the next day, after school, I took my shoe shine box and I started on my own. That was the beginning of my real hard life, at the age of eight years old. All the kids in the neighborhood would come home from school and go out and play, but I would go home and get my shining box and start shinning shoes. I wouldn’t even get nothing to eat, be cause we didn’t have much to eat. In those days, the saloons all had a big counter in the back of the room with a lot of stuff to eat. It was free. It had cheese, salami, peppers, rye bread, crackers, pretzels and salted peanuts. So I would go in the saloon and holler, “shine, mister, shine.” If I was busy shinning one or two men’s shoes, it was 5¢ a shine, so I would make 10¢ or 15¢. When I would get in the back where the meat and bread was, I would grab some cheese and rye bread, or some salami, and run out. The bartender would yell at me if he would see me but he didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t do it in the same saloon every night. One night I would steal it in one saloon, and the next night I would steal it in another. I would shine shoes up Mulberry Street on one side, until I got to Canal Street and then I would go back on the other side of the street. Canal Street had a real canal. It used to cross Mulberry Street and run down to the Hudson River.

Barges would be pulled by two mules and when the barge would reach Mulberry Street, they would unhook the mules and push the barge until it got on the other side of the street. Then they

12 NEVER A TEENAGER would hook the mules to the barge and pull it to the end of the canal, which wasn’t too far away. On Saturday, if there was a barge there when I got there, I would love to watch them. I would walk along Canal Street and watch the mules pull the barge until I got to the end of the canal. Down at the end of the canal there was two gates. When the barge got in the last gate, they would unhook the mules. A steam motor would lift the front gate up and the water would run out in the river. As the water went down the barge, it would go down about 20 feet until the water got even with the river. Then the barge would go in the river and a tug boat would take the barge away. Then they would close the big door in the canal and it would fill up with water again. Then I would go back to shining again. I would make 75¢ or a dollar and that was a lot of money. I wouldn’t spend a penny. I took it all home to my mother. I would shine shoes everyday. On Sunday, the saloons were closed. But I would go to China Town that was on my route on Mulberry Street. But Sunday morning I had three or four families, and I would go upstairs to their house and shine their shoes. They would treat me very nice. I remember one named Mr. Gilsider. They had a saloon on Chestnut Street and Railroad Avenue. Every Sunday morning, I would go there at 9:00AM and shine four pairs of shoes. And they would go to church. He would give me 25¢ for the four shines and he gave me the job of cleaning out the spittoons. They didn’t have water troughs then. They had five or six spittoons in the bar and when they went to church, I would go in the bar and get the spittoons and take them out in the yard and clean them out and wash them. He would give me 25¢. This was my steady job every Sunday. It was a dirty job, and they stunk terrible. But 25¢ was a lot of money. After about five or six months of shining shoes, I got an idea about selling newspapers. There was a lot of factories on Mulberry Street. One of the factories was close to home. At that time, we were five children, one girl and four boys. My smallest brother, Tony, was four years old. After school, I would go home and get my shoe shine box and my little brother, Tony. I would take him to this factory and set him down in the hallway. It was a three story building and I would tell him to stay there until I got back. I would leave my shining box there and I would go buy about 25 or 30 papers. I would take them back to the factory where my brother was. I put them down beside him and told him I would be back to take him home. The papers were only one cent a piece. We sold them for 2¢. There were three different papers; the Newark News, the Star, and the Journal. So I taught my brother how to say “News Star Journal!” He would keep on saying “News Star Journal”, and the people would get a big kick out of hearing him say Everyit. day, except Saturday and Sunday, I would take my brother to sell papers. I’d go get the papers for him. Then I would go shine for about an hour, and then I would go back and get him and take him home. I would go out and shine shoes again until it got dark. But this was too much for me, so after about two or three months we stopped selling papers. So all I had to do was shine shoes. I had the same route from South Street Station to Canal Street. Most

One day, one of the men in the bar called me over to shine his shoes. He would let me shine his shoes two or three times a week. I got to know him pretty well. He would give me 25¢ every time I shined his shoes. He started to ask me a lot of questions like how come I was out shining shoes when I was so young. I told him my story of how my father was very sick and he couldn’t work. We were five chil dren and I was the oldest boy, so I had to help my mother. He asked me where I lived. I told him 196 Parkhurst Street. That was only six or seven blocks away. So, he said, “What time do you go home?” I said about 7:30PM, and he said, “Can I go home with you? I would like to talk to your mother and father.”Isaid,“Sure.”Hetoldmeto stop at the bar on the way home and he would go home with me. So when I was ready to go home, I stopped at the bar. He came home with me. On the way home he said, “How would you like to live with me? I don’t have any children.” He was about 40-years-old, and he was a very nice man. When we got to my house, my mother and father didn’t know what had happened. They saw this man with me, so I told them what the man had said, that he would like to have me for his son. My mother and father didn’t like that too much. The man was very nice about it. He stayed about one hour. He talked to my father and then he left. My mother said, “If I starve, we will all starve together.” But I will never part with any of my children. We were very close. I loved my mother and father and my brothers and sisters. We were very poor. We wore clothes that our neighbors would give us. If they would tear, my mother would patch them up. Sometimes I would have two or three different color patches on my pants, but they were always clean. My mother would wash everyday.

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So the next time I saw this man, he said he was glad my father and mother felt this way. He said they were very nice people. Every time he would see me after that, he would ask me how my mother and father were.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. of the men in the bars knew me, and they would call me “shoe shine boy.”

One Sunday, I was walking on Railroad Avenue to go home, I had just finished cleaning the spit toons at Chestnut and Railroad Avenue when a colored man stopped me. He asked me to shine his shoes. I was a little scared because it was a colored neighborhood, but I shined his shoes and when I was finished he said, “Do you have change for a dollar?” I said I think I have. So he said, “I live two doors around the corner, come with me and I will get the dollar.” He took me in this yard and said for me to wait. He came back with a dollar bill in his hand. I took my change out of my pocket and I started counting. When I had counted to 95¢, I only had 10¢ left. I gave him the 95¢ and he hit me in the face and ran away. He knocked me down, and when I got up I started to cry. I walked out on

14 NEVER A TEENAGER the sidewalk and sat on my box and cried. About ten minutes later two colored men came over to me and asked me what was the matter. So I told them what had happened and they said not to cry because they knew who he was and they would get him. They said he did this two or three times before. He would take the shoe shine boy in this yard and he would go out on the sidewalk and make sure no one was out there so he wouldn’t get caught. He didn’t live there, but these two men knew him and they were after him. They knew where he hung out. They had a motorcycle with a side car. They put me in the side car with one of them and they went to this bar about ten blocks away. They made me stay in the side car and they went inside. When they came out they said he had just left, but they would get him. So they drove back. When we got back, there was some people outside. The two men took up a collection and they gave me $2.10. I thanked them and went home.

Another time in the same neighborhood, I was shining a colored man’s shoes in a bar, and anoth er colored man walked in and stood up along side of the man who’s shoes I was shining. They knew each other. The man that came into the bar bought the man a drink of whiskey. As the man picked up the glass of whiskey, he had a big club under his coat. He hit the man on the head. Blood started to run all over me. But the man ran out. I packed up my polish and left. After that, I stayed out of that neighborhood. But I kept on shining shoes.

Chapter 2 MOVE TO WINSLOW

LIFE

THE OF RALPH

DOMINICK

My father wasn’t getting any better. In 1917, the First World War had broke out. I remem ber, we couldn’t get sugar because it was rationed. We had to go to the firehouse to get sugar, and we had to stand in line. We had a card, and each family was allowed a certain amount of sugar. When they ran out of the sugar, they would give us corn and brown sugar.

When the furniture arrived, my uncle had a team of white horses which he took the furniture

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VITALE, SR.

In January of 1917, my father said we were going to move to Winslow, New Jersey. What I don’t remember, is that back in 1913, my dad had bought a six-acre farm with a large barn. The barn was bigger than the house. The house had five rooms. My mother had an uncle and some cousins out in Winslow. But after my dad bought the house, he leased it for five years to a man named James Birgandi.When he saw he wasn’t getting any better, and he could not work anymore, he and my mother decided to move to Winslow Junction. So in April of 1918, they packed our furniture in a box car and we moved to Winslow Junction. We went by train. When we got to the station, we had a Boston Bulldog. They wouldn’t let me ride the passenger car with the dog, so I had to ride the baggage car with the dog. It took us about six hours to get to Winslow. When we got there, we stayed at our uncle’s house for three days. That’s how long it took for our furniture to arrive.

Junction.Itwas very busy at the station. The First World War was on and the station was always filled with soldiers and people. In those days, there was no buses or cars. If you had to travel, you had to go byAttrain.Winslow Junction, there was the Reading, the Pennsylvania and the Central Railroad; all at Winslow Junction. The Central ran from New York to Atlantic City, and Bridgeton, New Jersey. The Pennsylvania and Reading ran from Philadelphia to Atlantic City.

I was eleven years old at the time. I had brought my shoe shine box with me from Newark, New Jersey. So I went to the station and shined shoes. I was getting 5¢ a shine and I was doing well. I would shine all day. My uncle had plowed our ground and he showed my mother how to plant the farm. My dad couldn’t help. He was too sick. We managed to live the best we could. I worked hard at shining shoes until school started in September. Then I had to go to school. I was in the sixth grade. After school I could go and shine shoes until 9:00 or 10:00PM. Then I would go home. The station was about a half mile from our house.The people that worked at the station were very nice and I liked them a lot. They had kerosene lights around the station and when I wasn’t busy I would help the man fill the kerosene lights. He would give me 25¢ a week. His name was Tony. Everything went well until Sunday, October 13, 1918 at 10:00AM. I never was a teenager. Everything went well until Sunday, October 13, 1918 at 10:00AM. I was at the Winslow Junction Station shining shoes when my brother Joe came running. He was crying. He was only nine years old. He said to hurry up and come home. Mom said dad had died. So I picked up my shoe shine box and ran home to find all my brothers and sister and mother crying. I went near my father, and he was stiff and he wasn’t breathing, he was dead. I started to cry. What were we going to do now? We were five boys and a girl. I was the oldest boy and I was only eleven years old. We lived three miles from the town of Hammonton, New Jersey. So I told my mother I would go to see Archie Bordman at the Pennsey Tower. I knew Mr. Archie Bordman and I thought that he could help me. So I went to see Mr. Bordman, and I was crying. I told him what had happened. That my father had died, and we didn’t know what to do. I told him that my father had worked for the Pennsylvania railroad for sixteen years, in Newark, New Jersey as a track walker from Newark to Elizabeth, New Jersey. So he told me to sit down and stop crying, and that he would call the main office of the Penn sylvania Railroad in Jersey City. He called the main office and they looked up my fathers’ record. After about a half an hour they wired back. They said to call an undertaker, and have him take care

16 NEVER A TEENAGER out of the box car and put it in our house. I didn’t like the place. There wasn’t any houses nearby.

There was a big brick yard that made all kinds of fancy bricks. There was a large hotel at Winslow

So about 1:00PM, Mr. Jones arrived with a Dodge hearse. He came in the house and looked at my father. Then he went out and backed the Dodge up to the porch. He came back in with a suit case. He told my mother and brothers and sister to go into the kitchen. He locked the door. He came all alone so, he made me stay in the room and help him.

I will never forget, as long as I live, how he tore the shirt off my father and made me hold his right arm up high. He took a razor blade and cut under my fathers arm pit and pulled out his veins. He had a gallon of some kind of stuff and he took a syringe and put a lot of it in my father’s veins. Then he tied his veins back. We went out in the back of the hearse and we got a long basket and brought it inside. Him and I put my father in the basket and we pulled the basket out to the porch. We put it in the hearse. Then he came back in the house and he told my mother he would let her know when he would be ready to bury my father. Then he left. We all went back in the kitchen and cried. We didn’t know what to do. We were all alone. We didn’t know anybody. The only people my mother knew were her uncle and cousins. They lived about a mile away and our house was surrounded by woods. We were scared to death. My mother didn’t know what to do. So she said she would go to her cousin’s house and see what he could do. So she went to her cousin’s house and talked to him. He couldn’t help her. He had a couple of his children sick with the flu. The flu had taken a lot of lives in the town of Hammonton. There was only two undertakers, Mr. Jones and Mr. Prash, and they were very busy. At the time, Mr. Jones had sixteen bodies in his place. They couldn’t get caskets fast enough to bury the dead. In the meantime, my mother went to Hammonton. She used to clean house for a man named Mike Brita, and she told

Mr. Bordman called an undertaker in Hammonton by the name of Mr. Jones. He made all the arrangements. He told me to go home and wait for Mr. Jones, and if I had any trouble to let him know. I was feeling better, to know Mr. Bordman had went out of his way to help me, and I didn’t know what to do to thank him. Without Mr. Bordman, I don’t know what I would have done. He was such a nice man. He used to take care of the switches in the tower for the Pennsylvania Railroad. I knew him from shining shoes at the station. He lived in Elm, New Jersey and he rode a bicycle from Elm to the station everyday. It was about two and a half miles. So I thanked Mr. Bordman and went home. It was about twelve noon on Sunday, October 13, 1918 and we were all home crying.

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THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. of the body. They would pay for the burial.

The house was about 50 feet from the road on a little hill. The road was a little dirt road. From our window we could see down the road about a half mile. I stood by the window looking out for Mr. Jones.Myfather was on a cot in the front room downstairs. He used to sleep downstairs because he couldn’t climb the stairs to the second floor. He had been very sick and at the time in 1918, the epi demic of the flu was going on and a lot of people were dying.

My mother and I got in the front seat of the hearse with Mr. Jones and we drove to the cemetery on the White Horse Pike about three miles from Hammonton. When we got to the grave, there was a grave open right along side of the road. Mr. Jones stopped the hearse right near the open grave. We got out and there were two men in the graveyard. They were gravediggers. Mr. Jones called them over and the two men, Mr. Jones and myself took the casket out of the hearse and put it along side of the hole, and left it there. My mother and I got in the hearse with Mr. Jones and we drove away. I still don’t know if my Father was put in the grave or not. The two men may of just pushed the casket in the hole and covered it up because, there wasn’t any ropes or anything there. I don’t know how two men could put a casket down in a six foot hole by themselves. It still worries me to think that we left the casket by the open hole with the two men and we drove away. Mr. Jones took a road back from the cemetery by the name of Old Forks Road.

Mr. Jones had the hearse out in front on Bellevue Avenue. He went out and got two policemen and a man, and they came in and carried the casket and put it in the hearse. The town of Hammon ton was very small at the time, and it had only four policemen, and they were volunteer policemen.

When we came to a road between two railroad tracks about two miles from Hammonton, he let my mother off and she was still crying. She walked home from there all alone. I went with Mr. Jones to Hammonton, to Mr. Brita’s to work. I told Mike Brita that I just came from the graveyard with Mr. Jones and that my mother walked home from Murphy’s Crossing. So he felt bad and he said I should have walked home with my mother. So he told me to go home with my mother. He told me to go home to be with my family. So I went home. I had to walk home, there was no other way. You had to walk or if you were lucky you may get a ride by someone going by with a horse and wagon. Back in 1918 there wasn’t too many cars, and it was three miles from our house to Hammonton, and about twelve miles to Winslow Village. When I got home, my mother and my sister Anne and my brothers were all sitting in the kitchen. We didn’t know what we were going to do. My mother was about 36 years old and my sister was

My mother made me quit school and I went to work for Mike Brita. I had to walk to Hammonton and back home three miles each way. I don’t know how my mother found out, but she told me that on a Monday, sixteen days after my father had died, that we had to go to Hammonton to Mr. Jones. He was going to bury my father. So my mother and I walked to Hammonton to Mr. Jones Funeral Parlor. We got there about 9:00AM and he had my father laid out in his front room. We sat there about a half hour just me and my mother.

18 NEVER A TEENAGER him about my father, and that I was eleven years old and I shined shoes in Newark. And that I was shining shoes at Winslow Junction Station. He told her to send me to see him and he would try and help us. So the next morning, I went to see Mr. Brita. He was very nice and he gave me a job shining shoes in his shoe repair shop. They used to make new handmade shoes. When I wasn’t busy shining shoes, I would help cut the soles of old shoes and sweep up the place. I kept busy.

My mother was a very strict Catholic. She would walk to church every Sunday morning. The superintendent of the brick yard, his wife was Catholic, and he had a car. He had to go past our house to take his wife to church, so when he would see my mother walking he would pick her up. The Sunday after my father died, he picked my mother up and she told him that my father had died. He asked her, “how old is you oldest boy?” My mother told him I was fifteen years old. So he said, “How big is he?” My mother said, “He’s a big boy.” So he told my mother to put a long pair of pants on me and send me to see a man by the name of Chewy. He was in charge of the mules and the horses in the brick yard, and he would talk to Chewy and he would take care of me.

19

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

So when my mother came home from church, she told me the good news. She went to my uncle’s house and borrowed a pair of long pants. She fixed them so I could wear them. The next morning was Monday, so at 6:00AM I went to the brick yard. This was about the last Monday in October 1918. My mother had told Mr. Rouse I was fifteen years old, but I was only eleven years old and I would be twelve on November 19, 1918. This is when I had the responsibility of a man. I was never a teenager.Iwent to the brick yard and asked for Mr. Chewy. I told him that I was the boy that Mr. Rouse had talked to him about. He asked me a few questions. If I had ever driven a team of horses before, and I told him that I hadn’t. But I think Mr. Rouse had told him about me and my family because he was very nice. He made me wait until everyone had left and he showed me how to hook up a team of horses and put them to a dump wagon. He got on the seat and went with me and showed me how to drive and how to dump the wagon when it was full of clay. We had to cross two Reading Railroad tracks. I had to drive under the chute and a man would open the chute and the clay would come down and fill the dump wagon. He would close the chute and I would pull away and another wagon would pull under. Then we would take the clay to the brick yard. They had a large field there and we would dump the clay in the field. There was a man that would level the clay off.

15. I was the oldest boy, I was eleven years old. We were all alone on a six acre farm and we didn’t know anything about a farm. My mother’s uncle lived about one mile away. He had showed us how to plant the farm in April when we came to Winslow, but now it was October and we had no money and winter was coming. What were we going to do? We had to have money for kerosene lights and flour, salt, sugar, cooking oil. We had no electric. We had kerosene lights and we had a wood stove to cook on and to heat the house in winter time. The house had five rooms and a shed, that we had a hand pump in, three bedrooms upstairs and an outhouse. We had a pig pen, a chicken coop, a shed with an oven and a big barn. The barn was bigger than the house. We had to have wood for the stove, so we could cook and keep warm. So my brothers and I got the ax and went in the swamp along the side of the house and we chopped the trees down. We had a large handsaw, and we sawed them into small pieces so they would fit the stove. We soon had wood to cook and keep warm.

20 NEVER A TEENAGER

Mr. Chewy was very nice to me. He was like a father to me. He was always there when I needed him. And believe me, I sure needed him. I was eleven years old and I was too small to put the harness on the horses. So he would put the harness on the horses every morning and take it off every night.

At 11:45AM, we had to take our team to the barn so they could eat. When I got to the barn, Mr. Chewy came and helped me unhook the horses from the wagon, and they would go to the trough and drink water and then go to their stalls all by themselves.

My first pay for two weeks was $30.20. We were paid 26¢ an hour and we worked ten hours a day and six days a week. Sometimes we had to work overtime. That was a lot of money back in 1918, and we got paid in cash, gold, silver and some paper money. I was so happy when I got my first pay envelope. We had money to buy sugar, salt, flour, coffee, and oil. The rest of the food we raised was on theMr.farm.Chewy did this for about a month. One night when it was time to quit, he told me to wait until everyone went home, that he wanted to talk to me. So he sat down and asked me how I would like to help him take care of the horses, instead of driving. I would have to clean the stalls and put fresh hay and feed in the manger. He said he thought I would like it and he wouldn’t have to hook and unhook the team for me. I said, “Mr. Chewy, whatever you say is okay by me.” Little did he know, that I thought so much of him for taking the time with me. So the next Monday morning, I started working with Chewy in the barn. We got along very good. We had 33 horses and mules and six little ponies to take care of. Mr. Chewy lived right by the barn. He had a two-room house. He was in charge of the horses and he had to make sure that they were well taken care of. At night he would have to go over before he went to bed to see that everything was all right. I liked working with him. He didn’t treat me like a boss. He would talk to me like he was my father. But he was never married, and all the men and boys that drove the horses liked him. I worked with him about a year and then I thought I would like to work around the men in the yard making bricks. So I asked him if it was alright. He said yes, if that is what I wanted. So I started working in the yard with the men. It was hard work but I liked it. It paid more money and it was more interesting. They made all kinds of bricks from a plain mud brick to fancy bathroom bricks. I was quick in learning. I worked there steady for about three years. We were getting along fine. My moth er and my brothers would work on the farm in summer, and when I came home from work at 4:30, I would go out in the farm and carry the baskets of potatoes and tomatoes home. My brothers were too small to carry them. Then I would take my shoe shine box and go over to the Winslow Station to shine shoes until about 9:00PM, then I would go home. Our house was the closest house to the brick yard and the station. We were surrounded by

Mr. Chewy made two trips with me and then he said, “Well son, you’re on your own. If you have any trouble, ask one of the other drivers and they will show you.”

My cousin was working at Essex Iron Foundry in Newark, so he got me a job there. I thought the job in the brick yard was hard, but this job was a lot harder. They had these little iron cars to haul the pig iron from the freight cars to the plant. They would send the little cars with the pig iron up on an elevator about three feet from the Bigelow, the red hot tank that melted the pig iron. My job was to take the pig iron out of the cars and slide it down a chute in the furnace where it would melt. The pig iron weighed about 50 pounds. It was very hard work for a boy about fifteen-years-old. This was about October 1921. I worked there until April 1922. It was too hot and hard, so I decided I was going to go back home and work in the brick yard.

21

About two years after my dad died, my sister got a job in a broom factory in Atco, New Jersey. It was about five or six miles from Winslow and she had to go to work by train. So I used to walk her to the Pennsylvania Station in the morning about 5:30AM. My sister was only about sixteen-years-old at theAbouttime.the time my dad died, in 1918, with the flu, there were a lot of people dying. One of my uncles and his one-year-old son died. Their name was DeMaio. So about 1920, my mother married this man, Mr. DeMaio. We didn’t know him too well, but the people that knew him said that he didn’t like to work and that he was very lazy. His wife worked on the farm to keep him and he would always say that he was sick and couldn’t work. Me and my sister would go to work everyday. My mother and my brothers would work on the farm and he would sit home and smoke a pipe and drink wine everyday. I was getting very mad at him and my mother. I just couldn’t get along anymore. I was about fifteen-years-old now, and my mother and sister and brothers were getting along pretty good. So I decided to run away from home. The only place that I knew was Newark, New Jersey. I had five or six cousins there, and an uncle and aunt that I knew would make me feel at home. I saved about $10, and one night when they were all asleep, I packed my clothes and left home. I went to Newark, New Jersey to my cousin’s house. I told him what had happened and he said I should let my mother know where I was so she didn’t worry. I wrote my mother a letter and told her I was alright and not to worry.

I also missed my brothers and sister and my mother. I had saved my money. My cousin only charged me $10 a week room and board, so I had a couple of hundred of dollars. When I got home, they all were glad to see me. We were all happy again, but we didn’t like our stepfather.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. swamps and woods.

On Monday morning after I got home, I went to the brick yard for a job. I knew they would give me a job because I was a good worker, and they knew my mother needed help.

There was a man they called Tony-One-Arm who was the boss of all the young boys that would drive all the horses in summertime. He gave me a job driving a team of horses. He had lost one of his arms in a clay crusher in the brick yard, so they made him a boss. He was a very nice man and I liked

22 NEVER A TEENAGER him. In summertime, they were very busy and we would work overtime and Sundays. But we would only get paid straight time. There was no time and a half in those days. In summertime, they couldn’t get help. Most of the men that worked there in the winter had farms. In the summer, they would quit and work on the farms. In the winter, they would come back to work. So in summer, we would have to bring the clay in the sheds, so it would be dried for the winter. So I worked at the brick yard, and I would go home at night and work on the farm. My uncle would plow the ground for us in April. We would take care of it the rest of the summer. I bought a little mule back from the brick yard for $35 so I could keep the grass down in the farm. But he was very stubborn, and I couldn’t do too much work with him. But I kept him until November after the summer.

23 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. Winslow Junction, 1975 Winslow Junction, 1975

24 NEVER A TEENAGER

Chapter 3

PETE THE MULE

So on a Saturday morning at 5:00AM, me and two other boys took six horses and my mule and we left for Vineland. We each rode a horse and had a horse tied to the one we were riding. But I also had my mule.

25 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

We got to Vineland about 12:00 or 1:00PM, and Mr. Chewy was there. He had a Chevy car. He drove his car there, so he could take us home after he sold the horses. The auction started at 1:00PM. They sold all the horses. A drunken man bid $40 on mule, so the auctioneer sold him. At 3:00PM, the sale was over. Mr. Chewy got all his money and when I went to get my $40, this man that bid on the mule said that he didn’t bid on him. So I was left with the mule. The auctioneer said I could leave him there until next Saturday, but it would cost me $1 a day. Mr. Chewy said it was up to me. So I decided to take the mule home. Mr. Chewy and the two boys left. This was about 4:00PM. I put the bridle on the mule and I started walking. I walked about twelve miles until I got out of town. I didn’t want to ride him in town. There was too much traffic and I had never rode him before. When I got out of the town on a side road, I thought now I can ride him. His name was Pete. So

About the last of November they didn’t need all the horses in the brick yard. They would keep about 25. They would sell eight or ten. They would take them to the auction in Vine land, New Jersey. That is about 18 miles from Winslow. Mr. Chewy asked me if I would like to take some of the horses to the sale in Vineland. I said I would like to and I asked him if it was alright to take my little mule to the sale. He said, “Sure, if you want to.”

The pike wasn’t built then and the Pennsylvania Railroad that ran from Philadelphia to Wild wood crossed the Black Horse Pike. When I got there, I was pretty tired, so I sat down and took a rest. I thought as long as I can’t ride Pete, I will walk along the Railroad tracks. It would be a lot shorter than going to Hammonton and then to Winslow.

