On Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
Aunt Margie told me that she lived on the 2nd floor at 1017 Putnam Avenue in Brooklyn, NY. Margie’s Uncle Frank O’Donnell and his wife, Nellie (Cotter) lived on the 3rd floor in the same building. Margie would go for Sunday car rides with Uncle Frank and she remembered urging Uncle Frank to go faster. She also remembered Uncle Frank taking her (Margie) to NYC at Christmas time to see Santa 🎅 and all the toys. Uncle Frank also took Margie to visit at Anne Kreb’s house in Ridgewood. Aunt Margie also remembers babysitting for Noel Krebs and taking him to Highland Park and to downtown Brooklyn to the Movies 🎥. Margie said it was the “ talk of the town” when Noel Krebs started a fire 🔥 in his apartment. After the fire 🔥, Noel’s family had to stay downstairs in TJ and Margaret’s apartment until their apartment was repaired. Warner lived with his other grandmother. Margie remembers living first on Ralph Ave and then Jefferson Ave.and possibly Howard Ave as a baby. She also remembers living in a different house on Putnam Ave before moving into 1017 Putnam Ave. She got married to Bill Foulkes from 1017 Putnam Ave and she remembers Bill saying he “took me out of the slums” since he lived across from Prospect Park. Margie said she met Bill at a Knight’s of Columbus dance in Prospect Park. There were dances there every Sunday. At first she said she wouldn’t dance with Bill but then after the dance was over he asked her to go out for something to eat and she said she was hungry and went!!! Lol 😂
Bill Foulkes and Tom McPartland, another fireman, opened a Real Estate office together and eventually Bill took it over.
Margie went to Friendsville Pa in August. She remembers staying 1/2 of the summer in Brooklyn and 1/2 the summer in Pennsylvania. TJ would go up in August and stay a few days in Pennsylvania. Margie remembers coming up the road from St. Joseph into Friendsville and taking a right turn before the Friendsville Church then going about a block up from Maurice and Kathleen Fitzgerald’s general store and Grandma Hannah Coleman’s house was on the right side of the road. Across the street there was a school in which the country cousins would go back to classes in August. Margie would go back to this school with them and she loved it because she “ was like a celebrity “.
Margie also remembers going to school in Lawton, Pa over Easter vacation. She said the High School and the Elementary School were altogether in one space. She remembers sleeping with Nonie and Ruth Geary upstairs in Grandma Hannah’s house. She said there were no toilets, only slop pots and an outhouse. There was no electricity and they used Kerosene lamps. There was a back room that contained a bathtub like “ in the movies” and once a week the water would be heated up on the stove and you’d get a bath. She remembers a sitting room in Grandma’s house that was always perfectly organized. There was also a wood burning stove in the big kitchen. The kitchen also contained something that was “sort of like a couch “. She remembers it because she remembers a time when there was a mouse and my grandma Margaret ( Margie’s mother ) jumped up on the couch and then Margie jumped up on the couch too.
Margie remembers there was a front porch on Hannah’s house and that all Hannah’s children were already married at this point in time. Margie remembers that she went to some dances in Friendsville and once again, remembers feeling like “ a big celebrity from the city.”
Margie recalled that Eddie Moran, my Aunt Anne’s country boyfriend, came to her wedding in January 1950. She also remembers that Eddie came to Brooklyn during the 1939 World ‘s Fair. She said that she ( meaning Aunt Anne ) was in love with him.
I believe she was in love with him. The only photo I found in Aunt Anne’s nightstand after she died was a little snapshot of her and Eddie.
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