Working class

Review: Hillbilly Elegy

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hillbilly-elegy

Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance. New York: Harper, 2016.

Summary: A memoir of growing up in a troubled family from the hill country of Kentucky in Middletown, Ohio, exploring why so many in the working class are struggling, and what made the difference for the author.

This book caught my attention for a number of reasons. J.D. Vance is an Ohio author. He is a graduate of The Ohio State University, as is my son who is the same age as the author. And a number of reviewers have said this book explains the appeal of Donald Trump. I was interested for another reason. As those who follow my “Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown” posts know, I grew up in a working class, rust belt town as well. On the opening page, he writes, “You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.” That sentence could have been written about my home town.

At the same time, Vance comes from a distinctive sub-culture, the Scots-Irish hillbilly culture of eastern Kentucky, as opposed to the eastern and southern European roots of many of the people in Youngstown, although we had our share of hillbillies who had made their way north to work in the mills. Vance takes much of the first part of this book to describe his family roots–the scrappy, fiercely independent and fiercely loyal to family character of these people who would take a chain saw to someone who insulted their mother, sacrifice to no end for children and grandchildren, and fight like cats and dogs with each other. We learn of his grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, estranged from each other, but who turn a corner when they see how their fighting destroyed their daughter, Vance’s mother, who struggled with alcohol and opiate addiction, lived with a series of men, creating an increasingly unstable home environment for Vance. He describes himself at the edge of the abyss, with declining grades and beginning to abuse substances. He recounts his mother’s episodes of violence, and then the utterly heartfelt apologies, with nothing changing.

The turning point came when his mother came to him to provide her with a urine sample so she could keep her job. He writes:

 “I exploded. I told Mom that if she wanted clean piss, she should stop f***ing up her life and get it from her own bladder. I told Mamaw that enabling Mom made it worse and that if she had put her foot down thirty years earlier, then maybe Mom wouldn’t be begging her son for clean piss.”

From then on, he lived with Mamaw, and describes how life improved. She insisted he study hard and in her own rough way insisted he contribute to the household, do his chores, all, with the hope that he would have a better life. After graduation, he realized that he still didn’t know entirely how to do that, and deferred college to serve in the Marines. Not only did they teach him what he was capable of physically, pushing him harder than he’d ever been pushed; they taught him life skills like balancing a checkbook and handling money. He learned to stop listening to the voices that said, “you aren’t good enough”, the pervasive hopelessness of the working class culture he’d come from. He ended up handling media relations for his base, and receiving a commendation.

He used veterans benefits to go to Ohio State, finished in two years, and gained admittance to Yale Law School. For the first time, he came to understand the importance of social capital. After his first “interview week” he observes:

“That week of interviews showed me that successful people are playing an entirely different game. They don’t flood the job market with résumés, hoping that some employer will grace them with an interview. They network. They email a friend of a friend to make sure their name gets the look it deserves. They have their uncles call old college buddies. They have their school’s career service office set up interviews months in advance on their behalf. They have parents tell them how to dress, what to say, and whom to schmooze.”

A law professor provides him with some of her social capital, and something more, advice at a crucial point putting the focus on a budding relationship rather than a clerkship that really didn’t matter to his ambitions.

The conclusion of the book faces the stark realities of coming back to Middletown, now bereft of its steel plant, its people struggling with not only making it in lower income jobs, but opiate addiction, families in turmoil and more. These are the “left behind” working class to whom Trump appeals. Yet one gets the sense in reading Vance that he doesn’t think Trump, or any politician, can solve their problems, because the unstable lives they’ve chosen, or in the case of children, been thrust into, won’t enable and equip them to keep any jobs that may be gained. It is a crisis of spirit and hope. Vance thinks ultimately that this is a culture which needs to find its own answers, needs to come up with its own Mamaws and Papaws, and culture-renewing institutions. In contrast to other-worldly, insular fundamentalist churches and dysfunctional families, he asks:

“Are we tough enough to build a church that forces kids like me to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it? Are we tough enough to look ourselves in the mirror and admit that our conduct harms our children?”

