26 Fairmount Avenue Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  A Note From The Author

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999

  Published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001

  Copyright © Tomie dePaola, 1999

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  dePaola, Tomie. 26 Fairmount Avenue / Tomie dePaola.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Children’s author-illustrator Tomie dePaola describes his

  experiences at home and in school when he was a boy.

  1. dePaola, Tomie—Childhood and youth—Juvenile literature. 2. dePaola, Tomie—

  Homes and haunts—Connecticut—Meriden—Juvenile literature. 3. Authors,

  American—20th century—Biography—Juvenile literature. 4. Meriden (Conn.)—

  Biography—Juvenile literature. [1. dePaola, Tomie—Childhood and youth. 2.

  Authors, American. 3. Illustrators.] I. Title.

  PS3554.E11474Z’.54-dc21 [B] 98-12918 CIP AC

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07573-9

  RL: 2.8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my wonderful, wacky family and relatives,

  especially Flossie; friends and old neighbors in

  Meriden, Connecticut; and my longtime assistant,

  Bob Hechtel, who has helped and put up

  with me for years and whose idea it was

  for me to do this book.

  Chapter One

  I didn’t always live in the house at 26 Fairmount Avenue. We moved there when I was five years old. I know that because in 1938, when I was still four, a big hurricane hit Meriden, Connecticut, where we lived. We had just started to build our first and only house, when people told my mom and dad that the house was twisting and turning on its foundation, just like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. A real hurricane had never reached all the way up to New England before, so nobody was ready for it.

  We were living in an apartment on Columbus Avenue. We all lived on one floor. Another family lived upstairs, and we lived downstairs.

  It had been raining for days and days, and some of the rivers were overflowing. There was a really weird brook near our backyard. It was called Harbor Brook. It wound all the way through Meriden, and factories dumped stuff in it. It was different colors on different days. We were told NOT TO GO NEAR IT. Right before the hurricane, the water was so high and murky that I was hardly allowed to look at it, much less go near it. “Come away from there, Tomie,” my mom would call.

  Right after lunch on the day of the hurricane, my mom was talking on the telephone when my dad came home early from the barbershop, where he worked. My brother, Buddy, who was eight, was at school. (His real name was Joe Jr., after my father.) Dad and Mom talked in the kitchen. Then Mom said to me, “Get your coat on, Tomie. We have to go pick up Buddy and some of the neighborhood children. There’s a big storm coming, and they’re letting everyone out early.”

  We got in the car and drove to the school in the rain. A long line of cars and teachers with kids were waiting in front of the building. I looked up and saw something I’ve never ever forgotten.

  A boy was standing at the top of the steps, holding an umbrella. All of a sudden a gust of wind blew, a really strong gust, and the boy went up, up, up in the air and floated down the stairs just like Mary Poppins.

  It was scary driving home to Columbus Avenue, the car filled with kids— Buddy, Carol Crane (my best friend on Columbus Avenue, who looked just like the child movie star Shirley Temple, only Carol had red hair and Shirley Temple was blonde), the Adams twins, the Fournier brothers, and a few others—all talking and screaming. Branches fell off the trees, leaves swirled around the car. A sign flew off Tomasetti’s grocery store and just missed us. But we made it to our apartment. Mom let us out, and we ran inside. Carol’s mother, Mrs. Crane, was already there, and she was really scared.

  Mrs. Crane was scared of storms, especially thunderstorms. If there was one clap of thunder, Mrs. Crane would be knocking on our door and calling my mother. “Floss, Floss!” (That was my mother’s nickname, for Florence. My mother liked being called Floss, but she liked Flossie even better!) My mom would open the door, and Mrs. Crane would rush in, pushing Carol in front of her. Nothing would 4 do except for my mom to get the bottle of Holy Water she’d gotten from Saint Joseph’s Church and sprinkle some of it on Mrs. Crane, who wasn’t even Catholic. I guess she thought that Catholic Holy Water was better than nothing, and it must have worked because Mrs. Crane never got struck by lightning.

  On the day of the hurricane, my mom calmed Mrs. Crane down and promised she’d get the Holy Water, while my dad parked the car where there were no trees. First Mom lit some candles because the electricity was out. Then she took the Holy Water and sprinkled some on Mrs. Crane. Everyone else wanted to be sprinkled, too.

  Mr. and Mrs. Morin and their daughter, Althea, who lived in the apartment upstairs, came down. I guess they thought, with all the voices and everything, that it was a party.

  We crowded around the windows and listened to the wind howl and watched it blow stuff all over the yard—tree limbs, lawn furniture, garbage cans, even a birdbath. Then it got really quiet. We looked up and saw a little, round patch of blue sky through the dark clouds. “That’s the eye of the hurricane,” my dad told us. I didn’t see any eye, but before I could say anything, the wind picked up and the rain started all over again.