The railroad track would take me about a half mile from my house. So I started to walk down the tracks. When I got about a mile down the tracks, there was a stream of water. There was a bridge about 20 feet long. The railroad ties were about five or six inches apart. The mule stopped. He wouldn’t cross the bridge. I tried everything to make him cross. But as they say, a stubborn mule, he sure was. I was so made I was going to push him down the bank into the water. But I had to turn and go back about a mile to the Black Horse Pike and 12th Street. I had to walk to Hammonton and then to Winslow. I got home about 6:30AM on Sunday morning. That was the longest walk I ever had in my life. I walked the 18 miles in fifteen hours.

26 NEVER A TEENAGER

The walk wasn’t too bad, but I had to pull Pete most of the way. I slept all day on Sunday. Two weeks later, I sold Pete the mule to a man from Blue Anchor. I sold him with the wagon and the harness for $40.00. And that was the end of Pete the mule.

I got on his back and said, “OK, Pete let’s go.” He went about 20 feet and threw me off. So I walked about fifteen or 20 feet and I got on his back again. He went about 20 feet and off I went again. I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I walked about a mile. I tried to ride him again, but it was no use. Old Pete wasn’t going to let me ride him. So I decided I would make better time by walking him home. We walked about five miles to Buena. It was getting dark, so I tried to ride him again, but it was no use. I would talk to him nice and pet him, but as soon as I got on his back, he would throw me off. We walked about five or six miles more until I got to the Black Horse Pike.

TRAIN

On a Monday, I was driving a team of horses hauling clay with a dump wagon from the clay pit to the field in the yard. We had to cross the Reading Railroad tracks to get the clay. The tracks ran from Camden, New Jersey to Atlantic City, and there were a lot of trains in 1920. So the brick yard had a watchman at the crossing so no one would get hurt. The watchman’s’ name was Nick Perna. He was about 19 years old. All the team drivers were all boys. I was the youngest one. One day the watchman, Nicky Perna, was playing a mouth organ and a boy named John Rodeo was driving a team in front of me. He stopped to talk to the watchman and didn’t see the train coming from Camden. The horses and the wagon was stopped on the tracks. It was too late to get them off the tracks, so he jumped off the wagon. He didn’t get hurt but the two horses were killed and the dump wagon was all smashed up. I was stopped right behind him and I saw the whole thing, but I couldn’t do anything about it. The watchman and John Rodeo both were fired. I worked in the brick yard and shined shoes at the station on Sundays and at nights. I loved to shine shoes there because there were always a lot of soldiers and people there. I knew the people that worked around the station. They treated me fine. I would help them and they would give me a nickel or a dime. I was the only boy around there. There was a big hotel between the Central and the Reading tracks. I would shine shoes there. I met the king of the hobos there. A man by the name of Fogiendeny, he was called the king of the hobos by all the people that knew him. There were always two or three that traveled together. There were a lot of them in the early 1920s. They would all hang Chapter 4 HITS WAGON

27 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

28 NEVER A TEENAGER around Winslow Junction because that was the only way they could travel, by freight. In October they would go south and in the spring they would come north. They would always stay for two or three days around the station. They would stay near the tracks by the brick yard in the woods. There was running water in the woods and they would build a fire and they would make coffee and cook in a can over top of the fire. I used to stop and talk to them. I hoped that someday I would be just like them and travel and see the world. They were very smart. I got to know them very well. When they ran short of food, they would go to a farmer’s house and offer to chop wood or fix an umbrella. One always came to our house, and my mother always gave him bread and sugar, and whatever she had. He would always chop some wood for us. They traveled in empty box cars. I couldn’t wait for spring to see them. Then the hotel at the station burned down, and World War I was over, and there wasn’t many soldiers travelingDuringanymore.thefour or five years that I was shinning shoes at the station, I saw a man, by the name of Joe Donio, get killed. He was using a torch to melt the ice around a switch on the Reading Rail road one winter. He did not hear the train coming and he was killed. I saw a man named George Lemons riding a bicycle along the Central Railroad tracks, and he slipped and fell. He had both of his legs taken off. He lived to be an old man. I knew both of these men. There was never a dull moment around the station.

When I was about fifteen years old, I had made a lot of friends around Winslow. One or two nights a week, we would go to the movies in Hammonton. It was three miles from my house. The movies cost 15¢. We saw silent pictures of Pearl White, Mary Pickford, Hoot Gibson, Tony Marino, Tom Mix, and all the old actors. We would always be four or five boys together.One night in July of 1922, we had just got home from the movies about 11:30PM. I was just ready to go to bed, when I heard an awful loud bang. It sounded like a bomb. I looked out the window and I saw a big light, in the sky about two miles from my house, on the Reading tracks. It was about 12:00PM, so I woke my brother up and we ran through the fields. It was an awful sight. The train known as the Boardwalk Flyer was the fastest train around. It would run from Camden to Atlantic City in 90 minutes. It had jumped the tracks. The tower man that worked the switches may have fallen asleep and when he woke up he thought that the Boardwalk Flyer was a freight train that was waiting in a side track to go to Wildwood. He pulled the wrong switch and the Boardwalk Flyer couldn’t make the bend at 90 miles an hour, so it jumped across a 50 foot bank that the Pennsylvania Railroad ran between. The engine buried itself in the bank about 100 feet from the Reading Railroad. The passenger cars were thrown all over. In a short time, there were a lot of people. The ones that weren’t hurt were helping the ones that were hurt. There was no road to the wreck. The road was about a half mile away. They had to get an engine and a car to take the people that were hurt, and

29 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Chapter 5 TRAIN WRECK OF 1922

The engineer’s name was Walt Wescott and the fireman’s name was Billy Saunders. There were seven people that lost their lives and a lot of people hurt. It was the worse wreck that had happened in that area. The passenger cars were so badly smashed that they burnt them right there. It was days before the wreck was all cleared up. The man’s name that was in control of the tower at Winslow Junction was John DeWalt.

30 NEVER A TEENAGER the dead to the hospital. It was three or four days before they could get the engine out of the bank. The fireman and the engine were buried under the engine.

VITALE, SR.

31

THE OF DOMINICK RALPH

LIFE

Chapter 6 MY

In 1922, I was still working in the brick yard. It was the only place that you could work all year round. There was no other place around. The railroad would hire men once in awhile to lay new tracks.Iwould work in the brick yard off an on because it was close to home and when I would get tired of working in the brick yard, I would leave for five or six months. I would come back and they would always give me a job. We had a Boston Bulldog that we had brought from Newark, New Jersey. He was just like one of the family. He was my dog and I loved him very much. My stepfather didn’t like him. I used to keep him tied with a chain when I wasn’t home. I went to work one morning and when I came home that night, my dog Charlie was dead. He had been killed by my stepfather. My mother told me that he had got loose and killed a chicken. My stepfather got a pitchfork and stabbed him. Then he ran in the house and got a sixteen gage gun and shot him. I started to cry, I thought the world had come to an end. I loved that dog. My stepfather was not home at the time I came home and found my dog. It was a good thing that he wasn’t because I would have killed him. I couldn’t stop crying. I got a shovel and a pick. There was two apple trees near the swamp, so I dug a big hole near the apple trees. I wrapped my dog in a blanket and buried him under the two apple trees. Then I went in the house and got my sixteen gage gun and a couple of shells. I hid the gun in the oven that my mother used to bake bread in. I DOG CHARLIE

32 NEVER A TEENAGER told my mother that if my stepfather ever came home I was going to kill him like he killed my dog. My stepfather didn’t live with us at the time. He had a two room house across the field from our house. He had a daughter named Marie, about my age, and she lived with him. So for three days I waited for him to come around the house, but my mother must have told him, and he never came around. Maybe it was a good thing, because I would have had to live with a murder on my conscience. I was so upset, that I packed my clothes and left home again. I went to Newark and got a job in the shipping department of a trunk manufacturing company on Railroad Avenue and Princeton Street. I was there about five months and I had a room close to my job. On weekends I would go visit my uncle and cousins. The name of the company was Webiam Ball Trunk Company. I was always a kind of a loner. I didn’t stay in one place too long to make friends, but at the trunk place I met a nice girl and she took me to her house to meet her mother and father. We would go to the movies, and I would spend a lot of time at her house. But I missed my brothers and sister, so I quit my job and went back home.

Iwould always save my money when I was away from home, and when I would go home, I would always have money for my mother. This time when I went home I didn’t go back to the brick yard to work. They were building the White Horse Pike, so I went and got a job there. I got the job in Berlin, New Jersey. There were three or four contractors building the White Horse Pike. I got a job by a contractor named William B. Kelley who had a contract from Berlin going to Camden, New Jersey.

33 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

All the work was done by hand, and all the grading was done by hand. The cement mixer was run by steam and so was the roller. The trucks would bring the stones and sand cement. The men would dump them in the mixer and they would mix the cement right on the job, and pour it in the forms, and level it off.

I liked my job. It was a lot different than my other jobs. I was the water boy for about two months.Bythis time we were almost to West Berlin. It was summertime and some of the men had farms.

Chapter 7

BUILDING THE WHITE HORSE PIKE

The man that got me the job lived in Elm, New Jersey, a couple of miles from my house. I would ride my bicycle to his house and then we would go by truck to Berlin. He had about six or seven men to take to work every day. The job was hard, but I didn’t have to work hard. I was the water boy. I only had to keep water fresh all the time. I was the only boy on the job. Most of the men were older men, and hard workers.

At night after work, the fires would go out and you would have to light new fires every morning. After three or four days, I knew how to get steam up. At night after I was done work, I would get wood and paper ready for the next morning. That would make it easy in the morning. Now I was on my own. It was my job to make sure that I had 60 pounds of steam in the steam roller and the mixer. I slept in the barn and I had breakfast in the little house right along the White Horse Pike. We would get paid once a week and on Saturday I would ride my bike home on Saturday after I dot done work. I would ride my bike back on Sunday night. After two or three weeks I got one of my boyfriends a job. His name was Stanley Scordo. He lived with me in the commissary. He was about seventeen years old and I was about sixteen. If the weather looked as if it was going to rain on Saturday afternoon, we would get paid and tell the colored men living in the barn with us that we were going home and take our money to our mothers.Butwe would take our bikes and go to the movies. We were afraid that if they knew we had

So on Monday morning, I got up about 5:00AM, and went to the roller and met the man that was going to show me how to light the fires and get the steam up. His name was Mike. He showed me how to start the fires. He started the fire and put two shovels of soft coal on the fire. Then we went to the mixer and we did the same thing. We went back to the steam roller and shook the fire up and put some more coal on. We did the same to the mixer. When we went back to the roller, the fire was pretty hot, and we had five pounds of steam on the gage, so he shook the fire and put the blower on. We did the same thing to the mixer. By 6:30AM we had 50 pounds of steam and at 7:00AM they were ready to operate.

34 NEVER A TEENAGER

So they would quit to work on their farms. We were short of men, so the contractor rented a three room house and a big barn. He brought in about 25 cots. He had the barn cleaned inside, and bought a stove and some tables and chairs for the house. He made a commissary out of the house, and he put the cots in the barn. He hired some colored men in Camden to work on the road.

One day, the boss asked me if I would like to make some extra money working two hours each morning building fires in the mixer and rollers. I said I would like too, but I didn’t know how to get up steam. He said the man that had the job was going to run the steam roller, and he would teach me. He said I would have to start at five o’clock in the morning in order to have steam up by 7:00AM. I needed to find a place to stay near the job, so I could start at five o’clock in the morning. I told him how about if I could stay at the barn with the colored men. He said he would find out and let me know. So he did, and he said I would have to sleep in the barn with the colored men and that it would cost me $10 a week for food and to have the company cook make breakfast and supper. I said okay. When I went home that night, I told my mother that the next week, I would be staying in Ber lin and that I would come home only on the weekends. On Sunday afternoon, I packed some of my clothes and took my bicycle and rode to West Berlin. It was about eight miles from my home.

The next pay day, when I got paid, I asked the time keeper if he would give me an extra en velope, so he did. I would always give my mother my envelope closed. But this time I opened the envelope and I took the bills out and I put my initials on the bills, “DV”. I put them back in the new envelope and sealed it so my mother wouldn’t know that I had marked the money.

So I went home and went to work in the brickyard again. This time I worked there about a year, sorting brick. It was pretty hard work. But I was a little older and much stronger and I didn’t mind working hard. My boss’ name was Mr. Johnson. He would shift me around when someone didn’t come to work, I would have to take his place. I knew how to do every job in the yard. They had their own engine to shift the railroad cars around, and sometimes I even ran the engine.

35 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. money on us, they would steal it. My boyfriend, Stanley, worked there about three months and then he quit and I was left all alone in the barn with about ten men. The man that owned the barn had three children, two boys and a girl. They were about thirteen or fourteen years old. At night after I got my wood ready for the next morning, I would sit out front of their house and talk to them so I wasn’t lonely. I had lived there in the barn about four months. One night I was sitting on the steps of the owner’s house talking to his children and a girl from across the street came over and sat and talked to us. She was my age, about sixteen years old. Her name was Hazel Christine. She invited me over for dinner on Sunday. So that Saturday, I didn’t go home, I stayed. On Sunday, I went to her house for dinner and met her mother and father, and her brother. She had one brother and two sisters. They were all older than her, but they were not married. They were very nice. They made me feel like I was one of the family. We became very friendly and I liked Hazel very much. At night after work, I would go over and sit and talk to her, and her family. Once in a while, I would take her to the movies. Her older sister, Clara had a car, and she would come and pick us up after the movies. I know that Hazel liked me, because she would tell me what time I would leave in the morning for work. She said she would be up and watch me go to work. Her sisters would tell me how much she liked me. They would tease me about when we were going to get married. For her birthday, I bought her a beautiful red ruby ring. I went with her until two weeks before Christmas. It was getting too cold to sleep in that barn. My mother wanted me to come home. So I packed my clothes and I got my pay on Saturday, and I left. I didn’t tell no one that I was leaving. I know now that it was a rotten thing to do, but I didn’t know how to tell Hazel and her family that I was leaving. I always hoped that someday she would meet someone very nice and get married. She was my first love and I still think of her.

Now I was about seventeen years old. I thought it was time that I saved some money. Up until now, I would give my mother all my money. But my stepfather wouldn’t work, because he was drunk most of the time. He didn’t live at our house. My sister and I would work steady, and give our money to our mother. We would wonder where he got his money to get drunk.

Mr. DeMaio had a daughter, about my age, her name was Maryann. She lived with her father and little sister in a house across the field from our house. He had a child by my mother, his name was Jimmy. One day his daughter Maryann ran away and got married, so he and his son Jimmy lived in the house all alone. He and Jimmy were at our house all the time. They would go home at night to sleep, but in the daytime, they would be at our house. One morning, I was at work, and little Jimmy woke up and he couldn’t wake his father up. He was dead. He had died during the night. He ran to my mother and told her that he thought his father was dead. My mother went over to the house and he was dead. She sent for me at work and I came home. I went back to the brickyard and called an undertaker in Hammonton. He came and took the body away. I wasn’t too sad. I felt a big relief. Because he had shot my dog, Charlie and Charlie was the best friend I ever had. Now that he was dead, I felt a lot better. At one time I was going to shoot him, so I thought he had got paid back for killing my dog. Jimmy then came to live with us and we all liked him. But we didn’t like his father. Me and my brothers and my mother got along real fine. I worked everyday and they would go to school. At night they would work on the farm. In winter when the ice was hard in the swamp, we would go and chop down trees, and take them home and saw them up for firewood. Living on the farm in those days, wasn’t too easy. We had kerosene lights and had to pump our water. The outhouse was about 100 feet from the house and in winter time it sure was cold sitting out there. At night, before we went to bed, we would fill all the buckets and pots and pans with water. Because at night the pump would freeze, and we would have to thaw it out with hot water. Sometimes that wasn’t too easy. But we had gotten use to living on the farm, and we would work hard all summer.

In winter, we didn’t have to work as hard. We would have our potatoes down the cellar and my mother would can all kinds of fruit and vegetables. We would dig a big hole out by the house, about three feet wide and six feet deep, and then we would line the hole up with corn stalks. Before the frost would fall, we would cut our cabbage out in the field and dump it in the hole. When it was

36 NEVER A TEENAGER

My sister was about 18 years old, and she had a boyfriend named Frank Donio. He lived in Fol som, about three or four miles from our house. One day she ran off and got married and went to live with his mother. They lived near the railroad tracks, and Frank her husband, worked on the railroad.

A couple of days later, my mother said that old man DeMaio, which was my stepfather, gave her $10 to pay his electric light bill. I said that I was going to town, and that I would pay it. She gave me the $10 and when she wasn’t looking I looked at the bill, and it had my initials on it. I didn’t say anything to my mother, but when my sister came home from work, I told her about it. We both hated him because he didn’t work. He was very lazy, and my sister and I always worked. My mother and my little brothers would work on the farm and pick berries in the summertime, but he would sit home and smoke his pipe and get drunk.

37 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. filled, we would put corn stalks over the cabbage. Then we would put about twelve feet of dirt on the cornWhenstalks.mymother was going to cook cabbage, we would go out and dig some dirt out of the hole and take two or three heads of cabbage and then cover the hole up until the next time. The cabbage would keep very nice this way. When my mother was going to cook corn, we would go in the corn crib and get a basket of corn, and take the corn off the cob and put it in a burlap bag and take it down to the swamp. We’d tie the bag to a tree and put it in a stream of running water for two or three days. Then we would take it out of the water and bring it home and my mother would cook it. It would be very soft to eat. We would raise one or two pigs and around Christmas time when it was real cold, my mother would get two of our closest neighbors to come over and kill the pigs, and cut them up. We would have our hams and sausage.

38 NEVER A TEENAGER

39 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Istill worked in the brickyard and I started to save some money. I had started a Christmas club for $5 dollars a week. Every time I got paid, every two weeks, I would put $10 in the bank. When I got my check at Christmas, I thought I was a rich man. At that time, $100 was a lot of money and I had about $125. It was around my birthday, and I was going to be 18 years old, On November, 19th, 1924. So I went to Hammonton, and there was a Ford dealer there by the name of Cordry. I went there to look at the new cars and I talked to a salesman by the name of Wes Vaughn. He told me if I bought a car he would take me to Atlantic City and get my license. So I gave him a $25 deposit and he ordered my car. In those days they shipped the cars by freight train. It would take about two weeks to get it, so he gave me a book with all the questions in it about driving. After a week, he took me to Atlan tic City for my drivers test, and I passed. So about three weeks latter, my car arrived. It was a Ford Touring car, with glass curtains, and it didn’t have a starter. You had to crank it to start it. It cost me, brand new, $482.45. He gave me five gallons of gas free. I gave him $100 and I was to pay him $25 a month, and the car was mine. I had told my mother what I had done. So when I took the car home, my mother was very sur prised. I took my mother and my brothers for a ride. We went to Olsom to see my sister and she was very glad. We were all happy that I had a car. We didn’t have to walk to town anymore. I was so happy. I was the first one to have a car at my age in Winslow; A 1924 Model T Ford. Although I was only 18 Chapter 8 MY FIRST CAR

I worked at the brickyard and at night and on Sunday I would help my mother on the farm. We were getting along fine. Now I had a car and I was well liked around the town of Winslow. I was going out with a girl by the name of Rose Bondiski. She was Polish. I liked her very much. On Sundays, she would come to my house with her girlfriend and we had a Victrola, and we would play records and dance. Then we would go for a ride in my car. My little brother, Carmen, was going to school in Winslow, and his teacher’s name was Miss Annie Pasaloqua. Carmen must have told her that I had a car. She lived in Hammonton. I don’t know how she got to school in the morning, but after school at night about 4:00PM, she would walk to my house and I would take her home. She was very young, about 22 or 23. She was very nice looking, but I was only 18. I liked my girlfriend, Rose, very much. I didn’t know what to do. Miss Anna, the teacher, would come to my house everyday for me to take her home. So one day, I didn’t take her straight home. I took her for a ride. I stopped and made love to her. She got very mad. She slapped me in the face and I took her home. After that day, she didn’t come to my house for me to take her home anymore. That was the end of the school teacher. So I still was taking my girlfriend, Rose Bondiski, out.

40 NEVER A TEENAGER years old, I acted like I was 21.

LIFE

Sometimes we would play at night after work. On Sunday afternoon, when we would play ball, there was a young man that would come from Hammonton with a horse and a wagon and sell ice cream. His name was Nick and he sold French ice cream. The French Ice Cream Company was from Vineland, New Jersey and he did a nice business. One Sunday, I had my girlfriend and her girlfriend, Mary, in my car at the ball game. I knew this Nick pretty well, so after the game he came over to my car to talk to me. He asked me to make a date, and we would take the girls to a movie. So I asked Mary if she would like to go out with Nick. She said she would, but not alone, so I told Nick. After the game, he took his horse and wagon home to Hammonton. We drove to Hammonton and picked him up. We went for a ride, but we didn’t go to the movies. We went for a long ride, and then we took the girls home. They lived in Winslow. I was taking Nick home when we got to the brickyard. There was a Central Railroad track, and along side the track there was a road that went from Winslow Junction to Winslow Village. On the

The brickyard had a baseball team. Most of the players worked at the brickyard and the name of the team was “The Winslow Athletic Club”. I belonged to the club. We had a ball field near the yard, on Egg Harbor Road. It was in a field surrounded by woods. We would play every Sunday and would play teams like Berlin, Blue Anchor, Hammonton, Braddock, Egg Harbor, Vineland and most of the teams around South Jersey.

41

THE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Chapter 9

WINSLOW’S BASEBALL TEAM

a nice corner and it was on Egg Harbor Road that went from Winslow Station to Winslow Village. It was summertime, and the man that rented the ground had corn planted in it. So I found out who rented the ground, and I went to see him. I asked him who owned the ground, and he told me that a woman by the name of Munkenstern, who lived in Atlantic City, owned it. He gave me her address. So one Saturday afternoon, I went to Atlantic City and I found the lady home. I told her my name, and I said that I would like to buy the ground at Winslow.

He said that this would be a nice place for a ball park. So, I took him home and we talked some more about the ground. I went home and everyday that week, when I went to work in the morning, and when I went home at night, I would stop at the corner and think about a baseball field on that corner.Itwas

42 NEVER A TEENAGER corner there was a big corn field. Nick told me to stop so I stopped, and we got out of the car. He started talking to me about this corn field, and he asked me if I knew who owned this ground. Be tween this ground and our farm there was about two acres of swamp. I didn’t know who owned it, so he told me to find out who owned it and how much they wanted for it, and to let him know.

I said that I would let her know in a couple of weeks. I went home and the next day was Sunday, so I went to the ball park. I told Nick that I went to Atlantic City and saw the woman who owned the ground and what she said. He said he thought that was a good deal, and that we would talk it over after the game. So that night after the game, I went to Hammonton to Nick’s house and we talked about what we would do. Nick was older than I. He was about 24 years old, and I was 18. He knew more about business then I. He was in the ice cream business for three years that I knew of. So, I listened to him.

He said we needed $300 a piece. I didn’t have $3, but I said I could sell my car. So he said this is what we will do. You belong to the ball club, so when you have the next meeting, you talk to them and tell them that we are buying the ground, and that we would like to have them make their ball park there. We would give them the ground and it wouldn’t cost them any money. We would pay the taxes. They would put the diamond on the ground and the grandstand. They could pass the hat around for donations, but they couldn’t sell any candy, cigarettes, or soda. That is where Nick and I would make some money. This was in the year 1925. So the next meeting, I told the boys at the club about the ground on the corner. They all agreed, it was a nice location and they would have a lot more room. It was six acres of nice level ground. So I went to see Nick. We used to call him Frenchy because he sold French ice cream.

I didn’t tell her that we would like to put a baseball diamond there. She asked me what I wanted to do with the ground, and I said my mother owns six acres of ground next to it, and I would like to work it. She said that she would take $1,800 for it. She’d take $600 down, and she would take a $1,200 mortgage for five years.

Now it was getting close to the end of December. Nick was a Greek and I was Italian. So one day, Nick came to see me. It was winter, and he didn’t do anything in the winter, but I still worked in the brickyard. We went to see the ground, and he was glad to see how we had leveled it off. We talked about the building and here we were going to put it. We were both happy. Before Nick left that day, he told me that he was going to Greece that winter. He would be back in the spring. We shook hands and he left.

By this time, the baseball season was over, and at night and on Saturdays and Sundays, we would work on the ground. It was about the first week in December, and we had the ground leveled off but it was getting too cold to work. So we decided to wait until spring.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

We decided to buy the ground about August. The man renting the ground had corn planted in it. I sold my Ford car for $400, and Nick and I went to Atlantic City and we bought the ground. The lady we bought the ground from said we had to wait until the man had his corn off the ground before we could do anything on the ground.

43

Nick and I were close friends by now, and he took me to Vineland to meet some of his friends in the ice cream business. We would talk about the ground. He said we would put a building on the ground at the corner, and make our own ice cream. We would make a lot of money. He went to see one of his friends and he would put a building on the corner 20x30 feet for $800. The building would be of cinder blocks. We both went to the meeting of the ball club. We told them that we bought the ground and as soon as the man would get the corn off the field they could start to work on the ground.InOctober, the man had all his corn off, and the boys from the club started to level off the ground. We had about 25 members in the club, and they were all very nice boys between 20 and 25. I was the youngest.

Nick and I had talked about what we were going to do, so we had no problem. The ground was ours. The boys at the club were glad because they would have a beautiful diamond to play on. Back in those days, baseball was the sport. You could see a ball game any night of the week. We didn’t play for money; we played because we liked the game. Every little town and village had a ball team. During the game, two or three girls would pass the hat around for donations, this would help us buy our bats and balls.

