84d-The Serrapede Family in Brooklyn Early 1950s-Junior and the Dumbwaiter

Introduction

Before the 1980s, when the public became more aware about child abductions, Brooklyn was a borough where most children played outdoors from mid-morning until dinnertime on days when school was not in session.  During the school year, once the children came home, they went outside for a half hour or more and engaged in sports, races or walking up and down the block with their friends.  Homework was done before or after dinner when one or both parents were available to answer questions and review the assignments the children were working on.  That is the way Emily Leatrice and her brother Junior (Sammy) engaged in a healthy balance of physical activities, socializing and schoolwork throughout their childhood and adolescence. 

When the weather was not agreeable to outdoor activities, children found many ways to occupy their time while indoors.  It was during one such day that Junior and a maternal cousin found a new use for a common feature that was widespread in apartment houses at that time.  While they enjoyed using it during their playtime they were unaware of the dangers that accompanied their activity. 

Relationship Notes

Josie and Sam Serrapede lived at 1168 66th Street during the early 1940s through the 1950s.  This 4-family house plays a special role in our family history because it was where Junior grew up.  His sister Emily Leatrice lived here until her marriage in 1950.  Josie encouraged her children to use their imaginations and transform ordinary objects into wonderful toys to pass the time.  She may not have expected just how far this reach would go as we’ll see in our family story.

Junior (Sammy) is the youngest child of Josie and Sam Serrapede.  He is EmilyAnn’s Uncle Sammy.  Only the closest family members and relatives called him Junior.  In Italian his name is Sabbatino, a derivative of his father Sam’s name of Sabato in Italian.

Philomena was Josie’s younger sister, the daughter of Nicola (Nick) and Letizia (nee Scotti)Muro.  At the time of this family story Philomena had already come up to Brooklyn from Wilmerding, PA.  She was married and the mother of one son near Junior’s age. Philomena lived one block away from Josie and on the same block as her sister Rosie.  Rosie was also married by this time with two sons who also visited the Serrapede family.  Philomena was delicate and sometimes sent her son to stay with Josie when she needed rest or was under a doctor’s care.

Family Story:  The Dumbwaiter

This family story took place during the late 1940s – early 1950s.  During this time period, Josie’s younger sister Philomena frequently needed medical care.  Her son came to stay for overnight visits with his Aunt Josie and Uncle Sam when that happened.  Josie’s nephew loved to stay over.  He was a quiet child who enjoyed reading through the volumes that comprised the My Book House collection Sam and Josie purchased for their daughter as a child.  Junior, in comparison, loved to be active in his playtime.  One day the boys went outside of the apartment and found a brand new object of fascination right there in the hallway. 

The Serrapede lived in the back apartment on the first floor of a three story, 6-family house.  There was a dumb waiter in the building which ran from the basement up to the third floor.  Mr. Correnti and his family lived in the front apartment.  He was in charge of all the janitorial duties for the building such as getting the furnace started in the mornings.  He also supervised the use of the dumbwaiter which was used to send the trash down to the basement from the first through third floors.  Mr. Correnti then had to sort through the disposables and organize them prior to putting out for collection by the New York Department of Sanitation. 

84c-Serrapede Family in Brooklyn-1950s-The Paper Boy

Introduction

The image of a newspaper boy riding his shiny bike down a tree-lined street as he flings the paper onto the front porch of a subscriber is one that still lives on in some novels and movies set in the time period of the 1930s through the 1960s.  It also mingles with the images associated with growing-up in the American suburbs during the 1950s.  There were very few girls filling the position during the peak years when young pre-teens and teens worked at delivering newspapers.   At least not until the 1970s. 

The newspaper delivery boy’s job enjoyed a peak period of growth during the 1930s through the 1950s.  The notion that a young boy could earn some spending money by using his bike and time after school had great appeal in the popular culture.  Another image associated with the newspaper delivery boy is that of the courteous housewife, or sometimes husband, who was at home to pay the paper boy the fees when it he came to collect.  The family dog barked sometimes but that did not interrupt the praise and thank you the newspaper delivery boy received for doing a good job.

The popular belief was that being a paperboy was an opportunity to not only make money but to learn responsibility.  This in turn prepared a boy for life in the working world after he graduated high school.  Or so it seems to us now if we base our assessment on the stereotyped images handed down from the pop culture of the past. 

Uncle Sammy worked as a paperboy and what he shared with me was far and away not even close to the idealistic notion conjured up by the images just described, images which even I carry around in my imagination when the phrases “newspaper boy”, “suburbs” and “1950s” comes to mind.  In researching the topic of what working like a newsboy was like, we found a lack of coverage from the 1950s to 1960s.  When any article appeared in a newspaper about paperboys during this time period the coverage was for the most part positive.  Once we started searching closer to the 1980s and onward a substantial amount of information about the experience was available.  Most of it came from former newsboys who are now in the 40-70 year old age range.  Without any hesitation they shared the nitty-gritty about their routes, customers, circulation managers and publishers.  The outpouring took many forms:  interviews by online newspapers, newspapers celebrating their 100th anniversary by soliciting contributions from former carriers, and older men sharing memories of their youth and times they grew up in.

