Some War Years Memories - by Judy

Before my father went over seas they built a house in Munsey Park, Manhasset, Long Guyland. I connect nothing of my life there with my father's being 'at war'. We had a garden too. I have never been able to grow parsley like that in all my years of gardening. We had a gardener at 42 Trumbel Road. I remember sitting with Jan* in the audience while my mother went up on stage carrying Joanne* to accept an award. I still don't know why Joanne got to go and we didn't. { A few years ago I sorted memories with fact and I think what I was remembering was a dedication of a monument to local men who died. I think there is a rock, a bronze plaque, some where in Manhasset.

I too was told when FDR died people lined the Hudson River drinking cocktails while his casket was taken by train up river to Hyde park.

I don't remember the War ending but I have a very weird memory of being down the street at a neighbors house listening to the radio with her mother as they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. I must have made that up. But it is a very vivid memory none the less. I'm not making up that across the street from us on Trumbel Rd, my best friend Carol's father, was Captain Video. I spent the night at her house and got homesick and climbed out the window and went home which Captain Video* discovered when he came up to give us Good Humor. We also stole the lights out of her doll house, she had real electric lights in there. We put them back. We had a great neighbor hood gang called the Robin Hood gang and had metallic disks you got out of a machine that stamped your name on them we hung on string around our neck. Jan was Princess and I was Scout. The Robin Hood name was total cover. What Princess did was liberate candy from the candy dish on the coffee table for everyone. My job was to go around and beat up kids who weren't in the gang.

We had black out curtains, too. I remember stamping on tin cans to get them flat so they could be used to make tanks.

My grandparents lived in Scarsdale too. 114 Potter Road. My grandfather had delicatessens up on the Boston Post Road. Steckler's. I had 13 cousins all about my age and we went there on Sunday for dinner. They had a huge yard to run in. My grandpa used to bring chicken heads and feet home to feed the cats. We'd be rolling around on the lawn and get grossed out by a bloody fly covered chicken head. Oh, such good times.

The hair rollers/curlers were leather covered, padded, and had a heavy wire in them you twisted up around the curl. They'd be Smithsonian treasure now, wouldn't they?
Do more, please, it is all coming back to me now. Did anyone have a Packard?

 

(footnote supplied by Judy in answer to editor's questions)

*Yeah, the real Captain Video. I'm not sure there was just one. I can't for the life of me think of his name anymore maybe something like Hodges or like that. I had two sisters both younger who went to HGHS. Jan is 18 months younger than I am and she graduated in1958 or 9. She went to Elmira to college and got her RN too. She married Bruce Thompson who I think was also in her class. He was two years behind me. The Clintons live in his old house. They live in Katonah and have three children. Always have. Jan just retired after uptiump years at Westchester Medical Hospital and Bruce supervises the Planning and Building Department of the township they live in, starts with a B. I think. Joanne was born in 1943 and was six months old when my father was killed. She graduated in the same class as Dave Lyons and married him in 1962 I think when he came home from Vietnam. Then he got his masters at Columbia and went to work for Corning. He had plants all over the east Coast. They had three children. Joanne died of pancreatic cancer after a three year fight two years ago. I am fascinated by your link to the Judd's. After my mother died MAry and Bob Brooks of Grand Central Railroad and Quaker Road fame, raised Jan and Joanne so we consider the Brooks' our almost real family. Lynda is the fourth sister. Still is.
I just love this web site. thank you so much for doing it.