...I couldn't resist!-)

Crile VA Hospital called Parma its home. On the northwest corner of York Road and Pleasant Valley sat row after row of long squat-like buildings of bricks that looked more like barracks than a hospital. Quite possibly the structures stood since the beginning of the Spanish-American War...perhaps longer. Looking back, it was a depressing place for injured soldiers to spend any great amount of time - better than a month in those dilapidated structures, and you might wish you were one of your comrades who didn't make it. From what I understand, the inside was just as depressing as the outside. This simply was not a great way to honor and treat American soldiers who fought for their country. Even the doctors and support staff must have found the facility a sad place to put in a shift day-in and day-out for the years they worked there. My dad was a nursing-aid at Crile. While a nice suburb, the grounds were a prison both for the patients and the staff. I'm sure for many soldiers, it was their last grimy mortal stop on their way to eternity. For my dad, it was bedpans, giving sponge baths among the blood and vomit. If my dad at least treated these soldiers well in his work, then he had some shred of human decency in him - he couldn't be considered all bad.

My parents wanted to live close to where my dad worked. There were no regular CTS (Cleveland Transit System, now RTA) bus routes to Crile, thus it would be better to live within walking distance - this was a primary reason why they bought the house.

The residence on York was a large old farmhouse that had seen better days. It had potential with its large rooms and open winding staircase. However, in my parents hands it was not going to improve. One bright note, I had my own bedroom, but it was a cold and scary place at night. In front was a half-enclosed porch - a makeshift sun room. It had a large farm-style kitchen...it also had a lot of field mice who ran across the kitchen and living room floors. The basement was dug out with dirt walls. We really were not allowed down there. I can imagine that it was a scary place with no windows, the only light came from bulbs or flashlight if a fuse blew.

My parents entertained the idea of taking on boarders as a way to subsidize their income. The place had four bedrooms upstairs and one on the main floor - but the house had only one bathroom. Then there was the question as to whether zoning would permit it to be used that way. However, my dad dissolved the idea over his insecurity of allowing the potential of my mom being around single men.

At Christmas time my parents were a couple of decades ahead of the game when it came to environmental concerns - although not intentionally. We were still getting evergreen trees to decorate for Christmas, however my parents would use balled trees. The idea being they could plant the tree in the yard the following spring. Therefore, the tree was set up on the porch with the presents placed under the tree the night before. It was pretty safe, Parma didn't really have any problems with burglaries in the mid-1950's, we just had to wear winter coats when we retrieved our gifts.

This was also where we learned the hard way that Santa was only a pleasant myth. In the morning my dad tried to sound like Santa just getting ready to go back up the chimney, and it might have worked except for two things. First the house didn't have a fireplace. Second, we knew Santa would not yell "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum", unless of course if old St. Nick were a drunken pirate sacking the place! Like I said, my dad was not a very intelligent person.

Although Parma as a whole was a burgeoning suburb, there were still some areas that had a rural flavor. Going south on York, you would go past a VFW hall with a hitching post and water trough for horses, and a World War Two cannon on the other side of the door. Go north on York and there would be an active Nike Site - small missiles designed to bring down enemy aircraft, installed towards the end of the second world war to combat the threat of the cold war...Parma would not go easily into the night!-)

The school I attended was a small fairly new structure just across the street and a few doors down from our home. Parma City Schools quickly found the facility too small, and would soon build another one nearby. My most memorable moment was walking out of the classroom after being teased by some classmates. I picked up my jacket, zipped-up and headed out the door. While I was headed home, the principle called my parents getting my father on the phone...not a good thing! He met me in the front yard, gave me a swat on the rear and made me march right back to school - it was a humiliating moment for this young lad. The school and property itself was eventually sold to United Church of Christ who replaced a century-old chapel they had been using as a place of worship. Next to the building, they built a large connecting church...a much nicer place to be!

During the spring one year we had a heavy rain storm drive through the area. Our driveway quickly turned into a rushing river for about fifteen to twenty minutes. This was my first experience with a flash flood. Being me, I thought it was fun to stand in the rushing water which went up to my ankles - any older, and I'd want to stock it with fish!-)

There was wildlife in that part of Parma, however, there was still enough land left for the animals to naturally separate them from the so-called human species. A neighborhood friend of mine had captured some very healthy garter snakes. One he had trained with some success, another that was less cooperative and generally ended-up confined to a screen cage. The more friendly snake could easily be controlled with an old handkerchief that had a red dot in the center. When he put the snake on the lawn, and dropped the cloth in from of it, the snake would stop, when he picked the cloth up, the snake would move forward. When he placed the cloth two feet away from the snake, it would turn towards the cloth...very basic to be sure, but still fascinating to a six year-old.

Behind our house was a small cottage where two six year-old girls lived. Dan and I would play with them in the yard - just kid stuff. Financially they seemed worse off than us - but if they had good loving parents, well that was solid value in my book.

My parents joined the UCC church across the street and I had the chance to see the inside of the old stone structure. As a small child, I really didn't appreciate the structure as much as I would now. Reverend Voll was its pastor, and I thought he was neat! Very nice, talkative with a sense of humor - he was married, and had kids my age. At that time I thought pastors stayed with a particular church until they retired, and with Voll, he did. Later on I would learn that was not always the case.

When the new church was built next to the school, Sunday classes were started, Overall, they were fun. We read these Christian comic books based on the Old and New Testaments, sang songs, played with clay and worked on projects like making terrariums. For those unfamiliar, terrariums were glass jars, usually pickle jars, where you put in dirt and seeds (usually plants that were hearty, but stayed small), and added a little water. Next you sealed the jar and through a natural process, it self watered the plants.

One time I stayed overnight at the Reverends house and it was a very pleasant respite from the violent home life I was growing up in. Before I left that morning, one of the kids snuck me into their parents bedroom to see a huge multiband console radio. It was an old Zenith nicknamed by its maker as the radio with the big black dial - it truly fascinated me. He demonstrated it for me, but it was kept short, since either of us were not supposed to be in their bedroom. From that day forward, I had a love affair with old Zenith console radios. Had I had my own home as of this writing, you'd see a bunch of them scattered around.

All electronic color television as it was called, had only been marketed five years when I saw my first colorcast on NBC. Realize color tv experimental broadcasts began in 1927 in Bell Telephone Labs with a small one inch crt (cathode ray tube) and a huge amount of circuitry, both on the color camera end as well the receiver itself - however it wasn't practical and didn't work well outside the lab. By the 1930's, CBS Laboratories technical director, Peter Goldmark produced the first workable consumer color tv sets. They worked really well. However, the sets required a mechanical process that was not compatible with black and white television sets just coming on the market for the first time.

An aunt who worked as a telephone operator at a Bay Village hospital purchased one of the first color tv sets and invited us over to her house in Elyria, Ohio. As we sat glued to the tube, we saw a black and white commercial when the picture faded to black as a white peacock feather appeared on the screen and an announcer intoned, "The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC" while the feathers spread into a rainbow of colors. I was enthralled, I had never seen something so beautiful in my life. From that moment on I vainly pestered my parents to buy a color tv set. At the time, the receivers were going for $800.00 a pop. My dad finally said in exasperation that he'd only buy a color set when they came down to $100.00 and not before. I ended up bringing the first color tv set into the house as a teenager back in 1967. More on that later.