I didn’t choose the cold water flat life—but it chose me. And it came with garlic-scented stairwells, squawking chickens in a converted shoe factory, and the unspoken truth that sometimes the “wrong side of the tracks” is where the real education begins.
I didn’t have an opportunity to choose where I’d be born and where I’d spend my formative years. I grew up in a 4 room cold water flat within a hundred yards ot the railroad tracks, fifty yards from a shoe factory and next door to a bar. I probably thought everybody lived this way. It’s what I knew. The hallways and stairs in my building smelled like a garlic factory. I wonder what my teachers thought about the garlic smelling Italians who came from my area.. The garlic smell didn’t bother me since garlic was probably part of every meal I ate. The only smell that bothered me was the shoe factory across the street that was converted into a chicken factory. That’s right a chicken factory. Chickens were raised in there until they were big enough to stuff into crates and carted off in big trucks to provide the chicken we ate on a special occasion. My mom always talked about us living on the wrong side of the tracks. Yet, I never saw a sign that said right side of the tracks or wrong side of the tracks. As I reflect on it, I couldn’t have chosen a better place to be born and spend my formative years. I learned a lot about life and what it took to get ahead.
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