English
Jon Allen
Norman Rockwell Signing My Adventures as an Illustrator in Bennington, Vermont, June 1, 1960
Photograph
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
Anyway, I was born in New York City, 103rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Now, that’s Harlem. At that time, it was Harlem, but it wasn’t the Harlem we think of as the present. It wasn’t the best part of Harlem, either. Amsterdam Avenue never was the best part of Harlem. There was a trolley car on Amsterdam Avenue, and the house is still there. Nobody’s put up a bronze plaque or anything. Nobody ever will. We lived on the fourth floor.
I must’ve been told about this, because I think I moved out of there when I was about four years old. I don’t know exact date, but it was a fourth floor apartment. We had stoves in the house, not a central heating. I remember my father telling, in the morning, before he’d go to work down on Franklin Street for the cotton goods merchant, why he would go down to the cellar and bring up two scuttles full of coal from the cellar. Each family would have a bin in the cellar. We had a dumbwaiter in the kitchen, but they weren’t allowed… I guess it was too much weight for the coal, and I guess they didn’t allow people to use it. There was only one dumbwaiter in the whole house, so I guess he’d have to do that. He’d have to walk down four flights, and get the two scuttles full of coal, and bring them up.