2011.027

Staff, Produced by

Gift

Museum Collections.

2011 - 2011

Date(s) Created: 2011 Date(s): 2011

Notes: 2011.027.0001 Session 1 THE HOBOKEN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT INTERVIEWEE: JOAN CUNNING with Dan Cunning INTERVIEWERS: BOB FOSTER & HOLLY METZ LOCATION: 5 CHURCH TOWERS, HOBOKEN, NJ Date: April 6, 2011 Session #1 HM: We're starting from the beginning. When were you born, and where were you born? JC: I was born in St. Mary's Hospital, 05/20/36. I was brought home to 256 Sixth Street, and I think I was eleven months old when we went to the Terrace (Willow Terrace). We went to seventeen first. We lived in seventeen for about eight years; then we moved next door, to fifteen. [Laughs] HM: And why did you move? JC: Well, we moved because my mother loved the bathroom the lady had next door. She had a tile bathroom, and off-switches. Everybody else had pull-strings. And, I guess, the price was right. HM: And how many -- well, in the birth order, where were you with your siblings? JC: I'm the sixth. HM: You're the sixth. And how many more were there after you? Were you the last born? JC: No. There was my sister, Marietta. Seven. My mother had seven children. HM: Can you name, for me, the siblings before you? JC: James; John (they're all deceased); Gerry (it's really Gerald); Eileen was first. I should have put Ilene first. HM: Eileen before James. JC: Yes. HM: That's four. One more. Ilene; James; John; Gerald (Gerry). JC: Virginia. HM: Virginia's last. JC: No. Marietta's last. HM: Ah. Okay. Virginia, and then you, and the last one is -- JC: Marietta. HM: That's an interesting name. Where did Marietta come from? The name. JC: I don't know. HM: It's sort of exotic. Okay. So did your parents both work? JC: My father was a fireman. He went on in 1930, and continued. HM: And your mother was a homemaker? JC: Yes. HM: Were your parents born in Hoboken? JC: Yes. Both of them. HM: And what about their parents? I'm just trying to see how far your Hoboken roots are. JC: In 1888, my grandmother, my mother's mother. She always said the year of the big storm, the big blizzard. HM: So 1888 was the year that what happened? JC: Bridget came from Ireland. HM: Bridget came from Ireland. And that's your mother's mother. Your grandmother. What was her last name? JC: Her maiden name? HM: Yes. Was she married when she came? JC: No. Connolly. It's spelled different. HM: And where was she from, in Ireland. JC: Mayo. County Mayo. HM: So she came to Hoboken. Did she come to Hoboken first? JC: Yes. HM: And do you know why she came to Hoboken? JC: She and her sister came together. Mary. Her sister, Mary. And they worked, really, as domestics. My grandmother was what they called "the upstairs girl." She happened to marry the boss of the house -- a big joke when we're all together, the family. RF: Upstairs/Downstairs. HM: And she married the boss. JC: She married the "man of the house," I guess you'd call it. HM: Okay. So Bridget came, and where did she work? JC: I think it was 732 Park Avenue. There was one family then. The family. His wife died. HM: And the name of the man she married? JC: James L. Roarty. HM: Why did he need an upstairs girl? JC: It was a private house. They were very wealthy, I think. HM: So he wasn't the head of the household, he was -- JC: Yes, he was. HM: Oh, he was. JC: I can't think of what they call them now. HM: Did he have children? JC: He had children. He had other children. HM: So he was a widower. He had children, and that's why he needed her to help. How many children did he have? JC: That I know of, that lived -- Mary, John, Steve. I think he had five children, and I think three lived. Then my mother -- he was like sixty-five when my mother was born. Sixty-three or sixty-five. Yes. Because he had children with her, then. She was supposed to have been a beautiful redhead, my grandmother. HM: Okay. So she came during the blizzard. Did you hear stories, her impressions of Hoboken? JC: Living in Hoboken. She lived across the street, there, between Park and Willow, and she didn't let a dog pass her house. That was her domain. HM: So she was a very conscientious homemaker. JC: And she took care of everything. When her husband died, she had boarders and stuff like that. HM: And he died when? [Interruption] I would like to have a calligrapher do a family chart for you. If we do it, it will be a big foldout. That's part of the reason we wanted to interview you -- because your family goes so far back. JC: I have a friend who has a tree as big as these [unclear]. HM: I like the idea of a river. JC: The river would be nice -- the Hudson River. HM: Exactly. Good. All