Page 26 - REALLY What A time Book IX

REALLY SO WHAT
What A Time

FAIRLINGTON

The high rise apartments were great for delivering news
papers. Joe was a newsboy. He could deliver 4 papers on each
floor. But, even more important for me was the layout of
these buildings. There was lots of green space between them.
One could run around the building, into the apartments, down
into the basements and out the back. It became a game.

Our heat and electricity came from powerhouses. They burnt
coal and had high smoke stacks to carry off the grime. There
might have been three in North Fairlington. One at the end of
our block, behind the apartments near the woods. They were
single story, which led several of us to climb the rain spout to
get on to the slate roof. To get down we’d jump off the roof.
Our legs and feet were like spring boards. We’d land and roll.
There wasn’t any air conditioning, instead, during the hot
summer months Mom would open all our windows. They all
had screens, a North American thing. She would start our
large fan in their bedroom to draw cool air up from the cellar
into the rest of the house. By 10:00 AM each day she closed
all the windows. The humidity was always very high.

Up the street from us in another direction were the main
recreational facilities. They were behind the tennis courts and
maintenance buildings. It was a large open field, twice the
size of a couple of football fields. We would be in our teens
before we played football. By then it was a supervised sport
by the schools. The fields also held two baseball diamonds.

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