Vance’s book actually gives us hope. Truth was, he didn’t need a lot of social capital to make the difference. A tough old grandmother who provided stability and structure and expectations that he could make something of himself was enough, at least to get him on the right course. That may seem over-simplistic. And it won’t help everyone. It didn’t help Vance’s mother. But it makes the point that the critical capital in any community is not the capital poured in by public and private means, but the capital of the people who live there, and whether they have the spiritual resources of hope to believe their own choices matter.

Politicians peddle panaceas. I’ve watched them do it in my home town. But the people who have made a difference and created bright spots don’t look to politicians but to God, themselves, and each other, and then put their backs to the hard work of providing role models for kids, and to rebuilding, a neighborhood and a business at a time. I appreciate Vance for naming the illusions to which politicians pander, the realities that defy political solutions, and what made the difference for him–the tough old grandma, the drill sergeant, the law professor, who took the time to provide structure, and counsel, and affirmation. Could it be that it is just that simple, and just that hard?

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Trading Stamps

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By Bill Hathorn – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11219825

Remember trading stamps? S&H Green Stamps, Plaid Stamps, Top Value Stamps, GeM Stamps, Eagle Stamps? These were a fixture of our growing up years. My wife can point to a guitar, an old blue suitcase, and a bowl we use for potato chips that were obtained by redeeming Green Stamps. I remember my folks getting a set of TV trays with theirs, and I have an HO slot car set buried somewhere in our house, the nucleus of which came from trading stamps redeemed for a Christmas gift.

Essentially, these functioned similar to customer loyalty cards and cash back rewards on our credit cards. It was a way by which retails stores, grocery stores, and gas stations encouraged repeat business. We received Plaid Stamps at A & P, Green Stamps at many businesses and gas stations, Top Value stamps at Kroger (when they still did business in Youngstown).

Both of the big downtown department stores gave out trading stamps. I know because one of my jobs in customer service at McKelvey’s (later Higbee’s) was to give out GeM stamps (from G.M. McKelvey) when customers would bring us their receipts. We also redeemed the pink savings books for store cash. Strouss’ had a similar program with Eagle Stamps, from their parent company, May. The challenge was how to tell customers that we could not redeem their Eagle Stamp books at McKelvey’s. And when Higbee’s management decided to discontinue the stamps, we got an earful!

S & H (short for Sperry & Hutchinson) Green Stamps had local “redemption centers”, showrooms where you could see available items and how many Green Stamp books it would take to “trade” for the item. It felt like you had gotten something for nothing when you walked out of a store with an item for which you had exchanged a bunch of stamps that the grocery stores and other businesses gave you automatically. I seem to recall that some of the trading stamp companies also had catalogs from which you could order, paying with your completed books.

One difference from today’s loyalty programs is that when you pasted your stamps into their books, you could immediately see your progress toward the goal of a completed book. These days, you have to check an app or go to a website–the feedback is more virtual than tangible, and carries with it all the data retailers are gaining about our shopping preferences and habits. The old way was far more private–no one knew what you had purchased to get those stamps. All I ever looked at on receipts was the amount someone had spent.

According to Wikipedia, at one time S & H Green Stamps boasted that they printed more stamps each year than the U.S. government. This changed during the recessions of the Seventies as gas stations stopped giving them out during the energy crisis, and stores cut prices rather than give out stamps, or turned more to couponing. Now trading stamps are among the ephemera of a by-gone era.

Do you still have any laying around your house, perhaps hidden away in a drawer? Would love to see your pictures.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Holy Name Church and School

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Photo courtesy of Tom Balog

I learned recently through a post on a Youngstown Facebook group by Tom Balog that the Holy Name of Jesus Church is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. This brought back many memories because Holy Name served as the parish for many of the families in my neighborhood and many of the kids I grew up with.