right. DC: This is early. That's 1898. HM: Oh, Kroger. Okay. At some point I'm going to ask -- is this something I can take, or is this your only copy. DC: You can probably take it for a couple of weeks. JC: If you need to borrow -- HM: Of course. Just so I can get the names-- DC: Let me show you where you're at. You're at [Unclear] and Grand Street, you're talking about, right? No? JC: No. DC: Here's my mom. JC: The house is there. [cross talk.] But she was very old when he came. He was a student from [unclear]. HM: Okay. So that's your grandmother. Now we should talk about your mother and father. JC: Not about my other grandmother? HM: Well, we should do the other side. JC: That's okay. They're not around. [Laughter] HM: No, go ahead. If you have a story to tell me about them, you should tell me. Let's do the other side. Do you have stories to tell me about the other side? JC: Well, I think she was a housewife, too. They lived here in Hoboken. HM: Where did she live? Do you know? JC: She was from downtown. St. Joseph's parish. That's how they talked. HM: Because Hoboken used to be divided uptown/downtown, east and west, as opposed to how they say it now, as north and south. Her name was - ? JC: Her maiden name was Olinda Tostain. It's spelled here correctly, someplace. HM: And she came from where? JC: Hoboken. HM: So she was born in Hoboken. JC: I think so. Yes. She told me she was christened in Hoboken. HM: And her family -- what a wonderful name, Olinda. So her parents -- she's an earlier generation. And her parents came from Ireland? JC: We're not telling. We only found out. DC: France. JC: I said that's why my mother never talked about it. HM: Well, that's interesting. JC: And she married John Smith. HM: She married John Smith. And where was he from? JC: Hoboken. He was born at 632 Willow. HM: And where were his people from -- John Smith. DC: Ireland. Right? JC: That's right. DC: There may have been a generation here. My wife explained all this stuff to me, and I forget everything. John Henry Smith. HM: Right. DC: Yes. I think she might have [unclear-eloped?] with him. JC: Wait. My grandfather came -- they left from Liverpool, England, and they said he was a farmer, and she was a spinster. It said so right on the papers. But we had that fire in Hoboken, in the Terrace that time -- HM: -- and lost a lot. JC: That's how they left it; that she was a spinster. HM: So it said that she was a spinster on what papers? JC: On the papers that they came into, in this country. Yes. HM: But they didn't come in together. JC: Yes, they did. He was a farmer. Yes. I got to tell you, my kids have a lot of jokes about that. My brothers -- not these kids. [Laughs] HM: But it's so strange. Why would they --? Hmm. That's interesting. JC: Well, a lot of people came from Ireland through Liverpool. HM: Oh, that part doesn't surprise me. JC: Maybe we all met there. HM: Well, I liked the French part. It makes it a little bit more complicated. Also, I think, just in terms of crossing ethnic lines -- there was more of it than people want to admit. JC: It's unbelievable. DC: They have better records, too, the French. HM: Well, a name like John Smith is a little hard to track. [Cross talk] You couldn't you get a more common name than John Smith. DC: You have eighty John Smiths born a day. HM: Exactly. So let's go back to Willow Terrace. You were born, you said, in 1936. JC: Right. HM: It was the Great Depression. JC: We didn't know. My father was a fireman. We thought we were rich. HM: Well, probably, comparatively speaking, because he had a job. JC: Exactly. Yes. HM: And do you have memories of what it was like for your neighbors. You felt you were rich, so you must have noticed that other people didn't have work. JC: In the Terrace, I don't know anybody who didn't work. We had a lot of policemen on the piers and the railroad. A lot of them worked on the railroad. Like [unclear] a lot of people working at City Hall -- secretaries and stuff like that. RF: Can you remember some of the other family names on the block? JC: Oh, sure. Sure. My best friend is Mary Pendrick. We were raised together. Her maiden name was Duff. HM: And where did she live? JC: Across the street. She lived at 25. HM: We live in a little Terrace house. At one point you had nine people living in a Terrace house? JC: Yes. DC: Ten after the fire. JC: No, no. We're talking about my family -- my brothers and sisters. HM: So you had nine living in there? JC: We had nine living in the house, and sometimes we had two grandmothers with us. HM: And how did this work? JC: You know, it's funny. I guess when we were little, we didn't notice it at all. But