Well, I lived in a Polish neighborhood. Our streets were still mud streets. But the great street was a main thoroughfare. My father had brothers who would take LaGrange Street and Striker Street, he had one brother Walter who had a hardware store, and then he had another brother Joe who was a tailor, and then he had another brother Lois who lived in our house with me and that was who I was named after of course, and he had another brother….

Annie: But he had a hardware store, honey.

He had a hardware/furniture store right on LaGrange Street. This is all within one block.

He had another brother, Sylvester, who was a lawyer who also shared my bedroom with me when I was a kid. He had an office right on LaGrange and Striker, right in that same block, he had a legal office there, and upstairs was a hall – my father owned that building.

My father had a sister; there was only one girl in the family, Loretta. Her husband was a pharmacist, Frank Pietrykowski, which was a popular name in Toledo. The reason for that is because Pietrykowskis were quite prominent.

John went to Notre Dame. His brother Frank went to Notre Dame, and they became quite the politicians. John’s wife was a city councilwoman and was the vice mayor of Toledo, was county commissioner. Her son John never ran for public office. He stayed in his legal business, but his son is a county commissioner and their ads were on TV and radio.

The reason I bring that up was where Sylvester had his office there was a drug store that my father put his sister and her husband in business in the pharmacy. Upstairs was a hall, a rental hall, where it was basically used by the Democrats for meetings, but it was used for weddings. It was kind of a forerunner of a catering business except people brought in their own food. They didn’t serve food.

Right across the street Lois Urbanski had the hardware/furniture store. This was in the 20s when my parents then had about three buildings along in there where John was the tailor and Walter with the hardware store, and they had the furnishing store.

Annie: How about Father John?

Oh God, I forgot. There was Father John the priest. He was the second youngest. He was the pastor, Catholic priest, pastor of a parish out of the opposite end of town, Nativity Parish.

Annie: Another Polish neighborhood.

Another Polish area and a very close friend of mine. He and I traveled. We traveled all over the country. We’d go to California, Alaska, and Hawaii, but that was in my growing up years.

I went to Saint Hedwig’s School and lived in a neighborhood I could have gone to Saint Hedwig’s or Saint Albert’s. Both of them are still there but they have merged now and it’s become Saint Albert’s, but Saint Hedwig’s is still there. I went to primary school there. Then I went to Saint John’s High School, Judgment High School, which was downtown, right downtown Toledo, and after high school I went to Notre Dame.