Van Houten's Landing Oral History Project
John Lodico Sr.
It's part of the 'hood where we grew up. I was born in 1928; I'm 75 years old, going on 76 this year. It was very interesting growing up - we had a very close-knit neighborhood. I guess some people may have called it a ghetto; there was probably more Italians living in the neighborhood than other ethnic groups - great wine making - everybody had grapes growing in their yard. Actually, I was born on Ellen Street, although my father had other property before he moved here - to Ellen Street.
Actually, at that time it was 2 Ellen Street. Ellen Street went north and south. If you called it like an H, Van Houten Street came on the south side, Lower Castle Heights came on the northern side - so we were like the cross road, parallel to Broadway, which was uppermost to the west. The shipyard was to the east, close enough to throw rocks at the boats when you didn't know that it was dangerous.
During World War II, that area, as far as shipbuilding goes - they cleared the area for parking for the workers at the shipyard. Van Houten Street came in on an angle from southwest to northeast and Lower Castle Heights came directly down and they joined at the bottom. In each case there was an opening to go in at the bottom to the boatyard - at Lower Castle Heights, and on an angle with Van Houten Steet.
It was one of these things. I don't know if it's appropriate now, but maybe it should be told. My father was born in Sicily, Italy; my mother was born in England. My father was a maintenance worker at a Catholic institution in Peekskill. My mother came as a vacationer to come and work for the summer, from England. She came here as a guest visitor, and on one of the tours her parents had sent her over as a young person, and she came like a domestic. She stayed as long as her visa would allow her to stay, and she met my father at this institution in Peekskill. They courted for about 4 years, and then they decided to get married.
They decided to get married in Peekskill and they went to the Catholic church. My father was Catholic and my mother was Episcopalian, and God forbid you're an Italian and an Episcopalian. Well, they have pretty much the same thing. They went to the Catholic church and the priest wouldn't marry them, so they went on the next corner where there was an Episcopal church. It's similar to Nyack: in Nyack you have St. Ann's Church on one corner, and on the other corner, on Franklin Street, there's the Episcopal church.. So in Peekskill they got married in the Episcopal church. All our kids were raised Episcopalian or interdenominational church.
This is rather interesting: they were at another location. There was a communion between a priest and a nun and as a result of that there was a child born. Of course there was no abortion in the church at that time, and they located the nun to Nyack where my mother and father were the attendants for her until she gave birth to the child. And then it was put in a Catholic home or some institution. As a result of that, they lived in a house at the bottom of Perry Lane which they had rented while they were there. Later on, Ben Hecht, the playwright, bought that property. If you don't know Ben Hecht, he was the co-writer, with Charles MacArthur, Helen Hayes's husband.
Then they moved over to Ellen Street. There was a house for sale, the family house. They bought that property and started raising children. They raised 8, 4 boys and 4 girls. My older sister is now 89 years old. She's just moved back to Florida. She was in Florida for a while, then moved back here. She wasn't happy with the lifestyle here - she was staying with her son. She just went back and now she's happy being back in Florida. She's got all her cronies there, you know. She was the oldest. My youngest brother passed away several years ago. I'm the last of the boys, and I have 2 sisters that are still alive - one in Florida and one in Maine.
My dad worked at the boatyard in World War I. He was a keel cutter and carpenter. They were building boats then, for World War I, for the Navy. Then after the war he continued on in construction. He was an all-around mechanic, he was a mason, an electrician, he was a carpenter, he was one of those guys - all the trades, he could do and do them well. Unlike the expression, master of none, and so forth. But he was great at all of them. All of his kids came in the construction business as well. And he made sure that you did it right. There was no, it'll be alright. He made sure - if you made a mistake, you had to do it over.
He became a citizen immediately after his 6 years, at the time, and my mother became a citizen as a result of marrying him. At that time, if you were a citizen, somebody you married became a citizen by virtue of being married to one - although she was always a Brit. Most of the time, Brits never give up the queen. But my father was a true American patriot. He became a citizen, got involved in local events: he would go to school board meetings, he would go to village board meetings. He couldn't quite understand why he couldn't always be the first guy to vote. He never failed to vote, except if he was in the hospital - which he was on 2 occasions in my lifetime. He worked every holiday that we have - he worked Christmas, he worked Thanksgiving, but his one thing that he maintained strongly, was his Americanization.
Actually, in going to high school, he's the one who really got me involved in history and political nature and stuff like that. We worked on the Constitution before I got it in high school. He had a great saying, he said that no one knows what freedom is until they've lost it. History became my popular subject. I was lousy in Math and gadgets.