as teenagers -- I had a brother in the army. He was in the Philippines. The other one was in Germany. They'd come and go. But the girls always had the top floor. That was another reason my mother bought the house; they had built out the back. I think it was the first one that went straight up. But honest to god, there was never anyone laying on a couch or anything. HM: But did you share a bed? JC: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. HM: So how many in a bed? JC: Well, there were four girls. We each had a bed. The boys -- the back bedroom had a big bed. Like I say, once -- I can't remember. HM: Probably, as you got older -- people started to leave by the time they were teenagers, or -- JC: They lived in that house until they got married. Nobody left the house until they got married. That's the way it was. That's why I didn't show my house when I sold it. I didn't want them saying, "You had seven kids in here?!" No way. That would annoy me. HM: So when you had dinner, did you all eat dinner together? JC: Positively. Dinner was a big thing. If my father was coming home at 6:00, then that was dinner. But the shifts, then, they were doing seventy-two hours. HM: He must have just come home and gone to sleep. DC: Back then you worked twenty-four. At 8:00 in the morning, you were either leaving work or coming to work. That was it. JC: They did a twenty-four cycle. DC: One on, one off, one off, and then an extra "Kelly" day, they would call it, built in once a week or so. JC: But that was after they worked seventy-two. Then they got the sixty-two. Somebody was probably always in my mother's bed. There was always a crib in the room. They always had a crib. When I got married, there was a crib in the pictures, for god's sake. HM: Frequently, people say, if you have a lot of children, the oldest girl acts as the mom. JC: We were very close. HM: So she looked after the younger ones? JC: Well, my mother never left the house. In the Terrace, you put the baby outside the door, in the carriage or playpen, and you went about your business. If anything happened, somebody knocked on the door and said, "Helen, the baby's crying." Even my children were raised like that. Nobody came through there that didn't belong there. They just wouldn't do that. HM: So, in a sense, the Terrace itself -- the front, we're talking about the front of the house -- JC: Yes. HM: -- was like everyone's living room. And everybody looked out for everybody else. JC: Nobody locked the door. We had screen doors in the summer. No air-conditioning. The door would be open. HM: And what kind of games? You played on the street, I assume. JC: I did. HM: What kinds of games did you play? JC: The girls were with dolls and doll carriages. [adds later: hopscotch, jump-rope] The boys, they could wander a little bit. They played ball. RF: Did people have cars? JC: They parked their car where it belonged, and you wouldn't dare -- dare -- even if they went away for a month, you would not take that spot. It got troublesome with us, because my children had cars. I tried to keep it -- I'd say, "Don't put your car in here, and don't --" But other people did it. They'd have three cars in a row. RF: The cars are bigger now, and they're renters. JC: Oh, yeah. But we didn't let you in. We had that barricade up. You did not get in. I mean, in the street, everybody was out. On a nice day, everybody was out. You ran back and forth, and if a car came in, every mother got up, opened the gate, and got your own children in place. It was a wonderful place. My neighbor across the street was a man. He was sick -- Mr. Hitzler -- and I opened the door for Danny (this one), and he'd say, "I got it, Joan," and he'd take that baby in the sun -- because they were on the sunny side. When he'd come back, he'd say, "I think he needs a bottle." That's how people were. You could get a babysitter in a minute. HM: And you needed one. I can't imagine how your mother -- JC: My mother was great. HM: How did she shop for food? JC: She sent us. I can remember going to the store. Like now, with Hannah -- they let her go to the avenue. They live on Bloomfield, so she goes around the corner. I say, "Oh, don't let her up there alone." And they go, "What?!" [Laughter] But we went to the A&P on Sixth and Washington, and we had no wagon. We carried back the packages, me and my sister. We did that four times a week. That's the way it was. HM: And laundry? JC: I had a washer and dryer. The first one, the dryer went in the bedroom. It had to be electric, and the plugs covered up the wall and all. We used to hang out on the big house, 314. My mother was 315, so the line went