The Holy Name of Jesus Church is located at 613 N. Lakeview Ave., at the corner of Midland. During most of my growing up years, Interstate 680 separated our neighborhood and the portion of N. Lakeview one block east of us from the church. But many of my Catholic friends talked about going to Mass, taking CCD classes, confirmations and more at Holy Name. My earliest exposure to Holy Name was going to the church festivals held there every summer, enjoying the good food, rides, and games of “skill”, all of which made money for the parish. Even though I was not a member, I made my contribution!

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Photo from 50th Jubilee Yearbook, 1966 (courtesy of Tom Balog)

In junior high and high school, I met a number of students who came from Holy Name School, across the street from the church. It seemed that a number of those in my classes were among the best students in the class. We always heard that the threat was that if you didn’t behave, you could always be sent to public schools!

The Holy Name of Jesus Church was established in 1916 to serve the Slovak Catholic families who moved into the Steelton area of the lower West Side. From a history published for the 75th anniversary celebration, I learned that the parish’s first priest was Father J.A. Stipanovic, a Croat who came from Chicago and quickly learned Slovak to serve the parish! The cornerstone of the church was laid November 5, 1916, and while the building was under construction, the parish met in a former barroom owned by a Jewish landlord. Father Stipanovic was succeeded by Fathers Dubosh and Kocis. Father, later Monsignor Kocis, oversaw the construction of Holy Name School, beginning in 1926 and completed in 1927, and also expansion of the church rectory. Monsignor Kocis died in January 1952.

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Holy Name School, from 50th Jubilee Yearbook, 1966 (photo courtesy of Tom Balog)

He undertook a remodeling of the church during his last years that included a mosaic of Christ the Teacher, stained glass windows telling the story of Christ, a Carrara marble main altar, and Stations of the Cross ceramic statuary of which the molds were broken after their completion so they could not be duplicated. When Bishop Emmet Walsh dedicated the renovation in 1953 he called Holy Name “the gem of the Youngstown diocese” and his “little cathedral.” Though I was not a Catholic, in high school I would sometimes slip into the church when it was open but no mass was occurring, just to sit in the quiet, to take in the magnificence of the building, and the sense of wonder and mystery I rarely had seen elsewhere. I can understand Bishop Walsh’s comments.

Monsignor Stephen Begalla served the parish during the time I and my contemporaries were growing up, until Father Franko took over in 1968 upon Monsignor Begalla’s retirement. He served until 1989. In more recent years as parish numbers declined, the school was closed and sold, and the church became part of Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, consisting of three churches: Holy Name of Jesus, St. Matthias, and Sts. Cyril and Methodius, all of which serve the Slovak Catholic community in Youngstown. Currently, Mass is held at Holy Name at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Holy Name, and the other churches of Our Lady of Sorrows Parish grew up with the working class neighborhoods near the mills and other related industries, serving those of Slovak heritage who moved into these neighborhoods. With the changing demographics of the neighborhoods and the consolidation of the parish one wonders about the future of the churches which served the families of so many people we grew up with. Perhaps they will re-conceive their mission in light of the needs of the current residents in what were formerly their parish boundaries. Whatever may be, I want to extend my own congratulations to Holy Name of Jesus Church on its 100th anniversary for serving the spiritual, social, and educational needs of generations in the area in which I grew up.

Boh ti žehnaj (God bless you)!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Washington School

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Mahoning Youngstown Washington

Washington School. Source unknown, reproduced from Old Ohio Schools website: http://www.oldohioschools.com/mahoning_county.htm (no attribution given)

Labor Day marked not only the end of summer but the beginning of a new school year. I grew up on North Portland Avenue on the lower West side. For my first seven years of school (1959-1966), this meant walking down the street to Washington School, at the corner of North Portland and Oakwood Avenue. My mom bought our house while my dad was in the service during World War II and she and her father chose it to be near the school.

Washington School was an old building even when I started school. The original part of the building was built c.1912 with possible additions in 1914 and somewhere around 1918-1920 when longtime superintendent of schools N. H. Chaney retired (from whom Chaney High School got its name). At that time, there was a twenty room addition in process. The building formed a giant L and my hunch is that the side facing N. Portland was built first. The east-west wing connecting to the south end of the wing on Portland was probably built later. There was a drive or alley between the school and houses on Portland and Lakeview Avenues.

