Family Friday 12 Brookwood Drive and the Candy Store We lived at 12 Brookwood Drive in Maplewood. That address is etched in the minds of every member of my family. To us, it is iconic. These days I like to drive by once a year or so to check it out and see if the Christmas lights my grandfather hung in 1960 are still up. As of the last time, the answer is yes – as you can see in the photo below. My grandmother died in 1990, at nearly 90 years old. That was a very painful chapter in our family’s history, which will be shared at another time. My parents moved out of Brookwood drive in 1990 and when they did we thought seriously of removing the stained glass number “12” that was atop the door on the front porch, but then let it go, and now regret that we didn’t. Thankfully the pretty window is still intact but we would have loved to have it in one of our homes. My grandfather and grandmother bought the house around 1960. It was their pride and joy. It was a two family house that somehow became a three family house, and for all the years my grandmother lived in it there was a related family in at least one of the units. My sisters, parents and I lived with my grandmother on the first floor. Zia Marietta and Zio Donato lived on the third floor with Giovanni and Sabatino before they moved to a house in South Orange. How four people lived in that space I will never know but I do recall there was a closet with a magical murphy bed in it, I think the boys slept there. When Carmela got married she lived on the second floor with her family. Aunt Antonette and Uncle Diones lived on the third floor for a while before they moved to Millburn. Sabatino, when he was all grown up, lived there again, this time on the large second floor unit, with his wife Maryann and their two kids beore building their house in Pittstown. Vinny and Chris lived on the second floor with 3 of their 4 kids before moving to Livingston. The Mastronardi’s lived on the second floor for several years before moving to 13 Burr Road in Maplewood. Even the first floor had more than one family in it when the Russos moved in for a year while their house in Livingston was being built. We were 3 and 4 to a bedroom for that year. I can remember during this time cousin Mikie was 5 years old and living with us and on the first morning of Kindergarten at Seth Boyden his mom, my Aunt Lucy, sent him off to walk to school, but he had no idea how to get there, or what to do when he did get there. He returned home shortly after starting to get clarification from my grandmother as to where he should go. I think he was in tears. He tells that story today and we all crack up at the image of this little boy in a strange town trying to find an elementary school he had never been to, for his first day of kindergarten. There was no “backyard” for us to play in because my grandparents had used up that space for grapevines (to make wine) and tomato gardens (to make gravy) and roses and flowers, (to make pretty). We had one long black top driveway and in the front of the house was a tiny patch of grass that we were never allowed to step foot on. After my grandfather died in 1963 my grandmother ruled this patch of grass with an iron watering hose. She maintained it daily and kept it bordered with a homemade contraption of string, tomato stakes and strips of old sheets hanging from the string. This was all to make sure we kids did not trample on it, or rather, step foot on it. I recall playing outside with my cousins during my First Communion party, me still in my pretty white dress and dress shoes, and the boys throwing a ball around and wrestling each other while the girls ran around making things out of sticks and scotch tape and catching the ball occasionally. At one point I went to run after the ball, which had fallen into the street. I ran after it, lunging over the string-bordered curb, and tripping and falling hard head- first into the street. I got up quickly and felt my forehead and found there were pebbles on it....I looked up to see my cousin Vinny Which One Russo staring at me in shock and fear and telling me to go inside because my head was bleeding. I noticed red blood dripping onto my white dress and I started crying and ran inside. From the top of the steps I could hear laughter and the clinking of glasses and dishes. Once I got to basement level where everyone was sitting around the table my Aunt Antonette looked over at me and immediately started screaming and muttering prayers to a saint as she ran over to hold me to her breasts. Tears soon followed the screams. My Aunt Angie sprang into action to grab our version of a first aid kit, a glass of water from the tap, and administer it to me. I sat hiccuping from crying and trying to sip water while my mother shouted at me, asking me what happened, searching for a band aid, (which we never had), and calling me a ree bam beed. When my grandmother heard my fall involved the lawn she started stomping around angrily and throwing her fingers up in the air. My Aunt Teresa found a mopeen on the table to clean my head and my Aunt Lucy held my head tightly like I was on a stretcher while muttering all right all right, thats enough as my uncles gathered around me, cigarettes in hand, scolding all the aunts for doing the wrong thing, though Im not sure what that was, and threatening the kids that everyone was going home now. A few of my cousins were then sent to the corner store to get some Bandages but it was closed. I went to school the next day with a huge, white segment of a cotton cloth, folded and taped to my head. My teachers almost called 911 thinking I had walked out of an emergency room. Instead they sent me to the nurse who bandaged it in more discreet way. There was one time at 12 Brookwood Drive when we had “strangers” living on the second floor. This was Myra and Mike and their two dogs, Vegas and Duke, a huge Boxer and a bulldog, respectively. Myra and Mike were large people, and they had to travel up the narrow staircase many times a day, up three flights, with their dogs and leashes and whatever else they were carrying. This was not a quiet event. For at least five full minutes 6 times a day we heard the parade of the Step Crawl...leashes hitting each other, steps being taken very slowly, dogs tripping over each other while snorting and barking occasionally, and parcels and bags being moved. The coolest thing about Myra and Mike was what they did for a living. Myra and Mike owned the beloved candy store around the corner called “Elmwood Sweet Shop”. This little store is still there, on the corner of Elmwood and Boyden. The candy store held everything that was great in our world….penny candies, all kinds of licorice, jolly ranchers, ice cream, and the beloved Freeze Pops. When they made the jumbo Freeze Pops we all thought we had died and gone to heaven. Blue fingers and lips were the norm for us after a trip to the candy store. There was also a food counter where you could sit and have a burger but we never did that because my mother said that was onlyfor people who didnt have food at home. Those burgers sure did smell good though. At family gatherings my cousins and I would leave and walk the short walk with our pennies in hand and spend 45 minutes picking out tiny sized Mike & Ikes, Mary Janes, Swizzle sticks, candy dots stuck to paper, milk duds and sugar daddys. Mike patiently let us pick over the candy like we were picking out diamonds, and he never told us to hurry up. We were often sent with 1.50 to buy our parents cigarettes and keep the change…for my mom it was “Taryton 100’s please” which always came with a match book. Can you imagine a 9 year old kid today going into a store alone and coming out with candy dots stuck on paper and a pack of cigarettes? For some reason I remember walking to the candy store early one Saturday morning with my cousin Bobby. I can’t remember much of the context, but I do remember my Grandmother yelling to us to be careful, she felt like the neighborhood had been getting more dangerous, and I commented to Bobby that “I had no idea what she was afraid would happen to which he replied with his usual shot of daily facts and scary tidbits that “most muggings happen early in the morningon days like this”…and suddenly I got really scared and rushed through my candy selections to get home faster. Im sure I wound up with more MaryJanes than I would have preferred, and no Jolly Ranchers. Thanks Bob Miseo.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:47:44 +0000
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