THE WAY IT WAS

By Harry E. Berndt

 

She was only about five feet four or five. She had steel blue eyes and straight gray hair cut short, and she was a little on the fat side. She also had a loud voice, which seemed to add to her size. I was never able to put my finger on it, but there was something about Annie G that demanded great respect.

 

She was always called Annie G, rather than Annie Gunners or just plain Annie. It sort of set her off in a way that just plain Annie never would. Some people would call her Mrs. Gunners, of course, but not friends or relatives. All were in awe of her. Annie G seemed less respectful, but more intimate. An example of this respect or power is the time she stopped a petition from being signed. A neighbor came to the door one day with the news that a "nigger" family was going to move into a house down the street. Wouldn't Annie G sign a petition to keep them out? Annie G said that she would take care of the petition and took it from the woman, who more or less bowed to her judgment. Annie G got on the phone and called every person whose name appeared on the petition and said things like "Oh, I just knew that you would never want your name associated with such meanness," or "you know Urban you've had my support all these years." Urban was the mayor, and she had him and everyone take their names off. She told me then that if she ever heard me use the word nigger she'd beat the hell out of me. I wasn't to say hell either until I was old enough to earn my own living. The new neighbors, the Wills, were Annie's friends forever after that, for somehow they heard what Annie G did. That was my first lesson about race.

 

The Wills had two boys, Marcus who was older and the younger boy whose real name I never learned, but they called him Tappie, and I learned about race from them. I learned mostly from Marcus, because I always looked up to him. He was about three years older than I and Annie G used to have Marcus run errands and do things around the place. She trusted him in a way she never would trust me, no matter how old I was. Every Saturday Annie G would give me and Marcus money to go to the Princess Theater to see the Saturday cowboy movie and the serials such as Tailspin Tommy, Clyde Beatty, and Buck Rogers. The cowboys were Hoot Gibson, Bob Steel, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard and a host of others. We each got ten cents for the movie and five cents for ice cream.

 

Mr. Kramer owned the movie house and always took tickets on Saturday mornings. Kids under six could get in free if they were with their folks or with a big brother. Marcus would buy one ticket and when we went into the theater Mr. Kramer would say to me "who is this boy?" I would tell him that it was my big brother. "Oh, yes," Mr. Kramer would say, "I see the resemblance." In this way we were able to have at least two ice creams each. I say at least because our favorite things were klondikes, which were purchased at the Islay store. We could get a free one if we had one that had a pink center. There were two kinds of klondikes, vanilla and chocolate. We would always order vanilla first, open the wrapper and check where the chocolate coating might be chipped a little to see if it showed pink. If not, we would say that we really wanted a chocolate klondik, and this way we had two chances each to get a free one. When winning we would take a free card, which could redeem a klondike at some future time. We finally had so many cards for free klondikes that we never had to pay for one.

 

Marcus was good at everything and he taught me how to play baseball and football, the only real sports in our opinion. He taught me how to play mumbly peg and root-the-peg, buckety-buck, leapfrog and many other games. Mumbly peg is played with a penknife and involves throwing the knife into the ground from different positions on the body. Root-the-peg was just mumbly peg with the addition that the loser of the game had to root a matchstick out of the ground with his teeth. Each player got to hit the matchstick three times with eyes open and three times with eyes closed. The purpose was to drive the matchstick into the ground so deep that the loser had to get a mouth full of dirt to get the matchstick out. Usually Leon Shill and Richard Mason were the losers. They were friends but not best friends like Marcus and I.

 

For Buckety-buck you needed at least six or eight players, making up two teams. You needed someone who could act as post, which was sort of referee. One team would bend over, each member making a back and resting his shoulder on the buttocks of the boy in front of him. The other team would leap in the air and land on the backs of the team that was down, with the purpose of causing them to cave in. If they did not cave in, the team on top would say, "buckety-buck, how many fingers up." The captain of the down team would have to guess the number of fingers the captain of the up team held up. The post would verify the number. If the guess was right, places were exchanged. If not, the process started over again. The idea of the game was to find one guy to hit, and have everyone on the up team leap on his and one another's backs to cause him to cave.

In leapfrog, each player would jump from a point called the cut-point. The one who
jumped the shortest distance would be down and would make a back that is bent at the waist for the other players to leap over. He would pick from the players one boy to act as the cutter. Each time the cutter went over his back he advanced forward to the point where the cutter landed. Every player would then have to leap over from the cut mark. If any failed, he would then be down and the process would start over. The only thing was that the cutter had to be successful or he would be the one to make a back.

Annie G was a great shopper, and used to take the train into Pittsburgh two or three times every week so that she could shop. She shopped for everyone in the family. She shopped for all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and in-laws, and for her friends as well. She went to stores like Kaufmanns, Horns, Rosenbaums, Gimbels and Sacs, and in each store she had special salespeople. They were all women of course, and they would put special bargains away for her. As I grew up, all my hats were bought from one special woman, as were my suits, my shoes, and gloves, shirts and underwear. When I finally left town, I had to go to each of the women to say goodbye and get a goodbye kiss.

