Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Sadie
Sadie
Sadie
Ebook218 pages3 hours

Sadie

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

From as far back as I am able to remember, I loved to sit and listen to my mother, Anna, and her sisters, Regina and Mildred, talk for hours on end of their childhood and what it was like for them growing up poor on the streets of Manhattan.
Of all the times I sat with them, my favorite times were the ones we spent in my Aunt Regina’s kitchen at her summer bungalow out on Long Island. Around midnight, each sister took her usual place at the table and there they would sit, and talk, and sip tea until dawn.
Even as a babe in arms, I just couldn’t get enough of their stories. Through my tenderest of years, my mind was their naked canvas where each of them, in their own animated way, took center stage and painted for me the most vivid pictures of the story of their lives and their world in another time.

LanguageEnglish
Publisherg.l. parker
Release dateNov 8, 2011
ISBN9781465794499
Sadie
Author

g.l. parker

I was born in Manhattan on 27th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues. Not on the street, literally, but in St. Claire's Hospital. Family rumor has it, I was the first redhead born in St. Claire's in over 20 years and the nurses took me around the hospital to show me off. I guess that is my claim to Manhattan fame. I went to P.S. 33, and I played in Chelsea Park. I use to play in the park with the homeless (or the bummy men and bummy ladies as I called them) who made the park their home. They all knew my dad, GG. He owned a bar; The Corner Bar, on 27th and 9th. He often fed the homeless and gave them a free drink, a few bucks, and they in turn played with me. But, in some regard, I guess you could say I was kinda-sorta a loner. I had quite a vivid imagination and my odd way of thinking kept me well occupied. Growing up in Chelsea is where I spent the best and happiest moments of my life. The community watch was more than that, it was an extended family who embraced you and watched over you, and no one ever locked their doors. Living in Chelsea, if you dared to misbehave out on the streets, even blocks from your home, by the time you got home your mother was waiting for you, most likely, on the stoop or leaning out of the window because she heard of your misdeed through the grapevine and no excuse was ever good enough for misbehaving in public and embarrassing her like that in front of the neighbors. I am SADIE's granddaughter, and fifth generation New Yorker. When I was a little kid, I told my mother I was going to one day write a book about her, her siblings, and their mother, SADIE. They, who I have written about, are all gone now, and I consider myself their ghost writer. Their story is, well, their story, in their own words. I just filled in some of the blanks. Where my writing may not inspire you, their story will. Especially, if you are of Irish descent, a true New Yorker, or one whose roots are through The Gateway to the New World or Ellis Island. What? Ya' were spectin' proper English here? Well, this is my leisure time, my time to chill with you and be myself. Whadda' ya' 'spect from a girl whose roots are firmly planted in Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, and its environs?

Related to Sadie

Related ebooks

Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies) History For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Sadie

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Sadie - g.l. parker

    SADIE was a strikingly beautiful young woman whose sheer Irish beauty earned her the title of Belle of the West Side of Manhattan.

    As a young girl, growing up on the mean streets of the city, she possessed a poise just as polished and genteel as those of the fine young ladies attending the Gibson Girl School on Fifth Avenue.

    With that said though, let it not be misunderstood that SADIE, for her children, and sadly more for others than herself, was a ball of fire when she had to be. She had an inner strength and conviction that guided her through whatever life threw at her and hers, and she met all the challenges presented before her head-on and in her own way. Which was with courage, a quiet grace or a sailor's tongue, a good sense of humor, and always, always a prayer.

    ~ Sadie ~

    By g. l. parker

    Copyright 2003-2011 by g. l. parker.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

    Smashwords edition

    Hell’s Kitchen

    Copyright 1958 by Richard O’Connor

    Reprinted with the permission of McIntosh and Otis, Inc.

    License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    This book is dedicated to the gang, because without them there would be no book at all…

    #

    I would like to thank my family and former coworkers for their kind words and support, which greatly contributed in making this book a reality.