Like so many of these old school buildings, Washington had big windows, high ceilings, wood floors in the classrooms and steam heat that heated classrooms through radiators. No doubt there were huge amounts of asbestos and lead paint (how did we survive?). There were two floors of classrooms. The school office was just inside the front entrance off of Portland. There was a basement with a cafeteria. What I most remember about the basement was the PTA Bazaars that were held there every year. When I was young I looked forward to those bazaars because they sold small toys, candy and would also have prizes.

School assemblies and class pictures would take place in the auditorium which was way down in the sub-basement. It seemed like we would descend endless flights of stairs whenever there were one of these functions. I think this was also one of the places we would go for civil defense drills (this was the era of the Cuban missile crisis).

The playground was located on the inside of the “L” filling the space bounded by Oakwood and North Lakeview. The playground and the sides of the building bordering it looked out over the steel mills as well as an entrance ramp to I-680 off of Oakwood, once this was built. Many of us might look at those mills and think of fathers or relatives who worked there or of the expectation at the time that someday we might work there. I still have memories of dodge ball, kick ball and all the other games we played. In the summers, my friends and I would play baseball there, until we had matured to the point that we were constantly knocking the ball onto Oakwood or the freeway.

What I most remember is all of the teachers I had and the foundation of a good education they gave me. Kindergarten was Mrs. McDermott. I missed about half of that year due to repeated illness, until I had my tonsils out. First and second grade were Mrs. Smith who could be stern but really cared and recognized even then that I loved to read. Third grade was Mrs Fusek. Between her and the school nurse they figured out that I was seriously near-sighted and needed glasses. Miss Adamiak was my fourth grade teacher. I particularly remember her love of science, and sitting in her classroom in November of 1963 when the announcement came over the PA that President Kennedy had been shot. Mrs. Vidis was our fifth grade teacher. She was strict and tough and when she saw I was being lazy pushed me to work harder and up to my ability. In sixth grade, I had Mrs. Welch, who was somewhat thin and wispy but could control a class of rambunctious pre-teens. For some reason what I most remember of that year was a unit we did on the United Nations.

Miss Stage was the principle during much of the time I was at Washington. She was a formidable gray-haired woman and you didn’t want to be sent to the office. Discipline was strict, you walked in lines to cafeterias and bathrooms but under it all, I had the sense of having teachers who really cared about teaching us and giving us what we would need to succeed in life. I also remember Mr Kollar, the custodian, who kept the heat on in that old school and kept it spotless. That must have been hard work!

The site where Washington School once stood is now a gently sloping field. In 1964, there were 26,000 baby boom students in Youngstown schools. With declining enrollments, Washington School was closed sometime around the early 1980’s, and I believe the students who would have attended there were sent to West Elementary or Stambaugh. For a time there was talk of it being turned into apartments but I suspect the costs would have been prohibitive. The windows were broken and boarded up. For a time, it continued to serve as the neighborhood precinct as a room off of Oakwood was opened for voting. Finally, the heating became unreliable and that, too, ended and the building was torn down, like a number of other schools.

While I was saddened to see the school go, I understood. Times had changed. It was too expensive to operate with inefficient heat and other problems. One could dwell on this, but I prefer to remember the good teachers, the classmates, and experiences that made this a good place when I was there.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Midway Memories

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DiRussos

Father and son at DiRusso’s

The 170th Canfield Fair starts next Wednesday. And hearing of this brings back memories that stretch from childhood until the early years of our son’s marriage. I wonder if it is like this for you:

