New York Wanderer

A DEED, NOW DONE....

2012-01-28T06:01:00.000-08:00

My Skype screen glowed and there he was, his 66-year old voice as clear as a bell, a bald head with a kind face beaming at me. Bob Newmark looks a bit like a kind-faced Kojak, or perhaps Yul Brynner in his prime. Once again my friend Roger Joslyn, genealogist extroardinaire, plucked an arrow from his magic quiver, struck a bulls-eye for me far across the Atlantic, and a sea of time.

Szaja Rotblatt is six feet under at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, laid next to his wife, Helen three years after her death in 1946. I hesitate to use the common saying. "Laid to rest" he certainly wasn't, as he'd left Helen for another woman and run off to Florida, leaving her bitter, to raise her daughter Eleanor, alone in the Bronx. The memorial plaque in my most recent blog post Dumped... to the memory of Szaja Rotblatt, honored officer of the United Hatters Sick and Benevolent Society, found in a street-side pile of demolition debris in midtown many years ago by Andrew Weinstock, finally can be returned, Szaja's memory honored at least by one.

Eleanor was Bob Newmark's mother. She had no kind words for her father, who died when Bob was only four. Szaja, known as David to the family, had come from Warsaw, via Paris, before the First World War, with his wife and his children, a blocker in the hat trade. Helen was an educated woman, aspired to be a lawyer. It never happened, and highest she rose professionally was as an executive secretary when Szaja's departure left her to fend for her herself.

The story spilled from Bob's lips. He'd known nothing of his maternal grandparents. I'd suspected such misery: a large bronze memorial plaque in a pile of trash? There must have been pain. All of the sudden, the image on the Skype sceen changed: Bob went into a back room in his Amsterdam apartment, and re-emerged with a sepia-toned photo, tears pouring from his eyes. There they stand, Szaja, in a straw boater and well-tailored suit, oysgeputst, as they say in Yiddish, all dressed up. Next to him is Helen in a fabulous lady's dress, her hat a gaint milliner's confection with broad brim and all manner of accoutrements. In front of them in an orderly row stand three of their children, the middle little Eleanor in a lovely smock, two brothers on eaither side. Tears of joy rolled on.

Bob's a native New Yorker, Sheepshead Bay born and bred, a Brooklyn College graduate and, until six years ago when he moved full-time to the Netherlands, a professional Dutch-English translator. A brilliant, gentle, simpatico, sensitive man. His father, Max Newmark, married Eleanor in 1931, and worked in the fur trade until it, too, fell apart. I'd tracked this couple to Florida many months ago, though a distant Rotblatt relation, but it took my buddy Roger Joslyn to find Bob Newmark. Imagine my thrill.

What does it take to close a circle? I'll hand-carry the plaque to Bob in the coming spring. Peysakh, Passover, is a time of renewal, the Jewish predecessor of Easter, a myth reborn. What sort of sacrifice should I make in thanksgiving? The dead now are raised, a circle closed and a bond opened. Bob will tell me more and you'll read as the story is more told.

Dumped...

2011-10-17T19:01:00.000-07:00

Driving east on a mid-town street in the mid-1980s, my acquaintance Andy W. spotted a bronze plaque in a pile of demolition debris. Intrigued by the shiny item, he stopped and rescued this memorial plaque, dumped on the street at the start of renovation of a former union headquarters of the millinery trade. How in heaven’s name could the crew have been so heartless? The memory of a tzadik, a righteous man named Szaja Rotblatt, was thrown without ceremony into the trash.

In this simple metallic scroll lies a story of proportions yet unmeasured. Perhaps they never truly will be. Through my search, its outline emerges. One day soon, this plaque will be mounted again in a place of honor. ‘Til then, the internet marks the spot for it to be.

Szaja David Rotblatt was not famous or well-known, except to his comrades in the hatters’ trade. As I learned from his US citizenship naturalization papers, filed in New York County Supreme Court in 1914, Szaja was born in 1873 in Warsaw, and found work there as a blocker, the craftsman who places a cut and partially-formed hat on a mold and shapes it into a finished item.

It’s hard to conceive how important hats once were. JFK ended that for men mid-century, with an uncovered head at his snowy January inauguration, 1961. Jackie actually extended the life of ladies’ headwear, her signature pillbox numbers, re-defining classic style for the shrinking number of women who went about hat-adorned. Four decades before, Mary Pickford’s classic short “The Hat,” epitomized the role that Szaja’s craft played in American society. Take a gander at this tasty depiction.
A woman’s hat was worth sacrifices so she could be beautiful and feel wanted; take another gander at this 1912 Mary Pickford silent short, The New York Hat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk8Pd3VbYiI

Life in Poland was no picnic for a Jew, and poor economic conditions as well as rampant anti-Semitism sent Szaja, his wife Helen, and their three children to Paris where they booked passage in 1908 aboard the steamship La Provence that sailed from Le Havre on December 12, 1908. "Russia" is listed as the family's native country as was the custom in the day (Poland being then still dominated by the Czar). Isaac, age 8, Herman, age 4, and Eleanora, age 2, (whose name was shortened to Eleanor in the USA), accompanied their mother, whose Yiddish name was Chaye, and their father, listed as David (Schaye) Rothblatt. Left behind in Paris was the family's friend, Mendel Relmann, of 14 Rue Eugene Sue in the center of Montmartre in the 18th Arrondissement, hard by the Metro Marcadet Poisonniers, downhill and north of Sacre Coeur. Relmann's 26-year old son Isidore, a tailor, was also aboard. Apparently the Rotblatt family had resided in France for some time before their departure for the Golden Land, at least long enough to form a friendship with the Relmann family.

By 1910, the Rotblatt family had landed in East Harlem, a mecca for Eastern European Jews. Slightly less crowded than the Lower East Side, and with a housing stock, albeit also dilapidated, in general many decades younger than that downtown, the Rotblatts rented in the neighborhood at 117 East 115th Street, where they are listed on the 1910 census. The family spoke Yiddish at home as did most of their Jewish neighbors. Szaja found work in the millinery shops downtown, where the shop-floor language as well as the fiery rhetoric at union meetings was the same.

By 1917, the United Cap and Hatmakers Union of North America was in the forefront of radical socialist labor struggles in the US. Its monthly organ, The Headgear Worker, was published in Yiddish and English.

The December 1917 issue wishes its readers a happy New Year, and then launches into a frequently heard rallying cry for the increasingly leftist group which had just seen a year filled with the Bolshevik uprising in Russia and major outbreaks of anti-capitalist furor all over the Western world.

In boldface caps, Szaja and his comrades were exhorted:

THE PASSED YEAR WAS RICH IN EVENTS MAKING IT AN EPOCH IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. STRUGGLING IN SEAS OF BLOOD AND UNDER THE THUNDER OF CANNONS, THE HUMAN FAMILY IS PROGRESSING TO ITS FULL EMANCIPATION FROM ALL FORMS OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY. TOGETHER WITH THE THRONE OF THE CZAR WAS [sic] ALSO SHATTERED THE THRONES OF THE CAPITALIST AUTOCRATS, AND EVEN IN GERMANY THERE ARE SIGNS OF THE AWAKENING OF THE PEOPLE AND ITS READINESS TO CAST OFF THE YOKE OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS AND ALL THEIR CAPITALIST COTERIE. LET THE COMING NEW YEAR ACCOMPLISH YOUR AND OUR FULL HEARTS DESIRE...

Thus ended a year that had devastated Szaja's homeland and the rest of Europe. The end of the next would throw both Europe and the United States into a financial tail-spin, as the bubble of war work and munitions production ended with Armistice Day 1918. Military contracts for headgear disappeared from the New York shops and with that came reduced wages and hours for hatters across the board. During the mid-decade, struggles over affiliation with the more conservative United Hatters of North America had grown. The December 1916 issue of the The Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers Journal included articles such as "Does it Pay to be a Union Member," and two by the prominent hatter's union activist Max Zaritsky about the internal workings of the union and its participation in the "Joint Council," even though the United Hatters were a conservative group who refused to be classed as a needle trade (unlike their comrades in the cloth hat trade). The United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of North America was a radical bund, its monthly journal packed with articles spewing Socialist flames, railing against the bosses and capitalist greed. The two groups included as their members almost 100% of the hatters, who comprised 32,000 members by 1921, mostly in New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Some men are born to lead, and others not; Some choose a small pond in which to be big fish. In America, everyone could count. In the sweatshop, Szaja was likely a nobody, poorly paid and exploited to the bone. Out the door, though, he could be someone. The Union Hatters Sick and Benevolent Society was his standing stone. "Founder and Leader" reads the bronze tablet. “Recording Secretary:” his name is proclaimed, incised on the grey granite gates of its burial field. These gates and graves and the discarded tablet are the only palpable remainders of the UHSBS, its records lost to the wind after its liquidation in 1990. Neither the YIVO archives at the Center for Jewish History, nor the UHSBS custodian, Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, nor the New York State Insurance Department Liquidation Bureau know the whereabouts of the files that would shed light on Szaja's deeds, those that caused the tablet's fashioners to sing his praises for his efforts during the group's "darkest hours." The stench of red-baiting filled my nostrils as I read the raised letters on my newest find. I imagined more was at hand than a testimonial to a burial society well-run.

The spaghetti twists of interchanges near the north side of Flushing Meadow Park bollix the mind, winding in and out of the park's borders and carefully avoiding the consecrated ground of Mt. Hebron cemetery, named after the hill from which the patriarch Moses was condemned to watch as his people entered the land of milk and honey without him. What a strange name for the site of over 1,000,000 Jewish burials! There I’d found Szaja listed in the cemetery’s website.

Thousands of gravestones stood like pine trees in a forest as I drove the paths, searching for his grave. Was Szaja really there? Did it matter to anyone? Perhaps I and my acquaintance Andy are in a club of our own. We want to know everything about this man, and resurrect him memory best as we can. Though Szaja’s wife of many years is buried next to him, I know through census records that they lived apart in the Bronx in 1930, and that at her death in June 1946 in Monticello, NY, the informant was a man named Charles Roth of Mosholu Parkway, not Szaja, her husband, who perhaps was spending June back in New York.

Szaja and Helen Rotblatt indeed lie side by side in the UHSBS plot near Mt. Hebron’s eastern gates.
Though well-tended, the plot is the worse for wear; no burials have been done there since 2008 and little, if any, room remains. The list of officers inscribed on the gates is a long one. America meant equality and opportunity for all. You didn't need yikhes or a fancy degree to serve as an officer of burial society. Nonetheless, doing so furnished a modicum of self-respect. Szaja was revered, though his wife may not have loved him. His memory isn’t dumped yet. I intend it never be.

Batya in the Heart of Darkness

2011-10-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

The title of Joseph Conrad's novel has always intrigued me, though I’ve never cracked a page. I understand the scenes to be strange and frightful; you never know what's coming next. New York City is a jungle, too, of cultures and races, living at each other’s edges, and so it is at Bedford and Nostrand, down at the southern end of Flatbush, where the 2 and 5 trains end their runs, disgorging their loads of hoi polloi. Just to the east lies Brooklyn College, a melange if ever there was one, every people that Brooklyn holds. The stew pot simmers: in three directions the lilt of Island accents fills the air, some gentle, others rough. Jamaicans predominate for vast dozens of blocks north, as well as east and west, even a bit south, having replaced the white folks, many Jewish, who fled in the early 60s during the epidemic of racist block busting that spread like cholera, just as immigration policies loosened in the States. South on Bedford, perhaps ten blocks, the next generation of bourgeois Jewish culture flourishes, its population of all-rightniks morphed into one of the many Orthodox communities that cover Midwood and many other non-Hasidic Brooklyn enclaves.

