I was three years old, and I remember going on construction jobs with him! I’m sure my memories are embellished by what others have told me, but I remember sitting on the sidelines on a stack of cinder blocks and watching him mix cement. If I stayed out of harm’s way, I was allowed to touch the cement, dig little holes, even rearrange bricks. Years later, I would figure out that he was helping my mom by taking me to work. She had had a difficult pregnancy with my little sister, and he sensed that sometimes she needed a break. Not the “typical man” of the 1950s.
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To this day the smell of cement gets me high. If my hubby is on a job and the masons will be pouring cement that day, he calls me and I drive, however far, just to grab a handful of this precious substance, rub it between my fingers and inhale … weird? Science says, “smells have a stronger link to memory and emotion than any of the other senses”, and since my dad often smelled of cement, especially during his bricklayer days, I get transported to my childhood and I swear I feel him standing right next to me!
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0ne of my favorite memories is as a 5-year-old child. My dad would come home from a long day’s work, we would have dinner, and then he and I would drive over to the garage where he kept his work trucks. We were going to “make blocks”. We, and by we, I mean he, would mix up a bit of cement, pour it into steel molds and then we would go home. They would dry overnight, and we would come back the next day, pull them out of the molds and pour two new ones. He could only afford two of these expensive forms and there were approximately 150 blocks to make altogether, so it was a long, slow process.
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When fitted together, every four blocks would form a circle! Little did I know that these ‘blocks’ would one day become the porch surround for our first house. But for now, the new house was a big secret. It would be a house of the future. The toilet paper holder would pop out from behind a little mirror by touch. The paper towel, wax paper and aluminum foil were also hidden in the wall. The reel-to-reel tape player was hidden within the paneling. The whole kitchen was “built in”. The fridge and oven were placed within the kitchen surround. This surround was built from blue and white glass coated bricks – no one had ever heard of this in 1963! I still cannot believe he let me set one of these bricks in the wall – it was the only crooked brick in the whole house! How was he OK with that?
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I’ve been back to this house a couple of times, as a grown-up. We try to get to Jersey every few years to see family. On one such trip, I said, “Let’s ‘drive by’ the house in Jersey City” … I had a plan! We stopped to take pictures of the house on Linden Avenue, and I snuck up to the door and knocked! This kind gentleman opened the door and I said, sweet as you please, “Hello, my dad built this house, I just thought you should know” to which he replied, “Are you Chico’s daughter?” I was quite surprised to hear my dad’s name coming from this stranger’s mouth – I said, “Yes!” and he said, “Come in, come in. I want to show you something.” He led me through the ‘finished basement’, where we had spent most of our days growing up and pointed to a glass plaque on the wall of the ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’. I immediately welled up, I had completely forgotten about this plaque. My dad had glued it to the wall when he ‘finished’ the basement in ‘64! I said, “I can’t believe this is still here!” to which he responded with a tear in his eye – “I’ll never take it down … and I’m not even Catholic! This was put up as a blessing and that’s where it will stay! – You know, Chico is a legend around here...”