Russell Karaviotis, born May 26, 1940 Brooklyn New York, Fort Hamilton area. Seems like far to many stories have gone around about me, and at age 73, just shy of 74, thought I would keep the stories straight.
"AINT NO RAGS TO RICHES STORY"
Best recollection I can see in my mind, is me putting pennies on the trollies in Bay Ridge waiting for them to come by and flatten them out, and then selling them to the other kids for 2 pennies as they were copper and shinned real good.
At age 6, was shinning shoes at the corner where the people waited for the trolley. Oh,How did I get the shoe shine box and polish? We had on Saturday's a guy with donkey's pulling his huge cart of "Junk, any old Junk" So i did what i remember was my first deal. He wanted 50 cents and i wanted to pay 25 cents, so we compromised, i gave him 50 cents and he gave me the shoe shine box along with 5 used shoe tins, that still had a bit of polish left in them.
Anyway, I got sometimes a dime and once I got fifty cents for my shine, and started to get real good at it, so I tried to get a few more shoe shine boxes and about a year later, had a few kids working for me shinning shoes. I wanted back 12 cents on a shine and they could keep the rest. Sometimes they made nothing if they only got a dime, but I was making a few bucks a week, and that was a lot of money, considering that a 2 cents plain (seltzer) or an egg cream, that was a shot of vanilla and milk in seltzer water with 5 cents.
Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snyder of the Brooklyn Dodgers, both lived a block from my family on Marine Avenue and I got to shine Dukes shoes, got 25 cents, and he asked me if i was a Dodger fan, heck everybody in Brooklyn was a Dodger fan. He and Pee Wee would drive together to Ebbets Field and that started me getting a ride to the ball games on the weekends with my best buddy Ray Siller, it also got me to start collecting autographs as I was allowed to go into the clubhouse. Sure was different then, no one was paranoid about all the stuff they are today, people just lived their lives with far less confusion. i had about 50 autographs in a green book that i gave to my son Russ Jr about 40 years ago, give or take a few. He gave it to his son Mark who is 17 now, and has been in Little League all is life, wanting to be a Major Leaguer. Back to the past, now around 1950, and family moved to Long Island so we could have a house and no more apartments!
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"AINT NO RAGS TO RICHES STORY"
Best recollection I can see in my mind, is me putting pennies on the trollies in Bay Ridge waiting for them to come by and flatten them out, and then selling them to the other kids for 2 pennies as they were copper and shinned real good.
At age 6, was shinning shoes at the corner where the people waited for the trolley. Oh,How did I get the shoe shine box and polish? We had on Saturday's a guy with donkey's pulling his huge cart of "Junk, any old Junk" So i did what i remember was my first deal. He wanted 50 cents and i wanted to pay 25 cents, so we compromised, i gave him 50 cents and he gave me the shoe shine box along with 5 used shoe tins, that still had a bit of polish left in them.
Anyway, I got sometimes a dime and once I got fifty cents for my shine, and started to get real good at it, so I tried to get a few more shoe shine boxes and about a year later, had a few kids working for me shinning shoes. I wanted back 12 cents on a shine and they could keep the rest. Sometimes they made nothing if they only got a dime, but I was making a few bucks a week, and that was a lot of money, considering that a 2 cents plain (seltzer) or an egg cream, that was a shot of vanilla and milk in seltzer water with 5 cents.
Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snyder of the Brooklyn Dodgers, both lived a block from my family on Marine Avenue and I got to shine Dukes shoes, got 25 cents, and he asked me if i was a Dodger fan, heck everybody in Brooklyn was a Dodger fan. He and Pee Wee would drive together to Ebbets Field and that started me getting a ride to the ball games on the weekends with my best buddy Ray Siller, it also got me to start collecting autographs as I was allowed to go into the clubhouse. Sure was different then, no one was paranoid about all the stuff they are today, people just lived their lives with far less confusion. i had about 50 autographs in a green book that i gave to my son Russ Jr about 40 years ago, give or take a few. He gave it to his son Mark who is 17 now, and has been in Little League all is life, wanting to be a Major Leaguer. Back to the past, now around 1950, and family moved to Long Island so we could have a house and no more apartments!
Thanks for visiting our on-line directory resource site for . Be sure to check out the useful Related Search options at top left featuring categories relevant to your quest. The More Info tab takes you to additional resources in the interesting field of .