Over the years, drugs have overwhelmed countless Flatbush blocks, Rasta devils careening though the streets in SUVs with tints, making U turns and doing doughnuts in the middle of Flatbush Avenue as pedestrians scatter. Where Yiddish was once heard day-in day-out, from the subway junction all the way north to Martense Street and beyond, pistol shots now ring out in the middle of the day when deals go bad. Even the $1.00 van drivers who swoop up and down Flatbush, stealing fares from the MTA, know to beware. Their CB radio aerials suddenly stand still as the gang vans screech by. Stand and watch anywhere at the junction: white kids from Brooklyn college who traipse to the subway from the west on their way home stand out like so many sore thumbs.

Several weeks ago on my way to the beach, I emerged from the subway in the middle of the bubbling stew, my bike in hand to complete my journey to Rockapulco after the train ride out. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I spotted a mermaid, her bright form beckoning to me, calling my name. In the sea of Black faces, the figure of a short, elderly white woman with a shopping cart caught my attention. She was troubling herself, assessing how to the safely cross the street. It was hot and humid and she was obviously disoriented. I came up to her and asked her if I could help.

Batya, indeed, might as well have sported a fish-tail, her presence in the intersection so strange that hot summer day. Dressed in matching bright red-accented clothing, her color scheme matched her little metal cart, packed to the gills with her earthly possessions. She was looking for an address on Bedford Avenue. After we safely crossed the Red Sea and she could talk safely, it turned out that Batya, though clean and presentable, was homeless. She’d walked all the way from Crown Heights, a sizable hike, seeking shelter at a government office that might provide subsidized apartment to replace the one from which she claimed she'd been driven by her neighbors, due to her past career as a “private eye.” Hmm, I thought, perhaps even one percent of this is true....

All this came out as we tottered down Bedford, after I managed to help her cross the street, gripping my bike frame in one hand and taking her arm with the other. Mermaids are notorious for their powers of persuasion. But it wasn’t Batya’s ample breasts that summoned me thither. A more powerful tool was at her command: I detected an accent once commonly heard on the corner where we met. Yiddish is gone from Bedford and Nostrand, dead as the white buffalo, its melodies extinct. I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real. Batya's Yiddish was more than serviceable. I was tempted to call the Natural History Museum with my sighting. Rara avis flew in my face.

Her story poured out as we moved down the sidewalk. Once a cherished Roumanian Jewish daughter, her parents had fled east with her during the Holocaust, ending up in a transit camp in Siberia. Along the way, shrapnel from a Wehrmacht shell injured her right hand. The scars were proudly displayed as she told me her childhood name in Italian: Beatrice, how her parents loved her so. Then the War came. All that tender youth is long gone, murdered by Hitler, then Stalin, then life. Who knows how she came to the shores of America? Close relatives live here, but her homelessness is not a bit their concern.

What does one do when confronted with misery, a human soul wandering in the dark, obviously nuts? How to put one’s arms around the situation (or them), what to do, what is ethical, beyond the knee-jerk reaction to not get involved. I was genuinely concerned, despite her obvious mental illness, that Batya come to no harm in the middle of the day. She formed an obvious target for those up to no good. I turned instead to selfish concerns, though, wanting a photo to save of this moment, that of juxtaposition and language, so strange. “No,” came her answer when I asked her permission. $1000 was her price to capture her face. Crazy she might be, but Batya had seykhl, the street smarts to handl with what was in play. I came up to $20 but that was my limit. We parted, my mermaid and I come to nothing. The odor of fishy intentions lingered about. Still it was special: Yiddish at the Junction. I’ll turn to learning Jamaican patios now, and get up to date.

More on Peaches and Daddy

2011-10-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Peaches Browning may have failed in her bid for wealth when her suit for divorce, a property settlement, and alimony against Daddy Browning failed in March, 1926, but all was not lost. Her fame was nationwide now, and her teenage dreams of a stage career on solid ground. Caroline Heenan, Peaches’ mother, who had encouraged her daughter’s relationship with the old goat so as to prevent Peaches from pursuing a questionable stage career, changed her tune fast now that marriage to the elderly Browning had failed to deliver its original, ostensible rewards for the Heenans. An about-face was warranted for the budding performer, now that something of value could apparently be salvaged from Peaches’ acquaintance with Daddy B.
Here’s a pub shot of peroxided Peaches, circa 1927 just when her vaudeville act took off.

Clad in dark velvet, expertly draped to conceal the zaftig nature of her major gams, the now 17-year old Peaches struck a demure a pose on a sawhorse that was surely cropped out of the shot before distribution.

While waiting for the trial court’s decision in her marital battle, Peaches and her Momma took a breather from the intense spotlight in which they had bathed since her April, 1926 nuptials. A cruise to Bermuda was just the thing. Here they are in early February, 1927 on the deck of S.S. Fort Victoria. She must have gotten something from the old geezer even though her divorce claim was foundering: perhaps the sale of some of the contents of the 20 or so trunks of finery carted away by her as she and her mom removed from the Kew Gardens Hotel in October, 1926 paid for the undoubtedly expensive passage. Six months of co-habitation with Daddy B. and his puerile antics had been more than enough. Temporary support was substantially denied to Peaches when Browning anticipated his teenage wife’s legal strategy and sued for a separation soon after she walked out.

During the pendency of the outlandish legal battle, fought in Carmel and White Plains, New York, wags paved the way for Peaches ’incipient stage career as a flaming chanteuse. Here’s Lon Mooney’s Tin Pan Alley hit, I’m All Alone in a Palace of Stone, with a morose Daddy staring at the tabloic headlines announcing his beloved’s flight. A winsome Peaches, clad in an unusually matronly frock, looks off into the distance, her grown-up visage belying her sum total of 16 years.

Peaches made quite a stir once she started appearing on the regional vaudeville stage. Despite a field crowded with Ziegfeld girls and Busby Berkeley wannabes, Cinderella Wannabe mattered enough for celebrity photographer Cheney Johnston to capture her inflammable essence in this smoking hot studio shot, her sizeable pins again gamely disguised, as she looks off-stage.
Peaches had earned her fame the hard way, battling competition at every turn. Browning was no easy catch during their short courtship, having solicited over 12,000 girls in his infamous 1925 newspaper ad that ended with a Czech girl, Mary Louise Spas, supposedly 16, being legally adopted until her true age was smoked out. Here he is in the same season of his and Peaches’ initial acquaintance, clad in what was reported as a gold vest.
The satyr is seated next to Miss Ethelinda Cooley, beaming at having brought down the house with his skill as her Charleston partner before a crowd of 1000 at the Commodore Hotel in late February 1926. Check out Mama Cooley’s stern smile behind her daughter’s smiling bee-stung lipped puss, an iron matron’s firm grasp on the white-haired so-called gentleman’s shoulder. Where is sweet Ethelinda’s mother’s other hand? Ready, aim, FIRE, just in case. Even old Daddy wouldn’t have dared fondle Ethelinda’s tight thigh. At least ‘til a bit later….

15 months later, a lot of water, under the bridge. Here is poor old Daddy again, May, 1928, kneeling on the ceiling of a glass vault in his real estate office, where 2,200,000 letters to him from young women all over the world were hoarded and savored by the old Terah. His appetite was never sated, even after Mary Louise Spas and Peaches were long gone.

Imagine my surprise when the phone rang this past March, and an old man calling from Florida inquired. “Is this Benjamin Feldman? I’m Warren Lee, and you’re gonna WANT to talk to me. I read your book. I’m in the know.” Warren’s father, Henry Lee f/k/a Hyman Levy, knew Daddy Browning more than well. Back in 1919, Hy was discharged from the Army. An orthodox Jewish boy from Brooklyn was ready to go to work, and his training in the service as a stenographer and typist would come in to play. Edward West Browning ran a large realty empire by that time, but his proclivity for members of the distaff side made it inadvisable for him to have women in his office as employees. Male secretaries were on the outs already in much of this country, but Browning preferred them, and when Hy Levy answered the newspaper ad placed by WASP-extraordinaire Browning, he was hired for the job. Browning may have been anti-Semitic, but he recognized select male members of the tribe as extraordinarily capable. Perhaps Browning’s career as a black sheep in the staid and pedigreed Browning family made him sympathetic to the Jews as social outcasts.
Daddy Browning knew smarts and ambition when he saw them, and how to employ them in others for his own uses and aid. By 1926, when Warren was born, Browning had made Hy Levy wealthy, giving him pieces of deals and a healthy salary, advancing him from clerk to appraiser as Edbro Realty Corp. grew. Chartered day-boats up the Hudson River for company parties, lavish presents for children of favored employees, access arranged for Hy Levy to “restricted” uptown clubs were all Browning’s pleasure, his largesse as an employer matching the mis-directed efforts he made with young women. The secret of what possessed his twisted soul would follow Daddy to the other world, as children who benefitted from one of the Browning charities sprinkled white orchids into his grave.

With the onset of the Great Depression, Edbro Realty suffered, and Hy Levy left to strike out on his own. Leaving his race-horses at the Belmont track his New York Jockey club membership behind and his wife and two children at their home on 169th Street in Jamaica, Queens, Levy hied himself down to Dallas, Texas, where he was hired as a car salesman by the C.S. Hamilton Chrysler dealership. There was one hitch before starting day, though. Hyman Levy was required to deracinate his last name turning non-Hebrew: H.L. Lee. Gertrude Levy and her sons must joined Hy there, and Warren graduated from a Dallas High School. Lee’s sales acumen was probably considerable: Chrysler took Hy Lee away, making Warren’s father manager of its West Texas Mopar parts division. After being moved for that post to tiny Kermit, Texas, Hy Lee was rejoined by his wife, Gertrude in 1934. Warren and his older brother Robert, both over 18 by then, elected to return to New York, their last names also by then changed to Lee.

Warren was born on February 2, 1926 at Eastern Parkway Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, so it’s likely that the family lived not far away then. The Levys were itinerant, just like Daddy Browning, who rented his many homes despite massive real estate holdings of his own. One of Hy Levy’s perks during his tenure with Edbro was to occupy apartments for short periods in his boss’ holdings. He also took advantage of the liberal free rent periods that were customary in apartment rentals in those days. While Warren was a small child, the Levy family even lived around the corner from Caroline and Peaches, at 654 West 170th Street, and Warren told me that his older brother Robert remembered visiting the Heenan apartment back in the days of Daddy’s courting there. Warren also remembers living in the same Washington Heights neighborhood when he was a grammar school student at P.S. 173, a fortress that still stands on Fort Washington Avenue and West 173rd Street. Warren’s his apartment house neighbor, Neil “Doc” Simon, was teased mercilessly by his older classmates when he brought a new toy doctor kit downstairs to play.

Before or after the Levys’ residence at Browning’s typical needle-like apartment house that Edbro built at 42 West 72nd Street, Warren also remembers living at The Majestic, on the southwest corner of Central Park West and 72nd Street. Hy Levy must have been doing quite well! Today, apartments at the Majestic cost $2000 per square foot and UP; even in the Depression they weren’t too cheap. Little Warren, 7 or 8 years old, remembers well the gift one Christmas from Browning of a miniature coal-fired locomotive and tender hitched behind, which his mother would take him in to Central Park, across the street from the Majestic. Warren had to be the envy of even the richest kid on the street, trundling about in this contraption after he visited Browning in his West 61st Street office to thank him personally, with his Mom.

Stories fade and collective memory fails us; even a fellow as well-known as Daddy Browning, the laughing stock of America in the Roaring Twenties, is now barely a cipher on the screen. I feel special having heard from Warren Lee. He’s quite possibly the only human being on the face of the earth who shook the hand that petted Peaches’ sweet hide.

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All images, except the Cheney Johnston portrrait of Peaches) are the property of and presented through the courtesy of The Green-Wood Historic Fund

A Sow's Ear...

2011-06-24T05:50:00.000-07:00

[Author's note: for more about the author and the creation of this piece, see The New York Times article about him July 2nd, 2011 at http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/chasing-a-name-lost-to-time-2/ ]

"You can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse" goes the popular refrain. I beg to differ, though. Sometimes one may.