    Special heartfelt thanks to my sisters, Charlotte and Linda; to Lady Lynda; and many thanks to Smashwords.com for giving me this opportunity to fulfill a promise I made as a child. My deepest thanks to my husband, who let me monopolize the computer! And a special thanks to B.L. Robinson and Jim Macdonald for all their help.

    From as far back as I am able to remember, I loved to sit and listen to my mother, Anna, and her sisters, Regina and Mildred, talk for hours on end of their childhood and what it was like for them growing up poor on the streets of Manhattan.

    Of all the times I sat with them, my favorite times were the ones we spent in my Aunt Regina’s kitchen at her summer bungalow out on Long Island. Around midnight, each sister took her usual place at the table and there they would sit, and talk, and sip tea until dawn.

    Even as a babe in arms, I just couldn’t get enough of their stories. Through my tenderest of years, my mind was their naked canvas where each of them, in their own animated way, took center stage and painted for me the most vivid pictures of the story of their lives and their world in another time.

    Always a child of the night, I was never asleep before midnight.

    If my mother was to take her place at their table, and in so doing be able to have peace of mind, I was usually on her lap doing battle with the sandman until he, as exhausted as I, finally won me over. There in my mother’s arms, as I drifted off to sleep, listening and absorbing their every word, I dreamed of angels on wing and things that go bump in the night.

    Though one sister would be in the spotlight when telling her version of their tale, the other sisters, who never seemed at a loss for words, constantly interrupted to make a correction when their names, or the names of any other family members who had come and gone on into the great beyond and no longer here to speak for themselves, came into the story in play.

    As I grew, I went from my mother’s lap to eventually having a place of honor of my own at their table, and, over the years, I relentlessly pestered them to recall their tales for me again and again. I asked them to recount their tales so many times, because I had this deepseated need to know every nuance of their lives, and I feared I might have missed something along the way.

    As the years went by, I got to know each of their stories so well, if they dared to change or omit a single word, I’d interject to correct them and my mother would then raise her eyebrows at me to remind me of my place at their table.

    The ladies, growing older and tired of telling me their tales, often said I should take over because I probably knew their stories as well as they or better. I just smiled and told them that when I grew up I was going to write a book about their lives, at which point they smiled at each other, laughed, and said for me not to dig too deep.

    Well, these sisters three have gone on now, and I am all grown up, and I did do some digging of my own. I delved deeper and deeper into their past, and in my search for the truth behind their tales, based on the family’s myths, lore, and legends grown out of Ireland of long ago, I revisited the history of Manhattan that encompassed their lives.

    Though it hurts me so their voices have been silenced, I now am finally able to add my voice to theirs and have their stories continued for those who come after me.

    Chapter One

    Between 1848, the year of the Irish potato famine, and 1855, with political eruptions occurring all over Europe, three hundred thousand immigrants came to America’s shores. Of them, one hundred thousand were Irish, and four of them had their roots in my family tree.

    My great-great maternal and paternal grandparents, the Parkers and the Bergens, as did the many other Irish refugees fleeing that country of blight, poverty, religious persecution, hated and war, came to America and landed at two of the country’s major port cities: one in the port city of New York, in the borough of Manhattan, and the other in Louisiana, in the port city of New Orleans.

    I don’t know why my great-great grandparents left Ireland, but any one of the aforementioned conditions sounds reason enough to me. What I do know of them is, it was on the great ships that they sailed away from their beautiful Emerald Isle, and under the billowing sails of the massive wooden vessels’ tall masts, they began their long journey across the unforgiving seas.

    When they arrived in America, upon disembarking the great ships, the immigrants found themselves on the docks of these port cities as prey to the most ruthless characters known to mankind. Left on piers, and in the hands of the would-be robbers of dreams, who stole from them what little possessions they carried with them from home.