When I went to Pittsburgh with her, Annie G would give me a dollar, drop me in the toy department at Kaufmanns and go about her business. She would come back and get me when she moved to another store, where she would drop me in the toy department while she shopped that store. In those times, it was not unusual to find children playing with the toys in the large department stores. Sometimes, I would wander out into downtown Pittsburgh and look into stores, bars, movie houses, and even look at the pictures at the burlesque house. Maybe I would get some ice cream or a white castle hamburger across from Pennsylvania station, and then go back and sooner or later we would find one another.

Sometimes we would go to Horn's Tearoom for lunch, where I would have scallops and then mints afterwards. At the entrance to Horn's Tearoom there was a parrot on a perch that actually would say, "Polly wants a cracker."

When walking from one store to another, Annie would sometimes display her authority as we crossed streets. She had a balance problem and walked with a cane, which she shook at cars that would dare move in her direction as she crossed the street. It was her position that once she put her foot off the curb she had the right-of-way and traffic would just have to wait until she crossed. Walking with Annie was a test of wills, hers and the drivers of cars. When all the stores closed and we had dinner, we would take the last train back to Glasstown.

In addition to Annie G. and me, the household consisted of two men, my grandfather and Uncle Jack, who was really not my real uncle but after whom I was named. In fact, Jack was not a blood relative. The story was that he came to live with them to get back on his feet after a business failure. He just never left. I always wondered whose friend he was, because Jack and my grandfather never seemed to be friendly. In fact, they were never together. Neither of them had much to say about anything that I knew about. Annie G was the boss.

My grandfather's name was George. He worked at the window house, where it was purported that he had invented many improvements for making window glass. Although we lived in the same house, I seldom saw my grandfather. He rarely had dinner with the family, and almost never spoke to me. He once gave me a penny and told me that he would give him another if I kept it for a week.

My grandfather was tall, well over six feet, and he was thin to the point of almost being gaunt. He did not smoke or drink, although he had tried both at one time or another. It was told about him that he tried everything once and that was that. He tried flying once, went to Europe once, and even went to a whorehouse once. He would not have a car, after one of his daughters was killed in an auto crash, so he walked everywhere. Of course, that was no great chore in Glasstown, especially since he only went from his house to the factory and back. I was told that my grandfather was very witty and brilliant. To me, he seemed very strange and distant.

If there was a male influence in my life it was Uncle Jack. In fact I was often referred to as Jack's kid, not meaning his natural son but rather his kid in the sense that we were always together and liked one another. My mother, who lived and worked away from home used to call Jack our Dutch uncle. Jack was always there for whatever I needed or wanted. He never said no.

Jack took me everywhere with him. When I was very little, before I started school, Jack would take me to Manards Speakeasy down on Third Street. He would put me on a high stool, give me a hat full of nickels, and let me play the slot machine. Jack would usually sit with some ladies and drink and talk. He drank his whiskey neat and followed it up with a beer chaser. In those days a whiskey and beer chaser cost 15 cents. Mr. Horn, Jack's best friend, usually kept me in root beer and peanuts, not to mention the free lunch that was laid out at the end of the bar. The free lunch included all kinds of meats; corn-beef, roast beef, ham, goose-liver, and different kinds of cheeses. My favorite was Swiss cheese on rye bread, covered with hot mustard. I thought the speakeasy was the most elegant place in the world and the free lunch the best treat. What were really elegant were the spittoons and the foot rail that ran the length of the bar. They were high polished brass. You could see your face in the spittoon if you were little and could get down to one of them.

Eventually Jack would have enough and we would head for home holding hands and staggering from one side of the sidewalk to the other. There was always hell to pay when we got home, but it was worth it. When we got to the end of our street, Jack's dog Zip would generally be waiting. If Jack was particularly drunk, that is more than usual; Zip would put his tail between his legs, hang his head, and walk in front of us like he didn't know us. When things were more or less ok, he would walk next to Jack and wag his tail the whole way home.

The best thing Jack and I did together was go to Forbes Field to the Pittsburgh Pirate's games. Jack had a box and was a high roller. He knew all the players, which made me feel very important. This was before lighted fields so the games were all in the afternoon. One or two of Jack's cronies would always be along. Most of the time we would all go to twilight game in Glastown after the Pittsburgh game. The Pirates had a farm team there, the Glastown Pirates.

Every summer Jack's factory had a picnic. It was always held in a grove outside of town. It was the kind of picnic where everyone drank and ate too much. Jack usually would play pinochle with friends and have me go after pails of beer and hot dogs. Each time I got a pail for Jack, I would drink part of it. Jack would never know the difference, but when we would get home both would of us would be pretty drunk and Annie G. would raise holy hell.

The highlight of the picnic though was the greased pig contest and the tug of war. The tug of war was held over a large pool of mud and the purpose was to pull the other team into the mud. Usually both teams would end up muddy. The tug of war teams were usually made up of men from different parts of the factory, usually one from the pressing crew, that is the mold pullers and pressers, and one from the glass blowing crew.