Browsing among the vast piles of bric-a-brac in a Chelsea flea market right before Hannukah, a tiny leather change purse caught my eye. Sifting through piles of dust-covered junk, golden lettering on the item's battered side gleamed at me like a nugget in dirt.. The Yiddish version of the old saw sprang into my head, my grandfather's shmaltz-coated voice ringing in my ears: Fun a khazerishe ek, makht men nisht keyn shtraymel" "From the tail-end of a pig, one doesn't make a Hasidic man's fur-banded holiday headpiece."

Suddenly I was sure I had beaten the odds. Though designed for small coins and subway tokens, and ostensibly empty, I knew right away that this little sack held lode-bearing ore. Sol. Goldberg's Cafe and Restaurant 71 Canal Street 2111 ORCHARD glowed from the crinkled skin. This lagniappe, this swag, held a big, fat story. Who was my fellow, this Jewish version of Oscar Delmonico, dreaming success for his little hash house? Likely, his reach exceeded his grasp.

Desperate to know, I rushed downtown to Allen and Canal Streets and found Sol's building still standing there, now home to Chinese restaurant suppliers and factory lofts with no names on their doors. The scent of secret commerce and bribery filled the air.

71 Canal Street today

Nearby loomed a ghost-ridden tower. The florid 1912 shell of Jarmulowsky's Bank still dominates the corner of Eldridge and Canal. That family fortune started in Hamburg, where in the 1870s patriarch Sender J. sold steerage tickets to multitudes of Sol Goldbergs on credit, and then "safeguarded" their tiny savings from miserable New York sweatshop salaries squirrelled away after paying off their passage debts. Thousands of depositors lost everything at the outbreak of The Great War when the bank suddenly failed.

Jarmlovsky's Bank - Corner of Eldridge and Canal Streets

The deceased founder's two sons had been "jumpers" in Harlem real estate schemes, using hard-earned passbook dollars to speculate, instead of protecting their depositors' gelt. A near-riot ensued as a mob marched on City Hall, demanding justice and restitution. As I gazed on the majestic facade of the failed institution, all about me drifted vapors of cheap booze on the breaths of disconsolate barflies, drowning the misery at Sol's bar and brass rail. Then I hurried home with my precious purchase.

Consider the phone number in the purse's gilt lettering. Why its strange order? I knew the purse was old, but exactly from when? New York telephone exchanges disappeared in the 1960s with the introduction of "all-number" dialing. Memorialized by novels like BUtterfield 8, two letters and a digit corresponding to the third letter of the old exchange names began all connections after 1920. But on this leather trinket, as was the custom before 1921, four digits precede the exchange. A determined push through the fog of Manhattan telephone and borough address directories cleared the glass. Sol Goldberg was a liquor dealer and saloon operator down on Canal Street, handing out change purses while striving to stay alive after Prohibition's 1919 start.

A visit to the New York County Clerk's Office followed my phonebook leaf-through. I found another listing in a reverse directory for 1920 at 71 Canal next to Sol Goldberg and his cafe. The "Eagle Non-Intoxicating Wine Company" fit right in. A quick visit to the New York County Clerk's Office confirmed the formation of this majestic-sounding enterprise by Sol and his elder son Herbert. Hope and khutspeh survived, even after Carrie Nation won the brawl. But business was lousy or perhaps it needed a quieter address. By 1921, Sol and Herb disappeared from Canal Street without a trace. The long arm of the law visited in October, 1920: Indicted on three counts of violating the Volstead Act, including that Sol "unlawfully, wittingly and knowingly, did sell 1 glass of whiskey to Isidor Einstein" at 71 Canal Street on October 17th, Sol pleaded guilty on February 8, 1921 in Federal Court in Foley Square and paid a fine of $250. Things were all downhill from there.

Solomon Goldberg emigrated from Kėdainiai, Lithuania (listed as Russia in the census records) in 1892 in his late teens, and then left New York to stay with relatives in Virginia where he found work in a sheriff's office. By 1898 he had returned to New York, and lived at 149 Ludlow Street, shown here as it is today. Here also is Sol's photo, taken in Charleston, SC.

Engaged to Rosa Fridlander, Sol married his lantsman in 1898 in a non-religious ceremony performed by alderman James Gaffney at 232 East 22nd Street in front of two gentile witnesses. Her father's photo, probably taken in Norfolk, VA, where the Fridlanders had immigrated, is below.

Sol leased one of his first saloons at 17 Ludlow by 1902, a modest structure on the west side of Ludlow, just north of Canal. Though the ethnicity of the building and surrounding blocks is overwhelmingly Chinese today, 17 Ludlow, its back house, and the immediate environs bear a remarkable resemblance to how they looked in 1902. Overcrowded apartments and small businesses dominate the neighboring tenements. Steam vents still pour from upper floor windows. Chinese signs are plastered on doorways. Mandarin or Yiddish, it's all the same: struggling to survive remains the game.

17 LUDLOW AND ITS BACK-HOUSE, TODAY

With the backing of the omnipresent Lion Brewing Company, Sol signed a formal lease for 17 Ludlow's northerly store and the four dwelling rooms above, for a term of five years, starting March 5, 1903. The rent was pegged at $75 a month, with Sol giving a promissory note of $103 for security, while also agreeing to pay charges for "Croton Water."

THE LION BREWING COMPANY-MANHATTAN VALLEY NYC

The big news that day in Der Forverts ? A scandal broke about mid-wives in the neighborhood who had banded together in a baby-selling syndicate. Women involved in secret affairs were said to purchase infants on the open market and then extort money from their lovers. The midwives belonged to a co-operative exchange, helping each other out in cases of short inventory and operating a clearing house likened by the reporter to that which banks use for processing checks !

Front and center, page 1? A story entitled “A Head Is Also a Piece of Merchandise.” Cigar dealer James Mendi of East 17th Street was also a Union Square dime museum freak show performer. Mendi delighted his audiences, including a fascinated physician from St. Marks Place, as Mendi banged gas pipes and iron pots over his rock-hard skull.

Dr. Tsiter talked Mendi into signing a contract for $500, payable in monthly installments, the terms of which required Mendi's estate to turn over his skull-bones to the good doctor if Mendi predeceased him, and otherwise to a medical institution designated in the doctor's will. Mendi thought the better of it after his buddies told him his head had started to shake after signing the contract, but upon complaining to a police captain at the 92nd Street station house of having been taken advantage of, the poor fellow was told that the courts were his only recourse. A goodly measure of news of fires and labor strife in the ghetto also filled the broadsheet, whose tone was closer to Pulitzer's yellow World than its future strident socialist voice.

In a move probably calculated to frustrate future creditors, Sol assigned his Ludlow lease to his wife thirteen months later, setting a pattern for his post-Prohibition life. On the Lower East Side or deep inside Russia, A Jewish boy stayed ahead of the law.

The couple apparently did well enough to sell the Ludlow Street saloon in 1908 right after renewing the lease, and moved to a larger tenement at 236 East Broadway when Sol began his liquor business at 71 Canal Street. Perhaps Sol even put his money in the Jarmulowsky's Bank. Before moving to the banking palace at Eldridge and Canal in 1912, Sender's two sons operated at 165 East Broadway, advertising their special services in Der Vorverts in a large display ad.

Trow's Directory also lists a Sol Goldberg in East Harlem as a bottler in 1909-10. The alcohol trade may have been an up and down one (or the 236 East Broadway apartment too small for an ever-growing family), because by 1911, Sol and his brood moved to 97 East Broadway where they lived with Rosa's unmarried milliner sisters Gertrude and Mollie.
#97 stands on a block that was permanently cast into shadow by the construction of the Manhattan Bridge and its 1909 opening. Here are Rosa and her two sisters, dressed to the nines !

THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE c. 1909

I found the front door unlocked to this rundown residence when I next returned to the neighborhood. I crept up #97's dirty stairs one landing at a time, camera in hand, anxious about a potentially violent encounter with someone who didn't speak English but knew I shouldn't be there. Recently used mattresses and cooking utensils were stowed on the landings, iron gates preventing access to the front doors of apartments that probably house groups of undocumented Fujianese who sleep there in shifts. Video cameras hung above locksets, feeding my face via webcam to who knows where. I skeedaddled after a very quick tour.

97 EAST BROADWAY – TODAY (front and hallway)

Several children were born to Sol and Rosa: Herbert in 1899, George Milton in 1904 and Helen in 1908. Here are photos of Herbert, George Milton and Helen, as well as their mother with the two oldest kids.

As Sol's liquor and saloon business prospered at 71 Canal, the family moved from 97 East Broadway to #259, a slightly newer structure, and then left the squalid and overcrowded East Side, moving first to a tenement on Rockaway Avenue in Brownsville and then to a sizable, newly-built attached brick house on Martense Court in central Flatbush. With the advent of the First World War and the August 1918 amendment to the prior year's Selective Service Act, all males between 18 and 45 years of age were required to register. One year under the limit, and clearly a poor choice for a return trip to Europe, Sol, a naturalized US citizen, did his duty anyway, but wasn't called. But even with the Versailles treaty inked and official, a live shell still landed, smack in his face.

259 EAST BROADWAY – TODAY (front and entryway)

1 MARTENSE COURT (left), TODAY

The Volstead Act of 1919 struck a violent blow to Sol and his family as well as tens of thousands of families, Jewish and gentile alike. All over America, alcohol went underground, and tens of thousands of formerly legal, respectable jobs disappeared. In America, Sol had followed a time-honored Jewish trade. Though barred from many professions in Eastern Europe, Jews had been tavern owners there at least since the 18th century, filling a strange function in Catholic-dominated societies where the "sin" of facilitating inebriation was pawned off on the unclean killers of Christ. The liquor trade also supported large-scale agriculture to produce the basic grains and potatoes that fed the distilleries and provided significant tax revenues to the state. The gradual tightening of Polish governmental restrictions on Jewish tavern keepers grew through the early 19th century, though, and they were forced into all sorts of extra-legal gymnastics to avoid starvation. With the closing of his hopeful "cafe and restaurant" at 71 Canal, Sol Goldberg would trod a well-worn path.

My research trail went very cold after 1920, Sol's name disappears from directories. His wife, who owned title to 1 Martense Court, sold the house in 1922, and it is unclear where the couple and their young adult and teenage children moved next. By 1930 they had landed at 80 Winthrop Street, not far from their Martense Court home in halcyon days. Listed as a "restaurant owner" on official documents until his dying day, I couldn't first figure Sol's sudden disappearance. What was he up to after the Volstead hammer blows rained down? Did Sol open a candy store, a luncheonette or a deli? None of the post-1920 Manhattan or Brooklyn phone books yielded a clue, and the trail of possible living relatives to question went very cold. After months of frustration and useless detours, I hired an expert and uncovered the truth.

In one day's work, a professional genealogist unlocked the secret, linking together a 1930 birth announcement in the New York Times together with a current Nevada phone number for a possible hit. Sol's estate administration papers, filed in Kings County Surrogate's Court at his death in 1943, list a widow and three children, among them one George Milton Gardner, who had changed his last name. I had already found George, back when his last name was Goldberg, living on East 21st in Manhattan when he married May Klein in a religious ceremony in 1925. On March 9, 1930, Mr. and Mrs. "Rube" Goldberg (nee May Klein) announced the birth on February 21st of that year of a son, Robert Allen. It was too close a coincidence. I'd found my man.

My voice trembled a bit as Allen Gardner answered the call. "How did you get my number?" an old man said. I tried to hide my own trepidation. Another person was listed at the Reno address, a Dar Es Salaam. Perhaps an Al Qaeda terrorist cell? After a bit, Allen warmed to my interest, being still careful about what he disclosed. 81 years old and retired from a distinguished career as an animal behaviorist, Allen and his late wife had taught the chimp Washoe to use sign language in 1969. I easily recognized the famous chimp's name. Talk about swag! Then we cut to the chase. When Allen was a baby, his parents would take him for rides in their car, traveling Brooklyn's leafy streets. The police never stopped a young couple with a baby. Even with cases of hooch on board. Milton and May did the deliveries. Sol handled the wholesalers. The family scraped by. Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein controlled the flow of juice to Sol's customers until Rothstein was rubbed out at the Park Central Hotel in 1928 and members of his minyan, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, took control.

