Allan William Miloff, The early years.

I was born on Sept. 18/37, in St Mary's Hospital in Kitchener.

My earliest memories was when we were living a tenement building at 98 Benton St., at Courtland Ave in Kitchener beside the Forsythe Shirt Factory. At some point my mother up and left my father and took me to live in Hull Que. for a while, I believe around 1939 when I lived with my grandmother and grandfather for a while, in Port Hope Ont. I remember my grandfather was a miserable S.O.B. and any time a fly got in the house he would go off on a rant and blame me. I never figured it out for many years but he was a WW1 vet, had been in the trenches, and gassed. What he saw with the flies, I guess turned him off. I always had the impression he resented me being there. He was on a full disability from the war and never worked, or at least as far as I could tell. When he got drunk he would roam around the house at 107 Hope St. wildly gesticulating while reciting Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade. My grandmother though was the opposite she couldn't do to much for me, and if anyone ever showed an interest in me it was her. The ice man would come around with a horse and wagon delivering ice, and would take me on his rounds on the wagon, and return with me when he was finished. I suspect the reason I was in Port Hope for a while was because my mother was giving birth to my brother Max. I eventually returned to Benton St. and we lived there for a while long enough for my sister Rosemary to be born, I started kindergarten at Victoria School in 1942, a couple blocks away. Max got run over by a Silverwoods Milk truck, crossing Courtland Ave, which was a traumatic experience because I remember visiting him in the hospital and he was all black and blue.

My mothers best friend in Kitchener was Mrs. Becker who lived in an apartment on Hall's Lane which was behind the Jumbo Ice Cream Parlour, and when we left Mrs Becker after a visit we would go into the Jumbo for an ice cream, a double decker for five cents, or two small for 5 cents. There was a curtain as a door between the front of the store and the back, and on a hot day if you were sitting by the door, if someone came in or out of the back you would get a cold blast and that felt so good, I always tried to sit near the door. Across from the Jumbo on King St. was Sweeny Sweets, with a wide variety of candies, and I loved going in there especially the silver dollars which were sort of a Carmel hard candy the size of a silver dollar.

Some more of my early good memories was wen my mother would take me out to lunch at the Metropolitan Store, or Five and Dime , on the west side of King St between Benton and Queen St's. They would take a hot dog from the steamer, put it on a bun and then put it on a griddle, with a weighted top, bring down the top, searing and flattening the hot dog, as drawing a frosted glass of hires root beer. from a very large barrel sitting on the counter. When my father took me to the Lyric, or Capital Theaters we would visit Raymond's Nut shop before the show and pick up a bag of freshly popped popcorn. This was before they sold popcorn in the shows, in Kitchener at least. The Fox theater was special for it's time because they had a soundproof room where mothers with crying children could go and watch the film without disturbing others, as well as headphone jacks, for the hard of hearing on the last couple rows of seats. The Fox also gave out dishes on occasion, so if you went often enough you could collect a set. Every once in a while people like my father would fall asleep watching the film dropping their plate which would drop to the floor, breaking with a crash, eliciting a curse from the clumsy, unlucky, and embarrassed person.

On a special day my father would take me to Galt for a hockey game, and we would go on the Grand River Railway, which was an electric train, with overhead wires, running up the middle of what is highway 8 today, the GRR being a subsidiary of the CPR terminating in Kitchener near the Municipal swimming pool.

1946 in Kitchener was a year of excitement for us, my brother and sister and me soon to be turning 9 years old, and were told that we soon would be on our way to the orphanage, at 22 Willow St. in Waterloo.

My mother and father split up again and we were moved to a foster home at 189 Hoffman St. in Kitchener, where it seemed I had to walk miles to school at Courtland Ave. School, and where at lunch time one day I discovered I could not stand Bananas, and can't to this very day. I used to take a lunch to school and they packed a banana in it and when I took a bite I was sick and almost threw up. This was War time and bananas were hard to get so I gave it to a class mate who was happy to get it. While we were living in this home my brother Max and me got in a fight, and I threw a Teddy Bear at him, and it landed in a frying pan of hot grease on the stove and that was when those people decided it was best that we were there no longer.

In June 1944 we were moved in with the Korbelas Family at 57 Borden Ave in Kitchener, and I started Sheppard School where I went until 1946. Mrs Korbelas had three kids to her husband Tony, Paul the youngest, who was about a year older than me, and John the next, and then Georgina, the eldest. Mrs Korbelas had an older daughter Helen, from a previous marriage, and her former husband had died. Helen was married and lived elsewhere with her husband and worked in the Sunshine baby buggy mfg. co . While I was there I got quite friendly with a kid across the street who I went to school with, Lionel Mosberg. They were building a house across the street and me and Lionel had gone into the shell of the house to see what was being done, when Lionel stepped on a nail, and got blood poison, and they didn't think he was going to make it for a while.

One year Paul, for Christmas got a Red Ryder BB Gun and we sat on a step, and shot at Mr. Korbelas long underwear which was hanging on the line in the basement drying, and it seems I got the blame for the resulting holes, on Weber St. was Sheppard school and beyond that was the Army Base, which a lot of traffic used to come and go from. Mrs Korbelas used to do something that I thought was very smart at the time, after washing her hair she would put the canister vacuum cleaner up on the table, start it and use it to dry her hair. I could not understand why they would take is in because they were not short of a dollar, but my father was working for Tony at the time and he was a good worker and very good at his job, that of a shoe shine, and hat blocker, and cleaner.

Mr Korbelas had a shoe shine establishment on Queen St. near King St. in Kitchener off to the side of Goudies Dept. store, and Goudies Dept. store had one of those doors that opened when you walked in by breaking a beam of light, and as a Kid we thought that was one of the marvels of the century. While we were living at the Korbelases, a plane crashed behind the army base, in a swampy area, and the pilot was unijured, a Harvard Trainer I believe, and all the kids in the area had to go and see the wreckage and get a souvenir, I got a piece of broken glass which I carried around for a long time. Mrs. Korbelas used to go to the market behind City Hall on Saturday to do the shopping, and while there one day when I was with her I found some one's Ration Book, with a phone number in it, and when we got back Mrs. Kobelas phoned up the man who owned it and when he came to get it he gave me twenty five cents, which was like a small fortune to me at the time, While we were at the Kobelas house we, Max Rosemary, and myself slept on a bed in the attic together. Another big event while we were the was VE day, and VJ day, which were real causes for celebration, planes were flying overhead, cars were beeping horns, there was a great deal of excitement. We were at the Korbelases until August 1946, when we were shipped to the Orphanage at 22 Willow St. in Waterloo.