MEMORIES


CHAPTER 1 THE EARLY YEARS (1936-1951 (cont)
	During this period my sister Barbara was born in June 1941 and brother Larry arrived in September 1943. I managed to move successfully through grade school and on to Booker T. Washington Junior High. I believe it was right around this time that my mother mentioned to my father that if he was not going to give us any religious training that she would raise us Catholic. All of us had been baptized Catholic. My father replied that he thought that was what they had agreed to when they were married. Since my sister and brother were younger than I, they fit into what we now call CCD. I, being a bit older, would have felt out of place with the younger children so my catholic education begins somewhat later as I mention in Going Home. I must have been a bit bright because I left junior high a semester early to enter high school on a special program. At this time, I gave one of the most honest but dumbest answers during a high school interview. I was being interviewed for the Bronx High School of Science a somewhat prestigious school. (Similar to what we now call a magnet school in Chicago) I apparently had the grades, but when asked if I liked science my brain froze and I responded no. So it was off to Lincoln Park High School, and honor division of the High School of Commerce. I remember spending three semesters there (I took honors classes and finished four semesters in three) before my world was turned upside down by my father's transfer upstate. Thus ended the "stickball" games in the street and in our estate known to everyone else as Central Park. By that time I had been allowed to travel all over the city on the subway as well as to the west coast of Manhattan Island (the Hudson River). It was from there that we were able to look across to New Jersey, another world. To a 14 year old this was similar to looking at the moon. I still recall taking the subway to 181st Street which was nearest to the George Washington Bridge. We walked across to the middle, standing with one foot in New York State and one ib new Jersey. So, with my Dad's transfer we began (for a New York kid) a new adventure. Transferring 350 miles up the New York State Thruway and into Chapter 2, the next phase of Grandpa Bob's recollections.