  “I hope the new house is okay,” “ my dad said as the wind roared by like a freight train.

  My mom pulled a book off the shelf and started reading a story to Buddy, Carol, the Adams twins, the Fournier brothers, and yours truly, just as she read to Buddy and me every night.

  Finally, three hours later, the Hurricane of 1938 was over. People started coming out of their houses. “Do you have electricity?” someone shouted. “No, do you?” someone answered.

  I pestered my mom so much that she let me go outside with Carol, her father, Buddy, and my dad. Branches, large and small, and leaves were everywhere. We could hear sirens wailing. We walked to Hemlock Grove, a small forest of tall hemlock trees at the end of the block.

  It was a mess. “Be careful. I don’t think it’s all that safe,” one of the neighbors told us. Trees had fallen in all directions, criss-crossing each other like a giant game of pick-up-sticks. Some of those trees stayed there for a long time, and after we moved into 26 Fairmount Avenue and I felt brave, I’d take the shortcut to Columbus Avenue through Hemlock Grove. One tree lay across a little stream, and if you had good balance you could walk across it.

  I guess 1938 was a special year. Not only because o
f the hurricane, but because it was the year we started building 26 Fairmount Avenue.

  Chapter Two

  When my mom and dad decided to build a house, friends told them that they were building “out in the sticks.” That meant way out where not many people lived. There wasn’t even a real street. Just a dirt road. But it wasn’t that far from our apartment on Columbus Avenue.

  It was really great watching the house being built. First a steam shovel dug a huge hole for the foundation. Next a cement truck came, and workers poured the cement down a chute that looked like a long sliding board. I pretended that the concrete gushing down was lava coming out of a volcano (I had seen that in a movie with my mother).

  After the foundation was set and the cellar was finished, the builders came to start on the house itself. They covered the opening over the cellar with wood, and that became the floor. Then they put up these things they called “studs,” which were pieces of wood called “two-by-fours” because they are two inches thick by four inches wide.

  They had just finished this part of the house when the hurricane struck. It was a good thing the walls weren’t up yet, because the house probably would have blown away. A new house a few streets away was knocked down by the wind. All that was left was the cellar and a mess of broken wood. They had to start all over again. It was sad, but I was glad it wasn’t our house.

  All our relatives were excited about the house at 26 Fairmount Avenue. I guess a new house with a big yard and a view of West Peak with Castle Craig on top was exciting. I know I thought it was.

  We had both Irish and Italian relatives in our family because my mom was Irish and my dad was Italian. The Irish relatives came to visit the most because they lived in Wallingford, which wasn’t too far from Meriden. Some of the Italian relatives lived up in Massachusetts, and some down in the Bronx, in New York City.

  I was pretty lucky because I had one grandfather, two grandmothers, and a great-grandmother. But my grandmothers and my great-grandmother were all called Nana, and that was confusing to me. And then there was this “great” business.

  But I figured out what to call them, and everyone always knew who I was talking about.

  I called my Irish great-grandmother Nana Upstairs, because she spent all of her time upstairs. She was ninety-four years old. I called my Irish grandmother Nana Downstairs, because if she wasn’t helping Nana Upstairs, she was either in the kitchen or sitting in her chair in the parlor, looking out the window so she’d know what was going on in the neighborhood. My Italian grandmother lived in Fall River, Massachusetts, so I called her Nana Fall River.

  I called my Irish grandfather Tom, because he told me to. “Tomie will be grown up before he can say ‘Grandpa,’” he told my mom. “He can call me Tom.” So I did.

  Every Sunday we went down to Wallingford. As soon as we arrived, I always ran upstairs. Upstairs was a special place for me, and my Nana Upstairs was a special person to me. I loved her, and every Sunday I spent all my time with her.

  Nana Downstairs would help Nana Upstairs into the big Morris chair next to her bed. She’d take out a long cloth and gently tie Nana Upstairs in her chair so she wouldn’t fall out.

  I pestered and pestered Nana Downstairs until she tied me in a chair, too. But she’d put the knot in front so that if I got tired of being in the chair I could get down and poke around or go to the bathroom or something. When I heard her coming up the stairs, I’d climb back into the chair. I got pretty good at tying the knot back, and she never came into the room until I was ready. It was Nana Downstairs’ and my private game.

  I loved to look around Nana Upstairs’ room. She had beautiful brushes and combs and glass jars that held her big silvery hairpins on top of her dresser. Sometimes I’d find candy mints or Life Savers in the sewing box on the table out in the hall.

  One Sunday I opened the sewing box and there was no candy, only needles and thread and buttons. So I went searching, very quietly. Finally I got to the bathroom. I stood on the wooden toilet seat and opened up the medicine cabinet. There on the shelf was a small packet of chocolates all wrapped in silver paper. I took them and went back into the bedroom. I tied myself back in my chair, and Nana Upstairs and I ate the chocolates—all of them.