  • Going to the fair as a child and seeing all the lights at night, particularly from the top of the ferris wheel and experiencing a whole new sense of wonder.
  • Seeing real live farm animals, smelling them, and realizing they don’t have the same sense of privacy we do when they pee and poop!
  • Having my first footlong hotdog, having never heard of such a think but thinking, “what a wonderful idea.”
  • Going to the fair with a girl and trying (and not usually succeeding) to win her a prize in the games of skill. Eye-hand coordination was never my strong suit.
  • Strolling the midway with a girl, sharing a cup of fair fries drizzled with vinegar.
  • Working one year in college at an old-time evangelist’s booth showing the curious these glass boxes designed to foster the fear of hell so they would turn to Jesus. I still like encouraging people to “turn to Jesus”, but decided this was not the way I wanted to go about it.
  • Going to some of the grandstand shows. I remember seeing the Beach Boys one year, Kenny Loggins another, and countless tractor pulls. Can we say “deaf”.
  • Then there were all those vendors under the grandstand. We would get a can of carpet cleaner from one of them that really worked!
  • For many years, we used the fair for an annual reunion with college friends. We started when our kids were in strollers and this went until our kids were getting married.
  • We always had to stop at DiRusso’s for an Italian Sausage sandwich. And once my son’s stomach could handle it, he joined the fun.
  • For a period of time, we could buy the kids a ride wristband and turn ’em loose for a few hours so that we could look at some of the exhibits like the art show and various 4-H exhibits that they would consider b-o-r-i-n-g.
  • Speaking of the art exhibit, the fair was responsible for my wife showing one of her paintings in public for the first timed, at the urging of our artist friend.
  • We grew up in the city but it was amazing to watch young boys and girls ride horses and put them through their paces competing for various ribbons. Then we’d walk through the barns and see them caring for these animals, sometimes sleeping in an adjacent stall or a trailer and being impressed with how responsible they were.
  • I think I always loved the nights the most, with all the lights of rides and stands. There seemed to be a haze over the midway–a combination of all the things being fried and the humidity of a late summer night.

The Fair was always the last fling of summer for us. School didn’t start until after Labor Day back then. Even as adults, the Fair marked the end of the easier pace of summer as our kids started back to school, and everyone got back from vacation at work. I think for all of us around Youngstown, it was, and still is for those who live there, the last big celebration of summer.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Elephant Ears

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Elephant ears with different toppings. By Arge300exx (Own work) [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I don’t know about you but as Canfield Fair time approaches, I find myself hankering for an elephant ear, or at least a few bites of one! This was always the perfect snack food for an afternoon at the fair. You could stroll down one of the midways with your friends and share one of these all around. The light, crispy fried dough with sugar and cinnamon on top was absolutely delectable, and after you finished the ear, there was the finger licking! And there was always enough to go around for at least four of you, and if you wanted more, someone else in your group could buy.

I never worked at one of the concessions, but I can only imagine that this was hot work, rolling out dough and pulling ears out of the frying oil. I also suspect that it was pretty hard to avoid a few burns, hopefully none severe. God bless those folks who worked all day to serve us up such tasty fair food.

Of course there are a number of recipes online for how to make these at home. Here is a video from AllRecipes posted on YouTube. My mouth was watering just watching them make this. I liked the idea of 6 tablespoons of shortening or butter in this recipe (and then more butter on top of the fried dough which helps the sugar and cinnamon mix to stick).

This is another one of those foods that goes under a variety of names. At the Canfield Fair, you wouldn’t know what people were talking about if you called them anything other than elephant ears. But they are also called fried dough (which is what they are but not particularly imaginative), doughboys, fry bread, scones (unlike the scones I’m familiar with), flying saucers (I can see that), beaver tails, buñuelos, and pizza fritte. I kind of like beaver tails but wonder if they are shaped differently to look more like a beaver tail.

After you finished the elephant ear, it was time to wash it down with a lemon shake-up (more sugar!).  Together, they made for the perfect treat on a hot fair afternoon, not too heavy on the stomach for all those rides, and not to hard on the wallet either.

