Where I'm Calling From

I grew up on the rough streets of New York's South Bronx in the '40s and '50s. My father was a longshoreman who drank as hard as he worked. My mother worked as a waitress when she could. I had two brothers and sometimes the only money we had was the mere tips our mother made. I remember nights going to bed hungry and the lights being shut off because the bills were not paid. We lived on the top floor of an old tenement building—hot in the summer, cold in winter. We were poor but who wasn't?