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Albany New York Area
Living on Harrison Avenue 1952-1971 (Village of Elsmere, Town of Bethlehem, Albany County, New York State)

When I was young we burned our leaves in the fall. Now they have a vacuum truck pick them up. I now live where it rarely snows
Joseph & Mary (Shields) Lenzenhuber. After being married in May of 1950 they lived in an apartment on a farm next to the Albany Municipal Golf Course. Joe would occasionally climb over the fence to the second tee and play a few holes of golf. In 1952 they moved into their newly constructed house at 45 Harrison Ave. Built on property Joe had purchased in 1943 at 17 for $250 with money from his paper route in Delmar and the house cost $9000 to build. (The lot was 50' wide and 250' deep) Mary died there in 2012 and Joe died in the same bed in 2013. The house sold in 2014 for $141,000.
My mothers name was Mary, my fathers name was Joseph and I'm from the Town of Bethlehem (That's as close as the similarity gets according to my youngest sister Susan)
When I was young we used to get a quart or two of milk delivered every day (except maybe Sunday) One day it was the Central Dairy and the next was from Borden's. There was a milk box on the exposed side stoop. (After I went in the Navy they enclosed the stoop) In the winter you had to get the milk in before it started to freeze, pushing off the cardboard cap in the neck of the glass quart bottle as the milk expanded. I remember not being able to get the storm doors open because of fresh snow and having to climb out the window to shovel snow and retrieve the milk. Those days you had the milkman the mailman and the Fuller Brush man coming to the house on a regular basis. (The latter sold household cleaning products) The doctor (Dr Drew) and the TV repair man would make house calls. You hated to hear the TV repair man say it had to go back to the shop. You had already checked the tubes before calling him. Our first TV was a black & white Admiral. The larger grocery store chains had tube testers with spare tubes near the checkout registers. (needless to say no bar code scanners and a family of four could get change back from a twenty for a weeks groceries). Sundays, a day of rest, everything was closed in the villages except the drug stores. Even the large grocery stores such as the Grand Union. Albany Public Market and the A&P were closed. There were no K-Marts, Wal-Mart's McDonalds or the such. The Albany area had a chain of hamburger stands called Carol's but none in the tri-village area. (Delmar, Elsmere & Slingerlands) 118 Grove Avenue in the Helderberg District of Albany was where most my mothers siblings lived, along with her Aunt Helen. Her brothers Tommy, Martin (Junnie) and sister Helen lived there. I spent more time there than anywhere else except home. We tended to gravitate to my mothers family rather than my fathers. The were all maiden aunts and bachelor uncles and they were very generous to us. On her death bed in 1968 my Great Aunt Helen thanked my mother for her grand children (She acted as our maternal grandmother since our real one was in an asylum) Grove Avenue had cast iron steam radiators and they kept there place hot in the winter (seemed like at least 80 degrees to me). My father was a very frugal man and we kept in the high 60s in the winter. ("Close the door, I'm not paying to heat the outside" or "Do you live in a barn" were common if you had the outside door open for more than a few seconds in the cold weather. (Also frowned upon was standing there with the refrigerator door open)
Bethlehem Central Grade Schools - High School

When we lived on the top floor at 385 Madison the Indian owner had a shop on the first floor	The Bethlehem Police made me cover up the finger (Good thing they couldn't see the roof)
I did live with my cousin John at 385 Madison Avenue in Albany for a few months before dropping out of college and joining the Navy on a delayed enlistment to avoid the Viet Nam draft. I went in in May of 1971 after spending several months in Florida living in a psychedelic Volkswagen van near the edge of the Everglades outside of Fort Lauderdale. (My grandparents were living in Delray Beach at the time.) Had a run in with locals with baseball bats and axe handle, luckily I got away without damage. (The didn't care for a long haired New York hippie with a painted microbus)
Jobs I used to shovel snow, rake leaves and mow lawns around the neighborhood. I would go door to door selling greeting cards, Tandy leather products, flower bulbs and apples that I would pick in my grandfathers back yard at 41 Harrison Ave. Easy to do when you are a kid with good neighbors. I also had a morning paper route delivering the Albany Times Union. In the summer of 1967 my mother pulled some strings and got me a job at St Peters Hospital cafeteria as a porter. I worked summers and weekends during the school year until I graduated from high school. In the summer of 69 my Uncle Marty got me a job as a common labor construction worker for Planet Construction Company working on a dorm tower at S.U.N.Y. Albany. Marty was the Union Stewart on the project and I worked as a scab until September. They wanted me to become permanent but I had to go to college for a 2S deferment to avoid the draft. The job paid $4.45 and hour compared to the $1.55 I started at the hospital in 67. After I started college I went back working at St Peter's in housekeeping about 20 hours a week on top of my 18 credit hours of engineering classes. After making the deans list the first semester my grades dropped due to partying, working and concerns about the Vietnam draft. Even though I had failed most of my third semester they were willing to have me continue in order to stay out of the draft (My draft number was 24 of 365). I decided to drop and when I was reclassified 1A and invited to take my draft physical, I join the Navy on a 4 month delayed enlistment. After hiding out near the Everglades for a few months to get out of the New York winter, I came back to the area. I worked a couple temp jobs through Manpower and went into the Navy in May of 1971.
Concerts Newport Jazz Festival 1969 Woodstock 1969 State University of New York at Albany 1969-70
Home away from homes
41 and 47 Harrison Ave
Lenzenhubers once owned three of four houses in a row on the upper block of Harrison Avenue. Ludwig owned two of them and his son Joe the one at 45 Harrison. 43 Harrison was owned by the Parkers after the Gregory moved across the street to a new ranch style home with a mother in law apartment above the garage. I remember the basement

118 Grove Ave
Shields & Moran lived at 118 Grove Avenue in my childhood and Helen Shields was the last one living there before it was sold after her death in 2011. We bonded closer to my mother's side than we did my father's. My great aunt Helen was the matriarch until 1968 and acted as my maternal grandmother. Her niece Helen and nephews Thomas and Martin Shields also lived out their lives at the address.

Sacandaga
	Edelweis is a flower that grows in the Alps The Sacandaga River was dammed for flood control of the Hudson River to form the Sacandaga Reservoir which was latter renamed the Great Sacandaga Lake. Grandpa Bought a lot from a local farmer at Sacandaga in the 50s. The farmer died and his wife gave him a deal on the rest of the land up to the road. Latter before his death it was sub divided into three parcels. His daughter Mary Lou got the lower lot towards the lake. Joe the middle and Inge the upper lot. Mary Lou's son Marty ended up with her camp. Mary Ann, Joe's daughter ended up with his parcel and she bought Inge's after she died. Inge and Neil had put a house trailer and improvements on their land, Joe had left his un developed. The total property straddles the Fulton-Saratoga county line.
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