If you make it to the Fair this year, eat an elephant ear for me!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — The Dog Days of Summer

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Sidney_Hall_-_Urania's_Mirror_-_Canis_Major,_Lepus,_Columba_Noachi_&_Cela_Sculptoris

Canis Major as portrayed on a set of constellation cards printed in London c. 1825, by Sidney Hall. Image available from the U.S. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

 

We’re in the middle of the “dog days of summer” right now. It’s those days where it is so hot and humid that you can work up a sweat sitting still. If you leave the A/C at all (and many of us growing up in Youngstown didn’t have A/C) you were sticky and sweaty five minutes after your last bath or shower.

Many of us think of “dog days” as days were all our dogs would do is lay in the shade and pant. And while that is true, and making sure that our dogs and other pets get enough fluid and are NEVER left unattended in a vehicle, the name has nothing to do with the four legged creatures we call pets, but rather one that roams the heavens, the constellation canis major or “The Great Dog”, whose most visible star, Sirius, or the “dog star” rises just before the sun in the period of late July to about mid-August. The term comes from the association between this star and the time of the year that is often the most sultry in many northern countries.

The “dog days” were often those when it felt like you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. A haze seemed to descend on the Mahoning Valley. We could see much of the Mahoning Valley from the second floor back windows of our house. During the “dog days” the features of the Home Savings building, Stambaugh Auditorium, and other landmarks we could see all got kind of soft and fuzzy. When there was no breeze, these were the days of pollution alerts when some people had difficulties breathing.

Those were the days I tried to spend as much time as possible at Borts Pool. Usually the pool was packed, as were all the Youngstown pools. I don’t think I realized then how blessed as kids we were. Most of our parents didn’t have the luxury of an afternoon at the pool. The guys in the factories and mills had it worst. My wife speaks of how her dad would take salt tablets and how his shirts would be stained from sweat after a shift at General Fireproofing. And our moms probably didn’t have it any easier if they had to do housework in a home without A/C.

I know I hated delivering papers on those days, having a canvas paper sack and the newspapers slung over my shoulders, sometimes two if it was a Wednesday paper with lots of ads. My shirt would be drenched by the time I was done and it was everything I could do to keep the papers from getting damp as well.

Those were the days when an ice cold glass of lemonade would taste especially good–probably the nearest thing we had back then to Gatorade. And often back then, it wasn’t from mixes but made with real lemons and plenty of sugar. Probably not the greatest for our teeth, but who was thinking of teeth in that weather!

Sometimes we beat the heat at movie matinees at the Schenley Theater. Theaters advertised their air conditioning, which sometimes may have been more of a draw than the movies! Double features were even better because you could spend a whole afternoon in blissful air conditioning.

The evenings may have been the worst when you tried to get to get to sleep. Often it wouldn’t cool down that much because the humidity held the heat. You might try sleeping on a porch to catch any breeze. We had a fan, but on nights like this, it seemed you just lay there with as little on as possible and prayed for any movement of air to cool you enough to drop off to sleep. There might have been a few hours of early morning where it sort of got comfortable.

I think the only thing that probably got us through sometimes was remembering that it was better than shoveling a foot of snow, and the gray, cold days of winter. And, at least in early August, we weren’t in school!

I’d love to hear your “dog days” memories and how you beat the heat!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Papa’s Garage

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Garage

The garage my father-in-law designed and built (photo courtesy of my wife!).

Some time back I wrote a post here on “Mama’s Kitchen” recognizing the 1948 kitchen that was being opened at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s Tyler History Center that reflects the kitchens of many of our youths. It occurred to me recently that maybe we need a “Papa’s Garage” to go along with this.

Garages were not a given when many of our parents bought their homes and most of them, if they existed were not attached in the older neighborhoods where houses may have been built before cars were in every driveway. That was the case when my wife’s parents bought their home. Her father designed and built, with the help of his brothers, the garage at his home, and then the brothers used that design and built garages at their homes as well. A friend of mine, who has done some construction work saw that garage forty years later and said that he thought it was built better than most houses! My wife and her parents lived on a busy street and so her dad designed the garage with a porch off one side, extending the roof over the extended slab of concrete laid for the garage floor.

