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- My Dad, Charles Anthony Fries, Sr., would always go out
to get our Christmas trees at the "11th hour" on Christmas
Eve. I think he felt sorry for the scrawny, unclaimed trees leaning
against the fence on the corner lot. It was cold and those poor trees looked
so lonely. It didn’t hurt that they
cost nothing or pretty close to it, but I don’t think that was his primary
reason for waiting until the stand was closing down for the season. There was something exhilarating about running
out at the last minute that excited him.
By the world’s standards we might have had the barest, skinniest, sickliest
looking tree in all of Brooklyn, but we loved our tree nevertheless.
- Speaking of Christmas, in
the late afternoon on Christmas Eve, my parents would also rush to Myrtle
Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens to finish their remaining Christmas present purchases.
I use the term “remaining” loosely since a
rather large part of the gifts were bought as they quickly ran from store
to store in an excited, somewhat stressful fashion. We would bring the items home and
hurriedly wrap them to bring next door for the “exchange” at the annual Christmas
Eve get-together at my Grandpa Fries’ house.
- My Dad was rather protective
of his family. When we were young
children, he had us kids stand on a table and twirl around and around with
our arms over our heads as he wrapped each one of us in a blanket and
secured it firmly down the side with large safety pins. God forbid we get a chill during the
night! I guess in retrospect it could be seen as
a bit confining but at the time I don’t remember minding it at all.
- My Dad always believed
that “function” was paramount and “looks” didn’t really matter. If
it works, who cares what it looks like?
So for most of my growing up years, the water spigots in our
one and only bathtub, in our one and only bathroom, were turned on with pliers
which we rested on the side of the bathtub.
There were no knobs on the hot and
cold water faucets, only some sort of screws coming out of the wall and
these were turned on by using the pliers. Hey, it worked; we were still able to
take baths. My sister recently reminded
me that the bathtub contained another interesting peculiarity - hot water
came out of the cold water spout and cold water came out of the hot water
spout. Till this day, we both still
have trouble figuring out faucets. It
makes life a little bit more interesting though.
- Whenever we sat in the
Dining Room (which was a lot since we had company all the time) my Dad sat
at one end of the dining room table.
Roast beef, roast turkey and
roast chicken were frequent choices for a company dinner, and my father
was the primary meat carver. These company dinners were noisy, crowded,
joyous events at 62 Interboro Parkway and my father’s style of carving and
serving the meat only added to the excitement. “Do you want some more meat?” he would
say, hoping he’d get a positive response.
When a guest said “yes’, he’d say, “hold out your plate”, and with
one well-coordinated movement, he’d slice the meat, pick up the knife and
fling the sliced meat across the table onto your plate. Rarely did he miss, even if the meat was
going to the opposite end of the table. Dinner
was fun at our house.
- The photo above was taken in 1936 ( my Dad was 19 years old )the backyard at my father's house ( 8 Vermont Ave - name was changed to 62 Interboro Parkway in the late 30's and more recently changed to the Jackie Robinson Pkwy)