The Under the Hill Gang was a strong family tie between the Italian community because it was competitive. I gotta be prejudiced or biased. My father was all of these traits that I mentioned - plus, he was a farmer, an agronomist. He had his own grape vineyard. He had white and blue grapes, right on Ellen Street. The neighbors had just blue. He'd make mixtures when he made wine. It was competitive in that area where all the Italians had their grape arbors and so forth.
And then when it came that time of year to crack the barrel, they would all get together and have like a block party in one guy's yard or another. And they would all insult each other, as to the kind of wine they made - like I said, prejudicially. My father did make the best wine in the neighborhood, and he made like - I remember 3 thirty gallon barrels in the cellar, 2 smaller ones on top. It went like a pyramid. My mother made root beer. In those days they made root beer too, and they had to put in the attic, or the dark, whatever it was.
The insults came, like, "Try Nicole's - try Louie's - try…" the other names - you know what I'm saying. And then one of them would say, "You call this wine? You bringa the oil and vinegar - this the vinegar." That was one of the things.
There were neighborhood parties on and off one year, on Ellen Street. During World War II, we had the activity of parking on both sides of the street, where they could, because of all the workers required to build those PT boats and so forth. The area that is now down there - I don't know if you've been there -it's like a big parking lot. That was all taken out of the hill, because we used to swing off the vines and rope off trees that grew out there, but of course when the war came, they fenced everything around so there would be no intrusion into the shipyard. From the standpoint of the shipyard itself…Like I say, my father was there World War I. My older brothers and I, we worked there World War II.
Then he joined the Navy and then the war was over. I came along, and I was in the Korean campaign. I was with the Army Security Agency for that period. They broke up the companies to send more over to Korea, like is happening today, and I became part of the Second Division - Indian patch - very proud of the Indian patch, because political correctness - they're removing that from our schools, our colleges, our high school in particular, and I think it's important to note that we have created a Nyack Indian scholarship program - a not-for-profit corporation - to keep and maintain the Nyack Indian.
Nyack was known as the Gem of the Hudson. Most people are not aware that Nyack High School, at one time was the number one high school for accreditation in the Hudson Valley, in New York State. Like I say, it was called the Gem of the Hudson.
We had to walk to Nyack High School - we didn't have buses taking us every 4 blocks away from your house and go 2 miles. We still wanted to maintain. Of course, along came centralization of the school system. We were probably one of the last to maintain our own, so it was a question of taxation. If you lived in Upper Nyack we were in Union Free School District number 9, I believe it was. In order to go to high school in Nyack - that was part of the Nyack School District - the tuition kept getting higher and higher and higher - because we didn't belong. Then eventually it got to the point where, after being taxed so high, centralization came in and took over to balance it out. But I thought that was a bad situation, because I'm not a centralist. Matter of fact, I have fought central government for the longest time.
I lived in the neighborhood - well, I was born in the house on the dining room table. In those days everybody didn't go - there were mothers in the neighborhood who took care of the other mothers when the time came - I forget the name they used for them - there would come the cry of "Angelo! Angelo! Send Marie over - She's a-comin', she's a-comin'" And then they took care of the birth. Most of the families were born in the house in those days. When the time came, "Get the towels! Get the towels!" and so forth.
I was born, as were 4 of the 8, in the house. The oldest 4 were born at the property next door, which my father originally owned - the 2-family house and the property to the south. They split the property and he built the bungalow in the back. Somebody purchased the house - and it went for a very high price - 'cause you could see the river. They owned the property, then they sold the 2-family and built the small bungalow to the south. And it had good school - Upper Nyack Grammar School.
I lived there all my life - up until I got married. I came back from Korea in 1951, and I got married in 1951. I moved into the house and fixed up the upstairs. We lived there for a couple of years - and then, moving from the frying pan into the oven, we then moved into my mother-in-law's in Nanuet. Because, you know, 2 women can't stay in the same kitchen. They have different ideas on how to grow up and raise their families.
I guess I moved out about 1954 or '5 - something like that. But I always maintained my membership in the village. During World War II they had lowered the age for joining the fire department. If you maintained your grades in high school and you were 16 years old, you could join the fire department as auxiliary members. So at 16 I joined, while still in high school, the fire department.
