Daily life through the eyes of a youngster

While Giovanna Schembri's recollections of her childhood and teenage years, living as she did so close to Strait Street, were so heavily influenced by what used to go on down the Gut because of her grandfather's and her mother's running of bars and music halls there, the account by Paul Caruana of his younger days living also close to Strait Street is totally different.

Mr Caruana, 45, a graphic artist and illustrator, recalls, at times infusing his story with touches of childhood innocence, how, as a young boy, his life and that of his peers focused on Strait Street.

Their world then, which to many today seems surreal, has tempered the way they look at the world at large. Apart from making them far more streetwise than other kids who lived in more sheltered surroundings, life in and around Strait Street seemed to them to resemble a cinematic film without any intermission and with several cocky characters playing the lead role.

In this third part of a four-part series, Mr Caruana speaks to George Cini about the world he remembers as a youngster. Inspired by this series, he has managed to capture in his inimitable way several scenes from Strada Stretta and Strada San Giuseppe which help no end to animate this series.

My grandfather was in the police force. He could hardly read or write - he was tall and heavily built and could provide muscle in case of trouble.

Grandma was British, née Mills, and used to play the mandolin in the dance halls in Strada Stretta.

We used to live in on the fourth floor at 110, Strada San Giuseppe - a four-storey tenement with a sole water supply pipe running up the internal courtyard. If someone opened one's water tap in any one of the apartments below, water would not reach our floor.

The stairs leading to our apartment were illuminated by natural light from a window on each landing but in the evening the place looked like a scene from a movie starring Bela Lugosi, the first Dracula.

Some prostitutes used to give false information to customers regarding their address. My father was overseas when we experienced an ordeal resulting from this state of affairs. There were just mum and I at home. We used to live above tas-Sisu bakery right round the corner from Strada Fontana.

The "customers" who came over looking for women at about 1 a.m. were German Nato personnel and they wanted their money back at all costs. Luckily, one of our neighbours managed to persuade them that no women lived there.

As kids we used to go around pulling sailors by the trousers asking for money, imploring: "Gif me penny". If mum caught us doing such a thing it would mean real trouble.

The place below us was a one-bedroom apartment rented out to a woman who in turn rented it out to her daughters to entertain men.

We always had some kind of company and to think that these women used to entertain all alone in such a scary place gives you some idea of how fearless and desperate these women must have been to earn a living.

A number of barmaids lived in an apartment across the street, one in the apartment next to ours. That is besides the ones running the show below us.

Never did we witness anything wrong or disrespectful from them. If, as in our case, someone was in need of help, they would go out of their way to support them. Although these women earned their living as barmaids and prostitutes, they were extremely kind.

On the second floor lived Stella Qtates - a loner who spent her days in the company of cats. She looked like a witch complete with dirty white hair, grey dirty overcoat and shoes through which toes sporting overgrown nails covered in grime protruded. Her fingers were long and crooked and ending in long discoloured nails. She used to stand in front of her door in pitch darkness, broken only by a stub of a candle, reciting the rosary.

The only time I ever saw her front door open I could see she had beautiful antique furniture and that everything was covered in candle wax. She used to scare the hell out of us.

The story was that in her youth she was a beauty and worked in Strada Stretta.

It was not unusual to see a young boy sitting on a wooden crate at a street corner holding a tray on his lap or with the wooden tray hanging by a piece of string from his neck selling cigarettes, matches and chewing gum to service men who roamed up and down Strait Street.

Girls as young as 11 were sent to Strada Stretta to ply the trade earning seven shillings a week, on the pretext that they came from a large family.

In a number of cases the nuclear family meant kids, parents, partners and grandparents living under one roof not to mention the pets.

Life in Strada San Giuseppe and Strada Fontana was dominated by Strada Stretta. There were shops and grocers and itinerant sellers. People lived on the street and gossiped, did their washing on the street or scoured their children's heads looking for lice as they sat on the threshold of their front door.

Fights between neighbours were frequent and emotional beyond belief with people calling each other names revealing dark secrets about each other, usually starting off with the kids and spreading out to the respective families.

The neighbourhood knew no nights or days - it was just an existence being reeled at one go.

Since life was hard, people sought out all sorts of ways - mostly illegal - of making money. These included such scams as the three-card game called Find the Joker and Win. In this game, the dealer, kneeling over a wooden crate, with great sleight of hand switched at speed three cards creased in the middle letting them fall on the crate or on the ground. The dealer often had a partner who would "win" a couple of games in a ruse to tempt onlookers to place their bets.

The fiddle was that if any of the punters was sharp enough to start hitting the joker, the dealer would shout "police" and grab the cards and the box and run like hell. Other forms of making-money were lotteries, selling tickets for three pence each with the coveted price being a live rabbit or a live chicken or a couple of liri.

Lotto related raffles included mal-prima where the winning number would be the first number in Saturday's lotto draw. For a sixpence you could win a hamper of tinned items, though usually the winner would turn out to be none other than the organiser himself or herself - another good reason for a sizzling street fight.

To be continued

Any of The Times readers who would like to add to this series by providing photographs and/or reminiscences about Strait Street can contact George Cini at The Times newsroom or at gcini@timesofmalta.com