The sow's ear started morphing as I talked to Allen longer. The shape of a shtraymel began to appear. As with any raiment, these bonnets come in gradations. I ended up with the finest in the store. "Perhaps you heard of my late brother Herb?" the old man said. "He was a playwright, kinda well known." "Herb Gardner?" I shot back. "The name is familiar." "His last play was Conversations with My Father, not so very long ago."

My spine tingled like icicles on my bare neck in winter. I'd loved the show on Broadway in '92. Judd Hirsch played the lead roll, Eddie Goldberg. The set was a dingy bar on Canal Street, New York. As we talked more, my excitement only grew. Herb Gardner also authored A Thousand Clowns, I'm Not Rappaport, Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, and The Goodbye People. What a piece of true dumb luck. Blanks had been missing. The play, albeit fiction, fleshed a lot out. I nabbed it forthwith from the library stacks, eating the words off the pages, scarfing down the beak and the bones.

Sadness informs and infuses Conversations. In it Sol Goldberg is portrayed as an upright man whose insistence after Prohibition began on selling only legal near-beer and his refusal to deal with bootleggers got him murdered in Cortlandt Alley. The alley seems dangerous, perhaps moreso today: It runs south of Canal and west of Lafayette Streets, hard by the ancient loft buildings where upstairs warrens of dark storehouses harbor soft goods counterfeiters. Gullible tourists are robbed blind there now every day of the week.

CORTLANDT ALLEY, TODAY

Eddie Goldberg, modeled after Allen and Herb's father George Milton Goldberg (Gardner), is a tough-talking cynical barkeep and irascible father, slinging drinks in a low-end dive that he keeps remodeling and redecorating to try and attract a better clientele than the alkies and bums who drift in from the streets near the Tombs and the court houses. 8:00 a.m. each day finds a line at the door. The play, in truth, is a confabulation. Sol Goldberg played along with Rothstein and more. The year after Prohibition ended in 1933, Sol's wife, son Herbert and a fellow named Israel Civin from Borough Park, formed a corporation and leased a bar at 258 Canal Street, where McDonalds sits today. Strangely, Sol's name does not appear on the corporate formation documents, though the following year, trade name documents were filed in New York with Sol and without Mr. Civin, registering the trade name “Silver-Gate Restaurant” at 258 Canal Street, with Sol's younger son, George Milton Gardner (f/k/a Goldberg!) listed as an owner also.

258 CANAL STREET TODAY

The Silver Gate Bar and Grill operated there until Sol's death from cardiac failure and pulmonary edema on August 8, 1943, Dr,. Bertha Kalish pronounced Sol dead at Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn where he had lain for 12 days prior. Manhattan's Riverside Funeral Chapel handled the arrangements when Sol was buried at Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, Long Island, eleven days later. Why the delay is an open book. Rosa, his widow, did not last long. After suffering at their home at 57 Lincoln Road for six months from hyper-nephroma and hypertension under the care of her neighbor, Dr. Gustave Bers, Rosa passed away on May 2, 1944 and was buried along Sol the next day. Her son, George Milton, who had altered his surname to Gardner at least 20 months before, must have had a change of heart or felt guilty as the molokh hamoves, the angel of death, came knocking again at the family door. On Rosa's death certificate, he is listed as informant. George Milton Goldberg resumed his boyhood role.

57 LINCOLN ROAD TODAY

Sometimes success will skip generations. Sol's swift-footed career didn't end so well. The Silver Gate Bar was sold by his widow and two sons in 1945. His estate was probated with almost no value attached to his assets. Business at the Silver Gate must not have supported three households well. At Sol's death he and Rosa were still renting their home. At least the couple tried to do the sewing. For a Jew, pig skin is tough to cut and stitch. Though the end result of Sol Goldberg's Cafe was certainly no shtraymel, it still outshines many, its lettering still aglow.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The New York Times tells the background behind the creation of this piece at
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/chasing-a-name-lost-to-time-2/

FOR READERS WITH AN INTEREST IN RESEARCH TECHNIQUES USED IN THIS PROJECT,HERE IS A LIST OF ELECTRONIC AND OTHER RESOURCES: WHERE TO USE THEM AND IF FOR FREE

MAPS MAPS MAPS ! (FREE):
THE DAVID RUMSEY HISTORICAL MAP COLLECTION: THIS TREASURE-HOUSE HAS 20,000 HISTORIC MAPS AND ITS INDEX IS TEXT SEARCHABLE

http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/all?res=1&sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort

BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE: (TEXT SEARCHABLE): FREE ONLINE:

http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Skins/BEagle/Client.asp?Skin=BEagle&AW=1306845851437&AppName=2&GZ=T

FULTON OLD NEWSPAPERS (TEXT SEARCHABLE) FREE ONLINE; PAPERS INCLUDE MANY OLD NEW YORK CITY NEWSPAPERS INCLUDING ONES NOT PUBLISHED FOR MANY DECADES

http://www.fultonhistory.com/my%20photo%20albums/all%20newspapers/index.html

http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

NY TIMES (TEXT SEARCHABLE) USE FOR FREE AT NYPL

NY HERALD TRIBUNE (TEXT SEARCHABLE) (NYPL ONSITE ONLY: USE FOR FREE)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: THE AMERICAN MEMORY COLLECTION IS SEARCHABLE, ONLINE, FREE, AND CONTAINS ZILLIONS OF EVERY KIND OF ARCHIVAL RESOURCE INCLUDING SOUND AND FILM THAT YOU CAN IMAGINE.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

CORNELL OLD MAGAZINE AND BOOK COLLECTIONS: CONTAINS TEXT SEARCHABLE ARCHIVE OF 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY US MAGAZINES AND MANY ODD BOOKS: FREE, ONLINE

http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/

GOOGLE BOOKS

FOOTNOTE.COM (USE FOR FREE AT NYPL) http://www.footnote.com/

THIS SITE CONTAINS DOCUMENT COLLECTIONS ESPECIALLY STRONG IN US MILITARY RECORDS INCLUDING VETERANS PENSIONS

NYPL FREE ONLINE DIGITAL IMAGES http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY ON-SITE IMAGES ELECTRONIC CATALOG AND link to SELECTED ONLINE images as well as books etc. in collections:
http://www.brooklynhistory.org/library/search.html

NYC HOUSING AUTHORITY WAGNER ARCHIVE LaGuardia Community College; THIS ARCHIVES HAS A HUGE NUMBER OF PHOTOS OF NYCHA SITES BEFORE AND DURING DEMOLITION FROM 1933- RECENT FOR NYCHA PROJECTS. IT'S A HISTORY OF THE SITES, SOME OF WHICH ARE HUGE.

general info: http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/PhotosVirtualExhibit/TourP1.asp?TourPage=1

search page:
http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/defaultb.htm

NYHS BOBCAT AND ON-SITE IMAGES COLLECTION
http://www.bobcat.nyu.edu:1701/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=NYHS&reset_config=true&

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NY FREE ONLINE IMAGES CATALOG http://collections.mcny.org/MCNY/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MNY_HomePage

OTHER RESOURCES:

CHURCH RECORDS: CHURCH RECORDS DATING BACK TO THE 18TH CENTURY ARE AVAILABLE IN MANY LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE METROPOLITAN AREA. THESE ARE CRITICAL RECORDS OF LIFE-CYCLE EVENTS AS WELL AS EDUCATION IN MANY CASES. WHERE TO START IS AT THE NYPL GENEALOGY SECTION AT 42ND STREET AND FIFTH AVENUE ON THE FIRST FLOOR. TELL THEM WHAT YOU KNOW AND WHAT YOU WANT AND THEY WILL GUIDE YOU TO THE RIGHT PLACES IN THE METRO AREA TO SEARCH, AND PERHAPS START YOU OFF WITH THE INVALUABLE WPA GUIDES TO CHURCH RECORDS IN NYC PUBLISHED IN 1940, ON THEIR SHELVES.

FEDERAL ARCHIVES NYC OFFICE: 212 401 1620 TELEPHONE INQUIRIES TAKEN ON FEDERAL LITIGATION INCLUDING FEDERAL CRIMINAL CASES IN THE FIVE BOROUGHS

INTERNET ATTENTION TO YOUR WORK: I HAVE HAD THE MOST MARVELOUS RESEARCH FINDS ONCE I STARTED POSTING MY WORK ON SEVERAL PROJECTS ON A BLOG. PEOPLE GOOGLE THEIR FAMILY NAMES AND BINGO YOU GET CONTACTED BY INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS, REALTIVES ETC THAT CAN ADD A HUGE AMOUNT TO YOUR PROJECT. I'VE BEEN CONTACTED 0UT OF CYBERSPACE MANY TIMES NOW WITH INFORMATION AND IMAGES FROM RELATIVES OF MY QUARRY WHO HAVE ADDED EMORMOUSLY TO MY WORK.

A Rite of Return

2011-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

PART ONE

Introduction:

We who cherish history know that place matters. We’re accustomed to applying this term to streets, buildings, docks and other physical sites whose preservation we hold dear. But many spaces, un-measurable in feet, un-countable in floors, carry historical heft. Moments in time occupy places in history much as do physical landmarks. Documents, likewise. Books, broadsides, and paper ephemera: all have places to which they belong, both in the past and in the present. Like the return of a family's furniture to its ancestral home, repatriating paper lost to the wind is a worthwhile act.

With these thoughts playing a gentle continuo, I’ve re-opened a modest little leather-bound day book that I came upon serendipitously almost ten years ago. My older sibling had cleaned out his in-laws’ home after their decease, and among the couple’s possessions was a Daily Memorandum book for 1870, probably acquired in a junk-shop foray. Though himself a voracious collector of old post-cards and portrait photos from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, brother Henry knew instantly upon whom to bestow this treasure.

The pleasure I experience examining such an item is almost indescribable. The worn edges of this cheap little ledger, the faded ink cursive, tinged brown with age, the poor spelling: all cast a spell upon me, one that pumps adrenaline into my veins each time I delve therein. Opening the volume for the first time, I leafed through slowly, page by delicate page, a pleasant hunger gripping me. I knew instantly I’d found a precious window into a long-forgotten life, a record of New York from days long gone. And I knew exactly what I'd do, the urge irresistible. With ample effort and careful thought, I’d be able to reconstruct the author’s life, both for the year of the account, and before and after.

One of the wonderful things about this diary is that its author, one Henry K. Dyer, was not a famous person, just an ordinary citizen. My reading and musing on his quotidian doings will neither be confused with the cult of celebrity nor distorted through the lens of fame. I’ll make him famous through my attention, and with that he’ll grow within me to considerable stature, forging a path of understanding and appreciating history from a common person’s life. Another place in history will be created. It will come to matter.

Once my task is well along, I’ll contact the author’s relatives. There is only one place where this book truly belongs: back in their hands. Perhaps they’ll be thrilled (I certainly would be). Perhaps no interested party can be found. And perhaps the author was a reprobate, and the less said the better. I think not, though, and chances are that I’ll find some unsuspecting relation who’ll thank me profusely. I don’t really care. I’m neither Robin Hood nor Sir Lancelot. I'm doing this for myself.

It’s the process that thrills me, this detective work, this re-creation of a life. And maybe that’s why we use that word in common parlance as we do. Sports, crossword puzzles, television watching, billiards – there are countless means of recreation. But my chosen path fits the word just as well. Let this serve as an invitation to you to join me on my jaunt backwards in time. Read my first steps below and accompany me on the next ones. Whatever we discover, we’ll do together.

