the glasss field

if you walked straight out front of my grandparents house, this is what would happen:  if you turned right, you would head up "the avenue" and if you walked right, after about 5 houses (the 4th one being the Kort's you would come to a cross street-Chery street.  I t was only 3  blocks long but if you recall the "hoods" from the TV show, "Happy Day," this was their hangout of pool tables and pinball machines and us kids rarely ventured where they were. However, walk across the street and there was a large field big enough for a supermarket and parking lot; which is what it became-Acme supermarket. And it became the down fall of all the little grocery stores in Brackenridge. But Before that it was a field of weeds taller than us and scattered with all sizes and chunks of different colors of glass, usually clear enough to see through, but some dense and black and pink striped marble.  It was a great place to play hide and seek and to find a vast collection of colored glass that looked like large rocks.  Years before I came into existence-probably in the 1930's it was the Flakas(sic) glass company surrounded on all sides by a high chain link fence. One day, the workers demanded to form a Union;  the next day, the gate had a chain and padlock with a large sign that said, "closed" and Flakas, the owner disappeared.
Unions were just not that popular with most company owners.  Just like our local (and Morton) Wal-mart would close the doors for good if a union would want to be formed.  See walmartwatch.com for some different perspectives of what most wally world really feel like. Side note: almost directly across the street from Grandma's (840 Brackenridge Avenue) lived two of our friends, Billy and Ricky Niedel who lived with their overweight, smoking momma and who sometimes were visited by their beer drinking divorced father.  I really can't remember much about them except we played together on and off and they were in our boy scout troop.  Our boy scout troop stayed together until a scoutmaster could no longer be found, including my dad, who turned down the position of Scoutmaster, when asked by the committee.  So there was no chance to become an eagle scout and no one knew of the "lone scout" program.  And, like, who would want to be a boyscout all by themselves?  Sounds kind of dumb to me. Next: Joe Wikes