The greased pig contest was a free-for-all. Whoever caught the greased pig got to keep it and a ten-dollar prize. It was really something to see everyone jumping at the pig as it ran around the field. Kids were the major chasers, but it was always a grown man who caught the pig. Kids did better on the greased flagpole contest, at least the older boys. Again, a ten-dollar bill would be taped on the top of a flagpole, the flagpole greased about three or four feet below the top, and whoever was able to climb beyond the barrier got the ten dollars. I tried that every year while I was growing up, but never made it beyond the greased area.

These were the hey-days of my life and nothing would ever seem so right again. Even though the depression was in full bloom, for me these were days full of play and fun and, though I often saw people who were having hard times, these days were for me the best. I saw hoboes and gypsies and people who were poor, but they remained distant from the main currents of my life.

Glasstown was right on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad and in the middle of the great American factory system. All along the road from Pittsburgh were steel mills, foundries, machine shops, and all manner of manufacturing plants. Glasstown was, as suggested by the name, the center of glass manufacturing with seven or eight glass factories, along with machine shops, a brewery, a foundry, several other factories, and coal mines in the surrounding area. Between the factories, mines, and the railroad, there was not an inch of air that did not contain soot or filth of one kind or another. It was impossible to walk a block without having soot or dirt get on your face or clothes. This was especially true in what was called "down-town" and on the South Side and West End, where most of the factories were. These were also the areas of town where blacks, Italians, and others with foreign sounding names lived, as they were also the factory workers.

The high school was also located on the South Side, right next to a factory and close to downtown. It had all the appearances of a factory, and the transition from high school to factory was easy. It was the lot of most of the students. Only star football players and a few of the more fortunate went on to college. For the rest, it was the factory. Mostly the glass factory, where they expected to work, and for most of them it was probably where they would spend most of their lives.

Many of the boys started working in the factories while still in school. I used to catch turns at one of the factories, the Victory Glass Company, when I was about thirteen. Catching turns was a term used to describe pick-up employment. You weren't considered an employee of the factory and there was no real record of your ever having been there. The way it worked was that you would sit with a bunch of other boys and men outside one of the open entrances to the factory, and the foreman would come out and choose several to work the shift. The foreman would pay cash out of his pocket at the end of the shift, so there was no record of those who caught a turn that shift.

I would try to catch a turn on Fridays, because Friday was payday and there were always those who got their pay early and would be too drunk to work. When I first tried to catch a turn, I found the factory a very scary place. It was hot, with smoke and fire which seemed to be everywhere and there was so much noise that I often found it hard to hear what the foreman was telling me I was to do. My first job was "Carry-in Boy", which involved carrying a pan of pressed glass over to the leer, a conveyer belt that carried the glass from the factory area to the packing area. The belt moved slowly and the heat was reduced in the leer as it went along. The Carry-in Boy was the low man on the totem pole and was usually the butt of all the jokes and pranks, some of which were dangerous. The Gatherer gathered the molten glass from the tank, using a long pole with putty on the end and placed it in the mold to be pressed. The Gatherer would sometimes toss the molten glass at someone - usually the Carry-in-Boy. This was thought of as a huge joke, but if the target was too slow to move out of the way, it could be dangerous.

The pay for catching turns was about 35 cents an hour, or $2.80 a shift. It wasn't long before I knew how to do all the jobs except those of Gatherer, Presser, and Glass Blower. That is, I learned the Carry-in-Boy's job, the Mold-Pullers job, and I learned how to clean molds.

When I turned sixteen I got a job at the Pennsylvania Glass Company, which paid 50 cents an hour. The war was on and the factories went to the high school to recruit students to fill the jobs left by the men who went into the service. During the war the workers in the factories included women, older men, and boys recruited from the high school.

The Pennsylvania glass company was more modern than the Victory Glass Company and a lot hotter. The molds were on circular tables that revolved. Instead of a Gatherer placing the molten glass in the mold, the molten glass dropped from a tank above into the molds as they revolved. As they revolved, air blew into them until they came to the front where a worker would remove the glass from the mold using a handling tool and place it into a pan for the Carry-in-Boy to take it to the leer. This method eliminated the high paying skilled jobs of Gatherer and Presser, and placed everyone on an hourly rate. Pressers and Gatherers were paid on a piece-work system and earned significantly more than the unskilled labor. Because of the massive size of the tanks, the factory was very hot. It was so hot that the turn-out workers would develop heat blisters on their hands, and often on their face. At the end of the shift these workers would pierce the blisters using needles.

I made up my mind very early that that was not the life for me. I decided then that I would go on to college and get better employment. At that time, the early 1930s, not very many students went on to college. For most families, the boy or girl graduating from high school would be the first in their family to get a high school education. Those fortunate enough to go to college were either athletes, who could get athletic scholarships, or were from families that could afford tuition. After the war, all that was changed, at least for those who went into service. The G.I. Bill made it possible for all who served in the armed forces during WW II to get a college education. That's the way it was!