I think I remember part 7

While we lived on the lower East Side in an apartment building which was so old the water barely reached our 5th floor apartment. When it did it was frequently a sort of brownish color. My parents would go to the docks and get bananas to sell at the Freehold Farmers Market in New Jersey. Occasionally my brother and I were taken along but sometimes we were left at home for the night, When it was especially cold or wet we were left at home. It was a different time, children of 4 or 5 where often left alone, or even worked.  My brother was in a crib and I was to care for him. One night there was a terrible sound and it felt like the whole building was falling. Actually it was not our building, but due to the rain, the building next door which was attached to ours was coming down. The cops came and took me and my brother across the street to the pool hall along with everyone else in the building. It was scary in the dark, we could see the outline of the bricks pilled high alongside the remaining parts of the building. Everyone was frightened and strangely not so much about the danger, which the firemen kept telling us about, but more if we were going to be able to return to the apartments. In those days having a place to live was really the most important item on the mind. It did not matter how dirty, broken, dangerous or small. I did not realize how small until recently my daughter in law took me and my sister and grandson to visit what is now a sort of museum of those neighborhood apartments which have been saved in the same condition as they were. Each apartment was 323 square feet in total.

In some of these apartments there were 8 to 10 people living, and in some even more. We were 4 so I guess we were in better condition. There was no "living area" or "den" only one room where my parents slept and one room where my brother and I slept. In the middle was the kitchen. What we thought of as kitchen sink is now considered a bathroom sink. The bathtub was in the kitchen and during the day the top came down from the hooks on the wall to make a counter of sorts, but in the evening it was hooked up again and the curtain drawn to make a bathtub where we bather. No shower. The difficulty of getting water to tub was a job in itself. Since I lived there and knew nothing else I thought everyone lived that was. It was with great joy we were notified after a few years to be able to move back into the projects in Brooklyn.