Growing up in Gary was great. As a youngster at age 10, we had a lot to worry about: where was our next Twinkie coming from, how were we going to afford a hot dog. My dad had a tailor shop in Gary, right on the alley between Washington St and Adams St on 7th Ave on the south side of the avenue. The state theatre was a block away and that was another dilemma: how to get enough money to buy a ticket to the show. We used to walk up and down the alleys to find empty pop bottles and get the deposit. At 2 cents a bottle you only had to find 6 to get the 12 cents for a pack of Twinkies. Good thing in those days that people did not know about recycling or even care about the environment or we would have never found anything in the alley. We used to live upstairs from the tailor shop downtown in the winter so we could walk to school and my parents did not have to worry about getting us to school. My mother did not drive than and my dad was working all the time, morning to night. Later, my dad built a house in Glen Park and we used to summer there.
As I got a little older, my friends and I would walk all over Glen Park. Our favorite place was Pete & Snooks for pizza. Large cheese pizza 2.50 and it was up to each of us to come up with 1.25 for our half the pizza. We would wash windows, dishes, do errands, anything for a quarter. We save them up and really treat ourselves. Sometimes if we could get enough we would even get sausage. If we didn’t have enough, then it was a beef sandwich for 30 cents, sometimes even 2.
Pete and Snook were brothers. Snooky’s real name is Bernard, that’s why we always called him Snook. He liked it better. Pete was never around and Snooky was the real owner but he never changed the name. We always tried to time it when Snooky’s dad was there because most of the time he would never let us pay. As we got older and got around better we started to caddy at the old Gary country club. We were rookies so we had to pay our dues when it came to seniority as to getting picked. The caddymaster was a mean guy to the new kids and did not teach us much as far as protocol. We were just mules, we did not have any expertise or knowledge to advise golfers. So as we stumbled through the learning process, sometimes you would caddy for a nice guy who would explain things to you or sometimes a not so nice guy. The fee for caddying 18 holes was 3.50, if you got lucky the guy would give you a five and have you keep the change. Then we could eat at Snooks for a week as long as his dad was around to comp us sometimes.
In the early 60’s we were dealt quite a blow. Snook’s dad was accused of some gambling activity and the government decided it would be better if he went back to Italy. We were crushed. We figured we would have to start caddying twice a week to have enough money for that righteous pie at Snooky’s. We should not have worried though. Before he left, Snooky’s dad told Snook to make sure he took care of us whenever we tried to pay. We did not know it then but he admired our work ethic and felt he was rewarding us for earning the money to buy pizza. I think it’s a great lesson. Next time I’ll tell you about working for Snooky later on when I was high school.
Until later…………………….ciao