down to the end of the thing. New people came in and dropped the lines. Well -- it was like a war! But, like I said, my mother -- on the lines all the time. We all knew how to hang up the clothes, and bring them in. But when I moved in, I got a dryer. HM: Well, if you think about it, that's a lot of diapers. They didn't have Pampers, so she's always hanging stuff up. JC: Yes. All the time. RF: And were you the largest family on the block? DC: Oh, yes. JC: Yes. Yes. Yes, we were. I think "Clancy" had three, next to me -- next to my mother. Well, the Earls, next door to me -- they had seven children. They were raised there. Mr. Earl, I was next, then his niece lived next -- Sissy -- and then Grace Earl, and across the street was Mary Duff, my girlfriend. That was a whole little community. Everybody was related. HM: I had heard that, before we moved in -- that a lot of times families would grow, then they would move down the line of the Terrace. DC: My Aunt Marietta -- her sister -- and my uncle, Steve Earl, got married -- JC: That was convenient. DC: -- so the whole neighborhood -- HM: -- related. Once removed. JC: My sister, Virginia, had her house there. She was there a good five years before they moved out. So it was her, me, and my mother. RF: Do you remember when -- like you had a back yard. But we'd often hear that there was actually an alley that ran right down the middle of the back yards, which, because -- JC: Wood sheds. RF: -- like for ash; for people to put the ash out, from the stoves. No? You didn't. JC: Because we had a coal stove, and those ashes you pulled out yourself. Even when they came, they came with big bags on them, and dumped them in the last room. It was a shed, really. It was a pretty decent shed, though. My father was very handy. But we would go down, we'd jump in there, and get a bucket up for my mother to take in the kitchen. Like I say, my father worked all the time. They were always in the firehouse. When he wasn't -- he could paint. We always had a nice, nice home. We always did. HM: So the coal -- the coal delivery would come, they would dump just a big pile of coal, and then you would take it, with buckets -- JC: No, they came -- HM: The coal guys. JC: -- with buckets on their backs, and dumped it in the hole, in the bin. Then when we needed it -- but there was never an alley back there. We had a lot that everybody played in, but I built right out to the end, when I got there. DC: Right. There was a short yard, then a shed, and then there were maybe five or six deep, and then over the years, you would just have -- HM: -- filling it in. RF: So people could not walk through the backs, continuously. JC: No. You could pass the bottles of beer over the fence. We'd have parties, and you'd be filling the pitchers down the [yard.] HM: Where did the beer come from? Where did the barrels of beer come from? JC: You'd put them in the yard, and ice them. HM: But from a neighborhood tavern? JC: Probably Mike D's. HM: Now where was that? JC: On Sixth and Willow. Mike D's. Around the corner. DC: It's [Peter's Hair Salon] now. HM: Maybe this is hard to say, but the people who lived in the Terrace -- they owned their houses. Right? JC: Yes. HM: So were they considered better off than people who lived downtown, [most] of whom were renters? JC: We didn't go downtown! [Laughs] HM: Because you didn't mix with -- ? JC: The first Terrace was all Irish. The second was Irish and Italian. The third, we never even -- I'm not kidding. Not that we didn't talk to you, but that's how it was. HM: So the Irish and Italian mix, that Terrace -- you're saying that the all-Irish Terrace, maybe they would mix with the Irish-Italian mix? JC: Everybody got along. HM: You're saying, then, that there was another -- JC: Seventh Street. It wasn't the same. I shouldn't say that. I've got friends there. They're Irish there -- god, yes. The Gills, the Englishes, the Cannings. I can't think of any -- HM: Well, it might not be because of background; it might just be because they weren't your immediate neighbors. JC: Yes. Oh, it had nothing to do with background. Nothing at all. HM: So it's really, really local. It's sort of like you have enough friends. The Terrace -- they're tight, there are a lot of people. So why go -- JC: I can remember a man falling down the stairs and being killed on the stairs. My father went over there, and they called everybody. Everything was taken care of. They brought her over to the house and we had tea. It was that way. Everybody got into everybody's business. If you had a party, you invited everybody. There was no such thing as you wouldn't invite your neighbor. HM: But what