With my parents, there was a garage but it was at the bottom of a hill, following the lay of the land for our part of the West side. My dad and my grandfather literally jacked up the garage, built a foundation underneath and added fill to raise it four to five feet. I can only imagine how hard they worked on that, which is before I was on the scene. But I heard about it.

What I do remember from when I was a kid was that my job was to open the garage doors (two opposing doors with hinges on the side) for my dad 10 minutes before he got home at night. In later years, those doors became my nemesis when we would play baseball in the backyard and they would get in the way of a stray fly ball, sometimes resulting in a broken window. At a certain point, my dad looked at me and said, “you’re old enough to break it and so you’re old enough to fix it.” I’d have to take my allowance money, go to the hardware store with the measurements for the window and have them cut me one, and then clean out the old putty, put in the glass and put in new putty. It was not too long after that that we moved the games somewhere else!

Garages served a number of functions beyond just a place to protect the car from the elements. Some guys had workshops in the garage. They ran power to the garage, had workbenches, and often well organized pegboards of tools as well as their power equipment. Those garages often had the smell of sawdust.

Then there were the garages that were primarily for storing all the lawn furniture and garden tools. There was this mix of earthy smell and gas from the lawn mower. Some were also well organized, and some were more helter-skelter.

My one grandfather specialized in the garage as museum with mementos of all his travels. There were maps, placards, matchbooks, flyers, even unopen soap bars from motels! It smelled a bit musty and dusty. It was fun to look around but you had to be careful not to brush up against his beloved 1961 Chevy Impala!

Then there were the garages that were auto repair garages. These smelled of oil and gas and exhaust fumes and solvents–kind of like the repair garage down the street. It wasn’t unusual to have a car up on jack stands or sitting there with the hood open while the dad was tinkering with the carburetor (remember carburetors?), the choke, changing the plugs, and adjusting the timing.

I do remember one other use for garages. They were the place where a group of guys who had learned three chords and had a drum set could try to put together the next great rock band. Hence the term “garage bands.” Most lasted a week or two but a few succeeded.

Of course some garages were all of these things and some were none of these but rather the overflow storage from the house. These were the ones were no car was parked. It sat in the drive or on the street. I still see this and kind of scratch my head–but to each his or her own!

What I think garages represented in working class neighborhoods was a place where do-it-yourself-er dads did their thing. For many this was by necessity. For some, it was probably a bit of a refuge. In some cases, garages were just a place to store the stuff you needed to care for the outside of the house and the yard and to shelter the car. In most cases they represented in some way or another the “work” in working class.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Tomatoes

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(c) Robert C. Trube, 2016

Backyard gardens were a commonplace in working class Youngstown. In the Depression-era and in strike times, they were an essential for feeding the family, and a help with the grocery budget at other times. And one of the staples of the backyard garden was the tomato patch.

I’m thinking of this because my tomatoes are just coming ripe right now (I know there is someone out there who probably has beaten me by several weeks!). There was nothing to compare to tomatoes fresh off the vine. Big Boys and Beefsteaks were the perfect thing for tomato sandwiches. My dad used to toast some bread, slice up tomatoes along with thinly sliced onions, and a bit of pepper and it was heaven between two slices of bread.

There were so many different ways you could use tomatoes fresh off the vine. A juicy tomato slice made hamburgers off the grill even better. Cut up in wedges with cucumbers, onions, and some oil and vinegar, with a bit of salt and pepper, and maybe some sugar and chilled, they made for great salads on a hot summer day when you weren’t too hungry. Cherry tomatoes were a great addition to lettuce salads with their candy-like bursts of flavor when you bit into one. Green tomatoes could be fried up, especially at the end of the season when you were cleaning off the vines before the first frost. Here’s a website with lots of recipes for fried green tomatoes.

Not everyone did it, but you usually had someone in the neighborhood that gardened in a big way and not only grew tomatoes to eat fresh but also to can to make sauces for spaghetti and other pasta dishes. In this case the plum or Roma tomatoes were the favorite tomato because they were thick and meaty, great for sauces. This is probably why the sauces were so good. I had friends whose basements were lined with shelves of sauce and other things their moms had “put up” for the winter.