44 NEVER A TEENAGER

Chapter 10 PHYLLIS

names were Tony, Alexander, and Lewis. The girl’s names were Phyllis and Anna, and the little girl was Pauline. I danced with the oldest of the two, two or three times. We talked and I told her that I knew her mother. She said that she was going to live here with her mother and was AND

45 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

They had a new orchestra, and they had a girl from Philadelphia to give an exhibition. She was about fifteen years old, and her sister was about thirteen years old. They were beautiful girls, but her mother lived here, right near the dance hall. I knew her mother. She was from Philadelphia, but she had moved here about two years ago. She lived in a tworoom house between the Reading and the Pennsylvania Railroad, at a place called Murphy’s Cross ing. The two rooms were; one downstairs and one upstairs. She had six children, three girls and threeTheboys.boy’s

ME

Back in the 1920s, it was baseball in the summer and dances in the winter. You could go to dances three or four nights a week. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, there was al ways a dance. I loved to dance, so I bought an old 1918 Chevrolet from one of my neighbors for $50 and I would go to the dances in Hammonton on Wednesday night, in Buena on Saturday night, and in Egg Harbor on Sunday night. We had a dance hall in Rosedale that was just built, which was the closest. It was about one mile from my house. It was ready to be opened up in a week or two. All the dance halls had orchestras. So when they opened on a Sunday afternoon at 4:00PM, there was a big crowd.

The next night, I went to Phyllis’ house and I took her and her mother to Hammonton, and when they were done, I took them home. They asked me in, and we had coffee and cake. We talked and I asked Phyllis if she would like to go to the dance in Hammonton on Wednesday night. She said she’d love to, but she’d have to ask her mother. She did and her mother said she could go as long as she was with me. On Wednesday night after work, about 7:30PM, I picked her up and took her to the dance in Hammonton on Bellevue Avenue and Second Street. The dance hall was open from eight to twelve o’clock. This was the first time I was with Phyllis alone. We danced together all night and we talked and had a good time. After the dance, she hated to go home. I told her I would take her to the dances. There was a dance on Sunday at Rosedale, near her home, and I would take her if it was alright. She said she’d love to go to dances with me, she liked the way I danced and we could become partners. She would teach me how to dance the Argentine Tango, and we could give exhibitions at the dance halls. So I took her home and on the way she sat close to me in the car. She told me about the family problems, and how they all had to live in two rooms. We got home about 12:30AM. When I pulled in the yard, I could see that her mother was up waiting for her. Before we got out of the car, I put my arms around her and kissed her. I told her not to worry, that I would stop over at night and see her. She got out of the car and walked to the back of the house. That is where the door was. Her mother opened the door, and asked me if we had a good time. I said we did. Phyllis went in, and I said good night and left. It was late, about one o’clock. I had to go to work at 6:30AM, so I went home and to bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about how pretty Phyllis was and how she had to live in two rooms with her mother, sisters and brothers. I

46 NEVER A TEENAGER going to make a career of dancing. She was a toe dancer and acrobat. Her mother and father had separated and her father was living in Philadelphia and her mother was living here. She had been liv ing in Philadelphia with some friends, and they had sent her to dancing school. She loved to dance. From what I had seen, I knew she was right. She was very good. Her mother was there and she said she knew my mother from Italy. After the dance was over, about 8:00PM, it started to rain, so I said I would take them home in my car, so they wouldn’t get wet. The mother asked me to come in, so I went in. It was pretty crowd ed. We were eight in one room and they had a table and four or five chairs, and an old wood stove. The mother made me some coffee and cake. We talked and the mother asked me what I thought about her daughter and her dancing. I said she was a very good dancer and she was also pretty. When I was ready to go home, the mother asked me if I would take her and her daughter Phyllis to Hammonton on Monday night. I said I would, after work about 5:00PM. I thanked her for the coffee and cake and left. I kept thinking about how pretty her daughter was and how good she danced. But I had other things to think about. The ball diamond was the first big thing in my life, and I didn’t want to see anything happen to it.

Phyllis’ mother had been here about two yeas, but I didn’t know her too well until I met her daughter, Phyllis. She told me that her mother would beat the kids, and let them work on the farm picking berries in summertime, and then put the kids in a home in the winter. I would see Phyllis three or four times a week, and her mother was never home at night to cook for them. She would come home about 10:00PM and make a large pot of coffee and send one of the boys to the store to get some cakes. They would eat coffee and cakes. Once in a while, she would cook macaroni. But it was coffee and cake most of the time. About two months after I met Phyllis, the brothers, sisters and I were sitting downstairs by the stove. It was very cold, and I was sitting next to Phyllis, and the mother walked in like a mad woman. She came up to me and said, “You have to marry my daughter”. I said, “Why do I have to marry your daughter? I didn’t have anything to do with her?” She said, “I don’t care, you marry my daughter”. She caught me by surprise, and I was very scared, but I had fallen in love with Phyllis, and I didn’t know what to do. I was 19 years old and she was 16. We were both too young to get married. I had the ball diamond to worry about. So I went home that night, and I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know what to tell my mother. My sister, Anna, was married, and she didn’t live home, but we were getting along pretty well. I was working everyday, and my mother and brothers were working on the farm. I didn’t tell my mother anything.

47 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. knew I couldn’t do anything about it. In the first place, I didn’t know her mother too well, and I knew that I was falling in love with Phyllis. We were too young to think about marriage, and I had the ballpark to think about. We had to have the ball park ready to play ball by April.

So I would take her to dances two or three nights a week, and stay home the rest of the week. We were getting along fine. I was getting to know her mother and her family pretty well. The mother worked in Hammonton in a clothing factory in the winter time, and in the summertime, she would pick berries on the farm with her kids. Back in those days, a family with five or six kids could make a lot of money picking berries. A lot of families from South Philadelphia with their children would come to South Jersey to pick berries and would stay all summer. Most of the big farmers would have a couple of small shacks for the farm hands to live, and they would give them a little piece of ground to plant and raise their own vegetables. They were all happy, and they would save a lot of money. The kids would be happy to be away from the city, and when they didn’t have to work, they would go swimming in the clay holes around the area. In September, when the berry crops were done, they would go home with a lot of money. Kids that were six or seven years old would make $1 or $1.50 a day, and you didn’t have to get working papers to work.

The next time I went to see Phyllis, her mother started to pick on her. She told me I had to marry her daughter. I didn’t know what to do, so her mother said we could get married very quietly and no one would know about it. I would go away and work, and when I saved some money, I could come back. Then we would get married in the church and have a big wedding. Believe me; I was scared of

On Monday morning, I went to the employment office in Newark for a job. The man there said that he had a job for two dishwashers. A boy next to me said, “let’s take the job.” So the man gave us the address on Bellmont Avenue, at Gregors Hotel. It was a Jewish hotel. We got the job at $14 a week and room and board. Our rooms were under the stage, small and very dark. It was a job, and I had to work. It was a busy place. They had shows and weddings. We had to make sure that every thing was ready for Friday and Saturday night. We would start work Friday morning and work until late Friday night and Saturday morning until late Saturday night, and all day Sunday. The rest of the week we had off. I would go visit my cousins.

I went home and told my mother about Nick. She said, “Why don’t you just put a little stand on the corner, and when Nick comes you can put a big building there?”

After a week, I was settled. I wrote Phyllis a letter and told her I had a job. I didn’t like it, and I was only making $14 a week. She answered my letter and told me that her mother was beating her and her brothers and sisters. She did not know what to do. She had me worried. I loved her and I had known her for about six months, and I was married to her for only two weeks. I hadn’t had sex with her, unbelievable but true. Every time she would write to me, she would tell me that her mother would take a fit and beat her up. So after two months, I thought I would be better off to go home and I could be near her. I packed and went home and went to work in the brickyard. My mother didn’t know I was mar ried. The weather was getting nice, and we started to work on the baseball diamond. By April, we were ready to play ball. I didn’t know what happened to my partner Nick. He had went to Greece and he didn’t come back. I went to Vineland to the French Ice Cream Company. They told me that they didn’t hear from him. They said he was going to get married.

The next morning, when I went to work, I talked to this friend of mine whose father was a car penter. I told him what happened and that I would like to put a small building on the corner, about ten feet by ten feet, so I could sell ice cream and candy, cigarettes, soda, hot dogs. He said if I would get the lumber, he would build the stand for $10, if I would help him. He figured how much lumber we would need. On Saturday morning, I hooked up the horse and wagon

this woman. She had a bad reputation in South Philadelphia. Her daughter told me she was crazy. So we decided to listen to her. One Saturday morning, about 10:00AM, I packed a suitcase, but I didn’t tell my mother, and I went to Phyllis’ house and her mother, Phyllis, and I and a friend of mine by the name of John Rodio, went to a little town called Tansboro on Egg Harbor Road, and we got a marriage license. We went to Hammonton to a church on Bellevue Avenue and got married by a minister.Her mother was very happy, so after we were married, the daughter went home. And I went to the Reading Station in Hammonton and got the Blue Comet Train to Newark, New Jersey. It was 3:15PM. I went to stay with my cousin in Newark. I didn’t tell anyone that I was married.

48 NEVER A TEENAGER

I took off Friday from work, and I took the train at Winslow Junction, and I went to Camden to the thirteen Ward Soda Bottling company. I told them I had a stand at Winslow, and I would like them to serve me the soda and Near Beer. They served all around Camden County. They asked me how much I needed, but I didn’t know because Sunday was the first day we would be playing. They said they would give me 30 cases of soda and ten cases of beer. They’d deliver it Saturday morning. The soda would cost me 50¢ a case and the beer $1.20. I went to Philadelphia on South Street. I had been there before. I knew there were a lot of whole sale houses there. I bought five pounds of peanuts and bags, and four boxes of candy, four cartons of cigarettes, five pounds of hot dogs, and four dozen rolls. I had to carry all is this down to the ferry and to Camden to the train. When I got home at 7:00PM, I was very tired. I was only 19 years old, and I was starting something that I didn’t know anything about. It was the first big step in my life.

49 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. and went to the lumber yard in Hammonton. I bought the lumber, it cost me $40. Joe and I started to build the stand as soon as I got home with the lumber.

Some of the players were there. They were practicing for Sunday. They bought some of the things, we locked the place up and went home. Now I was waiting for the big day tomorrow.

We worked all day Saturday and Sunday. By Monday night, we had the stand all done. It was nice; right on the corner of Egg Harbor Road and the Central Railroad track, right across from the brickyard. The diamond was all done and the grandstand was all done. The team was already prac ticing at night. This was in April of 1925.

When I got off the train at Winslow, I called the French Ice Cream Company in Vineland and told them I had built a stand and if they would supply me with ice cream. I was opening on Sunday, and they said they would. They would supply me with a cabinet and ice cream cones. They’d be there SaturdaySaturdaymorning.morning, the third week in April, I was up early in the morning, and I took all the stuff I had bought in Philadelphia to the stand. My little brother came and helped me put the stuff on the shelves. Me and my brothers filled the 50 peanut bags and the soda box with soda. By 2:00PM, we had everything ready for Sunday and the big game.

I went home and got cleaned up and I went to see my wife. But no one knew we were married. I told her about what I had done. She had not seen the stand so we walked down to the stand. We had to walk because I didn’t have a car. When she saw the store, and went inside she was very happy. It was all my idea. No one gave me a helping hand. She said she would come and help me tomorrow.

The next morning at 10:00AM, we went to the stand and took a kerosene stove and a pot with some water in it for the hot dogs. I was in business. The game started at 1:00PM, and we had a big crowd. The stands were filled and the people were standing around the fence to watch the game. The first game was with an all girl team. The “Bloomer Girls” had a male pitcher and a male catcher. The rest of the team were all girls.

50 NEVER A TEENAGER

They traveled all over the country playing baseball; hard ball, we didn’t know softball in 1925. These girls were pros. We beat them 7-5 the first game of the season. By 4:00PM, the game was over, and the stand was also nearly empty. We had sold about 25 cases of soda and all the beer and peanuts, hot dogs and ice cream, candy. All I had left was a few packs of cigarettes. We cleaned up, and I closed the stand. We went home, and I was very proud of myself. We had a beautiful day. Everything ran as I thought it would. It was April 1925, I was 19 years old, and I owned a baseball diamond and a hot dog stand. I was a business man at 19. What more could I ask for. That night the “Bloomer Girls” gave a dance at the hall in Rosedale, New Jersey. Felicia (Phyllis) and I went to the dance and we gave an exhibition. We had a lot of fun. After the dance I took her home. We had cake and coffee as usual, and I kissed her good night and went home. When I got home, I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of next Sunday. I worked all week and on Saturday, I would go to Philadelphia by train and buy my stuff for Sunday. That wasn’t easy. I always had two or three large bundles to carry. The next Sunday, we had another nice day. 30 boxes of soda, ten boxes of Near Beer, two boxes of cigars, four cartons of cigarettes, five pounds of peanuts, ten pounds of hot dogs, 70 quarts of ice cream, and all sold out by the end of the game. We played the Hammonton team and I remember the score was 4-3, ten innings, we won, a pitcher by the name of John Rodio, a lefty pitcher for our team. We had a good team. It was considered one of the best teams around at that time. They all wore uniforms with “Winslow” on the front. We played teams like Hammonton, Egg Harbor, Pleasantville, Vineland, Tansboro, Berlin, Atlantic City, The House of Davis, and The Donkey Team. I had one of the best ball parks around and we would pack a nice crowd every Sunday, and I was making a lot of money and having a lot of fun. I would work all week, and on Saturday, go to Philadelphia and get my stuff and on Sunday open the stand. It was May, and the team would play some games on Saturday afternoon. So I would have to go to Philadelphia on Friday night. It was a lot of work to work all week and go to Philadelphia to buy what I needed. So I went to Hammonton and talked to a butcher, and he would get the hot dogs for me. A man in a cigar store would get me the cigars and cigarettes, and the candy for me. We had a baker shop, and he would make me the hot dog rolls. So I didn’t have to go to Philadelphia anymore. That was a lot easier for me. On Saturday and Sunday, my brother and my wife would help me in the stand and we would be very busy. I was making a lot of money, so my mother-in-law wanted us to get married in the Catholic Church and have a big wedding. So I went home and told my mother that I was going to get married. My mother didn’t know that I was married. The only ones that knew, was my mother-in-law and my friend, John Rodio. When I told my mother, she didn’t like the idea. She said at nineteen, I was too young. She liked the girl, but she didn’t like her mother. She knew her from Italy. So we decided to get married in June. We got busy and rented a three-room apartment for $15 a month, and I took a day off from

On Sunday, my sister and some of her friends took care of the stand at the ballpark. We went to Saint Joseph’s Church in Hammonton and got married. We had a nice wedding. Everything went fine. We stayed at the hall until 11:00PM and then we went home. We didn’t have far to go. The house we rented was only about 500 feet from the hall. Monday morning, I took the day off. I didn’t go to work. I still worked in the brickyard. I still took care of my stand on Saturday and Sunday. I was doing very good. One Sunday, Nick, my partner, came over to the ballpark. I was very busy, so he said “You are making money, where is my share?” I said I had the receipts of the lumber and the carpenter, and we can figure out the amount of soda, cigarettes, and ice cream expenses and you could give me half. We will go 50/50. He didn’t like that. We wanted half of what I made while he was away. He got mad and said he didn’t want to be my partner anymore and for me to buy him out. He had invested $300. I gave him $100 more. I gave him $400 and the ballpark was mine. This was in 1925 and I kept the ballpark until the end of 1926. I was working everyday at the brickyard and taking care of the stand on Saturday and Sundays. My wife gave birth to a nice baby boy. It was getting too much for me, so I decided to sell the ballpark.

51 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. work, and Phyllis and I went to Philadelphia. We went to Stearns, on Market Street. Back in 1925, Stearns would advertise, “Buy off Stearns and pay as you earn.” Phyllis was sixteen and I was 19. The salesman was very nice. I told him that I was working everyday. I had owned a baseball diamond. We didn’t have any trouble getting credit. We picked out a bedroom and kitchen set and some other things. The bill came to $875 and we put $150 down and were to pay $30 a month. They would deliver the furniture on Monday. We had something to eat and we walked around for awhile. Then we got a train and went home. I rented the hall at Rosedale for $10, and I hired a car for one day from a friend of mine for $10. My friend, John Rodio, had an orchestra, he played a violin, and he had a six piece band. He charged me $30 to play from 6:00 to 11:00PM on Sunday. I got the soda from my soda man, 20 boxes of soda and ten boxes of beer. We had sandwiches and hot dogs and made our own sandwiches. I had four boxes of cigars and we had a wedding cake, fifteen pounds, that cost $8. We went to the church and made arrangements with the priest to get married. Phyllis and I, her sister, Anna, Pauline, and her brother, Louis, and my brother, Joe, went to Philadelphia with the train and we rented our tuxes and the flowers. I had to pay for everything.

In October of 1926, we had a meeting at the baseball club. I told them that I would like to sell the ground. It was six acres, but I would sell it only to someone that would keep the ball diamond there. I sold it to a man that belonged to the club. His name was Nick Conover and his son-in-law for $3,000 and I took a second mortgage for the $1,200, and I still had the first mortgage. They kept the ground until 1928, and they didn’t pay me any money. They didn’t pay taxes, or interest. I didn’t know what to do. The first mortgage would be due in 1928, and I didn’t have the money to pay for it.

So I talked to my mother-in-law. She said how much do they owe. I said about $3,000 and taxes. So she said, all right, I will buy it. So when the time came, the first mortgage was due, she changed her mind and said I will pay off the mortgage, but I won’t pay off the taxes. That was when we had the depression, so I had no choice. I let her have the ground. That was the end of the ballpark. She had a brick house built on the ground and it is still there. She was a mean woman. No one liked her. Even her children didn’t like her. My wife told me that she was raised by a foster home. She had six children. Three boys and three girls, and lived in a two room house, a kitchen and a bedroom. That is why she was so glad to get her daughter married. I loved her daughter, but I didn’t think she loved me. She just wanted to get away from her mother. I had a miserable life with her for fifteen years. But she gave me two very nice boys, of which I am proud of. I still worked in the brickyard, this was 1928. Things didn’t get any better. There wasn’t much work in 1928, but I quit my job in the brickyard and went to work for Harry Thurston in Hammonton. He was in the plumbing business. We were putting in gas tanks all over New Jersey for Gulf and Sun Oil Company. I liked my job, but things got very slow. I got laid off. I work for him for about one year. Now I am 22 years old, and I have two small boys and was out of work. My wife had a girlfriend in Hammonton that had a brother that had a big garage in Brooklyn. So we went to see her on a Sunday. He was at her mother’s house, and I told him I was out of work, and I had two small boys. He said if I wanted to go to work for him in Brooklyn as a night watchman, I could have the job. I could live with him and his wife in New York, until I could find a room in Brooklyn. So I packed my clothes and went to New York. On Monday morning, he took me to his garage, and showed me what I had to do. I worked from 7:00PM till 7:00AM. It was a big garage. He parked cars and trucks. This was during the Prohibition and a lot of trucks were running whiskey. After a week, I found a room in Brooklyn right next to the elevator. I worked there about two months, and I got homesick. I quit my job and went home. I got a job with a man named John Niccoli, driving a truck. He did road work and was working in Toms River. He had rented a house there, and we lived there and come home on weekends. I didn’t worry about my wife and my boys because my sister-in-law lived with us, and her mother lived close by. We had a nice house in Rosedale and paid $15 dollars a month. We worked there until October, and the water was very cold. So we had to give up the job and go back home. Now the Depression was on and no work. You couldn’t buy a job. I kept looking for work, and found a job on the railroad. I worked on the railroad until June, and then I went to work driving a truck from Rosedale to Newark hauling fruit and vegetables. That job was about the worst I ever had. The man I was driving for had two trucks. One was a Koller truck. He had just bought a hauler truck, and he couldn’t keep a driver on it. I was top heavy and had solid

52 NEVER A TEENAGER

53

Back in the late 20s, we didn’t have any highways and the roads were rounded off, and they had ditches on both sides so when it rained the water would run off into the ditches. The trucks didn’t have air brakes. It was a very dangerous job driving trucks. It was just a summer job. From July until September, then you had to find another job. We would go around to the farms with a small truck about 3:00PM and pick up the berry crates and take them to the garage and separate them. Some times we had seven or eight different stops. We hauled from Rosedale to Miller Street in Newark to the commission houses.

When we had all the berry separated, we would load them on the big trucks and haul them to the market in Newark. We’d leave about 7:00PM and get to the market about 12:00 or 1:00AM. It would take us about five or six hours to make the trip. After we got empty, we would load the trucks with empty crates and take them back to the farmers. I worked for Pat Christopher. He had three trucks, and a man Frank Donio, he had three trucks. They worked together like partners.

I talked to one of the bosses in the market on Miller Street by the name of Cline about a job. He said anytime I wanted to work, he would give me a job. So when I got home that morning, I talked to my wife about the job in Newark. She got like a mad woman. She said, “She didn’t need me around the house. She and her sister could take care of everything, for me to pack my clothes and get out.”

tires and magneto lights. I saw glass curtains on the side of the cab.

The summer was almost over, and I had to look for a job. My wife didn’t like me to drive a truck. She didn’t like any thing that I did. We had only a few more weeks, and then I would have to look for a new job.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

All the trucks were good to drive, but my truck, no one wanted to drive. So my boss gave me a helper. I did have someone to talk to. You had to try to stay in the center of the road. If you got off on the side, the truck would lean over as if it was going to turn over.

So I packed my clothes and when I left that night, I put my clothes in the truck and left for New ark. I helped my helper unload the truck and I took my clothes. I told my helper to take the truck back to Rosedale and give my pay to my wife. This was on a Friday, so I went to my cousin’s house. They lived about five blocks from the market. They knew that I was driving a truck from South Jer sey to Newark, because I had stopped to see them two or three times. So I stayed there Friday night. I told them that I had got a job in the market driving a truck for Kline Brothers. The next morning, I went out and got a room about six blocks away from my job. On Monday morning, 7:00AM, I went to see Mr. Kline. He said I should start working at 11:00PM. Monday night, he told me where trucks were parked and the truck I was suppose to drive.

Monday night at 11:00PM, I went to the garage and got the truck and drove it to the market.

Kline Brothers had three trucks. It was a pretty big place. Mr. Kline introduced me to the other two drivers. One was the boss driver. He told me what I had to do. The three of us would start working on Sunday night at 11:00PM. One driver would stay at the place to deliver orders and the other two

So on Sunday when our week started, we were told that at midnight, the whistle would blow and we would line up at the union office on the corner and sign up. So we signed up and paid $5 to join and $3 a month dues. So things did change. The next Sunday when we went to work, we went to the booth for our 20¢ coffee and doughnut money, and they said no more coffee and doughnuts. When we were all caught up with our work, we had to stay there until 8:00AM. That was the only time that I belonged to a union, in 1928. I worked there about three months, and I used to send money home to my wife. I missed my two sons very much, but they were too small to miss me. They were one and three years old. So one Saturday, about 3:00PM in the afternoon — I don’t know how my wife even found my room — I heard a knock on the door. I had a date with a very nice girl I had met a few days before, and she was to come to my room at 4:00PM. We were going to the movies. So when I heard the knock, I thought it was my date. But when I opened the door, there stood my wife. I had to do something very fast. My date would be there in one hour. She came in and said I had to come home. She had a job for me, and I should be home with my two kids. I didn’t have much time to argue with her, she had a mean temper. So I packed my clothes and we left. I don’t know what would have happened if my date would have walked in. I went home with my wife, but she didn’t have a job for me. She just wanted me home. So on Monday, my wife got a job in a clothing factory, and my sister-in-law took care of the boys.

54 NEVER A TEENAGER would go to the freight yard and unload the box cars. Back in the late 20s, all the fruit and vegetables were shipped in freight cars. So we would have to go to the yard and haul all the stuff to the commis sion house that you worked for. The market was very big and it was very busy. The farmers shipped their fruit and vegetables to the market, and the markets worked on a ten percent commission. We would take turns. One morning, I would stay and deliver the orders, and the next day, one of the other drivers would stay. We’d start at 11:00PM and back our trucks in front of the place and go inside to the booth where the man was checking out all the stuff that came in and out. He’d give us 20¢ for coffee and doughnuts and $40 a week. We all started at 11:00PM and ended about 7:00AM if we were caught up with our work. One of us would stay in case there was any orders to be deliv ered, and the other two would go home. It was hard work, but I liked it. I worked about six weeks, and then the chauffeur and teamster union was trying to get the drivers to get into the union. After about two weeks, the bosses of the commission houses had a meeting, and they said it was OK for us to join the union. Our boss said it was OK, and that we would work the same, and get a $5 raise.

55 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. at his wedding, 1925

56 NEVER A TEENAGER

57 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

One day, I was standing on a corner in Hammonton talking to some men, and a man came up to us and asked us if we would like to make $5 a piece unloading a box car of flour. He had a baker shop on Bellevue Avenue in Hammonton, his name was Eli Mattioli. He drove the truck and we unloaded the flour. We worked all day, and when we were done, he gave us $5 a piece. When he paid me, he said I would like to talk to you. He took me to his baker shop and said “How would you like to work here and learn to be a baker?” I said I would love it. He asked me if I was married, and had any children. I told him I was and had two small boys. I lived in Rosedale. He said, “I will give you $13 a week ,and the driver will leave you two loafs of bread a day. As you learn, I will give you a raise.” So I took the job. It was a small baker shop. he had four trucks and a store. The next morning, I went to work at my new job. He had a cake baker and his helper. The cake baker’s name was Louis, and his helper’s name was Joe. They would start 5:00AM and get done about one in the afternoon. They would make all the cakes and pies and all the fancy cakes. The bread baker’s name was Joe and his helper’s name was Gus. They were both German. I worked with the bread bakers from 10:00AM ‘til nine or ten at night. We made all kinds of breads and rolls and pastry. It wasn’t easy. It was steady work from the time we started until we were done. I liked my job, and I wanted to learn all I could about baking. After I worked there about three months, I talked to Eli. He was the owner. I asked him if he could give me a raise in pay. He said he would have to talk to his brothers. They were four brothers. Eli ran the shop in Hammonton, and BAKER

Chapter 11 MICKEY THE

We were married about five years and had two boys age four and two and a half, so why would she wait five years to tell me all this? I didn’t let it get the best of me and kept on working, hoping that she would change, and I would forget it all just like I had a bad dream. But it wasn’t so. She didn’t change. One day I said, “if you love John so much, I will give you a divorce, and you can marry him if he will marry you.”

