July 4th, 1959, Independence day.

July 4th, 1959, Independence day. Independence cuts both ways, for that was the day I married Marlene Marie Niceley. We had dated for about 18 months and had saved every dime we could lay our hands on for the past year to pay for the wedding as both of our families could not afford to pay for it. I cannot imagine how we expected to survive on hers and my small salary, they say love is blind. We had a very nice wedding at St. George's church in Clifton, with a reception that evening. We could not afford the expense of a long trip for a Honeymoon so we decided to go to Chicago. That was a really big deal then because neither of us had ever been very far from home, the problem was that my car would never make the trip. I had a 1947 Plymouth Coupe that had bald tires, bad battery and had a broken door lock on the driver's side. It would not stay closed. I took some coat hanger wire and wired the door handle to the steering wheel. The trouble with that is I had to scoot across the seat and emerge on the passenger side to get out. Marlene's Cousin Jo Jo as he was known to family members only offered his 1958 Chevrolet for the trip and he would use ours while we were gone. It was only a year old. I jumped at the chance.

After the honeymoon we moved into a small apartment close to Marlene's Aunt's and Uncle's grocery store. We had rented this apartment in an old house on Considine Ave. two weeks before our marriage. We went there evenings and weekends to fix it up as it was pretty dreary. It was the first floor of what had been a single family home. There two huge sliding doors on the right that were locked but our living room was to be on the other side of them, we had a living room (Behind the doors) a bedroom and a huge kitchen as big as the bedroom. We cleaned and painted every room, the kitchen was dark so we painted it light gray like a wainscoting at the bottom of the wall , and painted the walls above it a bright yellow with a 2" band of dark gray plastic tape all aroundbetween the colors. It really looked good. We had picked out all our furniture from where we both worked, The John Shillito Co. We did that because we got 10% off and could charge it. I remember we bought it on the BCA plan (Budget Charge Account) . We bought all we needed to fill our small three room apartment and had it delivered and set up before we moved in. The next morning I had my first breakfast in our new home, Steak & Eggs. I had told Marlene how much I enjoyed this meal I used to get while in the Navy in Japan. I was really proud of that apartment until the Creepy Crawler Things attacked. I suppose it was the middle of the night when I walked into the kitchen and turned on the light and there they were, Thousands of creepy crawly, dirty, ugly cockroaches everywhere. They did not come out during the day or when we were there but they were out in force at night. The next day I bought some spray and sprayed every nook and cranny I could find. The next morning our landlady came running down the stairs screaming at us for running the roaches upstairs. Whatever she had she now had double. She was a scraggly looking Portuguese woman who just barely spoke English. She also had a grown son who was living with her who dressed all in black and looked like a member of the Mafia. I felt uneasy leaving the house with Marlene at home when he was there. We couldn't stay at this house any longer and started looking. We found an apartment even closer to her relative's grocery store. We could walk to the store which was very small by today's standards. Vince Iacobucci and his wife Mary ran the front of the store and ordered the stock to fill the shelves and operated the register. Louie Iacobucci and his wife Nita (I never knew what her real name was) was the butcher and took care of the rear of the store, his wife Nita also helped in the store. They gave us 10% off on our groceries which was very generous as the profit on groceries is very low. You could always find Louie in the back of the store drinking beer out of his metal beer pail. I once told Marlene I did not care much for Italian food but the truth was I had never had any, my mother was Irish/ German and her version of spaghetti was butter and bread crumbs sprinkled over the top. Marlene must have told her relatives because when I went to dinner at their house they all had spaghetti & meatballs and they had fixed me a steak. I soon got over that and now of course I love Italian food. We only lived in that house for a short time

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