My mother had an expression that she used with me quite often. She used to say: “Jim, act like a gentleman and you’ll fool the people most of the time!”

I learned how to put pennies behind fuses when they turned your electricity off. That ended when my father got a job in 1939.

They were janitors. We had two little apartment houses with eight families in each. You had to stoke the fire with coal and my mother did that. She killed the rats in basements with shovels.

We knew we were poor because the good nuns would give us clothing. At thanksgiving and Christmas, the Democratic Party came around with a turkey for us. But we never felt deprived. We accepted the way we were.

When I was very young there was a street called Snyder Avenue. On one side were the black people and on the other side was us. Everyone liked it that way.

My mother’s grandfather’s name was Juiteau. The reason her grandfather changed his name to Langley was because Charles Juiteau assassinated President Garfield. My mother was a New England Yankee and her father was French-Canadian.

On my father’s side, there is some question as to whether my dad was born here or born in Ireland. His family came over once, when back to Ireland, and then came back again. So either he was the first generation or I was the first generation. We’re not really sure.