JohnPalmieri.com

Today I had the privilege of sitting in a circle with some of my pastoral friends…taking turns reading out loud in it’s entirety Letter from a Birmingham Jail . If you’ve never had the opportunity to read this treatise of Martin Luther King Jr, written while he sat lonely in a narrow jail cell, you need to take time out to read it. I would venture to say that your heart will open and your respect for Martin Luther King Jr. will only increase.

Who said seniors can’t take award winning photos? Check out Dad’s award winning photograph!

Click this link for: Joe Palmieri’s Award Winning Photo!

By the way – the picture is my brother and his dog (Tobby) - ahh the good life!

My father, Joe Palmieri, remembers the Great Depression. You can actually hear him talk about his memory of the Depression – just click the following link Everyone was Happy. I think it is so cool to be able to tap into the memory of our senior citizens….especially a parent. We have much to learn from them.

“I remember the depression as a tough time for my family. My dad was making two dollars a day when I started to realize how poor we were. But everyone was pretty much the same in the neighborhood. My mom was making a dollar a day working 10 hours a day — a dime an hour. Three dollars a day was all that was coming into the house.

We got by pretty good. You could buy pork chops for about 10 cents a pound. I can remember buying bread . . . for 10 cents. Milk was about eight cents a quart, and we got it delivered right to our house. Gas money at that time was 12-and-a-half cents a gallon. We could go to a movie for 20 cents and (that) got you into the movie and then you were able to get a hotdog and a Coke. Very few people had cars, so we used a trolley. For seven cents, it would take you anywhere in the city.

The amazing thing was that everyone was happy. Nobody knew how poor the next guy was. All the kids played outdoors in the wintertime. They didn’t have computers and all that other stuff . . . not even a radio. We never got a radio in our house until I was about 12 years old. It didn’t hurt us as we grew up. We didn’t know, but my mother knew. I remember she would feed five of us in the family with one pound of pasta and nobody complained.

I went into the service when I was 17 — right out of high school — during World War II. That was a time you met a lot of guys who were going through the same thing. Then, as the war went on, the depression was over. But people remember that (time).”

– Joe Palmieri, 82,
West Manchester Township