  Well, those chocolates weren’t chocolates at all. They were laxatives, and laxatives make you go to the bathroom a lot. Both Nana Upstairs and I didn’t feel so good, and I think we both made a mess.

  Nana Downstairs never forgot the mints or the Life Savers again.

  Chapter Three

  As exciting as beginning the new house and the big hurricane were, something I had been waiting for for a long time had happened in the spring of 1938. Mr. Walt Disney’s movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had come to Meriden.

  My mother had read the true story of Snow White to my brother and me. I couldn’t wait to see it in the movies. I thought Mr. Walt Disney was the best artist I had ever seen (I already knew that I wanted to be an artist, too). I loved his cartoons—especially “Silly Symphonies,” Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Three Little Pigs. But now Mr. Walt Disney had done the first ever full-length animated movie—one and a half hours long.

  I had been to a lot of movies—more than Buddy, even though he was eight. Because I didn’t go to school yet, my mother took me with her to the movies in the afternoons. We both loved movies. My favorite real-life movie stars were Shirley Temple, the little girl with blonde curls who could sing and dance better than anyone, and Miss Mae West. (I called her “Miss” because she was grown up while Shirley Temple was about my age. We always called grown-ups Miss, Mr., or Mrs.) Miss Mae West was blonde, too, and she could sing. She didn’t dance, but she was all shiny and glittery and all she had to do was walk and talk and everyone in the movie theater laughed and laughed.

  Mom, Buddy, and I went to see Snow White on a Saturday. We got in line early at the Capitol Theatre so that we could get good seats. My mom bought the tickets, and as we went into the lobby, music was playing. She bought each of us a box of Mason’s Black Crows—little chewy licorice candies (they didn’t have popcorn at the movies yet).

  We found our seats. The lights went down. First we saw a newsreel (it was all the real things that were going on in the world). After that was the coming attraction about the next movie that would be shown at the Capitol. And finally, with the sound of trumpets, and glittery stars filling the screen, the words I had been waiting for: “Feature Presentation.”

  A big book appeared on the screen with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” on the front cover. The book opened. My mother read the words to me quietly: “Once upon a time...”

  Music played, and there, in beautiful color, was Snow White, with white doves flying all around her. She was down on her knees, scrubbing the stairs in the Evil Queen’s castle. Snow White asked the doves if they wanted to know a secret. They cooed yes. She told them they were standing by a wishing well. Then she sang a song about wishing for her prince to come.

  WOW! I was really seeing Snow White, and it was the best movie I had ever seen.

  Then the Prince came on the screen and sang to Snow White. The Evil

  Queen, looking fierce and mean, watched. My brother sank down in his seat.

  The Evil Queen went to her Magic Mirror and said the words I knew so well: “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The mirror said it was Snow White, and the Evil Queen looked angrier than ever. Buddy sank down even farther.

  But he really freaked out when the Evil Queen ordered the huntsman to take Snow White into the woods to be killed, and the woods looked just like Hemlock Grove. Tree limbs grabbed at Snow White, and yellow eyes stared down at her.

  It was scary, and I loved it. But lots of kids didn‘t, and suddenly I heard crying and screaming all around me, even from Buddy. “I want to go home!” he yelled. “Come on,” my mother said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going,” I said. I had waited a long time for Mr. Walt Disney’s movie.
My mom, who is probably the smartest person in the world, understood. “All right, Tomie, sit right here and don’t move. I’ll be in the lobby with your brother.” That was fine with me.

  Lots of mothers left with their kids. I thought that was a good thing to do if the kids were afraid of the trees. They probably would wet their pants when the Evil Queen made the poisoned apple for Snow White and drank the magic potion to turn herself into the Evil Witch (even I was a little scared when that happened).

  Then things about the story started to bother me. Why was the Evil Queen making the poisoned apple now? The true story was different. In that story, before the Evil Queen gave Snow White the apple, she went to the dwarfs’ cottage and pulled the laces of Snow White’s vest so tight that Snow White couldn’t breathe and she fainted. The dwarfs came home just in time to loosen the laces and save her.

  Next, the Queen went a second time to visit Snow White with a poison comb, which she stuck in Snow White’s hair. Snow White fainted once more, but the dwarfs got back in time to take the comb out and save her again.

  The third time was the poisoned apple.

  Maybe Mr. Walt Disney hadn’t read the true story, because he used only the apple. I stood up and shouted at the movie screen, “Where are the laces? Where is the comb?”

  A lady behind me said, “Hush, little boy! Sit down.” I did, and the movie was like the book again until the dwarfs put Snow White into the crystal coffin.