When you talk about the fire department in Rockland County, there's a family name that goes with it, which is the Wanamakers. Homer was a little kid when I was growing up - he's younger than I. But his cousin, commonly known as Smokey Wannamaker, Everett, he and I were the youngest tillermen of the Hook and Ladder and drivers, in New York State. We drove the back of the engine at 16, and when we got our senior license at 17, we could drive the front - although the law didn't require you to have a license in those days, to drive a fire truck. That's interesting, but that was the rule of the fire company.
Empire Hook and Ladder is the greatest fire company going. It's always been the prestige. Goosetown Against the World is our slogan, and Goosetown became the moniker. "Where do you live?" You know, somebody'll say "Brooklyn" - "Goosetown." "Where's Goosetown? Never heard of it. It's not on the map." Well, it's in the hearts of a lot of millions of people who have come and gone.
Goosetown, from what I understand, goes way back. It used to be a guy would take a gaggling of geese and take them down to the water, and he'd follow on a trail going down to the river's edge and then they'd come back and go up the hill. They may have gone by Gilchrest's house, you know, because Gilchrest's house has another house below it, then Forrester's house, then Eugene Brown, who was one of my schoolmates, and so forth, and then Ayers, which at one time was one of the owners of the shipyard as well, and then came the shipyard. It was either there or Perry Lane, which went down to the river. It became the moniker or the monogram of anybody who was born there.
And then there was the competition of Under the Hill and Above the Hill. Little Arizona was the name for west of Midland Avenue. It went up Upper Birchwood Avenue, up to 9-W. I don't know where that name came about, but that's what it was called. And there was always competition between Upper Hill and Below the Hill.
On the corner of School Street, there was a combination of stores there - various types of art stores and so forth. But way back, when I was in high school, the first liquor store came into being. That was by a former assemblyman - and he was also the president of Rockland Realty - he and Herb Peckman, who was very famous by the river, Herb Peckman and him had that store on the corner. It thrived very well, and then it was sold. Herb Peckman went to Pearl River with his liquor store, and he's a very interesting historical person for that village.
The assemblyman and my father were the first 2 persons to talk about a bridge going from Nyack to Tarrytown. My father did a lot of fishing on the river, and he understood about certain depths.
Under the hill, next door to our house, at 2, (there was a bakery). They also had a bakery in Nyack on the corner of Main Street and Midland Avenue, the northeast corner - as well as the Colarelli family. The Colarellis had one (oven) in their house, and that is the first house as you branch off between Ellen Street going down to the shipyard. As you pass that opening with the house on the left - that was the Colarellis, and then another person took it and they also built one in Upper Nyack and one in Nyack on Upper Main Street.
On our street, which was in that book, the little story I did before, was the Vanderbilt family. He worked almost around the clock - he was a tinsmith, although the gas tanks were made of copper. He worked like 16, 18, 20 hours a day, making the gas tanks and the water tanks for the PT type boat that was built there. They were primarily similar to PT boats, and they were used for air rescue. They were 85 footers, and there were also 15 footers, all built there. It was one of the top producers and most productive boatyards during World War II, in the United States.
They had an assembly-line process where they started the keels, shifted them over… and got to the point where they'd have to "run down the rails." Rails were put there even before World War II - Petersen's Shipyard which went way back, through the Ayers and other owners - they were the first shipyard on the Hudson River to provide rails coming into the Hudson from where they built them. Whenever they had another boat, they'd shift them over and get it in there.
From right up until, say the '50s, there was a gate across there - only the workers got in there. We'd go on the south property line. The shipyard came up, and then where this guy who's the mayor, Esmay, where his house is built, we'd sneak down that property line all the way to the river. We'd go as far as Helen Hayes along the river at low tide. Helen Hayes had her canoe repaired at Petersen's when Humphrey Bogart and Franchot Tone wrecked the front part hitting her dock. I worked for Helen Hayes during high school, through the auspices of your neighbor up the hill, Comaniti was his name. He was the master gardener for Helen Hayes, and his grandson and I wrestled for 5 years at Nyack High School. After school we would go work in her garden. She had a famous rose garden - they named one after her, a rose.
When I came back from the Korean War I was a, I guess you'd call it a roustabout - I did painting, I did planking, all-around jobs. There were 4 owners (of the boatyard) at that time - there was Joe Raso, Bill Gould - the other 2 names are lost in my cache - they made it strict - there was no fooling around.
