Baker...he will finally be remembered

It’s sometimes hard to formulate my thoughts around a story, as sometimes they were so long ago, and pieces come into view and germinate for a while. This is one of those stories, made harder still by writing it on my net book, which I love, but it has an 80% size keyboard and I have 110% hands! My desktop is put away while we redo the office in the basement.

When I was a kid we lived with my grandparents. I lived there from 1947 until 1962, and most of my childhood memories from a warm, family environment, in a multi lingual, loving home, surrounded by family. My Aunt and Uncle and their children lived three blocks away, and it was a big, warm and loving place to grow up. I have been so far from a family environment for so many years that it seems, I am sure, better than it ever was. But hindsight is always 20/20.

We lived in a large, very early 20th century row house, today it would be known as a town house, only it was solid. We shared this house with my grandparents, and for most of the time it was actually shared except we had a kitchen on each floor. Later we added a full bath and changed the dining room into a bedroom so we really had two apartments eventually, without separate entrances. We live close!

On either side, we had close neighbors. They were not close as friends, although we were always cordial, they just were close as town homes tend to be. In those days there was no air conditioning except in the movies, so we shared adjoin porches, and in Baltimore, in the summer, we were all outside together.

On one side was Mrs. Weinberg, an elderly (when I knew her) widow with a Yiddish accent and a nasty little Pekinese dog. She had two grown daughters, Fan and Ann, and they owned a beauty salon somewhere, called of course, Fan and Ann’s. I have only vauge memories of these people, and I know Mrs. Weinberg passed away after I was gone from the house. I remember her daughters used to visit and I think they had families but I can’t remember and it has nothing to do with any of this.

Mrs. Weinberg had this large house for herself, and as it was sort of explained to me, it was a lot for an elderly woman to take care of, so she had help! In that lies the story.
The help was Baker, an old guy (I suppose) as he had white hair. He was tall and this and he lived in Mrs. Weinberg’s basement! He took care of the nasty little dog who wanted to eat me, and he mowed the lawn which was about 10’ x 10’ in front and shoveled the driveway and did stuff! Who knew? I was a kid when he was alive and I had no prurient interests so I never imagined anything else, or, I am sure, did Mrs. Weinberg. However, the story goes on, Baker was a drunk! In my neighborhood there were no such things! But here he was. He would get paid by Mrs. Weinberg (I was told all this) on Friday night and spend that evening and/or the next day drinking. We would find him sometimes, laid out in our alley, passed out on Saturday morning! It was just part of the fabric of our lives. Mrs. Weinberg, who was always congenial to all of my family, would shout at him incessantly, “Baker do this and Baker do that!” No wonder he drank!

I guess one day Baker died and it all ended. I will never know if he had a first name or a real job or maybe he was a wounded vet from WW1. While there are so many good stories brewing in my head about those old days, Baker stands out. I wish I had thought to take a picture of Baker. Maybe no one ever did.