I was getting at before, in terms of downtown -- I'm not saying that it's a bad thing -- but I would assume that the people who owned their houses [lived differently because they had more money.] Is that true, or not true? JC: I don't know. HM: Like you went to school with kids from downtown. JC: I'm sure the kids that went to school from downtown -- they probably owned their houses. HM: So you think they were [mostly] homeowners, too? JC: Oh, I think there were a lot of homeowners, yes. RF: And when you say Terrace #1, #2, and #3, where do you start from? Seventh Street? JC: No. RF: No. From your Terrace. JC: Number one "there." [Laughter] RF: Okay. I just wanted to be sure. DC: [Unclear] is the third Terrace. HM: And what school did you go to? JC: Our Lady of Grace. HM: And that's your church, too. JC: Yes. HM: And your girlfriends, your best friend from across the street, also went to -- JC: -- Our Lady of Grace. I went to Demarest for high school, she went to St. Michael's, in the city. She probably was the rich one. I didn't really think that [laughs], but -- HM: To pay for high school. JC: You pay whether you're rich or not, if you want your kids in a good school. HM: It's true. DC: There was no tuition was there? JC: Where? DC: In the high schools and stuff. JC: Oh, sure there was. HM: Not Demarest. At a public high school there was no tuition. JC: No. Later on. Later on. RF: At Catholic school, there is now tuition. HM: Yes. And before you got to high school, when you were in middle school, there was no tuition. DC: Right. Kindergarten through eighth grade -- or first grade to eighth grade, at OLG, there was no tuition. Then like maybe sixth or seventh grade, you had to start with $10 a month or something like that. That's how it started. The church supported everything. HM: Which is incredible. DC: Yes. When you think about three grades of first grade, three kindergartens, three eighth grades -- HM: And taught by priests or nuns? JC: Both. Charity nuns. The Sisters of Charity. HM: Who lived in town, right? JC: Yes. They lived in the convent. HM: That really is amazing -- it's just such a different world, when you think about it. And they wore habits. Before Vatican II -- DC: Yes. JC: You just respected them, and it was expected that you did. There was no such -- HM: Also, for women, in terms of advancement, being a teacher -- they were very good at what they did. That was a high accomplishment. RF: And the penmanship. JC: I still do Palmer. RF: Do you remember some of the prominent people involved with Our Lady of Grace? Like some of the early priests, or some of the sister, in particular, or the people who ran the school? JC: Oh, yes. We had Monsignor Masterson (I don't know what his first name was), and we had Father Coyle, Father Hessian, Father Brennan. [Masterson]-that's the only monsignor I remember. DC: Was Father Meehan a monsignor? JC: I don't think so. DC: He retired a monsignor. JC: Then they didn't make them so quick. DC: He was like a real [retired Navy] military-type guy. He was something. JC: I'm trying to think of where they were in the confessionals. [Laughter] Father Brennan. He was one of the older ones. HM: But in your day-to-day, like at the school, you were involved more with the nuns, right? Because they were your teachers. JC: Oh, yes. HM: Do you remember any of them? JC: Of course. Sister Catherine Baptista -- DC: Who I had. JC: Yes, she was there for my brothers, too. Sister Monica. HM: So you had Sister Monica, and you also had -- DC: -- Sister Immaculata, Sister Maria Francis [and] Sister Catherine Baptista. Yes. HM: And what was she like? DC: She was tough. JC: They were all tough. HM: Were you scared of her? DC: She was old by the time I got there. [Laughter] HM: She'd had enough of little children. JC: Who was the one we had the big wake for? Sister -- ? DC: Sister Therese? JC: No. But she was there, Sister Therese. Sister Agnes James. She went out like a queen. We had a 41dinner for her. We had everything. All the nuns came. We had Sister Therese Joseph, and Sister Therese Anne. They were wonderful. DC: Sister Joan Anne. JC: Sister Joan Anne. Yes. HM: And were they women who came from Hoboken? Or they came from someplace, and they -- JC: A lot of them came from Boston. Yes. And they let you know it. [Laughs] HM: Explain that to me. Did they think they were coming to Hoboken to educate -- ? JC: They must have went out to "convensation," for all their training. HM: But what was their attitude? They're from Boston, they come to Hoboken -- did they have a certain perception of what -- JC: No. DC: They just got sent here, and that was it. HM: They