The tough thing about growing your own tomatoes is you discovered how tasteless the store-bought ones were, or most of those served in restaurants. These breeds were developed when tomatoes started being shipped long distance and they were bred for firmness so that they would have minimal damage in shipping. Perhaps one of the good things about the movement toward locally grown food is that we are getting back to food that is probably healthier and tastes far better.

When those first tomatoes came, mid-July or so, you couldn’t wait to eat them. By mid-August, if you had a garden of any size you were overwhelmed and were giving them away to anyone who would take them–along with zucchini, peppers, and other vegetables. Then you reached the tail end of the season where you started treasuring anything that came out of the garden and storing partially ripe tomatoes in a cold place in the basement to see how far into the autumn you could extend your harvest. And if you had a particularly tasty tomato that wasn’t a hybrid, you saved the seeds for next year’s garden.

I’d love to hear about your favorite ways to use all those tomatoes out of the garden. And talking about all this has made me hungry for a tomato sandwich. I think I might just make me one!

 

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Stambaugh-Thompson’s

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Stambaugh-Thomposn

Growing up, when my dad needed something from the hardware store, we would probably go up to the old Cleverly’s Hardware on Mahoning Avenue and N. Hazelwood. I remember it as an old, wood-floored store with a patina of dust on everything. You just had to tell one of the guys, usually Mr. Cleverly, what you needed and he would take you to it and weigh out what you needed if it was nails or nuts and bolts or find the right amp fuse for the one that had blown at home (remember fuse boxes?). I think we shopped there because we lived next door to one of the Cleverly’s until he was in ill health and sold the house.

The premier place to go for hardware around Youngstown was Stambaugh-Thompson’s. Stambaugh’s started out at 114 West Federal Street in 1846. The store became Stambaugh-Thompson’s in 1887. They had a couple major fires at this location including one in 1904 that set off ammunition on the third floor.

Stambaugh’s led the way in opening a number of stores, including ones on the south side in the plaza on Youngstown-Poland road, the west side on Mahoning Avenue, one in the Uptown area as well as other stores. In more recent years, they opened a large store at South Avenue and Route 224 in Boardman. One of the things that seemed to set Stambaugh-Thompson’s apart from the old-fashioned stores like the one my dad always shopped at when we were young was that they were big, well-lit, and had a much larger selection of items in clearly marked departments. My wife remembers going to the store on Youngstown-Poland Road and that it had a main floor and basement levels.

What fueled the growth of these stores was this expansion into the suburbs, and the fact of so many people who had grown up in the Depression years “do-it-yourself-ing.” My father-in-law and his brothers built his garage, and then used the same plan to build ones for each other. You needed a new bathroom? Many plumbed them and did the work themselves. A new addition? Maybe you got a contractor for some work and then did the finish work yourself. All of this meant lots of trips to the hardware store.

My last trip to Stambaugh-Thompson’s was probably some time in the early 1990’s to help my mother-in-law buy a new lawn mower for her yard. We bought it from that shiny new store in Boardman. By then, I think they were just calling themselves Stambaugh’s. My mother-in-law was an amazing lady who took care of her home until she was 84 when she was diagnosed with cancer. She would arrange with friends to take the mower in each year to have the blades sharpened and the mower tuned up. We inherited that mower in 1998, an MTD self-propelled mower with a Briggs & Stratton engine and I literally used that mower until the wheels fell off a few years ago.

I loved going to that store–whether it was for power tools, gardening implements, paint, hardware, you name it. Even though I was living out of town in a big city, I thought the store got it just right. So I was saddened when I heard that the chain of twenty-six Stambaugh stores went bankrupt in 2000. I don’t know what the reasons were and could not find this in my online searches but I suspect it was the competition from big national chains like Lowe’s and Home Depot. At any rate it meant the disappearance of one more of those iconic names in Youngstown history.