FIRST STEPS

Why did I overlook the flyleaf when I first opened my brother’s gift? I just can’t imagine, but when I opened the book for the second time in 10 years, a vein of gold glistened. I stared wide-eyed at the inscription on the inside cover, and my pulse quickened:

This is my husband’s diary written when he was 24 years – we were married in 1875 Feb 25th when he was 28 years old – I was 27 years…Please do not destroy it. I want to keep this . . .

The first printed page ornately announces the contents,

MEMORANDUM FOR 1870

Then his widow’s script repeats:

HK Dyer 24 years – we were married in 1875 – Henry K Dyer died at the age of 65 on October 19, 1911

Entry after entry in the following pages tell of a young man who spent his days and evenings in Manhattan’s Tammany Hall clubhouse (then located on the north side of 14th Street just east of Irving Place at # 141 East 14th), sailing the Gowanus Canal and up through New York Harbor and the Hudson River to Haverstraw and back, ice and roller skating in Brooklyn and Manhattan, treating himself to ten cents’ solace and segars on a daily basis.

Tammany Hall

Though he visited “the store” on New Year’s Day, and occasional mention is made of this un-named place in the following months, Henry Dyer’s days seem devoid of gainful employment. Much time is spent in a Burnham’s Tavern, roadhouse located at 79th Street and Broadway that occupied the former Van den Heuvel country house near that intersection. Dyer would have taken a horse-car up Broadway from lower Manhattan, but I’ve yet to uncover his residence address during this year.

Burnham's Tavern-79th and Broadway

(formerly Van den Heuvel Mansion)

Finding his home in later life in the City was simple. Trow’s New York Directory for 1870 and 1871 list no entries for Mr. Dyer. Subsequent years’ volumes show him at various business addresses in lower Manhattan and residing at 86 Lefferts Place in Bedford Stuyvestant. I couldn't resist going there, and I was amply rewarded. I found the homesite; unfortunately now a huge vacant lot on a beautiful tree-lined street. The property is flanked on either side by multi-story wood-frame dwellings, one a sizeable mid-19th century yellow mansion with a widow's walk, the other a more modest and probably older green structure (pictured below). Though the lot at 86 Lefferts Place is vacant, a cursory examination of the remains of curbing and border wall foundations at the property line indicate that a majestic carriage-way once provided access to a set-back house. The lot appears to be approximately 200' wide and 100' deep, never built up with the late 19th century brownstone townhouses that line most of the block. Googling 86 Lefferts Place produces a number of obituaries of individuals whose funeral were conducted our of a funeral chapel conducted at that address a few years after Henry Dyer's death in 1911. I surmise that Dyer occupied a sizeable mansion on the site that was sold to a mortuary shortly after his death. We'll see...

86 Lefferts Place today

The 24 –year old had a number of favorite hang-outs: Visits to taverns named“Cuyler’s” and “Hooley’s” are frequent. I suspect Dyer of being moderate in his consumption of alcohol, though. His gentlemanly reference to “solace” in his daily entries in all likelihood refers to the dram or two of hard liquor in which he indulged. (I’d originally thought that the entries were a code for prostitution expenditures, but the maximum daily entry is ten cents in this category, far too little to have involved the flesh trade at contemporary prices). Dyer’s hours at taverns were probably irrigated, for the most part, with malt beverages purchased at modest cost. No mention is made of hangovers. I infer that his use of a euphemism for hard liquor stems from a religious family background that frowned on the consumption of the liquid kind of spirits.

Young single men in the City with some independent means had for decades formed cliques in a so-called “Sporting Gentlemen’s Society.” Starting in the 1820s, New York drew legions of young men and women from declining agricultural areas of New England to pursue gainful employment in the burgeoning urban economy. In earlier years, young male employees in stores and workhouses who hailed from outside the City usually resided in their employer’s combined residence/workplace. The establishment of middle class residential districts away from the central commercial area of lower Manhattan afforded business proprietors the opportunity to separate their homes from the noise and other discomforts of residing next door to or above a busy workplace. With these changes, however, apprentices and journeymen frequently lost their lodgings. Boardinghouses and similar arrangements become commonplace for young workers of both sexes. Employers who formerly supervised the moral conduct of their employees renounced that function. Young men and women in the City found new freedom to intermingle in the taverns, theaters and other recreations that abounded.

By 1870, New York had long been the unquestioned pinnacle of the national as well as regional economy. The Civil War made many New Yorkers wealthier than ever. Henry Dyer lived in a town filled with Reconstruction-era excesses. That very year saw the collapse of Boss William Marcy Tweed’s infamous Ring in a municipal corruption scandal that still captures New Yorkers’ imaginations.

New Year’s Day - 1870

The image at the top of this post shows the entries for January 1st, 1870 in Dyer’s neat hand. Apparently a new pair of overshoes was needed to protect the dress shoes and spats he most likely wore that day to go visiting. Dyer used stage coaches to get around that miserable, rainy day. Nothing like a plate of oysters and a good segar to ward off a cold and take one's mind off the ubiquitous smell of horse manure in the muck-filled streets.. .

Dyer’s visit to Tammany Hall on the first day of the New Year surprised me a bit. It had long been the tradition for those active in municipal politics to gather at City Hall for a daytime reception hosted by the Mayor (so long as their party’s man held that office). 1870 was the beginning of the end for the City's chief executive. “Elegant “ Abraham Oakey Hall, served as Boss Tweed’s designated flunky-in-power. The former New York County D.A. was known for his sartorial splendor, and headed up a troika of thieves who had drained the City’s coffers for the personal advantage of uncountable Tammany faithful over many years. Henry Dyer was a Democratic party regular, but a recent change in law making the first Monday in January the start of the term of office of new municipal officials ended this practice. The celebration of what was intended to be one more year of skullduggery took place in Tammany’s clubhouse.

A note on sources before I wrap up this first post about my little treasure:

So far I’ve been to the New York Historical Society’s magnificent library where I’ve had easy access to Manhattan directories as I try to pin down Dyer’s residence and business addresses. NYHS has wonderful collections of hotel materials in paper files that will hopefully shed more light on some of Dyer’s visiting places and watering holes. Taverns were frequently maintained in or adjacent to hostelries, and one never know s what treasures one will find in these collections. The hotel materials date back to colonial times and are indexed by name of hostelry. There are hundreds of business names in the hotel file card catalog.

n.b.: I could be happily locked in the NYHS library for the rest of my life. Even stale bread would do with my cup of water…

Green-Wood Cemetery’s Historical Association provides gracious assistance to researchers. Its website, http://www.green-wood.com/ has a searchable burial inquiry page. Theresa LaBianca in the cemetery office has already been tremendously helpful to me in this new project.

A Rite of Return – Part 2 will follow soon. In it I will examine the rest of the January entries and related topics. Stay tuned !

PART TWO

An Opium Den in New York's Chinatown

Before we rejoin young Henry Dyer’s daily January activities, let’s focus a bit on the fellow with whom we are traversing 1870. I daresay we’ll do so better than he did, with what I have now guess to be his continually dilated pupils Contrary to my initial thoughts, I’ve now a much better idea of what “solace” means in Dyer’s day-book. I already shared my opinion that sex-for-pay was far more expensive than the ten-cent entries for this item, and my musings about temperance and family religion possibly playing a role in his use of this term. I was right about the need, but wrong about the means. Solace at ten cents a day in 1870 was indeed sticky and sweet, much like the other two possibilities I mentioned. It was also black and fragrant. It’s called opium.

According to the 1972 Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, “The United States of America during the nineteenth century could quite properly be described as a ‘dope fiend's paradise.’ Opium was on legal sale conveniently and at low prices throughout the century; morphine came into common use during and after the Civil War; and heroin was marketed toward the end of the century. These opiates and countless pharmaceutical preparations containing them ‘were as freely accessible as aspirin is today.’ . . . Though called ‘opium eaters’ in the medical literature, most nineteenth century opium users (including Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater) were in fact opium drinkers; they drank laudanum or other opiate liquids. Similarly ‘morphine eaters’ included many who took morphine by injection or in other ways. In a number of the quotations which follow, ‘opium eaters’ refers generally to morphine as well as opium users. Opium smokers, however, were considered to be in a separate category.”

Though Harry Hubbell Kane’s 1882 work Opium Smoking in America and China maintains that the practice migrated from the west coast to New York in late 1876 or early 1877, I believe that Dyer (and in all likelihood some of his compatriots) indulged in the practice years before, whether in the dens of New York’s Chinatown, or elsewhere in the city. How and with whom Henry Dyer took his solace remains a mystery. We’ll try to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts he spent his 24th year high as a kite. Many days he wrote that he “stayed home.”

Many pages that mention “solace” also contain modest expenditures for “segars,” but Dyer may well be off the hook as a drug user. “Solace” was also the brand name of an extremely popular brand of cherry-flavored pipe tobacco marketed in foil pouches by tobacconist John Anderson, whose downtown New York City shop played a crucial role in the infamous Beautiful Cigar Girl murder of 1842. An 1893 photo of the Liberty Street store and two photos of a tin box used to retail Solace packetes by a successor to the Anderson business are below.

Anderson made his fortune marketing the pouches to soldiers in the Mexican War, and the brand remained popular for many decades thereafter. Whether Dyer was an aficionado of the sweetish mixture, or chose to indulge in stronger stuff remains a mystery. But I lean towards the opiate definition, given Dyer’s long absences from work and poor health in the year in question.

Now, let's get on with January. The month’s first week tells us much already about Mr. Dyer. The 3rd is spent at Burnham’s Mansion, the road-house I wrote of in Part 1 of this series. Burnham’s was known far and wide, and was located on many contemporary maps of the entire island of Manhattan. According to William Harrison Bayles' Old Taverns of New York [Frank Allaben Genealogical Company, New York: 1915], Burnham's was first located at Seventieth Street as early as 1825. In its latter incarnation, together with the Claremont Inn on Riverside Drive at the cusp of the Manhattanville gorge, Burnham’s was a popular refreshment stop for ladies and gentlemen out for a warm-weather bicycle jaunt or carriage ride. Winter sleigh-rides up semi-rural Broadway often made Burnham’s warm tap-room and blazing fireplaces a mid-journey stop. I’ve now positively identified the exact second site of the roadhouse and hotel: Both the Dripps 1867 and Bromley 1876 plats of the neighborhood show the structure located on the 11th Avenue (now West End Avenue) side of the block bounded by that street, Broadway, and 78th and 79th Streets. The ultra-elegant central-court Apthorp apartment house has occupied the site for approximately the past eighty years. The Broadway entrance to Burnham’s consisted of a circular driveway that led west into the lot and up to the porch of the hotel. This carriage path is clearly shown on one of the maps.

[An 1857 view of Burnham's Hotel]

[An historical view of Burnham's in its previous use, taken from a 1917 edition of Valentine's Manual]

A list names of the neighboring property owners on the largely vacant West Side blocks reads like a catalog of famous New Yorkers: Fernando Wood, former Congressman and Mayor during the 1850s, owned many nearby lots and small buildings. Wood was Mayor during 1857, when the location of Central Park was finally approved by the State Legislature and construction began. The Mayor and his cronies made no secret of their efforts to profit from real estate acquired near the vast Park borders. they reckoned on a rapid increase in values in what had been remote and undesirable precincts of the City, largely occupied by truck farms and rocky parcels inhabited by squatters, bone, boilers and goats. In 1870, Jacob Lorillard, John C. Van den Heuvel, Jacob Harsen, and Lemuel Wells all owned parcels on the Upper West Side, where the largest extant structures were the coal-gas holding tanks of the Metropolitan Gas Company, located at 65th Street and Tenth Avenue.
Dyer also spent ten bits on a book on January 3rd, as well as a dollar on “pictures.” Paperback novels were plentiful and cheap in 1870, so the dollar volume must have been hardbound. It won’t be the last book he buys this year, but what the unidentified title was intrigues me. Much the same as to the pictures: Daguerreotypes were wildly popular by this time. Images could be purchased for modest sums such as that Dyer tendered. Pach Brothers, Matthew Brady and others operated studios in town where middle-class customers could take advantage of what was still a much marveled-at technology, even three decades after its invention.
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January 4th marks Dyer’s first attendance this year at a “sociable.” Throughout the season, we’ll read entries of his attendance at these functions. Early January’s event was held at “Mrs. Hubbard’s.” Who she was and where the gathering took place will have to abide further research. The fact that Dyer paid $6.00 to attend (a healthy sum in his budget) tells me that the goings-on at these sociables were prized by the young bachelor. Though these get-togethers may have proven a fertile hunting ground for Henry Dyer, ultimately his acquaintance with a certain Miss Price probably was made in an even more controlled environment. More on that in the next installment.