didn't have any choice. JC: But Hoboken wasn't a bad town to come to, you know what I mean? I think they got a lot of respect, the nuns and the priests. HM: As they should. RF: Was the orphanage operating? JC: It was part-time. They didn't keep them overnight then. They'd keep them from afternoon to supper, so we'd pick them up. I didn't know too much about that. I did know a couple girls who were at it, but I wouldn't even know their last names anymore. It was over in my time. But anybody who went to it said they were really nice, very good to them. I'm sure my mother [wanted to send us?] there a few times. HM: She'd have to have you at night. [Laughter, crosstalk] And the pencil factory was still here? JC: Oh, yes. Yes. HM: Was that loud? JC: Loud at school, and on a hot day, when you'd have to open a window -- [vocalizes]. Because it ran this way. So right next to the school, you heard it all the time. HM: Did a lot of your neighbors work there? JC: Everybody worked at the pencil factory. HM: Men and women? JC: My brother worked there as a kid, part-time. But a lot of women. A lot of women worked there. My girlfriend just emptied her aunt's house, and we were laughing. She said, "You need a pencil." [Laughter] They had every color! HM: Well, that's one of the perks of working in a pencil factory. So the men in the Terrace -- they were firemen? JC: Firemen. All the Clancys were policemen. HM: And they worked on the docks. JC: And Mr. King and Mr. Watt -- they were all on the docks. The Murphys were all, I think, on the railroad. I know they worked for the railroad. I used to go to parties with them. We had no professionals. We had no doctors that I can think of. But everybody worked. Everybody had a job. [Mr. Earl worked for Con Edison.] RF: Would people try to leave for the summer? People still had to work, but was there the shore retreat? That kind of thing? JC: Oh, yes. Yes. We went to Rockaway for three weeks in the summer. And Mary, my friend Mary Duff Pendrick -- she went all summer. The Earls -- most of them had a room. You'd get a room down there in Rockaway, and have one big kitchen that everybody went in. HM: So more than one family would go down there together, and they would share a kitchen? JC: Well, anybody that you rented from, you shared. You'd get a room or two. Mary always had two rooms. RF: So the men would work, and come on weekends, sometimes? JC: Well, my father would be off. He'd be with us all the time. RF: Oh. That's when he took his vacation. JC: But the people who had them for the whole summer -- naturally, their husbands worked. But Rockaway was great. You could walk there at night, dance -- go from one dance hall to the other. We were fifteen-sixteen years old. When the band stopped, you'd go across the street and dance. That's how we knew all the Irish dances. That's where we picked them up. HM: Did you have to be chaperoned? JC: In Rockaway? No. HM: No chaperone. So that's a good thing. JC: We didn't stay out -- you had to be home, probably, by 11:00, which would be a lot earlier in Hoboken. HM: And why would that be? That you would be in earlier in Hoboken? JC: This was fun. The summers were fun. Other than that, you had to be in to do your homework and stuff. RF: School. HM: Did you make party dresses? Or buy party dresses for your outings? JC: We bought them. We didn't make anything. No. We're not handy. None of us was handy. But in Rockaway, you were in a bathing suit all day, and you did wear skirts at night. People weren't walking around in shorts, like they do now. HM: You know the world you're describing doesn't exist anymore, so I just really want to get a feel of what that was like. So a typical day -- if it was a school day, and you were living in the Terrace, what would that day be like? JC: You'd come home and see if you had to go to the store. There was always something to do. HM: But when you got up in the morning, your father and mother were there. Who was making you breakfast, and what kind of breakfast did you have? JC: My mother. We had breakfast every morning -- maybe fried eggs one morning, or oatmeal. My mother was big on oatmeal. HM: And everyone ate together. JC: Oh, yeah. And when my father was coming in at 8:00, we'd hurry up to eat, just to be seeing him. HM: Then you wore a uniform to go to school? JC: Oh, yeah. Well, we wore Navy blue skirts and white middy blouses. HM: Were you allowed to wear jewelry? JC: Nobody had jewelry. [Laughter] HM: I just remember friends (this is years later), when they went, and wore a ring or something, the nuns would take -- because they didn't want you to look better or... [truncated due to length]