58 NEVER A TEENAGER

there were three boys and a girl and my mother-in-law who all slept in one room at their house. My mother-in-law would take all her kids out to pick berries in the summer, but in the winter,

his three brothers ran the shop in Landisville. The shop in Landisville was a big shop. They had 32 trucks. It was more modern shop. It had two larger ovens and more modern equipment. They made mostly all Italian bread. We would make all the American sliced bread for them. They would send a truck to Hammonton to pick up the bread. I worked there about four months, and he gave me a raise of $3. Now I am making $16 dollars a week. I was learning fast. The four men that worked there liked me, and we got along fine. The baker Louis, we called him Chick, and I became very friendly. We were about the same age. He lived in Landisville and he was going with the oldest daughter of the brother, Edward. They had sent Chick to New York to learn all about baking and decorating wedding cakes three years before I started to work there. He was one of the best bakers I ever knew. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t bake. He would teach a lot about baking, and I was learning very fast. I was happy with my job. We were getting along at home. I had a good job and it was steady. I was making $24 dollars a week and that was good back in 1930. Most of the men of my age were on W.P.A. and were making $14 dollars a week. But my wife didn’t seem very happy. She was always in a bad mood when I was home. I tried hard to please her, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what was the matter with her. She was getting just like her mother. I couldn’t get close to her. She would walk away, and it was bothering me. So one day I asked her what was wrong, and she started to cry. She said she didn’t love me, that she loved a fellow by the name of John Pagano. He lived in the same neighborhood, and every time I got close to her she thought about John. I didn’t like that very much. I didn’t want to tell anyone, so I kept it to myself and tried to make the best of it.

John, I, and Felicia, my wife, got together at my house, and I told him the story of the problem I was having with her. He said he didn’t love her, and that was the end of her telling me that she was in love with John. I would go to work and try to make the best of it until my two boys were old enough to take care of themselves. I didn’t love her anymore. To me, she was just my boy’s mother. She did take care of them.Ikept on working and got another raise, $26, and I was about two years older. I did take good care of my family and my sister-in-law who lived with us. Her mother had only one-bedroom and a kitchen.Now

I still lived in Rosedale, a little town ten miles from town. My wife is working in town, but things at home haven’t changed. It wasn’t for my two boys, I would never go home. We just couldn’t live in the same house. My sister-in-law, Anna, still lived with us and my mother-in-law and the three boys and a little girl lived close by. Now it is about the last of September, and the berry season is over. My mother-in-law has put the three boys in the home in Camden. I don’t know why she would put them in a home. Because they were good boys, and they didn’t get in any trouble. She was a very mean woman. She didn’t have to care for them as long as they were in a home. She kept the girl Pauline with her. I had an old car, and on Saturdays, I would go to Camden and see the boys. We didn’t bake on Saturdays. We paid $18 rent for our house and were the first to live in it. The man that owned it had two built the same. He had a hotel right next to the two houses. They were right next to the Read ing Railroad. They didn’t have any running water. We had a hand pump outside and an outhouse. We had electric lights and a bathroom, but no bath tub or running water. We had a kerosene stove to cook on. One day, I went to the hotel to pay my rent, and I told Mr. Mango if it would be okay if I fixed the bathroom. He said it would if it didn’t cost him any money. We had to take a bath in a tin tub and I had a rubber hose to drain the water in the yard. He said I could run a line for the water from his house. So I bought a tub and all the fixtures. I started to work on the bathroom. I didn’t have any pipe wrenches or pipe cutters, so I told Gus the baker what I was doing and he said he would lend me his. I could only on Saturdays, because we baked on Sundays. So

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. after berry season was over, she would put the boys in a home in Camden. She would keep the little girl Pauline with her.

59

About two and half years in the baker shop, I had learned the baking business very well. One day, my boss, Joe, came in to work, and he said he was going to quit. He had a honey bee farm in Vineland and he was going to take care of it. So he gave Mr. Mattiolli two weeks notice. Eli, my boss got a baker from Philadelphia from the employment office, and he didn’t like the job. After two weeks, Joe, our baker, quit and the new baker worked there two weeks. On Sunday, he didn’t come to work, so we called Eli at home, and Eli, Gus, and I did all the baking. Gus had been a baker all his life in Philadelphia, but he was 60-years-old, and he had a chicken farm in Hammonton. Eli was a baker by trade, and I had three years experience. I was very good. In Hammonton, there were four baker shops, but they all made Italian bread. Hammonton was 95% Italian. Our baker shop was the only one that made all kinds of bread, pies, and cakes. We had a store front on Bellevue Avenue. We worked together for about a week, and everything was fine. I took the place of the head baker. So Eli said to me, “Do you think you can take care of the baking? I will hire a young boy to clean the pans and fry the doughnuts, and I will give you $30 a week.” I said “okay, I will do my best”. He hired a young boy by the name of Benny. Now I am the head baker, and I am making $30 a week, and I love my job.

On Monday afternoon, I was working in the back of the shop, and Mrs. Spear, the lady that took care of the store, came in the back and said, “Mickey, there is a woman and a State Trooper in the front that wants to see you.” So I walked out front and there was my mother-in-law and the trooper. She said, “That’s him.” I asked the trooper what this was all about. He said she is accusing you of stealing her pipe wrenches. I told him she never had any pipe wrenches. He said, “Can I look in the trunk of your car?” I said sure. He looked in but there were no wrenches. I told him I had borrowed them from Gus. So I called Gus out front and he told the trooper that he had lent me the wrenches. The trooper took me aside and told me to put her on a peace bond. So that is what I did, and she

Now it is about the last week in November, and I told my wife I would like to get the three boys home for Christmas. She said that would be a good idea if we could. So on Saturday, we went to Cam den to the home to see her brothers. We talked to the supervisor, and she said that would be very nice, but she would have to send someone to the house to make sure that we had room for them. So the next week a nurse came to the house, and she said that she would let us know. The house had five rooms and bath, and three bedrooms. So we got a letter that said we could have the boys home for two weeks at Christmas and New Years. So we were very happy.

When we went to see the boys on Saturday, they were very glad. We didn’t tell anyone that we were having the boys home for Christmas and New Years. We didn’t want my mother-in-law to know. So I went out on the farm, and bought a 25 pound pig. I had it cleaned and on the day before Christmas, I stuffed the pig and put a big apple in its mouth. I took it to the baker shop and put it in the oven and baked it. I also baked a big cake and we had fruit and soda. We had a wonderful time. My brothers-in-law were happy that they could be home for the holidays. After the holidays, I took my brothers-in-law back to the home in Camden. My mother-in-law found out that I had the boys home for the holidays, and she was very mad. She said I had no busi ness taking the boys home. I told her I had permission from the home, but she didn’t care. She said she was going to have me locked up. She saw that I was working on the bathroom, the pipe wrench es were still on the floor. I had picked them up and put them in the trunk of my car so I could give them back to Gus the baker on Sunday morning. My oldest boy, Jerry, played the piano. He was very good. At eleven-years-old, he had composed two songs. I loved my boys, and I was a good father. But I couldn’t get along with the mother. I worked ten and twelve hours a day baking, and on Saturdays, I would paper hang and paint to make extra money. But it didn’t mean anything to my wife. She just hated me. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to leave home, but my boys were too young. It was hard living with a woman that didn’t care much about you and knowing she didn’t love you.

60 NEVER A TEENAGER about the first week in December, I had the bathroom all done, but I didn’t have a hopper because we had no cesspool. I had the water from the tub and wash basin running out in a little ditch to the side of the railroad tracks. We still had to go outside to the outhouse.

I had a ‘32 Buick. For one week, I drove to work. I was baking small 100 pies and sold them on the street. After a week, I talked to my wife about this fellow Johnny, but she did not care. She wanted me to get out. I didn’t do anything to deserve all this. I worked hard. I was a good father, but I couldn’t take it anymore. My boys were able to take care of themselves, so I packed some of my clothes and I left home. I went to live in Atlantic City, but I still went home on Saturday and brought my pay home.

I moved to Hammonton and my sister-in-law got married. I still worked in the baker shop, but my home life didn’t get any better. I just hated to go home after work. So one Saturday, I was home, and a young man about my age came to the house. My wife said he was a song and dance man. He just moved here from Philadelphia. His name was Johnny Ranere, and he wanted my son, Jerry, to play for him. So he went out and got jobs in tap rooms and dance halls. On Saturday nights, they would go out and play, but I would have to stay home with my son Danny. I never was so upset. She had this guy Johnny at my house every day, and I didn’t like that. So I told her. She said if you don’t like it, you can leave. But I missed my boys so much after about a year. I quit my job at Mattioli’s Bakery, and I went to work in Atlantic City for the Venice Bakery on Mississippi Avenue. It was 30 miles from Hammonton.

61 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. didn’t bother me anymore.

I worked in Atlantic City all summer until September, then I got laid off. So I went back home and I went to work in Camden for a baker on Fifth Street, by the name of McLaren. It was a small place. He had one truck and two bakers. One had quit, so I took his job. He had a black man that would bake all the pies and cakes, and I would bake all the Danish pastry and doughnuts, and crullers. He used to go to Philadelphia down on Germantown Avenue to buy the half moons. They were the only baker that could make the half moons. He lived in Pleasantville. But his shop was in Camden. He would load his truck up about 7:00PM, and he would serve all on the White Horse Pike until he got to Pleasantville. Then, his son would take the truck and serve in Atlantic City. He had a very good business. So one day when he came back, he said he would like to talk to me about the half moon crullers. If I could make the half moons, he wouldn’t have to go to Philadelphia and he would save a lot of time and money. He said he didn’t care if I wasted any flour. So every night when I made the crullers, I would try to make the half moons. The crullers were the last thing I would do. Dawn Donuts had a machine to make the half moons but I had to make them with a canvas bag. It was the same dough I would make the crullers with. So I got an idea. I had to make something that would fit in the bags that would separate the dough. So I measured the cutter inside of the bag. Now I had to get a hard piece of wood and shape it, so that when I would press the bag down on the screen, it cut the dough in shapes like a half moon. So I cut a piece of a broom handle and shaped it. And every night when I got done, I would try to make the half moons. After about a week of trying everyday, I had shaped the

62 NEVER A TEENAGER plug like I wanted it. I was making a perfect half moon, and the boss was very glad he didn’t have to go to Philadelphia anymore. Now I had something that no one else had. I made one more plug, and every night when I got done making half moons, I would take the plug out of the bag and wash it, and put it in my pocket. I wouldn’t let no one see it. I still think that I am the only one that can make a half moon. Because Dawn Donuts went out of business, and I haven’t seen any half moons around. Back in the 1930s, that was the biggest seller in the diners and restaurants.

I went to talk to a magistrate and he said to make him come here and sign a letter and he would stamp it. Then I could go and get the equipment. But if he doesn’t give me a signed letter, and I went and took anything, he could have me locked up for stealing. So the next night, I stopped Mr. McLarin and told him what I had done. So he went with me and signed a letter that I could have all the equipment.Afriendof mine had a truck and we went down to Pleasantville and took the cake mixer and doughnut fryer and some pans. I put them down my cellar. I lived at 341 Valley Avenue at that time. I was going to start my own business, crullers and half moons. I sent away for boxes that would hold two dozen crullers and half moons. My wife didn’t like the idea. She didn’t want me around. She had this new boyfriend, Johnny Ranere, and she wanted me to leave home. She wanted me to take Johnny’s sister out, Anna, so she could have something on me. She tried hard to make me leave home. I loved my boys, so I would put up with a lot for them. But how much more could I take? I went to work for Mattioli Brothers in Landisville. Then the Second World War broke out. Now my boys were fifteen and sixteen years old, and they were old enough to take care of them selves. I was working ten and twelve hours a day and six days a week. I was getting $32 a week as

After about a year in Camden, my boss moved to Pleasantville. That is where he lived. He rented a baker shop at 600 Main Street about 22 miles from his house. So Bob and I went to Pleasantville to work for him. Bob lived in Philadelphia at 60th and Vine Street. He had no car, so he moved on the top of the baker shop. It was a two-story building. I had a ‘32 Buick and I would drive to work. It was about 25 miles. We worked there about a year. I don’t know what happened, but our boss said he couldn’t pay us that week. We worked three weeks without pay, then Bob and I said that if he didn’t pay us the next week, we would quit. He didn’t pay us, so we quit. That was the last I saw of Bob. He was a very nice man. But my boss is still in business. He was buying his baked goods, and he had closed the shop down. I went to Pleasantville to the shop, but it was closed. He used to serve a restaurant in Hammonton on Bellevue Avenue. So I waited for him one night, and I talked to him about my money. He said he couldn’t pay me, so I said how about the cake mixer and the pans and the doughnut fryer. He said that I could have them if I wanted them.

I didn’t like the Army, but I had no choice. The next time my boy came over, we had a nice talk. He knew what I was going through. She wouldn’t leave me alone. But he couldn’t do anything about it. She treated him and his brother, Danny, very good, so they would get along with her boyfriend,

63 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. the head baker. It was a hard job. I was 5’5” tall and weighed 140 pounds in the winter, but in summer I would go down to 120 pounds. I would lose 20 pounds. I had two helpers. I was the head baker. I made all the bread and rolls; regular, sliced, French Vienna, whole wheat, sour, rye, and some Italian bread. We had an Italian baker, and two helpers that made all the Italian bread. We were two bakers and four helpers, and we had three big ovens and twelve trucks. I would start at ten o’clock in the morning and get done about ten o’clock in the evening. At six o’clock in the evening, I would have all my dough made up. Then I would make two doughs for John, so when he came in about seven, he would take over all the Italian bread, and he would get done about five or six in the morning. We got along very Landisvillewell.was about eight miles from Hammonton. I had a 1932 Buick. I used to my wife my pay, and she would give me $5 a week for gas and a bowl of soup. She took care of the money. About one year after the war broke out, I went down to 120 pounds. I started to think. I was still a young man and a whole life to live. My wife was a no good woman to me. She liked her boyfriend. I couldn’t get near her, so I made up my mind to leave home. I quit my job and left home. But I kept in touch with my oldest boy, Jerry. I stayed in Hammonton. I got a room. I went home and got my clothes and left. But I was clas sified IA in the draft, so I had to find a Defense job or go in the Army. So there was a Sunoco Gas Station empty in Hammonton. I applied for a job, they trained me and two men for the job in Atlantic City for two weeks with pay. They opened the station and made me the manager. I was living just across from the station, and I liked my job. I met a lot of nice people, most of them were woman. The men were drafted in the army. The tires were rationed, and I had a lot of responsibility. After about four or five months, I met a nice woman. I started taking her out. I started feeling a lot better, and I was hating my wife for what she did to me. My son, Jerry, would come everyday after school to see me. He was a wonderful boy. He was very close to me. I loved him very much. But my other boy, Danny, didn’t seem to care very much. He was always out by himself. But Jerry would go out selling newspapers after school and take care of the house. His mother used to work, but I used to send some money home. But that didn’t help. Our draft board was in Mays Landing and one of the draft members was living in Hammonton. His name was Mr. Hearing and he had a hardware store in Hammonton. We were friendly. His daughter and my son, Jerry, went to school together, Saint Joseph High. So he sent someone over to the gas station, he said he wanted to see me drafted into the army, because I wasn’t living at home. My son, Jerry, was seventeen years old, and he would be drafted soon. He told me that the gas station job wasn’t essential, and I was in 1A so he could have me put in the Army. I didn’t know what to do.

64 NEVER A TEENAGER Johnny. But she didn’t want me to be around Hammonton. But where could I have gone? I lived and worked in Hammonton since 1928. My brothers lived in Hammonton, my mother lived there. So I kept working at the gas station.

One day, Mr. Hearing came to see me at the gas station. He said my wife kept calling him and the draft board in Mays Landing. They were tired of hearing her. So I told my son, Jerry, about it. He said he knew all about it. He said, “Dad, why don’t you come home and give it one more try?” But I knew that it wouldn’t work. So, Jerry got us together and I went back home. It lasted one month. I went to see Mr. Hearing, and I told him what I had done. So he said as long as I was in Hammonton, she wouldn’t leave me alone. He asked if I knew anything about electric work. I said sure. He said he knew someone in Philadelphia, and he could get me a job. He gave me a sealed letter and told me to go to the office of this company in Philadelphia and ask for the man whose name was on the envelope and give him the letter. So I gave the Sunoco Company a weeks notice. I went home and told my wife that one of us had to leave. I told her that I had quit my job, and I was leaving in the morning, but I didn’t want the boys to know it. I felt very bad, but the boys ere old enough to take care of themselves. I said “I just want you to leave me alone. You can have the house. Just pack my clothes and I will leave five o’clock in the morning. The boys will be asleep.”

Chapter 12

STARTING OVER IN PHILADELPHIA

So I packed a suitcase with some clothes and I set the alarm clock for 5:00AM and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. At 5:00AM when the alarm went off, I woke her up and kissed her good-bye, and I haven’t seen her since. I went to the railroad station and got the 6:00AM train in the morning, and I went to Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Railroad station was at 15th and Market Street. I got off the train and I looked

65 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

66 NEVER A TEENAGER around, and I didn’t know what to do. After all these years, I was all alone in Philadelphia. I didn’t know anyone. I went across the street at 15th and Vine. There was a hotel there, the London Hotel. I went in and got a room on the second floor for $10 a week. I unpacked my suitcase and sat there thinking, what was I going to do next? I went downstairs and walked around. I had breakfast and went back to my room. I started thinking. I went down to the bar and I had two glasses of beer. I never drank before. Then, I went to the Penn Station. I got a train for Newark. But I never got to Newark. When the train stopped at Linden, New Jersey, I got off and walked around for one hour. I decided to go back to Philadelphia. I was all confused. So I went back to Philadelphia and went to my room and fell asleep. When I woke up, I was feeling better. The next morning, I went to Cramp Shipyard. I went to the office, and I asked for this man whose name was on the envelope. I have him the envelope, and he went in his office. When he came out, he said to come there at 10:00AM the next day for a physical. So I went the next day and passed my physical. I went to work the next morning as an electric me chanic on submarines, from 4:00AM to 12:00PM

After about three weeks, my boss came to see me, and he asked me how I would like to brake in a new man. This man was from the South, and no one wanted to work with him. So I said sure. I can’t do as much work as I’m doing now. The next day, the new man came to work with me. He was a nice man. His name was Marshall Simmons. He talked very slow. He told me he hitched-hiked a ride from Titusvile, Florida to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. He met a girl in Waynesburg and married her. But there was no work there so he hitch-hiked to Philadelphia. He had no money, so he went to a restaurant on Girard Avenue. He talked to the owner, and he gave him a meal ticket. He went to a house on 821 East Girard and talked the lady into renting him a room on the third floor for $4 a week. I was still living on Vine Street, so he said that this lady had a room on the second floor. He didn’t know how much she wanted for it, but he’d ask her and let me know. It was two blocks from the shipyard and there were a lot of restaurants in that area. So the next day, he said she wanted $10 dollars a week. It was a large room with a double bed in the front of the house. I went to see the room, and I liked it so I took it. Her name was Medina, and she said I wasn’t to have no one in my room. If I had visitors, they would have to stay in the front room. So the next day, I moved in. Now Marshall and I lived in the same house and worked together, and we went to eat in Tony’s restaurant together. We became very close. We worked from 4:00AM to 12:00PM, and we went to eat before we went home. I met a friend in Marshall. I was trying to forget my past and think of my future. We were about the same age. We were like two brothers. I was 36 years old and in the prime of my life. I had a whole life to live. I made up my mind that I was going to make a new life. So I still worked hard. But I had something to show for. Every week when I got paid, I would put $25 in the bank. It didn’t cost me

67 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. much to live. I didn’t drink. In three or four months I had saved a lot of money. In the afternoon, Mar shall and I would go out to Tony’s restaurant about 2:00PM to eat, and we’d meet a lot of nice girls. There was a Navy barracks on Delaware Avenue about four blocks away. There were a lot of young sailors from all over the country. They would bring their girlfriends to Philadelphia. They would get shipped out and their girlfriends would be left alone. I had no problems with girls. I didn’t think girls could be so nice. I was dating nice girls from all over the country as far away as New Orleans.Ihad settled in my new life. I loved it. I was free again to start a new life. But I didn’t forget my two sons. I would go to Hammonton about once a month and see my mother and my brothers. I also had a brother-in-law that worked in Sam’s diner, and I would go and see him and give him $50 to give to my son, Jerry. But he never gave him the money, so I didn’t give him any more money. I told my brother, Joe, that if my boys needed anything for him to give it to them, and I would pay him back. Joe and I weren’t very close. I never told him that. But Joe came to live with us after I got married, when I drove a truck to Newark from 7:00PM to 3:00AM. He knew that John Pagano was seeing my wife, but he never told me. He was going with my sister-in-law at that time. She lived with us about four Soyears.Ikept on working in the shipyard for about three months. Marshall was my helper. Then the boss put him on his own. But we still lived in the house and worked side-by-side. We had four subs on their way in dry dock and the USS Miania almost ready to leave. About six months later, Marshall said we should get our own apartment. We could take our friends to our apartment. Here we couldn’t take no one. We asked a lady that worked with us, and she said she had an apartment; one bedroom and bath on third and Diamond. So we took it and bought a day bed. We moved in for $20 a month. After about two months Marshall got a letter from his wife. She was coming to Philadelphia to be with him and bringing his little son with her. So Mar shall went looking for an apartment. He found one on Frankfort Avenue in our old neighborhood. I kept the apartment.

68 NEVER A TEENAGER Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. and Marshall Simmons, 1942

69 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

70 NEVER A TEENAGER

71

VITALE, SR.

One Sunday, I was standing on the corner waiting for a trolley car. About one year after I left Hammonton, I heard someone call my name. I couldn’t believe it, I turned around and it was Jean, the girl I was dating in Hammonton. She moved in with her sister two blocks away on Burkes Street. I was so happy to see her. She was going to church, but she missed church that Sunday. It was like old times, because when I left Hammonton, I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. I liked her very much. She was 30 years old and her husband was in the Army. He had left her two years ago, but he wouldn’t give her a divorce. I would have liked to marry her. We liked each other very much. She took me to meet her sister, she was older than Jean. We were together about three months and one day she got a letter from her husband. He was stationed in California and he wanted her to move out there. We talked it over, and she said she would give it another try. So she packed her things, and we kissed goodbye and she left. I know I will never see her again. I hoped she would be happy the rest of her life. I was always happy when I was with Marshall’sher. wife came to live with him in Philadelphia. The only time I would see him was at work. I met his wife, Velma, and his brother, Richard. He was in the army, stationed in Delaware, and he would come to see his brother when he was off on the weekend. He was always drunk. He was from Titusville, Florida. He married a girl from Fishtown.

Chapter 13 FIRST MEETING CATHERINE

THE OF DOMINICK RALPH

LIFE

After Jean left I was all alone in the apartment. I didn’t like it. So I stopped at Tony’s restaurant one morning, and I talked to Tony to see if he knew where I could get a room. He said “go to 1302 Montgomery and tell my wife I sent you there. She has a room.” So I went to see his wife and she had a room on the second floor for $10 a week. I took it and thanked her. Her name was Elsie Marko. She was Polish. Tony, her husband, was Greek. They had one daugh ter. Her name was Charlotte, 18 years old. They had two restaurants; one on Girard Avenue and one on Delaware Avenue. On Sunday, I moved at her house. It was in the same neighborhood about five blocks from the shipyard. On Monday, when I went to work, there was a recruiting officer from the Coast Guard and he was trying to get men to join the Coast Guard. This was 1943. I talked to him and signed up three hours a day, seven days a week for the duration of the war. I had to go for my physical on Monday morning. I passed. Now I had to go for my training at the Armory. It didn’t Inter fere with my work. I didn’t have to go to work until 4:00PM. After 30 days of training, I had to go to 34th and Chestnut Street to the University of Pennsylva nia, two hours a day for three weeks, to study about different types of bombs. When I was through studying, I was given my uniform, and I was assigned to the unit on the Delaware River for three hours a day, six days a week from 6:00AM to 9:00PM. I didn’t have much time for myself. I was very busy, but I learned a lot about the service. Our job was to make sure that no one left the ship while it was in port and we had to check the ship while it was in port. One ship, I will never forget, a Portuguese ship, came in port with a load of sugar, and it had been hit and half of the side was blown off. They had no refrigerator. They had live pigs and chickens and a cow on board. The men on board were like slaves. They were sleeping on just plain mattresses. This was the only way they had fresh meat. I liked the Coast Guard. We had nice uniforms. Our dress uniforms were blue. I was proud to wear it. I worked everyday. I was saving my money. I didn’t see too much of Marshall anymore. His wife was here, but I saw him at work. When we got done work at twelve o’clock at night, we would stop at the restaurant and eat together. I told him what I had done. I moved out of the apartment and had a room at Tony Marko’s house. He liked that. He knew Tony, Elsie, and their daughter. Tony’s daughter, Charlotte, worked at the restaurant.

One morning, I came home from the service, and I was all dressed in my blue uniform. She was home all alone. She was sick and didn’t go to work. I sat and talked to her. She told me she had just came out of a home a year ago, and Elsie took her in and taught her how to do waitress work. She was hard-working and very clean dressed, very nice and nice looking. But she was only 18. I told her I liked her very much and she said she liked me also.

A girl named, Catherine, worked there. They were two very nice girls. Charlotte introduced me to Catherine and told me she lived at her house. She was 18 years old and she lived there one year. She had a room on the third floor. I had lived there one week and had never seen her.