PART THREE

Down the Wishing Well

Perhaps Henry Dyer’s mother, Emma, answered the knock on the door at the family home when a Federal census taker visited on Wednesday June 15th of 1870. Or perhaps her namesake eldest daughter greeted the visitor. Most likely though, their Irish servant, young Eliza Conlon, admitted Inspector William Mundell to the parlor where the interview was conducted. His notations, marked in the 1870 Federal census, reveal that under one roof, 23-year old Henry, his Virginia-born father and English mother, 29-year old sister Emma, 21-year old sister Florence, and 16-year old brother Charles all lived together with their 21-year old housemaid and a schoolteacher named Louise Herring (a boarder?) at 101 Cumberland Street in Clinton Hill. The spirits of several siblings who would have been counted in Dyer family census count a decade before sadly lingered in the home. Henry and his surviving brother and sister had lost Grace, Herbert, and Anson Phelps in recent years. Another brother, Sidney, also died at age 2, though it is unclear whether he was still living in 1870.

Inspector Mundell’s visit occurred on a weekday, and thus it is likely that Samuel Dyer was out of the house practicing his profession, described to the census-taker as professor of music. Ditto for Henry (a/k/a Harry), said to be a “clerk in a bank” as well as his teenage brother Charles, a clerk in a publishing firm. I assume that the $5000 worth of real estate specified on the census schedules as owned by the elder Mr. Dyer was the Cumberland Street house alone, and that the $400 personal estate was an estimate of the value of the home’s furnishings, plus perhaps a horse and carriage. Henry’s sister Emma is listed as “at home” in the column of professions, a spinster in contemporary parlance.

Next door to 101 Cumberland Street stood a pair of identical four-story attached brick houses with ornate stoops and heavy carved entry doors into their parlor floors. The houses survived until at least 1940, when they were photographed in the city-wide WPA-financed project whereby every tax lot in the five boroughs of New York city was photographed.

97-99 Cumberland Street c. 1940

By 1940, the Dyer home had long since been replaced with a Presbyterian church (the edge of which is shown in the photo above but which, too, is now long gone). The adjacent homes and others on the block were commonplace for families of the Dyers’ modest means. A demolition photo taken in 1945 prior to the construction of the present structures on the site (The NY City Housing Authority's Walt Whitman Houses) shows the backside of the block, behind the Myrtle Avenue elevated line, the successor to the streetcar line that Henry Dyer used for years as part of his commute to Manhattan)

1945 photo of Carlton Avenue (backside of the Dyers' Cumberland Street block), looking north past Myrtle Avenue el

The men in the neighboring households were shipwrights, accountants, real estate brokers, and fish merchants, while the two women employed outside the home were both schoolteachers. The Myrtle Avenue and DeKalb Avenue streetcar lines provided easy access to Brooklyn’s Fulton Ferry, where Henry would have made his way to Manhattan for work or pleasure. But the mystery remains how young Henry held down a position in a bank for any length of time that year when so many of his weekdays were spent in outdoor daytime amusements. Keeping up appearances, especially in front of government officials, must have been important for his parents and siblings, even if Henry refused to stay on the straight and narrow. Perhaps that explains the disconnect between his diary that year and the census taker's notes.

One sad fact perhaps explains in part his older sister Emma’s presence in the family home in 1870 even at the advanced age of 29, as well as Henry’s deep involvement in opium use that year. The Dyer household had, in previous years, been filled with the sounds of little voices. Many, many little voices. But late in August of 1861, “effusion of the brain” took the life of three year old sister Grace. One year earlier, 11-day old brother Herbert expired due to “congestion of the lungs,” and in November, 1860, 17-year old Samuel Price Dyer died of heart disease. All were buried in Green-Wood cemetery, where their parents and many aunts and uncles would eventually be laid to rest. Less than five years later, disaster struck again. Within ten days in January 1865, the Dyer children lost their 13-year old brother Anson Phelps Dyer to “gastric fever,” and Eliza Jane Dyer, to “rheumatic endocarditis.”

Eliza Jane was born in 1828, and lived with the family in lower Manhattan. The 1850 census lists her in the household together with the parents, Samuel and Emma, and five children: Emma, Samuel, Louisa, Henry and Florence. Eliza Jane may well have been an unmarried younger sister or cousin of Samuel’s who lived with the family for at least 15 years. Another sibling, Sidney, passed away at age 2. His death is recorded on the reverse of his parents’ graves in Green-Wood, but the date of death is unknown; I cannot find him in any of the Federal census records. All told, Henry’s mother seems to have borne at least ten children, and have outlived six of them.

Though carriage accidents and household fires frequently resulted in multiple deaths within a single family, it was far more frequent that diphtheria, cholera, yellow fever, typhus or influenza took the lives of young children in families such as the Dyers. It would be decades until the first crude antibiotics were invented to prevent the sudden deaths that these and other diseases routinely caused. Though none of the children nor Eliza Jane Dyer seem to have been victims of contagion, the family suffered more than its share of misfortune. Henry Dyer was 14 and his sister Emma 21 when the first of their brothers and sisters passed away prematurely

Emma was undoubtedly her mother’s helpmate in raising her younger siblings. Despite the commonplace nature of these deaths, the losses must have been staggering for a young woman, particularly one on the cusp of marriage and childbearing age herself. So it’s no mystery why Emma stayed at home with her parents and surviving siblings for so long. Ten years later, though, she no longer lived with her parents. According to the 1880 Federal census, her parents’ sole housemate in June 1880 was Emma Price Dyer’s 85-year old father, James Price, a retired bookkeeper. Henry’s sister Emma finally married at some point prior to her father’s death in April 1894. She is listed as Emma Elizabeth Brown in the application made by her mother to the Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court for letters of administration, but for reasons unknown, resided then with her parents at their rented abode at 76 Quincy Street, near Classon Avenue.

Samuel and Emma Dyer had moved several times in the 25 years before Samuel’s death, living with at least Henry (and perhaps other of their surviving children) at 117 Cumberland Street in 1872 and at 81 Willoughby Avenue during 1873-1877. Henry’s career in banking was apparently short-lived (if it ever started). While continuing to live with his father in the mid and late 1870s he is listed in Brooklyn City directories as a jeweler, a merchant and in the tag business, perhaps becoming essential to his parents' support. At some point Samuel Dyer’s fortunes deteriorated from those reported to the 1870 census official. He is listed at his death as owning only $600 in personal property and no real estate.

Henry Knight Dyer is listed in Brooklyn directories separate from his father in 1867-70 as a clerk in an unnamed business. A New York directory for 1867 is more specific, showing him as employed in the tag business at 198 Broadway, where Dennison & Co. maintained their New York City offices. His business address remains in succeeding years at Dennison in Manhattan. Married to Caroline Lavinia Price in 1875,

Marriage Certificate: Henry Dyer and Caroline Price

Henry and his bride lived in his parents home at 81 Willoughby Avenue, finally moving to 295 Ryerson Street in Clinton Hill by 1878, and to 235 Gates Avenue in by 1884, finally purchasing the mansion at 86 Lefferts Place for his final Brooklyn home in September 1890. Dyer continued to be listed in Trow’s Directory in the tag business or as “v. pres.” at 198 Broadway through the mid 1890s. Various entries in 1890-1895 list Dyer and Charles MacDonald together in the tag business at the 198 Broadway business address. No title is listed for MacDonald, and Dyer is listed in the joint entries as “v. pres.” Until I found the key to their relationship, I troubled myself no end about the whys and wherefores of Henry's acquaintance with Charles MacDonald. When Henry Dyer’s father passed away in 1894 it would have made perfect sense for the eldest surviving son to suggest to his widowed mother that she employ Henry’s business associate as her legal representative. Just what that association comprised left me in the dark for quite a few weeks after I first discovered the relationship. Samuel Owen Dyer died intestate, and Charles MacDonald indeed appears as attorney for the petitioner on the widow’s application for letters of administration.

Despite many (and unfortunately vain) pieces of sleuthing, these connections remained nebulous until a couple of weeks ago, when I struck gold at the New York Historical Society. The Bella Landauer Collection of Business Ephemera at NYHS comprises a treasure trove of 19th century American commercial life. When I punched in Dennison Manufacturing Company to the computerized catalog, I was rewarded with three particularly choice listings.

Like so many projects, the Dyer daybook research has proceded in fits and starts, one morsel of information serendipitously leading to many others. I stumbled across Henry Dyer’s career at Dennison through another serendipitous find at The New York Public Library earlier this summer. Knowing through Surrogate’s Court records that his only child was Agnes Dyer Warbasse, I found in NYPL stacks a slim volume of the speeches given at the memorial service held for her on April 8, 1945 at the home of Mrs. Raymond Ingersoll in New York City. The preface to this simple pamphlet details Agnes’ early years as well as adult life, and mentions her father’s ascent to the presidency of Dennison.

In 1894, the Dennison Company published a history of the company, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Massachusetts founding. Dyer had recently been named president. The Horatio Alger-esque biographical sketch of the new head of the enterprise provides a curious contrast both to the contents of Dyer’s 1870 day book as well as the story told to census taker Mundell in the Dyer family parlor that June day in 1870:

In 1859 the New York branch of Dennison & Co. was in a small back room on the second floor of Fellows & Co.’s building, 17 Maiden Lane, where it was first established in 1855; Henry Hawks being the partner, salesman, book-keeper and traveler, with one young assistant and a boy. That boy is the subject of this sketch. Born in New York City in 1846, one of ten children, necessity started him early in his career. He has since occupied all the positions in the gift of the Company – errand boy, clerk, book-keeper, traveler, salesman, manager of New York branch, Director, Treasurer, and Vice-President, and now rounds out thirty-five years of continuous service as President of the Corporation.

1894 Portraits of Dennison Mfg. Co. Officers

Top: Henry K. Dyer

The public relations copy fascinated me. “continuous service” ? I doubt it . Somehow the hiatus of 1870 must have been conveniently erased when it came time to publish a celebratory volume. Every thread just seems to lead to a new set of questions: what was the truth of 1870? How and when did Henry Dyer enter and leave the Dennison Company in the years surrounding 1870? How could he have held down his position with Dennison that year and spend so much weekday time at the mineral springs pavilion in Central Park, sailing on Gowanus Bay, at taverns, skating rinks, and outdoors with his friends, much less the many days spent home felling "unwell," enveloped in all likelihood by opium smoke. There’s a lot more to this story. The question is whether I will ever get anywhere near the bottom of this murky well.

More to follow: I've found the site of his home during his daughter Agnes' primary school years. The house is gone, but the neighboring ones survive ! And NYPL is really a gold mine. A contemporary catalog from her primary school surfaced there. But later...

PART FOUR

Passing the Pipe

Sports fans, shoe shoppers, stamp collectors – we addicts each have our own escapes. Down the hatch with the little bottle’s contents and we’re gone...

Some people smoke dope, others dance themselves silly. My problem’s a little different, though, perhaps just this side of sane. Musty old documents and crumbling ledgers are what take me there. I have very few requirements, but being of a certain age is not negotiable. The tickets for my trip must be pre-computer vintage. Beyond that, don’t light a match. The simplest piece of paper ephemera sets my mind on fire.

