Well, I've covered the family tree for perspective, I've talked about my dad and mom a little bit and I have talked about some memories I have of Wilmington Delaware so far. We were in Wilmington from about 1955 to about 1960 or 61'. That puts me between 9 and 14 years old. I am starting to grow up by the late 50's. I'm starting to notice girls and the parts that make them different. The late fifty's and early 60's were still kind of innocent for me. The urge to set things on fire had about past. I have my first girlfriend and she lives right across the street. Things are changing for me. The thing I remember most about the late 50's in Wilmington was that with my bike I had freedom. I could go anywhere....permission or NOT. Remember when I mentioned that my mom would usually say no when I asked her if I could do certain things.....well, she never said no more than if I ask if I could go somewhere on my bike or bus. I had no fear.....I knew about crime but it never phased me. We lived in a all white, Catholic neighborhood where the only crime that ever happened was crime my friends and I were involved in and fortunately, I was growing out of that period of my life. I wanted to go places, I wanted to see things outside my neighborhood and I had the means to do just that. Our neighborhood was right on Philadelphia Pike which meant that I could catch a bus and be in downtown Wilmington in a matter of minutes or go north and be in South Philadelphia in maybe 30 minutes.
Like I mentioned before, my dad went to work for one of the DuPont daughters. She was not in the family business of chemicals and gunpowder...she had married and she and her husband started this new business that they thought my dad quite capable of running. Working for a DuPont in Wilmington directly like my dad did.....brought him (and us) a lot of perks. My dad joined Kennett Square Country Club...a very nice private club west of Wilmington (where I first took up golf), he was able to buy a piece of the Ocean Grand Hotel in Hollywood Florida (where we would always go for vacation around Thanksgiving time) ...he drove nice cars and he got to meet lots of people. I remember going over to his bosses home a lot to play with their kids. They had two girls and a boy. One of the girls was my age and the other girl and boy were my sisters age. They lived on a huge ranch/farm with all kinds of hired help. They had beautiful horses and that's where I tried to learn to ride. I really never developed an liking to riding horses. Going over to their house was like going to summer camp. They had everything to play with that any kid would love including a pool!!
Anyway, there was a TV show coming out of South Philadelphia called American Bandstand. Dick Clark was the host. My dad came home one evening and ask if my girlfriend and I would like to go and be on it. He had met someone who was directly involved with the show. I was about 13 or 14 at this time and I said to my dad that I thought we were to young but he said he already mentioned that to this friend he met and that guy said it wouldn't be a problem. By the way, my mother had me going to dancing school twice a week so I figured if I appeared on American Bandstand....I could make some brownie points with my dancing teacher. Anyway, to make a long story short....my dad drove us up to the studio where this little TV show was coming from and we went in and got to dance with the "big" kids. My girlfriend and I were able to do this more than once. This was long before American Bandstand moved and became a huge national TV show it was soon to be. When we where there, it was only a local show. It was just viewed up and down the East Coast. I do remember seeing their musical guests but I don't remember who it was. Being seen on that show by my friends certainly did great things for my reputation and helped me with the girls too. I remember those times as being so much simpler than my life was going to be by the time the late 60's would roll around.
Like I said, I was free to do anything and go anywhere. We were always driving through South Philadelphia for something....one reason is that my mother had an aunt living in Drexel Hill. I don't remember much about her other than she was very rich and lived in a very nice house. We would also go to the Philly's baseball games once in awhile at the old Connie Mack Stadium....going there took us right through South Philadelphia...right on South Broad to North Broad. The reason I mentioned all this is that as we drove through these South Philadelphia neighborhoods, I noticed all these kids playing stick ball, wall ball, Lacrosse, and other games right out in the street. Remember, I did not see color...all I noticed was all these kids having fun. When I got back to Wilmington, I would tell my friends that we should go and see if these kids would let us play with them. It was only a short bus ride and we could be home before dinner. So that's exactly what we did. Once the local kids got over their shock of a few white kids asking them if we could play with them....we had the greatest time. This could not happen today but back then....it all came so natural. Another memory of this time was that in the summer, the inner city kids got real hot playing in the street so they figured out how to take the caps off the fire hydrants and play in the gushing water....what great memories I have of that time.
The last memory I will write about is the one I have of going down to the Delaware River. Stonehaven, the neighborhood we lived in was just west of the river....We could get on our bikes, head east and be at the river in maybe 15 minutes. I remember the first time that I went down to the river. I asked my mom if it was OK if Michael and I could ride our bikes down to the river...her answer, of course, was NO, it was to dangerous. Well, like usual...I didn't listen and off we went. We got down to the river bank, parked our bikes and started to walk the shore. I noticed that Mike and I were the only white people in both directions. As we walked up and down the shore, all the people who were fishing were black....and they were laughing and singing and having all kinds of fun. I remember asking one of the guys what he was fishing for and he said dinner. I noticed he had his whole family with him and they were all fishing. I asked him what type of fish he was fishing for and he said gar and carp. I said, is this what you ate for dinner and he said yes, almost everyday. He asked us if we had ever fished before and we said yes but only in a small pond, not ever in a huge river. He then went up to his car...got two more cane fishing poles and asked us to fish with them...the only thing was that if we caught anything, we had to let him keep it.....that was OK with us...we didn't even know what a gar or carp was. I tell this little story because I never saw color...I knew that other peoples skin was different in color but that really didn't register to me. I heard the "N" word but I really didn't know what it meant. Anyway, we took the cane poles, he pulled out this god awful smelling bait and he showed us how to put the bait on the hook. In retrospect, here was a black man I didn't know teaching me things that my dad should be teaching me if he wasn't working all the time. I came to have those thoughts often. Well, we sat there with his kids, with our lines in the water listening to stories, listening to all of them sing and laugh and just having the best of times. The day was coming to an end and we knew we didn't want to get home after the sun went down because then our parents would start asking questions....and we didn't want that. We told our new friends goodbye, we got on our bikes and headed home.....this would not be the last time we fished with our new NEGRO friends....something that later would get my mom and dad madder at me than they had ever been...but that's for another time.
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