    New York City, in 1855, working in conjunction with organizations such as the Irish Immigrant Society, built, with good intentions, a processing center downtown in Battery Park and called it the Gate to the New World. This was so that they could address the issues surrounding this influx of newcomers, and to keep better count of those arriving daily on its shores,

    Here, at the Gate, the weary travelers were assembled, herded in with bundles in hand, and stood on long lines waiting be counted. As the eager immigrants anxiously waited, and waited, and waited to see their new world, they were scrutinized by processors who questioned them as to who they were, from where they came, why they had come, what had they to declare, and in what trade were they intending to earn their living. Then, and only after having their physical and mental health checked, were they permitted to move along to have the papers stamped that made their entry into the New World official. To the immigrants, so coveted a prize were these official documents it was as if they, like the streets of America itself, were made of gold.

    After being released from their bondage of red tape, the more cautious bearers neatly folded their papers and placed them into pouches they wore around their necks. Tucking them inside their clothes, the papers were safely hidden from the prying eyes of those around them whom they feared at any moment may snatch them up and steal away not only their papers, but their freedom and their dreams as well.

    The other bearers, less suspicious of their new homeland, openly displayed their papers with a sense of pride made evident by the smiles on their faces. With their fists tightly clenched, they raised up their hands as if the papers they held in them were a prize for all to behold.

    Cunningham Parker, my great-great maternal grandfather, came to New York prior to the Gate to the New World. As a boy in Ireland, he dreamed of going to America someday to become the kind of artist he knew in his heart he was destined to be.

    He was an adventurous and talented young man who traveled to America alone in steerage, carrying with him only the tools of his trade.

    Not a man to be intimidated by a challenge, he held his own against a welcoming committee of young hooligans, with their gruff talk and cocky ways, when they confronted him on the docks and blocked him as he made his way down the pier. Cunningham didn’t have the time for such tomfoolery; he was a doer, a man on a mission, and a man with a plan who promised himself if he ever made it to America he would see the country state by state and not vicariously through books, magazines, and postcards, as he’d done in the past. This was the first step of his journey toward fulfilling his dreams, and no one was going to get in his way.

    Before he left Ireland, he wrote a letter to a friend who left Ireland and arrived in New York earlier than he, and his friend already had an apartment waiting for him in lower Manhattan in the Village.

    With his goals in mind, and destiny calling out to him, Cunningham was on the path to make a name for himself. It was going to be a rough start at first, and though he would manage to survive working as an artist, it was only going to be by the seat of his pants.

    Mary Smith, my great-great maternal grandmother, was the only one of my great ancestors to come to America from Ireland and arrive outside of the Port of New York. In 1848, at the age of twelve, she and her family landed in Louisiana and settled in New Orleans.

    Mary was a pretty, sweet, kind and spirited girl, and intelligent as well. After learning how to read and write English, and only two years after her arrival in America, she raised her hand and pledged her allegiance to the flag of her new country.

    Little did the Parker family realize that they, to escape the persecutions they faced under British rule in Ireland, found just as cruel a world waiting for them in Louisiana. An open door policy and the welcome mat were not awaiting them. The Irish were considered to be the lowest denominator on the rung in the social ladder of acceptance in America at the time, according to White Supremacist rule.

    With the odds stacked against her in the new world, Mary, understanding of the African American’s plight of injustice, had the good fortune, or misfortune as one could imagine, to witness the ways of life in America in its cruelest form. Alongside the children of color, who were her peers, a step above her in the ladder’s ascension, and all too familiar with the cold faces of prejudice, she bore witness to the harshest ways of the world through their eyes, and saw it, smelled it, heard it, and felt it for herself, and grew to be a better person for having been there.

    Daniel Bergen and Bridget Reily, my great-great paternal grandparents, came to America as newlyweds and landed at the Gate to the New World. They arrived in style and with money in their pockets.

    Unlike Cunningham, for the Bergen’s, it was the sight of the Crystal Palace with its illuminating charm standing beyond the Gate that welcomed them into the new world.

