NEIGHBORHOOD

I grew up on West Fifth St. during World War II. It was a great close knit neighborhood with kids my age and older .We always had a group willing to play stick ball or can hockey or every other imaginable sport kids can make up. Many of the windows on the Street had small flags hung with Blue Stars on them signifying a son was engaged in the war effort. Sometimes those stars were replaced with Gold ones and the neighborhood mourned with the family for the lost of their seviceman.... My neighbor who lived opposite felt compelled to step out on her top stairwell and announce the progress of the war, a kind of Town Crier. "Troops have invaded Normandy", Iwo Jima has been taken", "FDR is dead", The Germans have “surrendered", and finally “Japan has surrendered” the “War is over". There was no need to read the papers. All my news came from across the street.