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Preface
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I was a dead-end street kid. I was delivered by a mid-wife on a cold March Tuesday morning in a cold water, walk up flat in a three-story tenement. I was what you might call a disadvantaged kid but did not know it. This book is the result of my long-standing desire to record some memories of my childhood and youth in a time and place long gone. The time-the 1920's and the place, a block located on Race Street, in the old Hay Market district of the city on the shores of Lake Erie, known as Cleveland, Ohio. My reminiscences are in the form of vignettes that feature people and events that made an impact on me during the most impressionable years of my life, years spent in what was once known as "The Ginney Block." The names of some of the people that figure in the vignettes have been changed for obvious reasons. The title "Ginney Block" is not used in the derogatory sense. Far from it. As an Italian-American, I am proud of my heritage and of the great strides made by people of my background in all walks of life in the United States of America. I have used the title because that is what the place of origin was called by people of other backgrounds when I lived there. |