72 NEVER A TEENAGER

I told her I had been married and had two boys in Hammonton. She said she got married one year ago, but was only married two months, and she wouldn’t get along with her husband, so she left him. This was in late 1943. I asked her if she’d like to go to the movies, and she said yes. But I didn’t want Elsie or Charlotte to know. I didn’t think they would like it. So I met her down Front and Girard Street and got a cab. When we got back, I got off at Front Street, and she went home in the cab, and I walked home. We had a nice time. After that we dated a few times. Elsie was 36-years-old and we became very close friends. I would sit home on Sundays and talk to Elsie and her family, and we got along very well. So about one year or so, I was still living at Tony’s and Elsie came home one day and asked if it would be alright if a little boy would sleep with me. He was seven-years-old, and his mother had left her husband with two kids. A little girl, fouryears slept with Cass (Catherine), and the mother slept with Charlotte. I would come home from work about one in the morning. Everyone was sleeping at that time in the morning and this lady, her name was Rexie, would go in my bedroom and wake her boy up about 7:00AM and get him ready for school. She was a very nice lady, nice looking, about 28-years-old. I would go to work at 4:00PM and get home at 1:00AM and lie down until 1:00AM and then had to be in the service at 6:00AM. Then, I would get home at 6:00AM and go to bed until 2:00PM. So I was home with Rexie. Everyone else was working. Rexie would clean the house and wash clothes. We got very friendly. I still was taking Cass out on Sunday, but no one knew it. Rexie told me she liked me a lot. She would come in my room about 2:00PM and would kiss me on the forehead and wake me up. She must of told Charlotte and Cass that she liked me. Because one day I was down stairs and the three of them got me in the kitchen, and Cass asked me “who do you want, me or Rexie?”Ididn’t know what to say. I walked away and Charlotte came to me, and said Cass was very hurt. She said Cass loved me very much. I said I loved her too, but she was 18 and I was 36. She said she knows that, but she doesn’t care. Charlotte said she knew that I was taking Cass out. Cass told her. So I got Cass alone and told her I loved her and I had nothing to do with Rexie. She said she was going to move out of the house and that if I really loved her we could get an apartment in South Philadelphia and live together. So that is what we did. We got an apartment at 15th and Snyder. Cass stayed home for two weeks and when I got home about two in the morning, she would be waiting for me. She had biscuits and coffee ready, and we were both very happy. I was 36 but looked 28. I was a good looking man, 5’6” and I weighed 140 pounds, and Cass was 5’4” and weighed 110 pounds

73

After two or three weeks, Cass wanted to go to work. She didn’t like staying home. So we de cided whatever money she made, we’d save and what I make, we’ll live on. And when we have saved enough money, we will open a small restaurant. So that is what we did. We saved her money, and we bought a car, a 1940 Nash for $400.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

One day, I told Cass I’d like to meet her mother and father. She said “if I take you to meet my

We went to my brother Carmen’s house and met Carmen, his wife Rose. Carmen was my favor ite brother. I had four brothers and one sister. Rose and Carmen were glad to see us. I hadn’t been to Hammonton for about six months. They said they were glad I met a nice girl, and they liked her very much. You couldn’t help liking her. Cass was very sociable and good looking. She was always smiling. I loved her very much. On the way home, she said she liked my mother, brother and his wife and asked, “Do you think they liked me?” “If they didn’t, they would of told you. They don’t lie.”

74 NEVER A TEENAGER mother, you will leave me. I don’t think you will like what you see.” I said “I love you for what you are, and I would never leave you. You are everything that I have got and couldn’t do without you.” She told me what to expect. Her mother was living with a man named Jim in a two-room apartment, and they were always drunk. The apartment was dirty. One day, she took me to Frankfort Avenue and Cass said “Jim will ask you for money to buy beer. Don’t give him any.” So we went up to the second floor and Cass knocked on the door and her mother answered. It was dark in the room. They were both in bed and when she put the light on, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Bed bugs and roaches all over the place. Cass introduced me to her mother, and Jim asked me for 50¢ to get some beer. I gave him 50¢, and he went out and came back with a pitcher of beer.While we were standing there, the lady that lived in the front apartment opened the door and came out. Cass’ sister Alice was living with her. She had just came out of the home, and she didn’t want to live with her mother. So she was staying with the woman in the front apartment. When she saw her sister, Cass, she started to cry and hug her. She said, “Please take me home with you.” Cass didn’t know what to do. She asked me if it was alright. We could make room for her. We had a king size bed. She was sixteen years old, so we took her home with us to South Philadelphia. We all had to sleep in one bed. Cass was working from 3:00PM until 11:00PM and I was working from 4:00PM until 12:00PM. I would get home at 1:00AM and I would have to be on duty at 6:00AM until 9:00AM. So I didn’t get much sleep. Cass’ sister, Alice, stayed with us about four weeks, then she met a man, and she got married and moved out. Cass and I were both working, but had Sundays off. One Sunday, I took Cass to Hammonton to meet my mother and family. When she met my mother, she kissed and hugged her, and I told my mother as soon as the war was over, I was going to marry her. My mother asked how old she was. I said 20, but she was only 19. My mother said she was very nice, but she was too young for me. My mother was home all alone, so we could talk. My mother spoke in broken English. She asked Cass, “Do you know how old Mickey is?” Sure, she said, he told me he is 36. My mother said “don’t you think he is too old for you?” She said, “Mom, I love Mickey, I don’t care how old he is.”

One night, when I came home from work, Cass was all upset. She said she came home from work

Cass took sick, so I took her to St. Mary’s Hospital for two days, she was hemorrhaging. And after two days, she wanted to come home, but didn’t know if I could take care of her. So I said, “how ‘bout if I take you to Hammonton, to my mother’s. I am sure she will take care of you.” I took her out of the hospital and took her to Hammonton. I told my mother what happened and she said not to worry, she’d take good care of her. So I went home and went to work. I was quitting my job; I gave my boss a week’s notice. On Sunday, I went to Hammonton and Cass was sure glad to see me. She was in a strange house, but they took very good care of her, and she said they couldn’t do enough for her. They all loved her. My mother was married to this man, Harry Vergilio, and he had five children living home. It was one happy family. They didn’t want her to come home. They wanted her to stay one more week, but she wanted to come home. I told them that I would take her back next Sunday. So took her home, and when we got there, she told me how they took care of her. She said that she promised them that she would go back next Sunday. She said my mother took care of her just like a little girl. She loved my mother and couldn’t stop talking about them. When she was done talking, I said “how do you feel?” She said she felt wonderful. Now that she met my family and I met hers, and we both love each other, I think we should get married. She was so happy, she started to cry. She said this was the happiest day of my life. I was wondering when you were going to ask me. I said I quit my job, and the war is over, and we rented a store, now we will get married, and we will both start a new life together. We both had a hard life. So now it is just the two of us and I think we can do it. She said, “I know we can. I will be a good wife and help you all I can.”

75 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. and found the land lady in our apartment. She said she came to put the trash out and when she left, Cass said her wrist watch was missing. She said we had better move. I don’t like the land lady coming in our apartment. We decided to move back to Fishtown. So we found an apartment at Richmond Street. Cass quit her job and went to work on Kensington Avenue. This was in late 1945. She worked there until the war was over. I was discharged from the Coast Guard. We had saved $1,200 and were thinking about opening a small steak shop. We looked around the neighborhood and found a store front for rent for $25 a month on Girard Avenue. So we rented it for one year. I started to clean and fix the place up.

We went to City Hall the next day and got our marriage license. On Saturday, we went to 69th Street and Market and got married. We stopped and got something to eat and went home. Now we are happy. The next day was Sunday, so we went to my mothers house and told her that we had gotten married. She was glad and wished us all the luck in the world. We stopped to see my brothers and then we went home.

We still lived in the apartment in two rooms and had to share a bathroom. We thought we should look for a better place, so we found a small house with two bedrooms and a bath and a nice yard. So we rented it. It had two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs and an attic. We bought

76 NEVER A TEENAGER some furniture and moved in. It was a nice little house. We liked it very much. My wife stayed home and took care of the house, and I went to work on the store. I cleaned it all out and painted it. It wasn’t very big, about fifteen feet wide and 35 feet long, with a little room in the back with a sink. But it didn’t have a toilet. The man in the back apartment said we could use his toilet. I went to Hammonton to see my brother, Joe, and told him what I was going to do. He was a car penter, and I wanted him to build me a counter. So he said he would come to Philadelphia Saturday morning. He came and he measured the room where I was going to put the counter, and we went to the lumber yard and bought the lumber and all the other stuff that he needed, and he started to build the counter. He couldn’t build it in one day, so he came back on Sunday and finished it. It was beautiful. Joe was a very good carpenter. On Monday morning, I went to 2nd and Arch — there were a lot of restaurant supply stores there — and I looked at some of the things that I had to have to open my steak shop. I went home, and my wife and I went to the store. She liked the counter my brother made. We were going to fix the place up. She wrote down what we needed and went to 2nd Street and started to buy some of the things. My wife would come at the place and stay with me for a couple of hours. But she was still sick and she couldn’t help me. But she told me how it should look and how it would be better for me to work in. She was a waitress for three years. I knew it was going to be steak and sandwich shop; coffee and doughnuts in the morning, and steaks and hamburgers in the daytime. This was in late 1945. There was nothing like that in that neighborhood. It took me about one month to get the place ready. So after I was ready to open up, I had to find an ice cream company to supply me with ice cream and a sign and an ice cream cabinet, also, a company to supply my steaks and a baker from South Philadelphia to supply my Italian rolls. We were very proud of our place. It had a counter and six stools, three tables, six chairs, a stain less sink under the counter and a cash register, a large refrigerator, a grill, and three coffee urns. I had a painter to paint “Mickey’s Steak Shop” on the window. I put my opening hours from 7:00AM to 7:00PM. My wife hired a girl to work for me. At that time, the waitress was only getting $15 a week and tips. So we paid our girl $20 a week. We opened the shop up. My wife, the girl, and I were slow the first couple of days. It was some thing. New in the neighborhood, and after about a week, we started to get busy. We were closed on Sundays. After three or four weeks, we were starting to get very busy. It was all neighborhood trade. This building had three apartments — one on the second floor, and two room apartments on the second floor back. The lady’s daughter lived on the second floor front. She owned the building and there were two girls from South Philadelphia that lived in the two rooms back. One of the girl’s names was Grace. She was a nice girl. But Benny, the man that lived upstairs on the second floor front told me that she was lesbian, but I didn’t care. She would come downstairs at night and have coffee and a sandwich, and we became very

So a week later, he told me who to see. I went to the real estate office, and he said it was for sale for $4,200, but I would have to give the man that lived there time to get out. So I said I would let him

77

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. friendly. She was Italian and so was I. She asked me where I lived, and I told her I lived about five blocks away. She said I could use her bathroom.

The girl on the second floor front was looking out the window, and she said to the cop at the door, that I lived there so he let me in. I went upstairs and talked to her. Her name was Marge. She said there about ten or twelve girls in Grace’s apartment. They were having a big party and someone called the cops. Some of the girls jumped out the second floor window and on the shed in back and got away. That was the talk of the neighborhood the next day. The news was that the Steak Shop was just a front for the girls, but it wasn’t true. But after that, everybody knew “Mickey’s Steak Shop” and I was getting very busy.

Harry told me his sister said that I would have to leave the stuff that was nailed down. Her sonin-law would take over. Harry wasn’t talking to his sister, so I believed him. He told me not to say anything to Benny or his wife. He said the corner property was for sale but it didn’t have a for sale sign on it. He said it was an old estate and he’d let me know all about it.

We were saving our money. Benny would come downstairs after work at night. He was a truck driver and he liked what I was doing. I was always busy, and his uncle would come in about two in the afternoon when I wasn’t too busy and would talk to me.

In the afternoon, when I wasn’t busy, about 2:00 to 4:00PM, I would let the girl take over, and I would go upstairs and lie down on her bed. She gave me the key. I thought that was very nice of her. When I was busy at night, and she was downstairs, she would help us. I would close at seven, and I would take my waitress home. About four or five weeks after I had opened, I took my waitress home and on my way back, in front of my shop there were three or four police wagons. They raided the second floor apartment. The girls had a big party. I stopped, but the cops wouldn’t let me in. They didn’t know me.

One day, the landlord’s brother, Harvey, told me that his sister wasn’t going to give me a new lease when my lease ran out, unless I took her son-in-law as a partner. I didn’t need a partner. I was doing good. I was saving $100 a week, so I didn’t know what to do.

One night when I went home, my wife said she was pregnant. We were so happy. My wife stayed home and took it easy, and I took care of the restaurant. One day, a friend of mine came in. He had just got out of the army. I hadn’t seen him for five years. He lived in Hammonton. He used to work in the baker shop with me for awhile. I don’t know how he found me. He said they moved to Philadelphia. His Dad worked in the trolley car barn on Kensington Avenue. He was driving by and he saw the signs on the window that said “Mickey’s Steak Shop.” He thought of me. He knew I was living in Philadelphia, so he stopped. He would stop every day, and he liked my place. He started to take my waitress out.

After two months, I talked to George, and I said that I could buy the place on the corner for $4,200 and if he was willing to put up $2,000, we would buy the place on the corner 221 E. Girard Avenue. It was four doors away from my place. Then he could come and work for me, and I would teach him and pay him $40 a week until we moved in the new place at the corner. Then, we would become partners. So he said that was alright. We went to see the real estate person and we bought the building on the corner. It was three stories. It was a big place. Down on the first floor a man had a wallpaper store. But the two floors upstairs were empty. I told George not to tell anyone that we bought the store. I didn’t want the land lady to know. So the next week, George came to work with me and he liked it. I let the girl go that was working after school. George, the steady girl, and I were taking care of the place, and we were doing a good job. Cass would come over in the afternoon and bring the baby and stay a little while. In September, the man moved out of the store, so we started to clean it. When we weren’t busy, George would go over and work in the new place. We were only worried about the downstairs. We had to get that ready by the first of January. We had to have everything out by the first of January 1947. It was a lot bigger than the place we were in. So we had to buy a lot more equipment. It had a larger store front and two large rooms in the back. We made the room in the back the kitchen, we bought a new refrigerator and a larger grill and a magic chef stove and more stools. By the first of December, we were almost ready to move in. We had everything ready. The last two weeks in December, we closed the steak shop. The first week in

On Sunday, I went to Hammonton and got my mother and took her home with me so she could take care of my wife and baby. My wife didn’t know too much about babies, so my mother stayed with us for two weeks, then Cass was on her own. At night when I would go home, I would help take care of the baby. It was a lot of work in the steak shop, and I loved it. I was making money, and I had a good reputation. I was selling a lot of steaks and hamburgers and coffee. I had just one girl working for me. She would work from 7:00AM until 4:00PM. I hired a girl to work after school from 4:00PM to 7:00PM.

78 NEVER A TEENAGER know. I had about five months before my lease ran out. I talked to my wife about it. She was a little upset. She was expecting the baby any day. She said to do what I thought was best.

So the next time this friend of mine came in — his name was George Ferianio — I told him what had happened. I wasn’t going to get a new lease, and I didn’t have enough money to buy a new place. I still had five more months until the end of 1946. He said he had $2,000 he could lend me, and we could buy the place. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know George that well, so I told him I would let him know. I had a good business. I was very busy all the time. Now it was August 1946, my son was born, a beautiful boy, and we named him Russell.

In the new restaurant, we also had breakfast, doughnuts, soup, and all kinds of sandwiches. We had two girls working, and we were open from 7:00AM until 11:00PM at night. One week, I would work from 7:00AM until 3:00PM, and the next week, George would work that shift. We would change shifts every week and we were very busy. We were going to fix the upstairs. I was going to fix the second floor and George was going to fix the third floor. We were going to move there. So I fixed the second floor and I moved in. The apartment had three rooms and a bath. My wife liked it. We were together more when I wasn’t working. I would be upstairs with her. I would take care of the baby so she could go see her mother or take a walk. We got along fine, George and I, and then one day, he said he was going to let his brother, Dan, work in his place. His brother was 19-years-old. George didn’t want to work anymore, and I didn’t like the idea, but he was my partner. I said “if you want to take a week off, I will work, and on Saturday, you will still get your half of the money.” He said he wanted his brother to work. So on Monday, his brother started work. We had two girls working. One was named Kate and the other, Julie, was 19-years-old. Kate was 25. Kate worked the morning shift steady and Julie the night. After Dan worked two weeks, he started to take Julie out. He wasn’t thinking of his job, so I started to check up on him. We did a good steak business to take out after seven at night. We would sell about 100 steak sandwiches. When I worked the night shift, I would sell all the steaks and the money was in the cash register. But when Dan worked at night, I came down in the morning, and there were no steaks in the refrig erator and no money in the cash register. So for about a week, I checked to make sure I was right. I knew something was wrong. I would take care of the money. I didn’t want to tell George. It got so I didn’t trust Danny. One day, I told George that he would have to come back to work. He didn’t like that. He said we’ll sell the place. We were only open six months and had a nice business. I had made a big mistake when I took him as a partner.

One day, one of the salesmen told me that George said the restaurant was for sale. I asked George and he said, “yes, I want to sell.” We can get $7,000 for it. I said, “we should get more. I worked hard to get this far.” He only invested about $3,000, but I put a lot of hard work in it. He said that was too bad.

I had to move out of the building in 30 days so we could make settlement. I found a house at 1405 Frankfort Avenue with a for sale sign on it by Walter Levin. I went to see Walter Levin about it, and he took me to see it. It was a nice building, but it needed

So a couple of days later, a Greek by the name of George came in. He said the salesman told him that we were going to sell the restaurant. So I said, yes for $7,000. He gave me a check for $2,000 and he would give us the balance at settlement. So I took my $1,000 and went looking for a house.

January 1947, we had a sign on the window that said, “Mickey’s Restaurant.”

79 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

80 NEVER A TEENAGER a lot of work. It was a three-story building; three rooms on the first floor and a bath, and three rooms on the second floor and bath, and three rooms on the third floor. The third floor was rented to a man and his wife. The second floor was empty. On the first floor there were two men living. The man that owned the house had died. He had one son, a doctor that lived in New York, and he didn’t want the house. Walter Levin said he wanted $5,000 for the house. I said that was too much, it wasn’t worth it. He said to make an offer. I said I will give him $2,500 for it. He said give me $100 deposit and I will see what I can do.

Now my wife was pregnant with the second child. So she said, “How about if I get my mother to stay here with us, and take care of the baby, and I will go to work for Tony at the restaurant?” I didn’t know her mother too well. I knew she drank a lot, so I said okay, if you think she can take care of the baby. So she got her mother to move upstairs in one room. She went to work. My wife had two more sisters and a brother in foster homes. One day, her sister, Alberta, came to live with us for awhile. I went to see H&H Brothers. They had a meat supply house. I used to buy my meat from them. They knew that I had sold my restaurant and I wasn’t working. So they asked me if I wanted to drive their meat truck. I took the job. One day a week I would serve some restaurants from Philadelphia to Atlantic City down the Black Horse Pike and come back down the White Horse Pike. I worked five days a week, and on Saturday and Sunday, I would work on the house. I made my wife quit her job and stay home. I started to paint the front of the house, and I paint ed the bricks. When I was almost done, on Saturday, I was standing on the sidewalk and a woman stopped. She asked me who owned the house. I said I did. She said, “Do you want to sell it?” I said yes. She asked how much I wanted for it. I didn’t know what to say. I had just bought it for $2,500. So I said $5,500. She said, “Can I see it?” I said sure. She liked it and said, “Who do I deal with?” I gave her my real estate agent Walter Levin. About one hour later, Walter called me and said there was a woman there who said I wanted to sell the house to for $5,500. She wanted to give me $500 deposit. He asked if he should take it and

A week later, Walter Levin came to see me and said the man would sell it to me for $3,000. So I offered him $2,800, and the next day, I bought the house on 1405 Frankfort Ave for $2,800. I went to see the two men that lived there and told them I had bought the house and was going to move in there. They were paying $5 a week a piece for the room. So I told them they didn’t have to pay me for the next two weeks, so they could find a room and move. They were two good men. So they thanked me and they moved. This was in July 1947. We had just bought 221 E. Girard Avenue in December 1946 and had sold it in April 1947. George took his $3,600 and that was the end of our partnership. I took my $3,600 and put $1,100 down on the house at 1405 Frankfort Avenue. I started to clean and paint it. I fixed the first floor three rooms first. We moved in. The couple on the third floor had been living there for four or five years, so I let them stay there. The second floor was empty, and I let it stay that way.

I said yes, but he’d have to find me another house to move into. He said he had a small two bedroom house for sale and it was empty. So I went to look at it. My wife had the second baby. We named him Marshall after my friend. We bought the house and moved in. My mother-in-law moved in with us. This was in 1949. So I had made some money on the house that I sold and I quit my job. I went looking for a new business. Now that the war was over, everybody was moving out of the neighborhood. They closed the shipyard down and the Navy barracks were closed. My friend Marshall moved back to Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. I found a gas station empty on Delaware and Columbia Avenue. It belonged to the Mobil Com pany. I went to see about it and I told them that I had one year of management at a Sunoco station in Hammonton, New Jersey. The station was empty so the salesman took me to see the station and said that I would have to pay for all the equipment and the accessories. They would give six months free rent and after that I would pay $75 to $100 a month rent. It all depended on the amount of gas I sold. So I took the station. They cleaned and painted it all up and equipped it. It was a small station, about ten feet by ten feet. It had a toilet in the back and I had a little pot belly stove to keep warm in the wintertime. It had two open pits to grease cars and trucks, and a little shed on the side to keep my grease and tools in. So I opened the station in 1949. I hired a man from 7:00AM to 3:00PM and after three or four weeks, we started to get busy. I was open from 7:00AM until 6:00PM. Delaware Avenue was right along the Delaware River. There wasn’t many cars on Delaware Avenue, but there were a lot of trucks there.

Afterstarted.two or three years, I was pumping 35,000 gallons of gas a month. The Mobil Company tore the old gas station down, and they built me a modern station. It was beautiful. It had a car lift and a car wash room. It was a big station; hot air heat, air condition. Now I didn’t have to wash and grease cars outside in bad weather. I did minor repairs. I bought a wash mobile for $1,400 right across the street from my gas station.

81

There were a lot of piers and lumber yards, American Can Company and a big sugar house. A lot of trucking outlets were there. I gave the trucking outfits a two cent discount on gas and I had the only gas station that could grease trucks. I had two open pits that you could drive on, and they were on the outside of the station. I had Cowan Motor Freight, they didn’t buy gas, but I would grease their tractors every Saturday. They had about 30 trucks and tractors, and on Saturday, I would hire two men and they’d grease all the trucks. They did about fifteen trucks every Saturday. I had another trailer outfit from Salamanca, New York. The name was M&M Trucking Co., and they had about fifteen trucks, and I would grease their trucks and sell them gas. I had a good busi ness

There was a hardware supply house by the name of Ulmer Supplies and he had twelve salesmen. He leased his cars and I would take care of them. I had one man working steady and a high school boy after school working. About 1952, one of my customers was working in the American Can Com

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

In 1950, my son Dominick was born, and my wife stayed home and took care of the baby. We use to wash Ted Ulmer’s cars every Friday, and Ted would send a man over every Saturday with an envelope with a $5 bill in it for May as a tip. One day, my wife came over to the station, and she met May and watched her work. She said she was a good worker, but I think she was a little jealous of her. She was a good looking woman, and she was always smiling. My wife got to like her, and they became very friendly. In 1955, I sold my Ford to May, and my wife taught her how to drive, and I bought a 1954 Cadillac. I was working very hard, and I was making a lot of money.

I said I never heard of a girl working in a gas station. She said she will bring you more business. So I told her to bring her around, and I will talk to her. The next morning, at 7:00AM when I went to work, this young woman was standing in front of the station. She said her name was Mary Daily. She was a good looking woman about 5’6”, 120 pounds and 30 years old. I couldn’t believe that a man would leave a woman like that. So I talked to her and told her what she would have to do. She could come to work at 9:00AM, because she had to get her children to school, and she could work until 5:00PM. I would pay her $40 a week for five days. She was glad.

When I went home that night, I told my wife what I had done. She said “do you think a woman can do the job?” I said I would give it a try. So May started to work for me, and she worked one week and, she was doing okay. It didn’t take her long to learn how to pump gas and clean windshields and check oil and batteries, so the next week I let the man go. Her and the boy and I took care of the station. We were getting very busy and I made a lot of new customers. They would come to the gas station just to see the girl, and she was making a lot of tips. I was glad I hired her.

In 1955, my mother-in-law was still living with us, and we only had two bedrooms. So we went looking for a bigger house. We found one at 7340 Torresdale Avenue for $6,000. It was a nice house, six rooms and bath. It was brick house and 20-years-old. It had a porch front and a car garage in the back under the kitchen and a large cellar. It had a door that you could walk in from the sidewalk. Before we moved, my wife wanted to learn to be a hair dresser, so her mother was taking care of our three boys, and my wife went to school and got her license. We liked the house so we bought it and when we were ready to move my mother-in-law didn’t want to move with us. She wanted to stay in the old neighborhood. So my wife got her Aunt Mabel to live with us. Her husband had died, and she was glad to come and live with us. We gave her $15 a week and room and board. Our house was about five miles from the gas station. We bought the house in July of 1955. It was on the corner of Aldine and Torresdale. In the back of the house was St. Hubert’s High School for girls and across the street there was a big park. My

82 NEVER A TEENAGER pany across the street, came over to talk to me about her girlfriend. Her husband had left her and she had four children. She didn’t know what to do. She said she is very honest. She said, your man is very lazy, and you do all the work, why don’t you hire her and teach her to pump gas and clean the windshields, and she can help you inside. You don’t have to pay her the same as you pay your man.

83 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. wife and her Aunt Mabel loved it there. In the daytime, they would take our boys to the park. After about a month, my wife didn’t like staying home. She wanted to go to work as a waitress. So we talked it over, and she said “my aunt could take care of the kids. When I come home I will clean the house and wash clothes. The money I make, I can pay Aunt Mabel and have more spending money.” So I said okay. I was doing good at the station, “so this is what we will do. I will give you $50 a week spending money and pay all the bills. What you make, you can pay Aunt Mabel $15 and the rest of the money you can save.” So she went to work at the Torresdale Diner from 11:00AM to 7:00PM. They paid her $20 a week and tips. She worked there two months, and it was too hard on her, so she quit and stayed home. I like that, Now I didn’t have to worry about my boys. I made a lot of friends in the gas station business. One day one of my customers, named Steve Warnecki, said he had two boys that belonged to the Boy Scouts Post #329 of Philadelphia, and they were trying hard to raise money for a camping trip. So I got an idea I’d like to help. So I said, “If you make some signs and put a date on them for some Thursday, I will give them the wash room and all the money they make, they can have.” He thought that was very nice of me, so we make plans for two weeks.Icalled the Mobil Company and told them what I was planning to do and they said that they would send a man down on that day, and he would bring some suits of the “flying red horse” that the boys could wear. So that day came, and the company man came and brought some suits and a camera and took pictures. He put them in the paper. The boys had a good time and bought sand wiches and soda. They were very happy. They started to work at 9:00AM and stopped at 5:00PM Everything went fine, but the weather was cloudy all day, but the boys still did alright. They made $100. In 1955, that was a lot on money. About five or six months after that car wash, they presented me with a beautiful plaque with three Boy Scouts of America on it, in appreciation for your services to the youth of the community. I kept the station until 1957. Then I got a notice from the State of Pennsylvania, and they gave me six months to move. They were going to build an expressway there, Interstate 95. So I sold the station and the equipment to a fellow from South Philadelphia.

