Moving Again-1958

We moved from Montgomery Street to North Ilion, which was a little area across the tracks from the main area of the little village of Ilion, NY. I hated moving. I was leaving all my friends behind that I really enjoyed playing with. But my father had found a whole house for us to live in. An old cement block type house. We had to move. And it must have been hard to find a place with seven children. There was no hot water and the bathroom didn't work. There was an old wood furnace in the cellar for heat. I hated throwing the wood into the cellar window and then having to go down in the cellar and stack it. That cellar was spooky. I hate cellars with little dark windows. And scary spaces. When my parents were out for the night, I'd have to go down there and put wood in the furnace. I'd have to walk out the kitchen door and there was a tiny hallway with another door that led to the upstairs. We never used that. And there was a door that went to the outside. It was only locked with a hook. Then there was the door to the cellar. I was so scared when I had to go down there alone late at night after all the other kids were sleeping.
My father wasn't any help. He used to sneak up those back stairs sometimes at night when we were all sleeping and make noises and scare the living crap out of us. Talk about sadistic!
The neighbors were strange. There were four girls and one boy. They were being brought up by their Aunt because their mother couldn't handle them anymore I guess. They came from a family of sixteen kids! Two of the girls were close to my age. The other two were a few years older. They were wild, even though their mother (Aunt, but they called her mother) was very strict. They'd tie sheets together and climb out their window at night. Ha! We'd watch them from our window in amazement. The oldest girl would walk up the road and get truck drivers to stop and take her for a ride. They say she never wore underwear and raised her skirt to them..Ha! Ha! We lived on a main highway so there was a lot of traffic going by.
Their mother was a real big, heavy woman. We'd see her come out of the back door sometimes and stand over in the corner and just pee right there! This was at night. I'd watch out my window a lot at night just to see what was going on next door. So weird. Quite a difference from our nice neighborhood up on the hill in town. God I hated living there.
My sister, Debby, was born in 1958. Now there were eight kids. In the photos above, we are outside our house and behind us is a nice two-family house and beyond that is the gas station. In the other one is my mother and father and baby Debby. My father got baptized that day also. Guess he had never been before. I thought that was odd, being a grown man getting baptized..Ha! I am really surprised that my father did that. He never went to church otherwise.