During World War II one of the stories which comes out of that - I guess he was Norwegian or Swedish, Petersen, walked up and down that shipyard all day. He was like the monitor. There was no sitting down, no goofing off, no smoking and drinking. They had a code in the shipyard - hey, if Mr. Petersen is coming by, give a whistle or something. They knew he was coming up and down and looking between the rows of boats being built, and one of the stories is that when he was coming down the aisle, 2 boats further down would do the whistle for the next thing, and he finally came upon one, and the guy said, "Give me another one of those ribs, 2 hammer handle lengths, 3 fingers and a little bit." And that's a true story. The guy would throw it up, because he already had it cut out - and he said, "Perfect - I need another one of those." And Petersen stopped there. He couldn't believe what he'd heard. He kept on going to the next row of ships. If there ever was a story, that's a story that had to be told: "Two hammer handle lengths, 3 fingers and a little bit" and the guy on top: "Perfect - Just a tad shorter", because as you went with these ribs, you would go shorter and shorter.
They were expendable boats - in other words, they weren't built to last. They were built of plywood, and plywood doesn't last. You're either using teak or oak or Carolina pine for the planking. Unlike World War II and Camp Shanks, Petersen's Shipyard was the number one producer in the state and/or the country with the least amount of malfunctions and so forth. Now over at Camp Shanks, it was built as the great embarkation camp. People had 60 days, 90 days, to move out of their house - it was going to be torn down. And they appropriated most of that land. For its size, it was the most costly military installation in the country.
Every couple of months I go under the hill, and I go down to the shipyard too, because every once in a while there's Willie Knudson. Willie Knudson is from Palisades. He was one of the workers there - he's older than I am, probably about 5 years older. He might be in his 80s - I'm not sure. Karl Schreiber, he's from Tappan - he was there. I almost killed him - run over his foot with a jeep. He started to go one way, and then went another. We joke about that: "Who's on the phone?" "The guy that almost run over you, don't you remember?" There was a camaraderie, and the shipyard has maintained -Very popular people have their boats serviced there.
There were fences, but they were like fences for the protection of the dogs. If a guy had a dog, and it didn't go in your yard - that was pretty much maintained. Everybody had at least a 4-foot fence. In our property we had a fence, and on the north side of our house where I grew up, there was only 4 feet between the house and the fence that separates the property. That 4 feet went to the back of the house. We had the the grape arbors and my father's greenhouse back there. He grew all kinds of flowers and vegetables, things like that.
There used to be a fair in Rockland County which was held in Orangeburg, and 4Hs and clubs like that - kids who were in farming and whatever - would bring in their chicken and animals they raised - and there was horse racing. One of the persons in the village who had horses was Judge Tompkins, one of the early history riders of Rockland County and Upper Nyack. Arthur Tompkins would run the horses. He would have this driver and himself and they would have this competition at the track. And then they would have the daredevil car racers over there. There were circus events and rides and things like that..
One thing my father couldn't do - when you talk about vegetables in Rockland County, you talk about Dr. Davies' corn. Dr. Davies and my father were competitors. Dr. Davies could never grow tomatoes and peppers like my father; my father could never grow corn like them. And my father always got the blue ribbons on the tomatoes and the peppers, and also my father grafted a lemon tree, and that was like an extra thing that was brought into the fair - the lemons were like the size of a grapefruit, and he got the blue ribbon for that. But Dr. Davies and my father were friendly competitors at the Rockland County fair.
He always had a joke to tell. Whenever there was music he'd tap dance. That was one of the things my mother used to say: "I married your father because he was such a good dancer." They would go out on Saturday nights, up in Peekskill. I said, "I guess that's the only reason you married him, Ma?" "Well, no, he was all right - he could do everything." But that was her favorite thing - she loved to dance. And right up 'til when she got sick and died, she'd go out there, and my father, and dance like you wouldn't believe.
There was another event - when Welfare came out, after Roosevelt got elected. My father worked up in Iona Island, which was a naval ammunition depot- that's just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge. It's now a sanctuary for birds, or something I think. If you were on Welfare, you got $15 a week for a family. Our neighbors to the north had 10 kids, and you know what it is to raise 10 kids; they were on Welfare. You could always tell when it came time for the Welfare dole. You saw the orange skins out in the street. You saw the things that were part of a largess for the Welfare program in the '30s. I never found out what the expression was until a few years later - my father was nicknamed The Three Dollar Man. You've heard of our Million Dollar Guy, on TV and that. The Three Dollar Man tag on him was - he could have stayed home and collected Welfare and not worked - to get $15 - yet he journeyed to Iona Island for $18 a week - and glad to have a job.
He was very proud that we'd never had to go on that with the family. He hunted; he brought home deer; he brought home rabbits. He had birds. One mistake he made, though, in the hunting. Somebody said you could eat a possum. And, do you know what an opossum is? It's a scavenger, eats all kinds of garbage. When it was being cooked, you couldn't get the smell out of the house for weeks. My mother had the windows open for weeks at a time! It was intolerable.