    In 1857, Daniel and Bridget were living on 117th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, near the Harlem River in an area then known as Bloomingdale.

    Bloomingdale was an expanse of open green fields with lush colorful gardens that flourished and grew alongside charming single family cottages that rose scattered about the hillsides, speckling the enchanting landscape with their charisma.

    From their home, the Bergens could look out of their windows and watch the construction of the newly commissioned Central Park being chiseled out of the forest and bedrock surrounding their Ireland-like community.

    Settled in this pristine neighborhood, Bridget and Daniel started their family, and the first of their seven children, Michael, was born in 1857. Two years later John followed.

    #

    On a lovely late spring morning, Bridget sent Daniel out to get Mary Brady, the local midwife hired to help with the delivery of their next child. It was here in this serene vista, in 1860, their third son was born. Daniel Joseph Bergen Jr., who they called Danny, drew his first breath as the country held its own breath for the horrors of war beginning to unfold in the South.

    #

    In Missouri, in 1857, Dred Scott, the slave of a gentleman farmer of Missouri, put the words of the Constitution of the United States on trial by taking his master to court to seek his freedom. Although the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled Scott’s case unworthy, he set into motion the agonizingly slow wheels of freedom in a democracy that prided itself on liberty and justice for all.

    In the backlash of the Scott case, the conditions in the South became much more hostile and the land was beginning an upheaval of change. In their resistance to this change, violent outbreaks of hatred started to rise up across the coutryside.

    #

    Cunningham, in 1857, while working his way cross-country, stopped in Louisiana to look for work. He had traveled across most of the states and was on his way home to Manhattan when he got sidetracked in New Orleans. There, he met my great-great grandmother, Mary. They fell in love and married shortly after their meeting.

    The landscape just outside of New Orleans, where they were living at the time, was nothing less than a sweeping panoramic view of fields of cotton—where the laborers outnumbered their taskmasters who stood above them overseeing their work as they picked the fluffy white crop.

    Cunningham and Mary found the treatment that befell the Black people of their community abhorrent. Not able to bear witness to such harsh treatments toward their fellow man, they packed up all they owned and loaded it into the back of a covered wagon and left Louisiana and the South for good.

    With their first son, John, who was an infant at the time, they traveled north through the turmoil that was quickly becoming widespread throughout the South.

    Once they were back up north in Manhattan, in familiar surroundings, Cunningham settled his family on the West Side. Feeling his wife and son were clear of danger from the impending civil rights war, he went out and about the streets of his old stomping grounds to continue on in his trade as an artisan, painting and doing works in bronze. Little did he suspect that the soon-to-be war, and all the hardships and chaos it brings with it, was following him and making a path straight to his family’s door.

    Cunningham loved his new country and took every opportunity afforded him to lend his hand to any cause he felt would make America the kind of country he truly believed it could be, if it were given half the chance. He was a civic-minded man, and a patriotic one, too. When Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at Cooper’s Union, in lower Manhattan, he was there to give him his support and cheer him on in his race for the presidency of the United States.

    While on the campaign trail, Mr. Lincoln stopped to have a drink in MacSorely’s Tavern in the East Village. To this day, the newspaper articles appearing in the local papers at the time still hang on the walls of the bar as a reminder to its patrons the part it played in Manhattan’s history.

    #

    Waiting to play his own part for change and betterment of his community, and to his country, Cunningham joined the Freemasons. After the lodge meetings, he, like any Irishman worth his salt, went to MacSorely’s Tavern to hoist a few warm dark ales, have a piping hot bowl of clam chowder, and sit around the pot belly stove talking with his Mason brothers.

    #

    Mary wasn’t as concerned about the few dark ales her husband drank as she was about the order in which Cunningham took a solemn oath. There were too many secrets about the society of Masons. Too much mystery surrounded its history dating back to the Bible and the building of King Solomon’s Temple. Cunningham spoke little of it to Mary and held strict to the brotherhood’s code of silence.

    Despite the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1