84 NEVER A TEENAGER Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. at Mobilgas, 1954

85 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. Dominick and Catherine in a casino, 1953 Catherine, Dominick, Marshall and Russell dressed for church in 1954

86 NEVER A TEENAGER

Now

Chapter

I made settlement in two weeks and went to see Tony. I had the $500 and went back in the kitchen and told him I had the money. What a surprise I got, he said he changed his mind and didn’t want to sell it anymore. I was very mad. He waited two weeks to tell me that he changed his mind. So I went home and told my wife what happened, and she said not to worry. “If I were you, I would look for a place on Girard Avenue and give him competition.” So that is what I did. I found an old threestory-store front building one block away from Tony’s restaurant. It was at 607 E. Girard Avenue, next to the police station. I went to see the realtor, Walter Levin. He took me to see the place. It was an old estate that 14

I am looking for a new business. I stopped to see my friend, Tony Marco, in the restau rant I used to eat at everyday when I had the station. He was a lot older than me, and I liked him and his family. We were like one family. My wife and I used to live at his house. I told him that I had sold the station and he said, why don’t I buy his restaurant. He wanted to go back to Greece. He and his wife were separated. She lives in the house, and he lived upstairs on top of the restaurant. He said he’d sell it to me cheap, for $11,000. So I went home and told my wife what Tony said. She said that would be nice and he had a nice business. So the next day, I went to talk to Tony, and he said he would sell it to me. I said in two weeks, I will make settlement and get my money from the station, and I will give you $500 deposit and the rest of the money when we make settlement.

87 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

MICKEY’S RESTAURANT ESTABLISHED

88 NEVER A TEENAGER had been in the family since the 18th day of April 1871. Henry Thiele, the first owner, died in 1920 and left it to his next of kin, his wife, Sally Thiele, and her two children, Florence and Harry Thiele. Sally died in 1922, leaving it to her children, Florence and Harry. Florence died in March of 1951 and Harry died in 1956. I bought 607. It was a large brick building with three rooms on the first floor and an outhouse in the backyard and three rooms on the second floor and bath, two rooms on the third floor. I bought it for $4,200. But I was sick now. I had my work cut out for me. There was a large tree in the yard. It was three stories high and the neighbors didn’t like it. They would cut the limbs every year and would let them lay in the yard. I got the yard cleaned up and went out and looked at the outside of the building. Then I went inside and went up the third floor to see how the inside looked. It didn’t look too bad. But I knew if I was going to do the work, it would take me a long time. I did want to get it done as soon as I could. So I went out and bought some tools and I started on the third floor and worked down to the first. On the third floor, they had left a lot of boxes with a lot of old music sheets. I was told that Florence was a music teacher and she kept the sheets in boxes. She died in 1951. Harry died in 1956. That was the last of the Thiele family. It was in the family 96 years. I started to work on the third floor. I would start working 8:00AM and would work until 6:00 or 7:00PM. One day, May Daley went to see my wife, and my wife told her that I had bought a place next to the police station and was there working. She said she’d like to see it. She had her car and asked my wife to take a ride and we’ll surprise Mickey. My wife hadn’t seen the place since I started to work in it. She didn’t have a car. I had the car. So they came down to the place and I was glad to see them. I had one room ready to be papered. I said I am going to clean and scrape the paint on the third floor, then I will get someone to help me paper. May said “I will help you. I’m not working. I’m collecting unemployment.” So my wife said “let May help you and you can give her a couple of dollars. I know she could use some money.”

So May would come over every day after her children went to school and help me until three o’clock. Some days May would stop at my house and pick my wife up and take her over the place. My wife would take my car so she could take the kids for a ride. Her and Aunt Mabel were getting along very good. She was a lot better than my mother-in- law. They were sisters, but Aunt Mabel didn’t drink at home. She was very clean, and I liked her. So with my wife getting the car two or three days a week, they could visit her mother and her sisters, and they were very happy. We had a 1954 Cadillac, and it was a beauty. I worked in the building about four months. I was ready to buy the equipment. It was all papered and painted up. It looked very good. I made a special job downstairs on the first floor. I started to buy the equipment that I needed, and when I had the place all set up, I made arrangements with the baker and the butcher and all the others. I bought all pink cups and dishes, an Admiral refrigeration,

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

At night when I closed the doors, I would clean the place up and clean my coffee urns and put clean water in them. I would turn the gas down low and would go upstairs. I was home. I didn’t have to fight the traffic anymore. In the morning, I would get up at 6:00AM, go downstairs and turn the gas up under the coffee and light the gas under the grill and French fryer. Then I would go upstairs and shave and shower. By 6:45AM, I would have the coffee ready, and I would open the door. We were all home together. When we weren’t busy, my wife could go up and rest. Aunt Mabel came to stay with us, and my boys would come downstairs and eat breakfast and go off to school. They didn’t have to cook upstairs anymore. They liked that; fresh milk and doughnuts.

My wife and May and the two boys helped me set the place up. Now I am ready to open the place up. I hired a waitress, and my wife was a waitress and she taught May to do waitress work. I hired a young man to help in the kitchen and wash dishes. I did all the cooking.

cutting board, French fryer, a Star grill, cream dispenser, three gallon coffee urn, six gallon water urn, 24 quart milk dispenser, a pie display case, a counter and nine stools.

The ice cream company gave me all the equipment and the cabinet. I bought a soda fountain, a three compartment stainless steel sink, six round tables, 18 chairs, large wall mirror, exhaust fan, two new air conditioners, 18 sugar holders, one slicing machine, 18 napkin holders, a large refrigera tor and freezer, one steam table, one Magic chef stove with vent and canopy and fan, one Frigidaire ice machine, one standard scale, one bay marie.

The last week in September of 1957, I opened up. My hours were from 7:00AM to 7:00PM and I was very busy. I was four doors from the corner, next to the police station and in the back of the restaurant there was a laundry and library and a Junior High School. On the corner of Girard and Montgomery, the City Stables were located. I had a nice location. I opened up at 7:00AM, and all the city workers would come in for coffee and doughnuts. At 8:00AM, I would be busy with high school and the police station people. The police changed shifts at 8:00AM and 3:00PM, so I was busy all day. I had a lot of coffee to take out. Back in 1957, coffee was 5¢ a cup and doughnuts were 5¢ a piece. Hamburgers were 20¢, so you had to sell a lot to make a good living. I was doing okay, but it was getting too much for me. I lived in Torresdale, and it would take me one hour to get to work and one hour to get home. I had to leave home at 5:30AM so I could have the place ready by 7:00AM. I told my wife it would be better for us to sell the house and move upstairs. We had a nice three-bedroom apartment and bath and we could move in anytime. We could save a lot of time and money. So in 1958, we sold Torresdale Avenue, and we moved upstairs on top of the restaurant. That made it a lot easier for all of us.

89

The police next door were very nice. The first day I opened up, the Captain, his name was Jim, came in and introduced himself to me. He told me that a lot of restaurants gave the policemen free coffee, but for me not to start it. He said they will take advantage of me. He was right. I decided to give the men that worked inside free coffee, but it didn’t work that way. There were only about six

90 NEVER A TEENAGER or seven men that worked inside. But two or three of them would come in and sit down at a table for a half hour and talk, and they would only drink coffee. They wouldn’t even leave a dime tip for the waitress. It was bad enough giving them free coffee, but they would take up a table for two hours. So I told the waitress I thought I would stop giving free coffee.

After about a year, we checked on the free coffee, and we were giving them about 55 cups of coffee a day and coffee had went up to 10¢ a cup. So I had a sign made and put it on the milk dispens er where everyone could see it. “Sorry, all coffee must be paid.” After that, the cops weren’t drinking too much coffee. There were about 50 men on each shift about 150 in all. And some of them were pretty nice. We got along with them. At night when we closed the doors, all the coffee that was left in the coffee urns that night was sent to the cops next door.

On the week before Christmas, the 26th police district next door would have a party for all the kids in the neighborhood. I would make about 75 hamburgers for them, free. I didn’t charge them anything. I loved helping the neighborhood. It was sort of a poor neighborhood. It was called Fish town. A lot of drinking people, the cops had their hands full. They would lock the men up and put them in jail, and in the morning, they would have a Magistrate hearing at 8:00AM, and let them out of jail. They had a shift next door that was one of the best. It was captained by a Joe Anderson and all his men that worked inside were great. They used to care about people. When they were on the three to eleven shift, if they had anyone in the cells that was hungry, they would come in the side door and ask me if I had any food left over. They had someone that was hungry. I would always have something to give them.

91 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Catherine and Dominick behind the counter of Mickey’s Restaurant in Fishtown, 1965 Russell, Dominick and Catherine outside of Mickey’s Restaurant in Fishtown, 1960

92 NEVER A TEENAGER

One night I will never forget. It was in November. It was freezing outside, it was about nine o’clock in the evening and I was upstairs. One of the cops next door, John Loftus, came in the side door. I didn’t lock the side door. The doughnut man would lock it after he left doughnuts about 10:00PM, and the cops on that shift knew it. John Loftus and I were very friendly, and he said he had a big problem. They had a call that a woman and two children, one boy and a girl were sleeping in a Chevy car. The boy was about eleven and the girl was three. They had no place to go, so they were trying to sleep in the car, but if the cops didn’t go to get them, they would freeze to death. Her husband had got drunk and put them out of the house. So John took them in my restaurant, and we took good care of them. We made sure they had enough to eat, and got cleaned up. The boy was a little bashful. I think he was ashamed. We took them upstairs, and John said he would see what he could do. My wife gave the little girl a bath and put some of my little boy’s clothes on her. About one hour after John had left, he came upstairs and said he had found a place for them. They thanked me and my wife and left. John said they locked her husband up. We didn’t know what happened to the woman, and to her children. But the boy didn’t forget. About four years later, about two in the after noon, my waitress came in the back and said there was a young man out front. He’d like to see me. This nice looking, well dressed, young man said, “Don’t you remember me?” I said no. He put his arm around me and held my hand. He said I am the little boy that you and your wife took care of that cold THE HOMELESS

Chapter 15 HELPING

93 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

94 NEVER A TEENAGER night. I said I had wondered what happened to them, and he said that he and his mother and sister had moved. His mother got a divorce, and they were doing alright. He was thinking about that cold night and wanted to come and thank me personally. We shook hands, and I said to tell his mother and sister “Hi.” He left the next day. When I saw John Loftus, I told him about the boy. He said it was very nice of him. “How could anybody forget the coldest night in November?” John Loftus said he would have liked to of seen him. Every day, it was business as usual. One day, my wife said she would like to be a hair dresser. So she went to school and became a beautician. Aunt Mabel took care of the boys and my wife went to school. She got her license and went to work in a beauty shop on Girard Avenue, but she didn’t like the place. So she quit, and stayed home, and helped me in the restaurant.

95 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

One day, my wife was sitting in the restaurant and she came back in the kitchen and said, “Mickey, look out front. See that girl sitting at the counter? She has no place to go. Can I take her in and let her stay here? She said she is 18-years-old and is working in the city. Her name is Sandy.” I said it was up to her. She went out front and told Sandy she could stay with us, and the girl was happy. She was very nice. She was 5’10” and very pretty. She was good company for us, like our daughter. Aunt Mabel had left, so we were a nice, happy family. After she got done work, she would come home and help me out in the restaurant and all the customers liked her. It was good for business and everyone was getting along fine. We thought a lot of Sandy. She was like one of the family. About one year after Sandy was with us, my wife Cass took sick and had a nervous breakdown and had to be put in a hospital. So Sandy quit her job and stayed home to take care of the boys and help me. We were very busy and the visiting hours were from 2:00PM to 4:00PM, two days a week. So Sandy said we should hire a girl, so I could go see Cass and wouldn’t have to work so hard. I had two waitresses, one from 7:00AM to 2:00PM and one from 11:00AM to 7:00PM. Sandy was talking to a cop next door about a girl and he said he knew a girl that needed a job bad. She had cut her wrists. The next day, he sent this girl over, and Sandy talked to her. She was a waitress, but she didn’t have a uniform and didn’t have a place to live. So we gave her money to buy a uniform, and Sandy said she could live here and sleep with her, so the people wouldn’t talk about her being

Chapter 16 CASS’ BEAUTY PARLOR

So his mother and Sandy gave him a little party, and they got married. I was so hurt that I didn’t go to the party in the back of the restaurant. This was 1963. Russell dropped out of the 10th grade and got married. I bought a little house at 608 Flora Street. It was empty. So I let Russell move in it a year after he was married, and he got a job across the street in a laundry.

I would go to see my wife at the hospital at 2:00PM and on Sundays at 2:00PM. It was very hard for me. After about three weeks, they said I could take my wife home. She was home three days, and I had to put her back in the hospital. It was so hard for me to take care of the restaurant and then come home and clean upstairs. The girls didn’t know too much about cleaning. When they were done work, they would go out. They were young, they didn’t want to stay home. It was bad enough with the two girls.

The cops next door thought I was running a house for wayward girls. This was in 1958. My wife was in the hospital. After two or three weeks, my wife was ready to come home. She came home and Sandy took care of her until she got better. Then Sandy went in the Air Force and about one year later, Sandy came out of the service, she got married and left. We didn’t hear from her for three years, but I still worked hard in the restaurant. One day, my wife decided to be a hairdressing teacher. So she went back to school and got her teacher’s license and started teaching at 8th and Market Street in Philadelphia. She taught about one year. My oldest son, Russell, went to hairdressing school there. He put in 300 hours, then quit. My boys were getting big, and they were very good. They would help me in the restaurant. Russell and Marshall were in High School, and Dominick was in elementary school. One day, Russell came home from school and said he wanted to get an apartment. I said he was too young to go on his own. He was sixteen years old and hadn’t finished high school yet. He was playing in a band and going with a girl. He said he had to get married. I was sick, he was only 16-years-old. He said if I didn’t sign, he would get married anyway.

Around 1964, my wife decided she wanted to open up her own beauty shop. So we looked around for a building. After a while, we found a building that we thought would be a good place for a beauty shop, on Susquehanna Avenue. We bought it for $6,500. It was a three-story building on a corner. It had three rooms on the third floor and four on the second floor and bath. On the first floor, it had three rooms and bath, a large store front room which would make a nice beauty shop. It

I went to the hospital the next time, and when I came home, Sandy had one more girl there. She said that this girl was from down South, and she had married a soldier from the neighborhood. She lived with him two weeks, and he told her he didn’t want to be married anymore. He told her to go back home. So Sandy said she could stay with us for a couple of days. She stayed with us for two weeks and went back home.

96 NEVER A TEENAGER here all alone with me. The next day, Shirley started to work. She was 19-years-old and wanted to be called

EveryTony.Tuesday,

I asked why she didn’t tell me about it. I was mad, but I went down with my wife and our boys to see it. I helped her pay for it, but I didn’t like the idea. I was working twelve hours a day in the restaurant and on Sundays. If I went to see my mother in the morning, I would have to be back by 4:00 or 5:00PM, because I would have to make coleslaw and get things ready for Monday. I opened up at 7:00AM, and I didn’t have time to do anything in the morning.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to Laurel Lake on the weekends to relax. She could go with the

My son, Russell, and I started working in the place on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays and at night. By the end of 1964, we had the place all ready. It was beautiful. My wife and I went to Penn sauken beauty supply and picked out all the fixtures and supplies. I didn’t know what she needed. So I picked out two wash basins, three chairs, mirrors, six hair dryers and six chairs and a desk. She was ready to open up for business. It had a three-room apartment in back. It was all air-conditioned and my wife was very happy she was in business. That is what she wanted all the time. She hired girls that she needed and opened the shop. I told her that all the supplies and towels that she got, she had to pay cash and keep the receipts, and all the work that the girls did, to keep the receipts and at the end of the week, she would pay the girls. She would take $50 for herself and whatever was left we would put it in the bank. That is what we did, and we were getting along very nice. She was running her business and I was running mine. But I took care of the money, and my boys would help us out. We were saving money. She did a nice business. All the girls liked her.

97 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. needed a lot of work. My boys were big now, they were teenagers, so they could help me clean and fix the place up.

In 1966, the restaurant was still keeping me busy. My wife was in business about one year, and she became very friendly with a girlfriend of hers named Virginia. She had a house trailer down Lau rel Lake, about 60 miles from Philadelphia, in Millville, New Jersey. On Sundays, my wife would go with her to Laurel Lake, and she would come home on Mondays. Her shop was closed on Mondays.

After about one year, my wife came home one night and said her girlfriend, Anna Mae, had a house at 708 Belgrade Street that her brother was living in. He was suppose to pay the mortgage and he didn’t pay if for three years. They were going to foreclose and put a judgment against her house in New Jersey. She said if I would pay the mortgage, I could have the house. She didn’t have the money. It was $900. So I bought the house and gave her $100 and paid the mortgage of $980. Her brother moved out and I fixed it up. I rented it for $55 a month, but the family that rented it was giving me a lot of trouble, so I sold it for $3,000 to a real estate.

After three or four weeks, one of my lady customers came in and told me that my wife had bought three lots of ground at Laurel Lake. I didn’t know anything about it. So when my wife came home, I asked her. She said she bought it, so we could go down on weekends and enjoy it.

98 NEVER A TEENAGER boys. She would close her shop at 3:00PM on Saturday and she had Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

After about four weeks, she said Virginia was going to buy a new trailer on Sunday and wanted her to take a ride with her to look at some trailers. So I said okay. We went to look at some trailers, but I didn’t know that they had already gone to look at the trailers. When we got there, Virginia told me that she had picked hers out already. She showed it to me. My wife said, “Now that we are here why don’t we look at some.” So, the salesman showed me one that my wife liked, but I didn’t know that my wife had already picked it out. I told the salesman, “When I want to buy a trailer, I will see you.” He said why don’t I give him a deposit and he would hold this trailer for me. I said I wasn’t ready to buy a Whentrailer.weleft, I thought there was something wrong, because my wife didn’t act right. She was disappointed. So when we got home, we talked it over. I said when we get ready to buy, we will buy a used one for half the price. But she didn’t like it. Virginia was telling her what to do. I think Vir ginia was jealous of us. So two weeks after this all happened, one day another woman came in the restaurant and told me my wife had bought a new trailer and put it on the three lots in Laurel Lake. I couldn’t believe it. How could she buy a trailer without me signing for it? But she did. Now I was really upset, and I told her so. I said she wasn’t taking care of her business. She was listening to Virginia, and she was losing a lot of customers. She had only one hairdresser and herself and a shampoo girl left. She got all upset and told me to take care my own business and she would take care of her’s. But I told her that she didn’t know how to run a business. I was paying all the taxes and bills for her shop. So I said if you want to run your shop, okay. Get yourself a tax man and you can handle all your money and pay all your bills. I won’t bother you anymore. It hurt me very much. We had got along very nice all those years and had three nice boys and never had any problems. Now she was acting so different. Even my boys didn’t know what was getting into her. They felt bad. Two boys were living with me in the restaurant. She came on Saturday and got her clothes and went to live at the beauty shop. She had a three room apartment in the back. So I let her go. But we were still friends. My boys would go see her after school and Marshall and Donnie would go and stay with her down Laurel Lake on the weekends.

Russell was the oldest of the boys and he had been married and had a son. But he was only 20 years old and he had separated from his wife. He was living with me at the restaurant and he was working as an Insurance man. Marshall and Donnie were still in school. At night, they would help me in the restaurant. After about one or two months, Marshall graduated from high school and he went out to look for a job. He didn’t like restaurant work. After a week or two Marshall came home one day. He said, “Dad I joined the Air Force. I couldn’t find a job, so I signed up for four years.” This was during the Vietnam War. Russell and Donnie and I were living on top of the restaurant and we were getting along fine. But things were starting to slow up in the restaurant. So I decided to change my hours. I was getting

don’t know what happened, but Marshall talked Russell into joining the service. The next week after Marshall left, Russell joined the Marines. After about two or three weeks, Russell left for Boot Camp in South Carolina. That left me and my son, Don, and I was missing Russell and Marshall very much. They were never away from home before. After five months, Russell came home on leave. He was dressed in his Marine uniform. He looked real sharp. Before he left, he had a 1967 Ford Mustang. He left it home. My son, Don, had just got his license, so he would drive Russell’s car to school. He decided to buy his own car. One Sunday, he and I went out looking for a car. He found a beautiful Chevy Nova. It was a convertible, like brand new. I was driving a 1963 Cadillac. After about six months, I was making the payments on Russell’s car. It was standing out front, so I decided to sell it. I gave it to the girl on the back street for the balance of the payments. Now, Don and I were home alone. Don was still in school, and when he would come home after

99

Russell and Don would go and help their mother at the beauty shop. But I didn’t bother with her anymore. She was on her own. One day, Donnie came home and told me that his mother had only one girl working. She didn’t have much business. It was summertime and very slow. Marshall came home after his boot training and I was sure glad to see him. He looked very sharp in hisTheuniform.nextmorning, I was back in the kitchen and had all six burners going on the Magic stove making breakfast. The waitress came back and said that they smelled gas in the front. I went to check, but I didn’t find anything wrong, so I went back in the kitchen and checked all the burners. My kitchen was small, about twelve by eight foot, and when I had to open the oven door, I would have to step aside, so I could open it. I stepped aside and as soon as I was going to check the oven, standing on the side, the oven exploded. It burned my face and my arms. I let go of the door handle, and it was a good thing that the door had a strong spring on it, because it pulled the door right out of my hand. When this happened, the police next door heard the explosion and they came and called the gasTheycompany.tookme to the hospital and I had flash burns. They patched me up and sent me home. The gas company had two men come over and check and they found the trouble. The pilot light was baking gas in the oven. So they put a new pilot light in. I looked like a mummy. My face and head was all bandaged up. I was very lucky. I could of had been scared for life. My face and hands cleared up fine. No scares. Marshall was home about ten days.I

very tired working twelve and thirteen hours a day. I changed my hours from 7:00AM to 2:00PM. I didn’t do too much work after 2:00PM. So by 3:00PM, I would have the place all cleaned up and I would have an extra five hours to rest up. I was just serving breakfast and lunch, no supper. That was a lot better for me.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

100 NEVER A TEENAGER school, he would help me and go over to his mother’s and help her. But she had lost a lot of her busi ness. It was her and a man and a shampoo girl left working in the shop. Don would come home and tell me she didn’t have any coffee or sugar. I told my son, she’s your mother and if she needs anything, you take it to her. So he did.

I said, “OK, I wish you a lot of luck” and left. I didn’t bother her anymore, but Don would go over after school and see her. I would take care of the restaurant and take it easy.

I said “you are 40-years-old. Don’t you think it is too late?”

That was the end of the beauty parlor. She lived in the back of the shop. She would spend a lot of time down Laurel Lake in the house trailer.

So I said, “OK, I hope you’re right,” and I went home. I felt so bad. She had a good business, but that all went. Now she had nothing left of the business.

So Monday night, I went to see her in the hospital, and I told her he made $110. I gave him $60 and the girl $40 and I had $10 left. I told her that is why she was in such bad shape. With her $10, she would have to pay the over head expenses and the taxes, towels, gas, and electric.

She said she knew what she was doing.

I said, “You wouldn’t listen to me. You can’t run a business like that.”

The next week, when she got out of the hospital, she couldn’t work, so she closed the shop.

I said sure. She said to go over to her shop and pay her man and the girl on Saturday. So Saturday afternoon, I went to the shop to pay them. She said she paid him 60 percent, and she would take 40 percent, and she paid the shampoo girl $40 a week.

He and I went to see her and she said, “Mickey, will you do me a favor?”

So I asked the man for the money he took in that week, and he said he took in $110. So he got $60, and the girl got $40, and I had $10 left.

Don told me she was selling the hair dryers and all the equipment. Don came home one night, and said she was going to sell the two air conditioners for $75 if I wanted them. Sure, I wanted them. I paid $800 for them, and they were only two years old. So I gave her $75 and took them out and took them to my place.

She said, “don’t worry, I know what I am doing.”

We talked it over, him and I, and we both felt so bad about her. I said I will go over and talk to her. I went over and talked to her, but I couldn’t change her mind. I wanted her to come back home, but she said she wanted to be an average woman.

About four months later, Don came home and said “Mom is in the hospital.”

So when we got outside of the office, she said, “Are you going to take a week off the fourth of July?” I said, sure. She said she didn’t have any money and she couldn’t go anywhere, so I gave her $100 and I said this will help you. And I left.

Chapter 17 DIVORCED AGAIN

About one month later, I got a letter from a lawyer. She was suing me for a divorce and $75 a week for support. I wasn’t about to give her $75 a week.

My son, Donny, was living with me and the other two boys were in the service. I gave her the beauty shop, and she was getting $35 a month for the apartment on the third floor, and $100 a month for the second floor, and that was $135 a month.

She had a good business, but she let everything go. I wasn’t going to help her. I told her that she didn’t know how to run a beauty shop. When I was running it, we were saving money. I opened a safe box in the bank, and every week I would put money in it. Our bills were always paid. We didn’t owe any Sincebills.she bought the trailer, she wasn’t taking care of the business. She was losing money every

About the first week of 1967, my wife told me she was going to sue me for a divorce. She said, “the only thing I want is the beauty shop. You can have the restaurant and the other buildings. I won’t bother you.” So I said okay. We went to the real estate and I signed the beauty shop and the building over to her. I still wanted her to change her mind. We were still friendly.

