Tag: family life
Foreign Tongues
Part II Neither of my surviving grandparents, both native born, had learned English until they went to school—and Grandpa’s family had been citizens since the Revolution. Someone in that family had been scalped, another was a Hessian deserter, as I understand the matter. But I’m probably garbled: When the information was available to me I…
Foreign Tongues
Part I When my public school introduced me to French, in 1960-something, I discovered a French-language broadcast from Montreal. Radio, then, was still mostly AM—Amplitude Modulated—and FM, Frequency Modulated, was in its commercial infancy; the radios in our house didn’t have it. When FM did debut on the newer radios over the next four or…
Daddy
We lived in a half-duplex in West Hazleton, Pennsylvania until early February 1954. I think a large object in the cellar was a coal furnace, but our heat came from the kitchen cast-iron coal stove, and something called a “heat-o-lator” in the living room, which was some kind of coal firebox with a protective sheet…