Each new find is like a love affair. Behind the face of a warehouse receipt, a diary page, a deed of conveyance, lies a beautiful story. Unlimited possibilities exist. Unwrapping the details like layers of onion skin, I uncover myriad possibilities, teasing out the connections. No protective gloves are called for. You can’t get hurt. My eccentric friend Stacy might say these papers are grateful for the attention. They lie there, hidden, submissive, waiting patiently.

Take the diary with which I am now obsessed. Though it lay neglected on a shelf in my office, unobserved and unappreciated for five years after I first came upon it, the story inside never moldered, didn’t falter. A simple morocco-bound booklet sat there tempting me for years. There’s something here, I know there is… Finally ready, I went about my task silently, reveling in anticipation, a weatherman’s fantasy of just which way the wind would blow.

Just one page is all it takes. Then the dreams begin. Who was this person who wrote these words? How did they dress? Whom did they love and whom did they scorn…Bit by tiny bit I draw a picture in my mind, the gum eraser at the ready when I stumble in confusion.

This is my husband’s diary written when he was 24 years – we were married in 1875 Feb 25th when he was 28 years old – I was 27 years…Please do not destroy it. I want to keep this . . .

Thirty –eight words twist a torque wrench on my heart. Here was one, I was sure. Who was this man who was so loved, he of precious memory? To start I’d need to know his name. Another penciled scribble sent me flying.

HK Dyer 24 years – we were married in 1875 – Henry K Dyer died at the age of 65 on October 19, 1911

My pulse quickened, my heart raced. Now I knew I’d get inside. Who were this couple? How’d they meet? What could possibly explain the abandonment of this once-precious diary to the hands of strangers? I read these lines; a bell tolled. The author’s wishes had been observed, but only in letter, not in spirit. Here it was, the precious book, cast out, alive but barely breathing. For me it was a golden gift: the opportunity to make repair, to reconnect, to bring closure.

First I’d have to recreate the diarist’s life; perhaps uncovering facts that surviving relatives would not want to know. Repair or destruction were equally possible. But I could hold all the cards, doling out the wins and losses, setting the pace and upping the ante at my will.

When will I know that the game is over, the well run dry and time to fold? When will I know that the time has come, to lay my cards upon the table, to invite the others to the dance. To put at risk my big fat winnings?

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The little faux-leather bound book my brother handed me gleefully might have appeared inconsequential to the untrained eye. But we knew better, H. and I. Well-thumbed edges of fake morocco revealed a pinkish dermis in the thin-fleshed binding. Inside the cheap edition, an ornate title page added a taste of grandeur to the ruled pages for each day of 1870 where quotidian entries were inscribed in Dyer’s neat hand. Much like the facades of urban buildings in mid and late-19th century America, outside appearance was everything. An over the top beaux-art exterior hid many a collection of pstage-stamp sized rooms in the large hotels of New York and Saratoga Springs. So it might be, I thought to myself, as I ventured beyond the grandiloquent opening page of Dyer’s day book. What lay inside might well be nothing much to speak of. But I got lucky.

Turning each yellowed page with utmost care in a silent room, I could hear the scratching of his pen-nib. Massed produced fountain pens (he could not have afforded a luxury item) were uncommon in America until the mid-1870s, but the brevity of Dyer’s entries make it difficult to determine if he used a quill or one of the new inventions. There is significant consistency in the ink applied to form each word, and “dry-out” endings of letters or words are rare. A daily expense book more than a diary, Henry Dyer’s notebook has few words on each page other than those necessary to describe in modest detail the author’s daily outlays, and in many cases a line about one or two activities. It all seemed plain and simple to the naked eye. But my brother and I knew Golconda when we came upon it. As with so many treasures, though, this one required months of investigation before the might of its story revealed itself.

1870 was a special year for Henry Knight Dyer. Though obviously not a man of means, the young bachelor spent the majority of his time in leisurely pursuits, sailing on Gowanus Bay, skating, and imbibing the mineral spring waters at the newly opened Central Park Pavilion. Sociables at various hostess’ homes and in well-patronized taverns such as Burnham’s Hotel at 79th Street and Broadway, plus evenings at Manhattan theaters made for busy days and evenings of pleasure. The trip via streetcar from his home near Fort Greene Park (then known as Washington Park) in Brooklyn to Fulton Ferry took only a few minutes, and the ferry ride to Manhattan not much more.

Travel to and from Brooklyn to Manhattan’s theaters, taverns and to Central Park was far easier that 20 years prior, and Henry Dyer did so almost every day. Except the days he spent at home. Inclement weather was one reason. Illness another. But the almost daily entries of a ten-cent expenditure for what is euphemistically referred to as solace reveal the darker side of Henry Dyer’s libertine year. First I came to know of his youthful addiction, but who this man became later in life remained a puzzle for many weeks.

Dyer died in 1911, a wealthy man, with palatial homes on Lefferts Place in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood and at Penzance Point in Woods Hole on Cape Cod. He had risen through the ranks of the Dennison Manufacturing Co. to become its president by 1894. The Massachussets-based manufacturer and tags, labels and jewelry boxes grew in its first fifty years to a multi-national operation, predominant in the manufacture and sale of not only its initial line of industrial products, but also the leading dealer in tissue, crepe papers, napkins and other decorative and household paper products. The burgeoning middle classes in the Americas and Western Europe all had access to the Dennison Co.’s product lines through a network of retail stores in large cities, as well as through its mail-order catalogues.

Despite a plethora of facts about residences, wills, family members and the like, after several months of research, I remained in the dark about how Henry Dyer became associated with the Dennison Co., and why he was able to spend much of 1870 apparently out of work. In Part 3 of A Rite of Return – Down the Wishing Well, I’ve told of one of my finds at the New York Historical Society. The 50th anniversary celebratory pamphlet printed by Dennison was my Rosetta Stone.

Embodied in the pamphlet within the official sketch of Dyer’s early life may be one of the explanations to his year away from Dennison & Co. I’ve independently confirmed from census records and tombstone engravings at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery that Henry was indeed one of at least ten children of Samuel Owen and Emma Price Dyer. Henry’s father, a self-described “professor of music,” was brought to New York City by his father, also Samuel Dyer, in the early 1820s. The Dyer family had resided in Virginia when Samuel Owen was born in 1819. Son followed father in the trades of piano tuner and musician, and by 1839, Samuel Owen Dyer had established himself in Manhattan at 302 Hudson Street. (Henry’s grandfather moved to a home at Washington and York Streets near the Brooklyn waterfront in 1829 after a succession of addresses in lower Manhattan). Henry Knight Dyer was born in 1846 at his parents’ next home at 396 Hudson Street, a few doors south of Charlton Street. The family moved to Laurens Street (now West Broadway) in 1847, then to Leroy Street in Greenwich Village in 1848, residing at numbers 32 and 49 for a few years. They departed for Brooklyn’s downtown Gold Street in 1852. The family moved once again to 54 Cumberland Street in 1854, and to 101 Cumberland Street about 1859.

The Dyer family’s peripatetic years were common for middle-class mid-19th century Brooklynites. It seems from title records that Samuel Owen Dyer owned only one of the many homes in which he lived. A music teacher with many mouths to feed must have had a hard time accumulating the necessary means, and the tide of real estate development sweeping over the entire metropolitan area caused frequent displacements as downtown Brooklyn neighborhoods shifted from residential to commercial uses. Title records are not dispositive, though. Evasion of creditors through changes of name, “parking” of real estate and other assets with friends and relatives and other devices was far easier in 19th century America than it is today. Whether or not Henry Dyer’s parents were forced to such ends is unclear. A bit of skullduggery might have been a matter of life and death in a household that at one time or another held a dozen mouths to feed.

Henry Dyer’s parents never held title to the Cumberland Street home that they occupied in 1870 when the census taker showed up. A woman named Charlotte Dyer took title to the house in the summer of 1869, and conveyed it to a Sarah Dyer of Morrisania, (in what was then Westchester County and is now the Bronx) in 1871. No further Dyers took title thereafter. Perhaps these grantees were relatives, and the conveyances arranged to avoid the greedy hands of creditors. And perhaps Samuel and Emma Dyer were renters for the several years that they lived at 101 and then 117 Cumberland Street. But in 1872 Samuel Owen Dyer acquired the house at nearby 81 Willoughby Avenue, for $12,500, a substantial sum in those days. Father and son lived in the same home until 1877. Samuel Owen Dyer and his wife conveyed the property to their son Henry in 1886, who turned around and sold it in February, 1888. Meanwhile, Henry Dyer had married Caroline Lavinia Price in 1875, and moved to a home at 235 Gates Avenue in Prospect Heights that he purchased in 1883 for $15,000. The couple lived there until 1890. Henry Dyer must have prospered, just as the Dennison & Co.’s sketch depicted: in 1884 he also purchased 76 Quincy Street, around the corner from his Gates Avenue home for $4750. The two-story frame house at 76 Quincy Street became his parents’ residence some time before Samuel’s death there in 1894. Henry’s father died in poverty, owning no real estate and only $600 in personal property to his name. His wife Emma is buried beside him beneath a simple stone in the Dyer family plot at Green-Wood.

Out at Green-Wood this past summer I quickly found the Dyer plot, and little by little I’ve connected the dots among the gravestone inscriptions and vital records. But someone’s missing. Henry’s wife. Until death did they part, or so I had thought. She’s in Green-Wood, but not next door. In Lot 1715, Grave 585, deceased within 13 months after her husband’s passing. Caroline lies in a public lot, among strangers. And Henry’s tombstone was erected by his brother.

What can possibly explain this? Surely the Dyer plot cannot have been too full (though I guess it’s technically possible). Some money and a concerned relative or two would likely have gotten permission to bury deeper and make a space. Henry’s property was left to Caroline Price Dyer and their daughter. So I doubt it was his doing, this strange misalignment. His widow’s words have haunted me, though: she treasured him and all he’d been:

This is my husband’s diary written when he was 24 years – we were married in 1875 Feb 25th when he was 28 years old – I was 27 years…Please do not destroy it. I want to keep this . . .

Who and why were they done dirt? Questions fly about like bats: Caroline and her mother in law shared the same surname. A common one, admittedly. Henry’s mother had come from England, his wife from Madison Parish, Louisiana. Were the young couple kissing cousins? And if now, how did they meet? I sure wish I could lay my hands on the guest lists for those sociables at Mrs. Hubbard’s and Mrs. Edsall’s that Hnery attended in January 1870. Better still I’d like to talk to those two dames. But that would be a tall order, wouldn’t it?

PART FIVE

Til Death Do Us Part

The graves of a man and his loving wife lie more than a mile apart at Green-Wood today: Henry Knight Dyer’s earthly remains are buried in the Dyer family plot on the southwest side of the cemetery near Fort Hamilton Parkway.

A modest tombstone, placed by his surviving brother Charles, marks Henry’s grave, side by side with those of his parents, several siblings who died in childhood, and other relatives. But Caroline Price Dyer, Henry’s wife of 36 years, is absent. If you look carefully, you can spot Caroline’s grave in Public Lot 1715 at Green-Wood, but you need a little imagination.

The unmarked plot to the west of the White family holds Caroline Lavinia Price Dyer’s coffin. Though dignified and beautiful today (and never a potters’ field), Public Lot 1715 at Green-Wood Cemetery sits at the foot of the burial ground’s rolling hills, hard by Fifth Avenue. The location is far less desirable, even today, than that of the Dyer family plot. The peace and quiet a visitor experiences today at both sites is deceptive. From the late 19th century until right before World War II, elevated trains regularly screeched past the cemetery’s Fifth Avenue iron fence, rousting even the drowsiest residents from their eternal rest. Graves in the Public Lots at Green-Wood were sold piecemeal to those who found themselves in need, on a first come first served basis. The gravesites are modest at best, and the fancy statuary so common elsewhere at the cemetery is absent. Common sense dictates that for the most part, people of modest means occupy Public Lot 1715. But other reasons must have occasionally led to a decedent’s interment there among total strangers. Caroline Dyer is one such case.