101 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

So they called our number, and we all went in the court room.

Every week, I would get a letter from her lawyer, and the letters all came registered. It was driv ing me crazy. I didn’t know what to do.

102 NEVER A TEENAGER week. It got so bad that she had only one man and a girl, and when she was there, she would work.

“She said she would take $50 a week.”

I said, “No, I would give her $10 a week.” My lawyer said, “the judge might make you pay her $75 a week.”

“Do you own a house at 708 Belgrade? How much did you pay for it?” “One dollar,” I said. “One dollar,” repeated the judge.

I was still getting letters from the court. About two or three months later, I got a letter from the court that my case was coming up. So I called my lawyer, and he said he would be there and to bring my son with me.

So on that day, we went to court and met my lawyer, and we sat in a large room across from the judge’s chamber. My wife was sitting there in front of us all alone. A little while later, a man came in and sat alongside of her lawyer. He said “I am going to talk to him.”

I said, “I’ll take that chance. I will go to jail before I pay her $75 a week.”

In the morning, they had cases next door in the police station. They had a Magistrate listen to the cases. They would come in the restaurant in the morning for coffee and doughnuts. I told one of the magistrates what my wife was doing, and he told me I would have to get a lawyer because she was taking me to court.

He said his name was Mr. Blumburger. The two went out in the hall, and he said he would talk to my wife and see what she would say.

My son, Don, stayed in the room. My wife and her lawyer sat at one side of the table, and me and my lawyer sat on the other side. Her lawyer was doing all the talking, and I was doing all the answering.

So when my tax man came on the first of the month, I told him what my wife was doing. He said he had a lawyer friend, and he’d talk to him and let me know what to do. His friend, the lawyer, called me and said he would take care of me. He said to bring the letters that I received and to bring the deeds of my two houses that I owned. If I had any money in the safe deposit box to take it out, because if she knew that I had money in the box, she might get half of it. So I went to the bank and got my deeds, and I had $3,200 in the safe deposit box, and I took it out. I bought a safe from Sears, and I put it in the wall behind a picture frame and put the money in it.

“Mr. Vitale, do you own the restaurant at 608 Flora Street? Is it paid for? How much did you pay for“$3,500,”it?” I said.

“Who did you buy it from?” “Her girlfriend,” and I pointed my finger at my wife. When I said one dollar, the courtroom was very quiet. They thought they were hearing things.

“I was driving a 1953 Ford, and it broke down, and it would cost too much to fix it, so they want ed $4,000 for a new Ford. I had a nephew that worked in a Cadillac dealership, and he said he had a 1963 Cadillac like new for $3,000.”

“Yes, but I only went to school until the fifth grade, so my tax man shows me what to do. He gave me a book and said for me at night, when I close, to take a reading of the cash register and mark the amount and the date in the book, and keep all the receipts. Once a month, he would come and take care of the books.” “Mr. Vitale, do you have a safe deposit box?” “Yes.”

“Yes, one dollar,” I said.

“Mr. Vitale, how much do you pay your girls?” “$40 a week a piece.” “How much do you take for yourself?” “$25 a week.” “Is that all?” “Yes. I don’t smoke or drink. I work twelve hours a day, six days a week, and on Sundays, I go to see my mother, and I only have the bridge fare and gas to buy.”

About this time my wife jumped out of her chair, and said I was lying. The judge hit his hammer and told her to keep quiet. “You will get your turn to talk.”

“Don’t you keep books?”

103 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

“Why did she sell you the house for $1?”

“Mr. Vitale, what kind of car do you drive?” “A 1963 Cadillac.” “If you aren’t making any money, how come you are driving a Cadillac?”

“She said she built a house in New Jersey, and her brother was living in 708 Belgrade. He was supposed to pay the mortgage, but he didn’t. They were going to put a lien on her house in Jersey, so I paid her one dollar and took over the mortgage of $900.”

“Mr. Vitale, I heard you bought new furniture.” “Yes. I bought a new television set, and I have to buy a new bed because my old bed broke, and I am sleeping on the mattress on the floor, and if you don’t believe me, you can come home with me and see for yourself.” “Mr. Vitale, how much money do you clear a week?” “I don’t know.”

I said, “Yes, your Honor. I would take her back with open arms.”

104 NEVER A TEENAGER

“I don’t have any money in it. I had all my deeds and insurance papers in it. But my lawyer said he wanted all my deeds and insurance papers, so I went and took them out and gave them to him.”

“How much money do you have in it?”

I said, “No, your Honor. We got along very good, but she said she wanted to be a career woman.”

He called her lawyer up to the bench and talked to him. We didn’t know what they were talking about.After a few minutes, the judge said, “All rise. I don’t see where Mrs. Vitale should get alimony. But I will grant her a divorce.”

My lawyer didn’t say a word. It was just her lawyer and I. All the rest of the courtroom was just listening. So the judge called a recess for 20 minutes, and we all went in the hall and walked around.

But when we were out, they called my son, Don, in. The judge wanted to talk to him. I didn’t ask him what they asked him, and I still don’t know. Then, after the time was up, they called the court to order.The judge called me, “Mr. Vitale, would you please stand?” He said, “You are still under oath to tell the truth. Do you think that the difference in your age had anything to do with this?”

So that was the end of our married life. Now I was free. I was glad that I won the case. I didn’t have to pay her alimony. I only had to take care of my three boys, Russell, Marshall, and Dominick.

So the judge said, “Mr. Vitale, you may sit down.”

“Mr. Vitale, if your wife wanted to come back home, would you take her back?”

So in the late part of 1969, Dominick graduated and joined the Navy, and I was left home all alone. I still had a good business, but I wasn’t working as hard. I was opening from 7:00AM to 2:00PM and by 3:00PM would have the place all cleaned up and would go upstairs and take it easy. I still had two girls working for me about eight years. One is named Lorraine, and the other named Nancy. I was pretty lonesome after they would go home. I would start thinking about my boys.Russell was sent to Vietnam, Marshall was stationed in Kansas, and Dominick was on the USS Milwaukee at sea all the time. He had secret clearance on the Milwaukee, and about once a month, he would call me ship to shore. He wasn’t allowed to do that, but he was in secret communication aboard the ship, and he could call any place in the country day or night. I would get a letter from

Donnie and I were alone. Don said, “Dad why don’t we fix the upstairs, buy new furniture and a new rug and put new drapes on the front windows? If we have company, it’ll look nice.” That is what we did. We fixed the front room and the entire second floor, real nice. We bought new furniture and fixed upstairs very nice. This was in the last part of 1968. Marshall was shipped to Kansas. Russell was sent to Vietnam in 1969. I was left home with Donnie. We got along very well. In the summer months, there wasn’t much business, so the first week of July, I would close for one week and take it easy.

105 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Chapter 18 LONELINESS

106 NEVER A TEENAGER

I know a lot about what they have to do, and I was going crazy thinking about my three boys in the service at the same time. They signed up for four years, and now I had my work cut out for me. I had the restaurant to take care of and worrying about them. I loved my boys, they were never away from home, and I missed them very much. When I was all alone, I would think about them, and I wouldAftercry.about

two years, Marshall got promoted to Sergeant and said that he liked it when they had a special part to ship somewhere. He had to go with the part and make sure that it got there safe.I was very lonesome.

Marshall once in a while, but I didn’t hear from Russell for about six months when he was in Vietnam.

One day, my waitress Lorraine said, “Mickey, my mother-in-law was asking about you. Her hus band died about a year ago. Why don’t you take her out? She’s a nice woman.”

So I said I didn’t know her too well. “Ask her if I could take her out for dinner some night.” She did, and she said my mother-in-law said she would be glad to go out with you.

So I started to date Lorraine’s mother-in-law. I was feeling a lot better. I wasn’t so lonesome any more. She was a very nice woman, and she was 60-years-old and had two sons. They were married and she was all alone. We got along very well. I would take her out on the weekends, and on the week of the fourth of July, I took her to West Virginia. She was very jealous. Lorraine said she didn’t want me to talk to no other woman. So I stopped taking her out.

One day, one of my waitresses came in the restaurant to see me. I hadn’t seen her for three years. Her name is Shirley, but we called her Tony. She said she got married and went to live in San Francisco, and she had a little baby outside in her car. She left her husband, and she had her car and a little trailer and her baby out front. She didn’t have any money, but she said I have a $50 check if you could cash it for me. She was a good worker, and she lived with Sandy and I in the restaurant when my wife was in the hospital.

So I said, “I don’t want your check”, and I gave her $50. I said, “This will help you. If you need any more, let me know.”

She was a young girl about 28-years-old. Her mother and her lived in the neighborhood. About one week later, she came to see me, and she said she had a nice apartment, and she had the baby with her. It was a beautiful baby girl. She wanted me to stop up to her apartment some night after work and see her.

So one night after work, I went to the apartment to see her and her little baby. We talked and she said she didn’t like Los Angeles. She left her husband and came back to Philadelphia. Her apart ment was about three miles from where my restaurant was, and she said, “You are all alone. Why don’t you come up here a night, and I will cook supper for the two of us?”

In the daytime, she would come to the restaurant and have a sandwich and coffee. My two

On Sundays, I would take Carol to Hammonton to meet my brothers and family. They all liked her and her daughter. I was glad because they were really nice. I started to love Carol. But I didn’t think her daughter liked me. She thought I was taking her mother away from her, but I wasn’t. I liked her very much. I never had a little girl. I had five boys, and I tried hard to be nice to her, but when we would go out to dinner, I would sit with her mother, and she would sit alone. When we were eating, she would put her feet under the table, and she would kick me. So when I was alone with her, I talked to her and told her that her mother loved her, and I loved her and no matter what happened we would always love her. She said she was sorry that she kicked me, and she would be nice. I was glad I talked to her after that. She was very nice. Every place I took her mother, I took her with us. When I would take her home after school, I would teach her to make coffee and fry eggs. Her mother didn’t want her near the stove, but I had her doing everything, and her mother was proud of her. I would let her help me in the restaurant before I would take her home. We became very close. She was like the daughter I

waitresses knew her from when she worked for me. They said, “She is too young for you. You are old enough to be her father.” I said “I know that, but we get along very good. I don’t intend to marry her. When the time comes that we don’t get along, I will break up with her.”

We got along about one year, and then I heard she was going out with a cop next door. So I left her, and I didn’t see her since. When Nancy, my waitress heard I had left Shirley, she said, “Mickey, I have a nice lady for you. You know her, my aunt Carol. You will like her. She is 36-years-old, and she works every day.”

Nancy made a date for me and her aunt. I took her and her daughter out to dinner one night and we hit it off very well. So I took her home. She had a two-bedroom apartment on Frankfort Avenue. It was close to my restaurant. I started taking her steady, but I had to take her daughter Teresa out with us. She was only ten and we couldn’t leave her home all alone. She was a good girl and she was no bother.Wetalked it over, and I would close my restaurant at 2:00PM, and when Teresa got out of school, she would come to the restaurant, and I would take her home about 4:00PM. Her mother would come home about 5:00PM. She worked in town, and it would take her about one hour to get home. She didn’t have to pick her up. She would save a lot of time. When she got home, she would rest, and about 6:00PM, I would take them out to dinner. They liked that. Carol didn’t know too much about cooking. We all got along fine.

She said she was talking to her about me and she said, “I wouldn’t mind going out with Mickey. He’s a nice man.”

She has a ten-year-old daughter, but she goes to school. She stays at our house until her mother gets home from work. So I said, “How do you know she would go out with me?”

107 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

108 NEVER A TEENAGER never had.

I still owned the house on Flora Street that was right in back of the restaurant. It was rented out. It had two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor and two rooms on the first floor. The lady that was living there moved out, and it was empty. So I told Carol that I would clean it all up and paint the inside, and she could move in it. We would be close together, and she thought that would be very nice. So that is what I did. Carol and her daughter moved in. They never lived in a house alone, always in an apartment. They were so happy they lived in a house all by themselves. I didn’t make her pay any rent. She was the happiest woman in the world. She would go to work at 8:00AM, and she would come in the back door of the restaurant and as soon as she came in, I would fix her breakfast. She would get the street car in front of the restaurant, and when she came home at night, her daughter would be home. If she needed me, I would be there. But I missed my boys very much. I didn’t hear from them too often. When they would write, I would answer their letters and put a $10 bill in the letter so they would have some spending money.

After about a year in the Marines, Russell was sent to Camp Le Jeune to finish out his time. Camp Le Jeune, North Carolina, was about 500 miles from Philadelphia. So he would come home on the weekends. There were Marines with cars and they would take four or five riders from the base on Friday night and drop them off in Jersey by 295 in Blackwood and pick them up at 3:00PM on Sunday for $17.

Sometimes I wouldn’t hear from them for two or three months. It was driving me crazy. Don would call once in a while at two or three o’clock in the morning. I would ask him where he was calling from, and he would say somewhere in he ocean. One time I got a letter from him, his ship was in Rhode Island. Carol and I went to Rhode Island and his ship was there, so we spent the weekend there. We went aboard the ship, the USS Milwaukee. It was a nice trip. Dominick took us all over the ship. That was the last time I saw him in two years ‘til he came home. He would send me most of his checks home, but I would put the money in the bank for him. Marshall and Russell would spend their money. I went to the Penn Treaty Bank on Girard Avenue, and I opened a bank account for the three boys, and I was putting $25 a week a piece in the bank for them. I thought that when they would get out of the service, they would have some money to start with. I didn’t need too much money for myself. The only time I would go out was on Sunday to see my brothers or down to Atlantic City or to Wildwood in summertime. I went out and bought a 1969 Cadillac, and on the week of the fourth of July, I would take long trips with Carol. We would go to West Virginia. I had a friend, Marshall Simmons, and his family that lived out there. We went to Niagara Falls by car. Carol’s daughter would go to camp in summertime, and we would travel alone. We went to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands by plane.

Marshall had a girlfriend in Kansas City that he left there when he got discharged, and she wanted to be here with him. So he asked me if it would be alright if she came to live with us. He said she was a nurse. He said she was 21-years-old and her parents didn’t care. She was old enough to know what she wanted. So I said it was okay. She came here to Philadelphia and lived with us. We had two bedrooms on top of the restaurant and her and Marshall lived here with me. After a couple of weeks, she went out job hunting and got a job as a nurse in a hospital. Marshall went to college to study art. I was still going with Carol, and on Sundays, I would take her to Hammonton to see my people. On her birthday, and on Christmas, I would always buy her something special.

So when Russell got a chance, he would come home on the weekends, and I was sure glad to see him. I didn’t hear too much from Dominick and Marshall, but Russell would come home once or twice a month. He met a girl that lived across the street from the restaurant. He told me to get her phone number and her address. He liked her a lot. So I got her number and address and sent it to him. Af ter three or four months, she went to live with him on the base in Camp Le Jeune, and they would come home on the weekends. So Russell told me if I bought him an old car, we could come home on weekends, and I could take two or three of the Marines with us to Jersey, and it will pay for the gas, and I wouldn’t have to pay for our trip back and forth to North Carolina. So I bought him a Chevy for $400 and he and his girlfriend, Catherine O’Neill, could come home whenever they had a chance.

I told him that I was putting $25 a week in the bank for him and his brothers. He said, “could I take my money out of the bank, and I will rent a little apartment?” I gave him his bank book, and he drew his money out of the bank.

But Dominick was still stationed in Morocco in the Navy aboard the USS Milwaukee.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Marshall was home on leave around Christmas, and he drew his money out, but Dominick didn’t take his money out until after he came home. He had $3,600 in the bank.

109

On the week of the fourth of July, I would take her on vacation. But she said she wished she could stay home. She was 40-years-old now, and if she would stay home, what would she do all day? Her daughter was fourteen-years-old, and they didn’t know how to cook, but they were very clean. So I got thinking that she was up to something. She was acting kind of funny and cold. It was Christmas, so I didn’t know what to buy her. I had bought her rings and clothes, so I didn’t think of anything that she needed. I went and bought her a diamond ring. On Christmas morning, when she

Russell was discharged from the Marine Corp in October as a sergeant.

In August, 1972 Marshall was discharged from the Air Force as a staff sergeant.

Russell had a son born in North Carolina. So when he was discharged, he came home and rent ed the house on Flora Street and went to work as a Maintenance Repairmen for the Liquor Control Board. He was getting along, and I would help him if he needed help.

The place was very big. It had three rooms on the third floor and three rooms and a bath on the second floor. On the first floor, the restaurant was 20 feet by 40 feet and the kitchen was ten feet by fifteen feet, so I had a lot of cleaning to do.

110 NEVER A TEENAGER opened her gift and saw the diamond ring, she dropped everything and ran to the phone and called her brother and her two sisters and said guess what I am? “I’m engaged! Mickey gave me a diamond for Christmas!”But,Ididn’t think of it that way. I had no intention to get married. I loved Carol a lot, but she didn’t know how to cook. The only thing she knew was working in the five & ten store. She wanted to learn to operate a computer keypunch, so after work, I sent her to a school two hours a night. She only had a few more weeks to go, and she would get her diploma, but she quit, and it cost me three hundred dollars. So I was thinking that if she quits her job, and stays home, I would have to keep her, so I thought it would be better off if I broke it off with her. So that’s what I did. Then she met a man ten years younger than her, and they got married. They bought a house, and she quit her job and stays home, and she is happy. Her daughter, Teresa, got married and has two children. We are still the best of friends, but that was the end of our four years of being together. My boys were still in the service, and I was home all alone. I still had a good business, and I was working hard, but I was very lonely. I missed my boys very much. Russell was the only one that could come home once or twice a month. I didn’t hear too much from Marshall or Dominick, so on Sundays I would go to Hammonton and see my mother and come home and start getting things ready for Monday mornings.

Back in 1965, my neighbor was Mrs. Levin. Her husband died in 1957. They lived next door, 609 E. Girard Ave. She got married and sold her house to a Mr. Boyer and his wife, and they were very nice people. They were living there about three years and her husband died, and she had two sons, and they wanted her to sell the house and go live with them. They had just put a new front on the house and it looked beautiful. The building was next door to me, and it was a big building. I had been in it a lot of times. It had a three-room apartment on the third floor and a bath and four rooms and a bath on the second floor and four rooms on the first floor. I told her if she made up her mind to sell it, I would like to buy it. Whatever the Real Estate offered her, I would give her $500 more. So, about one year later, she came into the restaurant and said she had made up her mind, and she was going to sell it. A Real Estate had offered her $5,000, so I said I’ll give you $500 more. So she said OK. I gave her $500 deposit and I bought the building in 1972. After she moved out, I started to clean and fix it up. Marshall had just got out of the service, and he was living with me. I wanted him to move into it, but his wife didn’t like the neighborhood. After two or three months, they decided to move out. They moved to the outskirts of Philadelphia into a little apartment in a private house. About four or five months later, the man that owned the house said they had to move. They were making too

111 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. much noise. So I talked them into moving next door, 609 E. Girard Avenue.

getting tired of working all these years, ten to twelve hours a day. I love it, but I’m thinking of selling the restaurant. So I called my real estate agent, Walter Levin, and he didn’t have any problem selling it. So in June 1975, I sold my restaurant to a Greek named Thomais for $20,000. I had to move out to make settlement, so I bought a house at 810 East Girard Avenue for $9,000, and I moved in and made settlement. I didn’t have to do any work in the house. It was in very good shape, but the house next door, 808 E. Girard, was a mess. It was empty for two years, and it was all boarded up and the windows were broke. It had caught fire and the kitchen in the back was all burned out and it made my house look very bad. One day, I went over and got inside and looked at it. The cellar had about six inches of water. They were both built the same. They had brick fronts, and they were built very strong. If I could buy it very cheap, I could fix it up and make it look like one house, and I could rent one. I had plenty of time to fix it.

Now Russell got discharged, and he came home and had a son, Russell, Jr. I had the house on 608 Flora Street empty, and he moved into it for about one year. Then he decided to move to New Jersey.About one year later, Dominick got discharged. He came home and lived with me. He would help me in the restaurant. Now I was feeling a lot better. My three boys were out of the service. About one year later, Dominick went to college on the G.I. Bill. He was taking up photography, and he would spend most of his time with his brothers and me, and we were all getting along fine.

At night about 6:00PM, I would go out to eat at a friend of mine’s restaurant on Girard Avenue. I knew all the people there and they knew me. One night, he had just hired a new waitress. Her name was Ann, and she was about 40-years-old. I started to take her out. She was from Clearwater, Florida and she had an eleven-year-old son. I dated her for about six months, then she quit and went back to Florida.NowI’m

I said, “You can have the house for what I paid for it”, so they said they would talk it over, and let me know the next week. I sold them the house at 609 E. Girard Avenue for $5,500. They took a mortgage on the house and then we made settlement. They were $600 short, and I loan it to them so they cleaned it all up and moved in. Marshall was going to art school and his wife Donna, was working every day as a nurse in a hospital, and they were getting along fine.

In 1973, I had a 1969 Cadillac. A friend of mine, Lou Wolff, on Girard Ave, up the street from me, was a used car dealer and he also sold repossessed cars. I was talking to him about trading in my 1969 Caddy. He said he had a 1972 Cadillac El Dorado coming in about a week. It was like new, yellow, with a white top. The next week the car came in, and it was a beauty. I fell in love with it, so I bought it for $3,200. I sold my 1969 Cadillac for $900. After I closed my restaurant at two o’clock, and the place was all cleaned up, I would take a ride in my new car.

He said they owed Welfare $3,000. “Let me see what I can do and I’ll see you in a week.”

So he left, and the next week, he came to see me, and he said all the creditors agreed to take a cut on the loan. I could have 808 E. Girard for $3,000 and a clear title.

They were the last two houses on Girard Avenue. The I-95 Expressway ran right alongside of them, and I-95 built a fence around them. After I sold the restaurant, Dominick moved in with his brother. He fixed the apartment on the third floor real nice and he was happy.

I said, “about $3,000.” He said, “Is that your best offer?”

I found the people who owned 808 E. Girard. A woman named Elsie M. Deputy. She was on wel fare and her husband had died, and they owed a lot of money on the house, so she sent her lawyer to see me, and I talked to him, and he said they owe about $6,000.

And I said, “Yes. It was going to take a lot of money and work to fix it up.”

So I bought it and started to fix it up. The kitchen in the back was all burned out. It was one room all by itself with a cement floor. So I cleaned it all up, and made a nice patio of it. The second room back I made into a beautiful kitchen with all new fixtures. Then I started on the second floor. I put all new windows and frames in and also did the same on the first floor. The two houses had closed in porches, so I put all new windows in the house. Then I went to work on the cellar. One of the drain pipes was broken, so I put all new drain pipes in. That was the reason the water was in the cellar. I drained the water out of the cellar and painted all the inside. It looked real good. I painted the outside front to look like my house next door. My house front was painted red and the brick was painted also. 808 was painted green, so I put a coat of white paint on it and painted the two fronts red and they looked like one double house. They looked beautiful. I did all the work myself. It took me about four months and about $3,000. So I sold the restaurant and bought the two houses and fixed them up all in one year. My boys were getting along, so I decided to take a vacation. It was in January 1976 that I went to Florida.

He said, “What do you think its worth?”

112 NEVER A TEENAGER

I said, “Forget it.”

The two girls asked, “Where is your suitcase?” and I said that it is in my car and they said to go get your suitcase and you can stay in our room with us. So I went and got my suitcase and we went up to their room.

Chapter 19 STILL GOT IT

113 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

My brother Carmen and his wife, Rose, and also Albert and his wife, Margaret, were all there along with two other couples from Hammonton. They were all around the pool. There were young girls there in bathing suits, and they were all glad to see me.

I told them my name is Mickey Vitale. They said my name is Chris Saul, and my name is Lori Lafferty, and we are from Chicago, and we work for the city of Chicago. I said I had a restaurant in Philadelphia and I just sold it, so I am going to take it easy. They said they had to leave the next day. I took them out to dinner that night and we had a

My brother Carmen said,” When did you come down here?” and I said “Yesterday, and I stayed here last night, but they told me they didn’t have any rooms. I was out looking all day and I couldn’t find any rooms.”

Two of my brothers from Hammonton, New Jersey, used to go to Florida every year in Feb ruary for one month. I knew where they stayed every year at the YKK Inn, so I went there, but they hadn’t gotten there yet. I got a room there, but the man told me I had to be out by 11:00AM because the rooms were all taken. The next morning, I went out looking for a room, but I couldn’t find one. About three o’clock in the afternoon, I went back to the YKK.

was home, the college he was going to was on strike again. We had just got a letter from Sandy. She had moved to Las Vegas, and she liked it out there. She said we should take a ride out there to see her. So Dominick and I decided to take a ride out there to see her. So we packed our

114 NEVER A TEENAGER good time. They had rented a car, so I took them out in my 1972 Cady. The next morning, I took them out to breakfast and we exchanged addresses. They were about 35-years-old, and Lori had just gotten divorced, but Chris was married. So we kissed, and they went home, and I went back to Philadelphia. They were very nice girls. So we kept in touch with each other. On Christmas, I would send them a card, and they would write me a letter once in a while. When I got back home, Dominick was home. He said the college was out on strike, and he went over to New Jersey to see his brother, Russell. Russell had three children now. He got a job for a 7-11 store, he was fixing up an empty store, and he was working real hard. But he wasn’t feeling too well. So about one week later, I was sitting home, my son Dominick came in, and he said Russell just got real sick, and they took him to a hos pital in Ancora New Jersey. So we got in my car, and we went to pick up Russell’s wife in Woodbury, and we went to the hospital in Ancora. They wouldn’t let us see him. They said he had a nervous breakdown. I was very upset that they wouldn’t let us see him, and I didn’t like the hospital, so I wanted to take him out of the hospital. But they said I would have to take him out before 11:00AM in the morning because he had signed himself in before 11:00AM. If I didn’t, I couldn’t take him out. So his wife, Cass, and I called five or six different hospitals, and they didn’t have rooms. He was in the service for four years in the Marines, so we called a Vet hospital. They didn’t have room, but they told us to call Friends Hospital in Philadelphia, they may have room. So we called, and they did have room, and it would cost $1,685 for ten days. So I told them that I would have him there at 11:00AM the next day. I told Russell’s wife to go home and make arrangements with the Woodbury Ambulance to take Russell out of the hospital in Ancora at 10:00AM in the morning and have him at Friends Hospital at 11:00AM, and I will be there with a certified check. So I went home and went to the bank and got a certified check for $1,685, and the next morning, I went to Friend’s Hospital and everything worked out justThefine.ambulance got there at 11:00AM, and we got Russell into the hospital. And we were all glad. We would go to the hospital every day and Russell was doing fine. After ten days, Russell was ready to come home, but he was under the doctor’s care. It was well worth $1,685. When Russell got better, he went to college on the G.I. Bill, and he got three diplomas. He got a good job as an engineer for a Japanese company, and he has a beautiful home and a great family, two boys and two girls. His wife went back to college and she is a graduate nurse, and they are a happyDominickfamily.

