Dad

This is my Dad when he was very young. I always thought he was incredibly handsome. A Greek-American boy in the projects. He met my mother, and his best friends for life there. Federal housing projects don't seem like a place where elderly people hold their fondest memories, but my Dad, Mom, Aunts, and their friends did and do. At my Dad's viewing one of his projects friends reminisced about the old days. He was the Armenian, Dad the Greek, and their friend Bill the Irishman. They all went to different high schools for different specialities, something I thought was only invented recently. Dad went to East Tech, where he specialized in aeronautics. Bill went to a secretarial school, which prepared him for his Post Office career. Al went to to the Liberal Arts school, which he said prepared him for "absolutely nothing".

It sort of sounds like the old war movies (the Irishman, the Italian and the Jew in combat) but that's how it was. My mother, who died recently, always said it was one of her happiest memories, being one of the gang in the projects. They would sit outside after dark and drink "pop", talking about the the neighborhood, the depression, then the war. When they turned 18 the guys went into the war and the girls went to work. No longer innocent teens, they became adults very quickly.