26 Fairmount Avenue Read Free

kiss Snow White, and she woke up. In the true story the Prince carries the coffin to his palace, and on the way the piece of poisoned apple falls out of Snow White’s mouth and she wakes up. But this time I didn’t yell at the movie screen, in case the lady behind me got mad at me again.
    But when “The End” appeared on the screen, boy, was I mad! I couldn’t help it. I stood up and hollered, “The story’s not over yet. Where’s the wedding? Where’re the red-hot iron shoes that they put on the Evil Queen so she dances herself to death?”
    That was the true end of the true story. Just then my mom came running in, grabbed me, and dragged me out.
    â€œMr. Walt Disney didn’t read the story right,” I yelled again.
    I never did understand it, and when I went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs again, with Carol Crane, I warned Carol that Mr. Walt Disney hadn’t read the true story. I didn’t yell at the movie screen. But I still wished I could have seen the Evil Queen dancing to death in those red-hot iron shoes!

Chapter Four

    R ight after the Christmas of 1938, my dad had a big fight with the man he had hired to build the house. My mom and dad wanted the house to be built a certain way, but the builder didn’t listen to them. “I’m paying for it,” Dad said. And they fired the builder.
    So 26 Fairmount Avenue just sat there all winter without any work being done. My dad and mom would put Buddy and me in the car and drive by to look at the sad, unfinished house. Maybe we would have to live in apartments forever.
    Easter came. Easter was always fun because every year the Easter Bunny brought Buddy and me Easter baskets. I always got a stuffed animal, too. My favorite was a duck.
    We got new “outfits” to wear to church on Easter Sunday. My mom must have loved to dress up Buddy and me, because there are pictures and home movies of us, Buddy in long pants, a jacket, and necktie; me in shorts, a striped shirt, and a beret. We certainly were what grown-ups call “fashion plates.”

    â€œGuess what?” my dad said one day in the spring. “Johnny Papallo, Tony Nesci, and a few of my other friends are going to help us finish the house.”
    Hurray! I might get to live in our house at 26 Fairmount Avenue after all.
    But before my dad’s friends could start work, the City decided that Fairmount Avenue would be a real street with telephone poles and streetlights.
    Machines came and scraped away lots of dirt, which made the street lower. Suddenly our house, which had been on a small hill, was way up in the air. My mom cried. My dad said some bad words.

    Now a wall would have to be built to keep the front yard from falling into the street. Stairs would have to be made so we could get to the front door. And, last but not least, they would have to put in a steep driveway so we could get to the garage. Until all this was done, no one could work on the house because no one could get up to it.
    And the new street was still just dirt. Every time it rained, the street turned to mud.
    Well, my father’s friends were really smart men. They just got boards and loads of wooden planks and made a long walkway up to the house. Mr. Johnny Papallo, Mr. Tony Nesci, and all the others started to work.
    Soon the roof was on the house and the inside walls were up. They were made of plasterboard, which was like heavy cardboard. Later, men called “plasterers” would come and smear wet plaster over the plasterboard, and it would dry into smooth, white walls.

    But before the plasterers came, Mr. Johnny Papallo gave me a piece of bright blue chalk from his toolbox. He knew I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I looked at those blank walls and knew what I wanted to do.
    I asked my mom if I could make drawings of the family on the walls. She and my dad talked about it, and finally my dad said, “Okay, Tomie. Mom and I decided that you