The Colarelli family - Henry Colarelli, by the way, who was one of my neighbors across the street - he was a pitcher for the Nyack High School. I caught for him in Nyack High School. He graduated in the '40s and he got drafted. I graduated Nyack High School in the class of 1946 and then I went back for additional courses. In those days you could go back and do additional courses in high school - it's called PG'n'. In most cases, whatever your favorite sport was - you took history, additional this and additional that, but you took your favorite sport - if you were a wrestler or a football player. They allowed it for 2 and sometimes 3 years. Then finally somebody said - the PSAL league - "You have guys here who are 18, 19, in high school" - football player, baseball player, or wrestler. That was part of the educational thing in those days - until they changed the laws and said, "Hey, wait a second - can't have 19-yr-olds competing with 16-yr-olds." I went back myself in 1947, and I took History, Math, Business, and I took Wrestling 4.
Basically they were all plastered houses, there was no sheetrock. Those houses were built. You're talking about the '30s - they were wooden lath and plaster - there was no sheetrock to speak of - if you had a problem, you had to know where the slats were. Before they put on the plaster you had these little thin strips 3/8 inch thick and about an inch and a half, 2 inches wide, then left with a space in between them. Most of the houses were built with plaster walls and wide baseboards, square baseboards, and then trim around them.
In my father's house he had one of the early hot-air furnaces. Most of them came in with gas, when gas came in. If you had any heat in your house at all, most of it was hot air with big pipes and you'd burn coal. Now, if I asked you guys, "Do you know what riddling coal is?" probably you wouldn't know. Well, riddling coal - it was tough growing up in the '30s and like that - riddling coal was when you bank the stove. It's called banking the fire at night when you leave a little hole open in the stove and then the draft from the bottom - so it would burn slowly. Then, in the morning, there was a shaker and you'd shake the thing and down would come all the burned stuff, and then the ashes from the coal. Then, what you had to do, if you had a riddler, and this was a device, like a crank with a hopper on the top - this is where you got the word ash can - 30 gallon metal ash cans. You put this on top of it and you'd throw the ashes from the stove in there and you'd riddle it. Then you got just the dust in there, and as it was riddling the coal, it was like a screen inside - and it would fall on the floor. You'd get the burnt ones and the ones that didn't burn. It was your job, or whose ever turn it was at bat, to go pick out the black ones. The things that didn't burn, you'd put aside. The ashes you would put in your garden and mix with the soil - I guess it was potash or whatever - they used it that way. There were 2 collections of garbage - there was Ash Wednesday and then you had Junk.
That was another thing - as you would move north on Broadway it was a more affluent neighborhood. As you went from the fire house north, you had all the affluent houses and property owners, most on the river side. And of course there were some on the left, going all the way up, with fields in between. One of the interesting things hasn't changed. We used to go out junking when we were kids. Can you think of anything that was the same price in 1930 or '40 that it is today? Okay ,every soda bottle had a 2 cent or nickel deposit on it. The only thing that has changed now is that there's no 2 cent bottles. It's either no deposit or they're nickels. They're stamped on the top, and they have the label. We used to go junking to raise money for ourselves. A quarter a week was your allowance, and you was able to go to the movies for 11 cents.
Matter of fact, I lost my Babe Ruth autograph. Babe Ruth came to Nyack at the Skouras theater in Nyack, just south of First Avenue. Babe Ruth came on his going out time as a signatory. They had the movie and Babe Ruth would be there. I went to that theater, I got his autograph - and lost it. It was one of those things - I kept it for the longest time, and then, I don't know, it disappeared.
The other thing is, going back to Henry Colarelli, he was a star baseball pitcher and he was drafted by the Dodgers. He was with Montreal team. During World War II, there was no back and forth, airplanes in spring training, so if you were a local team - the Brooklyn Dodgers did their Spring training at Bear Mountain, on the green. He invited me up there because he was now with Montreal. My 15 minutes of fame in baseball world is I did practice catching for Ralph Branca. Now, if you were a Dodgers fan, Ralph Branca was a super pitcher, but he threw the pitch that lost them the series. Henry introduced me to all of them - Dixie Walker, Pee Wee Reese, Peter Reese, the owner. I had them sign a baseball bat. The bat goes in your closet until your older brother takes it out, plays with it, and leaves it out in the rain…
Recorded in New City, NY, April 17, 2004.