So in November 1976, it was my birthday. She said she wanted to take her girlfriend, and her and I would go have a party. So she took her girlfriend up, and she was a nice girl about 30-years-old and I had bought a cake and we had plenty to drink. My apartment was on the third floor next to the

One night, I stopped to eat at George’s restaurant and I met this young girl. She had a little boy about two-years-old. She looked like she was about 21-years-old, but she was only 19-years-old. We talked, and I paid for her dinner. It started to rain, so I asked her if she wanted me to take her home. She said that would be very nice, so I took her home. She lived with her mother. She said, could I see you again and I said sure. So I made a date and I took her up in my apartment and we got along fine. She told me the life she had with her family. Her mother and father were always drunk and on welfare. She made me meet her father and mother and they were very nice to me.

This girl’s name is P.J. and we became very close. She would come and stay at my apartment on Friday night and go home on Saturday morning. She liked to drink, but she was so young, and I was afraid I would get into trouble. But she said I didn’t have to worry, she liked me very much, and she wouldn’t get me in trouble. I would have to have a bottle for her on Friday night. This was in October 1976.

115 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. clothes in a suitcase, and we went out there in Dominick’s car. It was a Volkswagen. It took us three days and four nights. We got there at eleven o’clock at night, and the lights were all on and it looked liked on big Christmas tree. It looked beautiful. The next morning Tom, Sandy’s husband, took us down to see Las Vegas and the casinos. He took us to Union Place casino, and he asked Dominick how he liked it, and Dominick said he liked it very much. So Tom went to the back of the casino and came out with a man. He was one of the bosses, and he took Dominick into the back of the casino. This was about 10:00AM and we had driven from Philadelphia and we were very tired. Dominick told him he wanted him to start working at 1:00PM, but we were very tired. So Tom went back and talked to the man, and he said he could start working Monday afternoon at 1:00PM. He would have to have black pants and a white shirt, and they would give him a pink tie to wear. So we went home, and Dominick bought a white shirt and black pants. On Monday, Dominick went to work at the Union Plaza and he liked it. So I stayed there for a week, just in case he didn’t like it, and he would have to drive back to Philadelphia all alone. So he stayed there, and I came back to Philadelphia by plane. I sold my two houses on 810 and 808 E. Girard Avenue in April 1976 for $22,000 and I moved into Dominick’s apartment on 609 E. Girard Avenue, and I still owned the house on 608 E. Flora Street.So now I’m taking it easy. I have a 1972 Cadillac El Dorado, and I sold the restaurant and the two houses. So for the first time in my life, I have it nice. My three boys are getting along fine, and I don’t have to worry about them.

was about 20 and the other was about 25. That would be 45 years. He didn’t talk to me for almost a year. But I knew it had to do something because these girls were too young.

116 NEVER A TEENAGER police station. My son, Marshall, and his wife lived on the first and second floor. The girls started to drink. I didn’t drink and I still don’t drink. About one o’clock in the morning, they were so drunk, they started fighting, and I couldn’t keep them quiet. So Marshall opened the door and said if they didn’t keep it quiet, he was going to have the cops next door lock them up. So I got them in bed and they fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the next morning. So I knew Marshall was going to give me hell the next morning, so I snuck them out. When I saw Marshall, he said “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Two young girls! Why don’t you pick someone about 45-years-old?”Isaidone

117 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Chapter 20 MOVE TO VEGAS

Imoved from the apartment to 608 Flora Street, and I bought a building at 241 E. Girard Avenue in 1978, and I was going to open a restaurant. I had it all fixed up and a Greek wanted to buy it, so I sold it to him. I took a ride to Las Vegas to see Dominick. He was doing fine. I stayed there a week.Dominick met a nice girl and they were going to get married and buy a house. Marshall and Donna and I went out there for the wedding, and when we came back, Dominick wanted me to bring his furniture out to him. So I tried to hire a van. They wanted $900, and I had to pay for the gas and drive it. So I looked around for a van for sale. I found a 1974 Chevy van for $700, like new. I bought it, and I took it home and bought two new tires. I had it greased and checked the brakes, and I ran it about a month. Then I loaded all Dominick’s furniture in it, and I took off for Las Vegas. The man that sold me the truck was in the laundry business, and he said the van used about one quart of oil every thousand miles. So I bought four quarts of oil, and I took them along.

The trip to Las Vegas was 2,500 miles and the van used seven quarts of oil. I got to Dominick’s house at 11:00PM and no one was home, so I parked in front of the house and fell asleep in the van. When Dominick got home, he woke me up, and we went inside. He was glad to see me. He knew I was coming but he didn’t know when. So the next morning, we unloaded the furniture into the garage, and Dominick took me to the

So in June of 1978, I bought a building, three stories, at 241 E. Girard Avenue, and I was going to open a restaurant for $7,500. I fixed it all up and sold it for $15,000. I bought a three-story building on 1418 Orange Street for $3,500 and I moved into it and fixed it up and sold the building on 608 Flora Street. Now I am living at 1418 Orange Street, Philadelphia. The neighbors are all nice to me. My old girl Pam, P.J., and her mom moved across the street from me and we got along very good. Pam is about 25-years-old now, and she just had a little girl, and we call her P.J. just like her mother, and I am herThisgodfather.neighborhood is just like one big family. Pam has three brothers and three sisters, and they are all on welfare. But Friday night is party night, and Pam still comes and stays at my house on Friday and Saturday nights and we get along fine. I like Pam very much. The neighbor next door has a girl fifteen-years-old and a boy 21-yearsold, and the boy sniffs glue, and the mother works, and when the girl comes home from school, she comes and stays at my house ‘til her mother gets home. She is afraid of her brother. Her name is Teresa, and she is a pretty girl, and she is good company for me. She makes herself at home until her mother comes, and then she goes home. This is in 1979. I sold my Caddy and bought a 1975 Ford, and I took a ride to Las Vegas. My son, Dominick, wanted me to move to Las Vegas, so I said I will think it over. I stayed there two weeks, and I liked it. When I came back, I told my neighbors I was going to move to Las Vegas. They didn’t want me to move, but I thought if I stayed there, I would get in trouble with the young girls. So I made up my mind to move to Las Vegas, and I sold my house at 1418 Orange Street. I packed my furniture in a U-Haul and moved to Las Vegas. When I got to Las Vegas, I stayed with my son, Dominick. He and his wife worked, and I was home all alone. It was kind of lonesome. I didn’t have anything to do.

I stayed at Dominick’s house about two weeks, and I was ready to go back home. But Dominick didn’t want me to drive home. He wanted me to fly home and sell the van. But I liked the van, so I took the van and had it greased and the oil changed. When the man changed the oil and the oil filter, he asked me, “who changed the oil last?” He said they didn’t have the gasket on tight enough and that is why it was leaking oil. So I took the van home to Dominick’s house and parked it and stayed two more weeks, and the van didn’t use any more oil. Dominick told me to sell the van. So I put an ad in the paper for $1,500, and I sold it for $1,400, and I flew home.

118 NEVER A TEENAGER mountain climbing, and I slipped on a rock and hurt my back.

I moved into my house at 608 Flora Street, next door to Marshall’s house in the back street. I put a new roof on Marshall’s house, and I painted two rooms and the hallways and steps inside and, I painted the back of the building. I am a workaholic. I can’t sit around. I have to work.

I said I liked it very much but I didn’t have anything to do. He said, “Do you want to work?”

I loved it there, it was a nice clean place, and we had no bosses. They would bring our orders on the morning at 7:00AM, and we had a beeper. If there was an emergency, they would call us on the beeper. It was a very easy job. Some days we didn’t have anything to do, so we would clean the boiler room and keep the place clean. I started to work at Levy Gardens in 1980 and I worked there two months.Oneday, the super came in, and he called me aside, and he said, “Do you think you could handle the job by yourself? I said, “Sure, but what about George?”

He said, “We are going to give George a new, different job.” I felt bad. George had worked there for fifteen years, and I was only there for two months. So the next week, I was there all alone. The people in the building, and I got along very good. In the morning, I would put the flag up at 8:00AM, and then I would go around the building and pick up the papers. Then, I would get my orders and start doing my work around 9:00AM. By that time, the people in the apartments would be up. I was the only maintenance man there, and I had keys to all the apartments. If there was an emergency, I would have to take care of it. I was in charge of the whole building, just like it was my building. They had a man taking care of the office from eleven o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. The rest of the time, the building was all mine. I loved my job. If I had an empty apartment, the main office would call me on the beeper and tell me they were sending someone. I would show them the apartments. I kept myself very busy. If I didn’t have any orders to do, I would paint the lights outside of the building, and I would keep the boiler room and the maintenance room clean. After about one year, I got to know everybody in the building, and they

His name was Allen Myers, and he was a brother-in-law of Mr. Sorting, the head of the Las Vegas Housing Authority. He said he’d pick me up at 10:00AM tomorrow. The next day, Monday, he picked me up, and he took me to Levy Garden one of the Housing Authorities on 2525 Washington Avenue. He introduced me to a man named George Petrof. He was a maintenance man there, and he told George, I was going to be his helper. The next day, Allen came there, and he showed me an apartment, and he said I can move in here. You will be on call 24 hours a day and you will get $7 an hour and I am sure you will like it here.

The people are all nice here. And I said I am sure I will like it. Levy Gardens had 150 apartments and they were all one-bedrooms for senior citizens. So I moved into the apartment, and I started to work with George.

So one Sunday, Dominick’s neighbor next door came over and asked me how I liked Las Vegas.

119 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

And I said, “Surem I would like to work.”

In the 150 apartments, there were about 130 women and about 20 men. The women outlive the men by about ten or fifteen years. All the women here were about 65 to 80-years-old, but they were very nice. Some of them were here when the building opened up in 1968. They were telling me about how Las Vegas was 25 years ago. Now a lot of them were sick, and they couldn’t get around too good. I would help them all I could, and they would help each other. It was like one big family. They had emergency lights in front of their doors, and if they needed help, they would pull the emergency light, and the next door neighbor would come and get me, and I would take care of them.

120 NEVER A TEENAGER all liked me. They said I was doing a good job.

So in 1985, I quit and went back to Philadelphia. I was there five months, and I bought a house on sheriff sale next to the police station for $7,200. I was going to open up an ice cream parlor. When I got to see the house, I got sick. There was a tree in the yard, and the house was empty for four years. All the leaves from the tree had plugged up the drain pipe on the second floor roof, and the water had caved the roof in. The people that had lived there had left all new furniture in it, but the water had ruined everything in the house. So I hired an outfit for $1,500 to clean the house out, and I started to work on it. I put a new roof on the second floor, and I started to paper and paint it, but my son, Marshall, didn’t like the idea. He wanted me to get rid of it. He said it would take me a long time to fix it up. So I sold it, and I moved back to Las Vegas. I got my old job back.

I worked there about four years and some of the women would get sick and go to the hospital, but no one had died there.

Then one morning, about 10:00AM, a woman came looking for me. She said that the women in Apt. #149, her paper was in front of her door, and she always took her paper in about 8:00AM and she was worried about her. I said I would go and see. So we went to the door, and I knocked two times, and I hollered and no one answered. So I opened the door and the coffee pot was on, and the toast was up in the toaster. So I walked in and there she was in bed. She was dead. So I called 911, and they came and they were next door to Levy Gardens. The fire house was only about 500 yards away from our place. In a case like that, I would call the paramedics, 911, and then I would call my main office, and the next of kin. And when 911 came and the person was dead, they would call the police department. Two policemen came, and they called the coroner, and they would take the body away. In five months, I found four women dead. All of them had died in their sleep. Two had died with their televi sions on, and one was sitting on the hopper. I found two or three on the floor, and they couldn’t get up. It was getting the best of me.

Now Dominick wasn’t getting along with his wife. He had a little girl, Christine, and they were getting a divorce. They didn’t want to sell the house, so she said she would take $10,000 her share, and she would give him a divorce. So I lent Dominick the $10,000, and she gave him the divorce. She moved out, and Dominick kept the house, and I am still working at Levy Gardens.

THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

121

When they got home, Chris told Lori that they had come to Las Vegas, and they stopped to see me and that I took them out and we had a good time. So I got a letter from Lori, and she said she had been all over the country, but had never been to Las Vegas. I told her, whenever she had time off, she could stay at my place as long as she wanted to. She called me, and said she was taking a week off, and she was coming to Las Vegas. So she came and stayed seven days with me. Lori was 45-yearsold and she was single. She had four children, three girls, and a boy, and they were all married. I fell in love with her, and she said she didn’t want to go home, but she would come back as soon as she could. She was working for the city of Chicago.

I still keep in touch with Chris and Lori. I told them I moved to Las Vegas, and Chris and her husband came out to Las Vegas at Christmas, and I took them out and showed them the town. They liked it very much, and they said they would come out and see me again.

For fifteen years, her and Chris worked together. So she went back home and got sick and went to the hospital. This was in 1985, and they said she had leukemia of the blood cells. She got very sick, and they had her in and out of the hospital for all of two years. When she had a week or two out of the hospital, she would come to Las Vegas and spend a few days with me. But she wasn’t get ting any better, and I was worried about her. She was so young and so beautiful and as sick as she was, she was always happy. I made sure that she got whatever she wanted. She was losing so much weight and she said she didn’t like to be alone. We talked about getting married, but she couldn’t leave Chicago, and if she did, she would lose her insurance. The city of Chicago had already paid over $200,000 in hospital bills. The last time she came to see me in Las Vegas was in April 1987, and when she went back, she wound up in the hospital part of June and all of July. But she said she was doing OK, and she hoped to see me soon. We talked to each other on the phone and by letter. But she wasn’t getting any better, and in December 1987 she got worse. Her daughter called me and said she was asking about me for me to call her and talk to her so she would feel better. I called the hospital, but she was too sick to answer the phone.OnJanuary 3, 1988 she passed away, and I am so sorry I couldn’t be with her those last few days. But I never will forget Lori Lafferty. I think of her every day. Chris, Saul, and I still keep in touch, but I miss Lori very much. She was a very special person. I am still working in Las Vegas, and I am thinking of retiring. In 1989, I gave my boss two weeks notice and I retired.

122 NEVER A TEENAGER

123 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR.

Iwent back to Philadelphia and I went to see my son, Jerry, by my first wife. I told him that I had retired, and he said he was going to retire soon, and he would like to buy a house in Fort Pierce, Florida. He and some of his friends had winter homes in Florida. They were from Hammonton, New Jersey, and they all had businesses in Hammonton. Jerry had his business in Hammonton, the Sure Insurance Business.

Chapter 21 FLORIDA CARETAKER

Jerry called me and said he had went to Florida and found a house that was empty, and the church owned it. It needed a lot of work, and he could but it very cheap. He wanted me to come and see it. I wasn’t doing anything, so I packed up my furniture in my van and went to Fort Pierce, Florida. He met me there and showed me the house. It was on a corner, and it had a street in the back of the house and one in the front and one on the side. The house was in bad shape, but with a lot of fixing

So he said, next door to my sister, Annie, there is a house for sale with two apartments, and he would put $5,000 down for me, and I would fix it up, and I would live in one apartment and rent the other apartment. When he retired, he would come there in the winter time. So I went back to Las Vegas, and I went to live with my son Dominick. He met a girl, and they were living in his house. She had a little boy by her first husband. But she didn’t like to live there, so they bought an old ranch house, and they rented the old house. They were both working, and the house was empty, and it was in bad shape, so I painted it. It had a big swimming pool. I cleaned it all up, and I fixed all the water spigots, and it looked real nice.

Jimmy was living all alone. He had moved from Hammonton, New Jersey, about four or five years before. His children were still living in Hammonton. He had two girls and two boys, and they were married.SoI started to clean the house up. It sure was a mess. You could hardly see the house from the street. The grass was about one foot high. I started inside the house, Jerry did all the talking, and he was there about ten days, then he went back to Hammonton. He said whatever I need to fix the house, keep the receipts, and he would come down once a month and give me the money that I wouldJustspend.like

124 NEVER A TEENAGER and cleaning, I could make it look real good. So he said, “What do you think of it?” I said, “It needs a lot of work. About four or five months, and it will look real good.” So he bought the house and made settlement on the 10th of January, 1990, and he paid cash for it, $38,000.Mystepbrother, Jim DeMaio, lived across the street from the house that Jerry bought. But, I didn’t know him or my sister, Annie, too well. I left my family back in 1942 and moved to Philadelphia and now it is 1990, and I’ve only seen them ten or fifteen times in all those years. They were like strangers to me. I stayed at my stepbrother’s house until I got a room fixed, so I could move into the house that Jerry bought.

The house had two bedrooms and a big dining room and a kitchen. I made the car port into a spare room. I put cabinets and a sink and a hopper and a shower in it, and I ran hot water and cold water into it. So I got the inside all done. Then I started of work on the outside. I put two coats of paint on the outside, and I painted the shutters on the windows around the house. I painted the front porch. It was nine foot by 32 foot. I painted the back porch, it was ten foot by ten foot. I cleaned the shed out, it was 40 foot from the house. I put a sink in it, and I ran a pipe under

I said, I didn’t know what Jerry was like, how he turned out to be. I thought he was thinking about me, but he was thinking about Jerry. He said, “Pop, you know why I bought this house? You can fix it up and live in it and just pay for the utilities, the electric, and the telephone, and the TV cables, and take care of the house, and if Bill leaves JoAnn (that’s Jerry’s daughter), she will have a place to stay.” He wasn’t thinking about me, he was thinking about his daughter. But I don’t think Bill will leave JoAnn. They got along very good. I don’t know why he talked to me like he did. He wasn’t the Jerry I knew when I left home. He was sixteen-years-old and now he was 64. I couldn’t figure him out. So I tried to get along with him. I started to fix up the house, but when he came down once a month, I wouldn’t work for two or three days. I wouldn’t do anything because I couldn’t satisfy him. He was like an old lady. He never once said, “Dad, you are doing a good job.” So I cleaned the house up inside, and I put wall to wall rugs, and I put two coats of paint on the inside.

I didn’t have much time to look around Fort Pierce, but when I was done working on the house, I was very much disappointed. Fort Pierce looked like a ghost town. The people weren’t very friendly, and they were all old people. I would get up in the morning, and shower and shave, and I would go out for breakfast and buy a paper and go out to the jetty and read for two or three hours. Then I would stop on the way home, and have something to eat, and go home and look at four walls. There wasn’t much to do in Fort Pierce, and I was getting sick by the day.

125 THE LIFE OF DOMINICK RALPH VITALE, SR. ground from the house to the shed, and I put electric in the shed and water. I put a work bench and cabinets in it, and I painted the inside. The water was trouble, you couldn’t drink it. I had to buy my drinking water. The old water tank was an old 100 gallon tank. So I put a 40 gallon tank in and I changed the pipes. They were all on one side of the house, and they didn’t look right, so I put new pipes under ground. That didn’t help the water problem. I still had to buy my drinking water. I had a large driveway in front of the house, and I cleaned it all up and painted it a dark gray, and I also painted the back sidewalk dark gray.

he would call the Real Estate up and put the house up for sale. So he did put it up for sale. He paid $38,000 for it ,and he put it up for $50,000. He put all new furniture in it. My furniture wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to sell the house with the furniture in it. People buy the

Now I have the house looking like a little mansion. It took me about five months, but now the only thing I have to do is mow the lawn. I painted the fence around the house. I hired a man to mow the lawn for $60 a month. He only mowed it one month, and then I mowed it all the time as long as I was working on the house.

I also ran a water line from the back of the house to the front, and I put all new water spigots so I could water the lawn. I put two new doors on the house and one new screen door. I put two electric plugs on the outside of the house. The front porch was leaking. It was nine by 32 feet. So I put three rolls of 85 gauge on it, and it stopped the leak. I put two drain gutters on the front roof 32 feet long, so the water would run into the street. I put two turbines on the roof, so it would take all the hot air out of the attic.

Jerry would come down about once a month, and I would tell him I didn’t like it here. “It is a ghost town,” I said, “You thought you were doing me a favor, but I’m just a caretaker.” I was living nice in Las Vegas. I had a one-bedroom apartment for $150 a month, and I didn’t have to even change a light bulb, and here I am going crazy. I pay about $125 a month, and I have to mow the lawn, and I have to take care of the house. I worked five months fixing the house, and he never gave me a dollar even for gas to mow the lawn.

So in October, I got sick, and I went to the hospital. They said I had a bad kidney. They took the kidney out, and I went home, and I am thinking, what am I doing here? So I told Jerry I was going back to Las Vegas. I said I would stay until October, and then I am going to leave. I can’t stand it here anymore.Hesaid

This was about noon on Friday, and the girls were coming over about 1:00PM. So I told him to help me put the bed in the van. And I told him how cheap he was. All the work I done, and he says I owed him $40. I left a chair in the bedroom and a TV and a kitchen set and all the kitchen things. I didn’t take anything out of the kitchen. So about 1:00PM, the girls came over. I didn’t tell them what happened. I didn’t want them to get upset, so I kissed them goodbye and left. I should have told them what happened, but they wouldn’t believe me. They thought Jerry was such a nice man. So did I. But after what he did and said to me that day, I don’t want to hear his name anymore. I don’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. I worked over four months fixing the house, eight hours a day. If he paid $5.00 an hour, he would owe me $3,200. That’s not counting the $60 a month for cutting the lawn for 20 months. That would be $1,200 more. That would be $4,400, and he didn’t give me one dollar for all the work I did. I didn’t think he was so cheap.

126 NEVER A TEENAGER house, but the furniture is your problem. He said I am making him lose a lot of money. If he paid $38,000, and he sells it for $50,000, he is making about $10,000 profit. And he didn’t do any work. I did all the work. So I told him I was going to leave on the fourth or fifth of October. He came down and he brought my sister-in-law, Rose Vitale, and her cousin, Rose Malloy, and my ex-wife down with him. Rose Malloy lives in Titusville, Florida. My ex-wife bought a house there in Titusville, and they were coming to Fort Pierce to see me off. They were coming to Jerry’s house and stay over night on Friday.

My sister Ann was going to make homemade spaghetti Friday, and we were going to have sup per there. Then we’re going to go on a boat ride Saturday. So I got up Friday morning, and I started to pack my furniture in my van. I gave Jerry the bills I had. I hadn’t seen him for three months, and I had $132 in bills. He didn’t talk to me. He went into his room, and he was there about two hours. He didn’t help me to pack, so when I was done packing, I only had my bed left and my duffel bag in my bedroom because I was going to leave on Saturday morning. He came out of the room and I said did you figure out the bills, and he turned around like a mad man, and he said you owe me $40. I said you owe me $132. He said I don’t owe you anything. You made me lose a lot of money on this house. He went into my bedroom and got my duffel bag with my clothes in it and he threw it at me and said, “Here, take your clothes and get the hell out of here.”

127

DOMINICK

I am thinking about going back to Philadelphia and spend the rest of my days in Fishtown. I lived there about 45 years, and I know a lot of people there, and I think I will be happy. So I will end my story on this day, November 26, 1991. It is 11:00AM and Thanksgiving Day. I am all alone and 85-years-old. I am in very good shape and have a good mind. I hope to live to be 100 years old, and when I die I want to be cremated. I hope you enjoy my story. It is a true story.

Thank Dominickyou,Ralph Vitale, Sr., in Las Vegas, Nevada Chapter 22 BACK TO VEGAS

THE LIFE OF RALPH VITALE, SR.

Ileft Friday, October 5, 1991 at 2:00PM and I drove to Las Vegas; 2800 miles in 62 hours. When I got to my son, Dominick’s house, I got very sick, and I went to see a doctor, and he put me in a hospital for ten days. I had bleeding ulcers. I’m OK now, and I’m thinking about putting a lean on the house at 209 Tumbling Kling Road in Fort Pierce for $40,000 for the work I did. Just to show Mr. Jerry Vitale he ain’t as smart as he thinks he is.So

I am living in Las Vegas now. I have a one-bedroom apartment. I have one son living in Las Vegas, but I am very lonely, and I don’t know what to do.

Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. in 1994

EPILOGUE Dominick lived for another six years and made a few more trips back and forth between Las Vegas and Philadelphia. He died peacefully, all alone, on March 19, 1997. His ashes where distributed near the Winslow Junction train tracks. Just as they blew across the tracks, a train whistle blew to warn of it’s approach. We like to believe Pop got on board and is still traveling the rails, looking for an adventure. — Russell Vitale, Sr.

TEENAGER THE

NEVER A LIFE & ADVENTURES OF A FIRST GENERATION ITALIAN-AMERICAN BOY

I never was a teenager. Everything went well until Sunday, October 13, 1918 at 10:00AM. I was at the Winslow Junction Station shining shoes when my brother, Joe, came running. He was crying. He was only nine-years-old. He said to hurry up and come home. Mom said dad had died. So I picked up my shoe shine box and ran home to find all my brothers and sister and mother crying. The autobiography of Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. was recorded in his own words toward the end of his life. There are people who would dispute some of the contents, but Pop outlived them all and we are left with his version. Grammar and writing style do not follow established literary standards. Nonetheless, the reader will agree that this autobiography contains a unique representation of the Author, not merely a story. The life story of Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr. is written in his words; dictated and recorded by him, in the vernacular of Dominick Ralph Vitale, Sr.