| Chapter 2: | Street Life |
Street Life
On cool spring mornings I would open my parlor window facing the street and smell the East River. To get to the river I would have to pass One Hundred and Seventh Street between First Avenue and East River Drive. That street had horse and wagon stables. They always smelled of horse manure. When I read my picture books with horses and farms I knew what smell enveloped them. I liked to look at the island on the other side of the pier. Tugboats passed. I wondered how far they could travel? How long would it take to travel from the East River to San Fratello in Sicily where grandpa would buy me a pony and an orchard? Did Italian ponies smell like the horses I passed to get to the pier? I would have to ask my grandpa.
Years later, I learned that one of the stables I passed so frequently to get to the pier had been owned in the early years of the twentieth century by a notorious woman, Pasquarella Spinelli. She employed at the stable a blacksmith, a wheelwright and thugs who stole horses from merchants unwilling to pay Spinelli protection money. She leased tenements in East Harlem and managed the Rex