There was a broad selection from newspapers across the country we used to research the topic.  There were also some essays, YouTube videos and photo collections in the search results as well.  To provide a sharp focus for this posting, we decided to extract the experiences that were common to all newspaper boys.  Then we discuss, in the Resources section, how these intersect with Uncle Sammy’s experience.  So that our readers can get into the finer details of the topic, if they choose, the summaries from each reading are included along with the links to websites in the Resources section at the end of this posting.

Relationship Notes

Junior (Sammy, Sabbatino) Serrapede was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1943.  He grew up in the Italian-American section of Dyker Heights where he lived with his parents Sam (Sabato) Serrapede and Josie Muro Serrapede, along with his big sister Emily Leatrice.

Junior became a newspaper boy when he was 12 years old. 

84b-Serrapede Family 1950s: Junior’s Set of wheels (Junior becomes a teenager, Part 2)

Introduction

1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible.  Public Domain.  Photo by Sicnag.  Wikimedia Commons.

In the 1950s America began a romance with the automobile.  Thanks to the growing strength of the American economy at home and the wide variety of manufacturing jobs, an automobile was now within the reach of more Americans than before.  Since more families could afford an automobile, it became easier for teenagers to take driving lessons and use the family car on a weekend when going out on a date.  Other teenagers had cars of their own and used them to get to and from school. Among married couples living in the suburbs it was possible, for those who could afford it, to own two cars.  This enabled the husband to drive to work and left his wife free to use the car for daily errands and taking the children to school.  When a family had only one car, the wife took her husband to the station each morning and picked him up at night.  This was not true in every level of society nor true of every suburban family.  Yet it is an enduring image when the suburbia of the 1950s comes to mind.

Wikipedia has an entry on this phase in popular culture entitled “1950s Automobile Culture”.  Owning a car was part of the experience of upward mobility.  Plus, the expanding network of interstate highways provided Americans with more opportunities to travel.  Another factor increasing the need for a car was the move to the Post-WWII suburban lifestyle.  One could not walk everywhere in the suburbs due to greater distance in some locations between the residential areas and the commercial districts. 

For teenagers, cars became an extension of their personalities, a way to express themselves as individuals.  An entire industry grew up to catering to those who used their car as more than a means of transportation.  The popular image that has come down from the 1950s is that for the teenager the car was a home away from home.  They could enjoy a meal in their car at a drive in restaurant, watch the latest Hollywood film from the car at a drive-in theater, and even romance their steady date in some isolated area the car was parked in. 

While the innocence of drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants are perpetuated in stereotyped images of the “happy days” of the 1950s, there was also a dangerous side in the hot rod and drag racing culture.  It was the flip side of the teenager’s passion for the automobile.

Another pop cultural image that still brings the 1950s to mind is that of the teenage boy and his friends tinkering with an old jalopy in the garage of the family home.  Sometimes a younger brother or group of neighborhood boys were part of the scene, awe struck by the car and the know-how of the older boys.  This scene, though, was not always true for families living in apartments in an urban setting.

Junior did not have a car as a teenager, nor did his friends.  They grew up in small apartments located in multi-family dwellings.  Junior and his friends wanted other kinds of wheels during their pre-teen and early teenage years.  The kinds of wheels they sought out in the late 1940s to mid-1950s often were loads of fun and much less expensive to acquire.  In this story we’ll share Uncle Sammy’s memories of a how he and his friends had a great time by applying some ingenuity, hard work and just a little outlay to make a set of wheels known as a street scooter.

Relationship Notes

Junior was the name Sammy was known as during his childhood and into his early 30s.  Sammy is the son if the late Sam Sr. and Josie Serrapede.  He was born in 1943 in Brooklyn NY and lived with his parents and sister, Emily Leatrice, on 66^th Street until his late teens when the family bought their own house.

Sam, the grocer, owned a small store on the corner of 11^th Ave and 66^th Street near the 4 family house where the Serrapede family lived.  Across the street from Sam’s was the fruit stand where Junior and his friends got the crates used in making their scooters.

Family Story:  Junior gets a set of wheels

Junior grew up in an apartment house.  The experiences and aspirations he and his friends had regarding a desireable set of wheels had nothing to do with cars when they were young.  The boys found a good use for a set of wheels they’d outgrown—their old roller skates.

Junior and a friend went 50-50 on the price of an 8’ long and 2 x 4 (2” high and 4” wide) piece of wood that they bought at a lumber yard.  When they got home they’d get a saw from their Dad’s tools or from a relative or neighbor.  Then they would saw the board in half.

The wheels from the roller skates were then nailed onto the bottom of the 2’ x 4’ board.  Onto the board was nailed a crate.  Junior and his friends got their crates for free from a fruit stand across the street from Sam’s grocery store on 66^th Street and 11^th Avenue.  The crates had contained oranges or other fruit.  Another piece of wood was nailed to the top of the crate to act as a handlebar.

The boys had great fun with their scooters.  Since the crates were not too sturdy it was necessary to replace that part of the scooter every so often.  But Junior and his friends had the 2’ x 4’s with the wheels for what seemed like forever.

When he was a little older, Junior was ready for the next set of wheels sought after by many American pre-teens and teenagers:  the latest and greatest bike by Schwinn.