Locating the estate administration records of Henry Dyer and his wife was a simple task. The Surrogate Court’s file room at 345 Adams Street in Brooklyn is open to the public on business days. Apple pie order rules the day. Absent special needs for secrecy, estate administration records are freely available and well-indexed. The name of the decedent and an approximate date of death provide access to card catalogs and computer databases This lead you to dusty old bound libers with transcriptions of major documents such as wills and intestate distribution orders, the court decrees that establish the distribution of estates where the deceased left no will. No novice at Surrogate’s Court research, fifteen minutes in the well-staffed and thinly patronized office lead me to all that I’d imagined I’d find there, not only for Henry and Caroline Dyer, but also for his parents and several other relatives. Estate documents are a treasure trove of other leads: residence and business addresses of the deceased and relatives and attorneys mentioned in the documents spill forth, leading you to real estate records, litigation records, and not infrequently a peek at the personal property owned by the decedent. It’s all free, except for the quarters you feed into the Xerox machines, and the damage done to your respect for humankind engendered by having to overhear the banter among the male file-room clerks that would make the characters in Hubert Selby, Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn squirm.

Henry Dyer executed his last will and testament at the end of January 1909, more than two years before his passing. By its terms, Caroline Lavinia Price Dyer was to inherit all of her late husband’s wearing apparel, jewelry, “household furniture usefull and ornamental” automobiles, horses, carriages, and the contents of the houses, barns and garages of the couple’s large homes in Brooklyn and Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Other than minor bequests to family servants, $1000 bequeathed to the Brooklyn Nursery and Infants Hospital and an annual income of $1200 to his sister Emma Dyer Brown, Henry Dyer left the balance of his sizable estate in trust, with 75% of the income to go to his widow until her death. The remainder of the income went to their daughter Agnes Dyer Warbasse. Caroline’s death resulted in Agnes receiving the corpus of the trust, less a few small added bequests to Henry’s brother Charles and other relatives. It struck me as strange that a man as wealthy and important as Mr. Dyer provided such a paucity of charitable bequests in his will. Perhaps he was more inclined to practice philanthropy inter vivos, but I think not. A search of the computerized databases of all issues of the New York Times and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for his adult life did not turn up any evidence of his involvement in civic or charitable affairs. Dyer split his time in his later years between Brooklyn and Woods Hole, Mass., and I was informed by the Woods Hole History Museum that Dyer was a founder of the local public library. Perhaps Dyer’s Horatio Alger-like rise in life deterred disinclined him to magnanimity towards the great unwashed above whom he rose by luck and pluck. And perhaps his daughter Agnes’ extensive efforts for left-wing social causes showed a different path. But none of this explains the set up of the eternal marital bedroom. We’re not just talking twin beds here, but separate bedrooms in opposite wings of the house. I wonder what the set-up was like at Gladheim, the couple’s palatial home at Penzance Point in Woods Hole? Or was it Agnes who rearranged the bedrooms?

It defies reason that the Dyer family would have lacked the funds to bury Caroline next to her husband of 36 years. The Dyer family plot could accommodate more than the 9 graves that it holds to this day. So why a Public Lot for Caroline ? One of the burial records for her husband lists him as “Unmarried” the record keeper having taken pains to strike through the other two typewritten possibilities on the form, “Married and Widow__.” So perhaps marital discord explains everything. But the inscription Caroline made in Henry’s 1870 daybook, which seems to me to have been made by a widow after her husband’s passing, is hardly consistent with a split-up.

Caroline died intestate in 1912, and when her daughter Agnes submitted a final accounting to the Kings County Surrogate, the cash distributed from her estate was approximately $20,000. The Brooklyn and Woods Hole houses were inherited by Agnes and later sold. It appears that Caroline spent whatever income she derived from the trust set up in her husband’s will. That income was more than likely quite substantial, if I’ve done the math correctly. The transfer tax paid upon the probate of Henry Dyer’s estate in Kings County was 65 times that paid on Caroline’s estate. Assuming that the New York and Massachussetts real estate was not included in the calculation of the tax (I’ve yet to verify this assumption) Henry Dyer’s assets probably exceeded $1,300,000 (plus the value of the two homes). The trust probably contained most of this wealth, with much of that being held in the form of stock of the Dennison Manufacturing Corporation. I’ve come to this conclusion after being unable to locate the final accounting of Henry Dyer’s estate, and based upon a story related to me by his great-grandson, Phillip Warbasse that further illuminates the extensive public record of the exemplary lives of Phil’s grandmother Agnes and her husband Dr. James Warbasse, Sr. Phil’s grandparents were founders of the co-operative consumer and housing movements in the United States and Europe in the years after World War I and their careers as energetic social activists and pacifists stretched over many decades. One of the largest subsidized housing projects in Coney Island was named after James Warbasse. According to Phil, his grandparents decided after the end of the War that they had more than enough resources to last them throughout their lives. A keen sense of social justice impelled them to return much of their holdings of Dennison stock to the employees of the company, a gift worth millions of dollars, even in 1919.

Having tracked down the finances and amassed some evidence of a daughter who lived an extremely committed, moral life (and who I assume had a lot of say as to where her mother was buried) I can’t figure out why a rich widow was buried by her even wealthier daughter in a grave more than a mile distant from their husband and father. All appearances are that Henry and Caroline were close throughout their long marriage. Family portraits, Caroline’s inscription in his 1870 diary, and the manner in which Dyer set up his estate in his will, signed 33 months before his demise, would normally lead to a widow being buried next to her late husband. Their daughter Agnes was already 32 years old at the time her father penned his last will and testament, a married woman with several children of her own, living on Washington Avenue near her parents palatial Brooklyn home. So why was Caroline Dyer placed in a grave that remains unmarked to this day?

I’ve requisitioned the correspondence files from Green-Wood cemetery, and when they are located, perhaps some of the explanation will spill forth. Though I think it’ll be fruitless, I’ll also check the Kings County, New York and Barnstable County, Massachussetts divorce and litigation records, and try and determine if the Dyers remained married until Henry’s death.

***********************************************************

Caroline’s interment in an unmarked grave was the final chapter in a life that suffered from enormous devastation when she was a teenager. Caroline was a descendant of Samuel Adams (though I’ve yet to determine how), and her father received a patent from the Federal government for several hundred acres on Bayou Despair in Madison Parish, Louisiana (near present-day Richmond, Louisiana) in 1844. The family probably lived in a substantial plantation home, but its location proved unfortunate when Ulysses S. Grant’s Union armies crossed the Mississippi River a few miles north at Milliken’s Bend at the outset of the Vicksburg campaign. Public records I found on the internet told me of David Price’s land grant and its proximity to Grant’s march west and south through the Parish. The story of Grant dropping by one early Spring day at the Price homestead was related to me by Caroline’s great grandson, and I’ve already been able to determine from The works of Bruce Catton as well as Grant’s memoirs and detailed extant maps of the Vicksburg campaign that it could be true. Rest assured: further efforts are underway to get closer to the whole truth.

Family lore holds that General Grant and his troops marched into Caroline’s family’s plantation during their march down the eastern edge of Louisiana towards New Carthage. Many plantations were ransacked for supplies by the Federal troops on their way south, before they re-crossed the Mississippi River, to march northward and attack Vicksburg from an advantageous direction. Henry Knight Dyer undoubtedly heard the story told many times how as a 15-year old girl, Caroline trembled with fear as General Grant and his adjutants stormed into her home. Grant made himself comfortable in the formal dining room, his muddy boots unceremoniously propped up on the mahogany dining table. Caroline recoiled in disgust as the uncouth General expectorated on the dining room carpet.

Apparently the family’s real estate was not confiscated, though. Lists of post-war claims filed against the Federal Government in Madison Parish lack any mention of the Price family, and real property tax rolls continue to show David Price and then his estate as the owner of the property until 1879. How, if at all, the family recovered from the devastation of the Vicksburg campaign, and how Caroline Price made her way to New York remain to be answered. Right now I’m fantasizing about a trip down south that salesman par excellence Henry Dyer might have made eight or so years after the War’s end, perhaps encountering young Caroline in a New Orleans hotel lobby or some such after a day of flogging the Dennison Co.’s wares to local businessmen. I doubt that the Price family had the resources to bring their eligible daughter to Saratoga Springs on a mating trip during the destitution of Reconstruction. Seems like a good excuse for another wonderful research trip up there though, doesn’t it?

PART SIX

The internet is a marvelous thing, and thus a few months ago, more than two years after I started this series of pieces about an 1870 expense book kept by a young man in NYC unknown to me, but later identified as Henry Knight Dyer, I was contacted by a gentleman from the midwest with what I hesitate to say is "priceless" information. In fact it was filled with Price, my generous informant being married into the Price family, that of Henry Dyer's mother Emma Price, and perhaps also his wife, Caroline Price Dyer. I had long ago lost the trail of the Price family, and have not published on this matter in 32 months to the day.

Herewith are photos of Henry Knight Dyer's mother and father (Samuel Owen Dyer), both mistakenly captioned "Byer." My correspondent's connection with the Price family makes the provenance of these photos indisputable.

Emma's christening record is as follows, taken from

England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906 Source Citation: Place: St. Saviors, Southwark, Gravel Lane, Surrey, Eng; Collection: Dr. William's Library; Nonconformist Registers; Date Range: 1820 - 1820; Film Number: 816019. Source Information: Ancestry.com. England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2008. Original data: Genealogical Society of Utah. British Isles Vital Records Index, 2nd Edition. Salt Lake City, Utah: Intellectual Reserve, copyright 2002. Used by permission.

Description: This database contains information extracted from birth and christening records from various counties in England and Wales. The records date from 1530 to 1906. The records included in this database do not represent all localities in England and Wales and for any given area, coverage (both records within a year and total year range) may not be complete. Some parishes and counties are more complete than others.

Name: Emma Price Gender: Female Birth Date: 14 Sep 1820 Christening Place: St. Saviors, Southwark, Gravel Lane, Surrey, England

Father's Name: James Price Mother's Name: Elizabeth Maternal Grandfather's Name: William Hunt. Maternal Grandmother's Name: Elizabeth

****

Samuel Dyer's obituary was published in the New York Times on April 3, 1894; Henry Knight Dyer was at the peak of his career when his father passed away, still residing at the 76 Quincy Street address in Bedford Stuyvesant near the younger Dyer's palatial residence on Lefferts Place.

PART SEVEN

Several mysteries and apparent dead ends have confounded me along the way in "A Rite of Return," not the least of which is why Henry Knight Dyer's widowed wife of 36 years, Caroline Lavinia Price Dyer, lies in an unmarked grave in a public lot at Brooklyn's magnificent Green-Wood Cemetery, many hundred yards from her late husband's resting place, despite the fact that the terms of his will demonstrate a great deal of caring between the two.

The couple was married in a Brooklyn Episcopal Church in 1875, and a trip to the Garden City archives of the Long Island Archdiocese some months ago yielded the parish ledgers. There, plain as day, is Caroline's 1869 confirmation record, and the priest's entry of the solemnization of their marraige at St. James Episcopal on February 25, 1875.

Their only child, Agnes, was born April 4, 1877 and duly baptized in the same parish church.

Her name appears in this Baptism register

Weeks went by after my last post in this series. But then, a comment appreared out of nowhere, and I hardly believed my eyes as I read the following email on June 25, 2009:

"Hello Benjamin, Thank you for following up and your interest in my blog comment regarding Henry Dyer Knight. A little background which you may find interesting. My fiancé and I hosted my parents for an belated Father's Day dinner last night. During dinner my Father presented a male wedding band, which he described as having belonged to Henry Dyer Knight (our family's connection to whom I described in my comment on your blog). This ring was worn by my Grandfather James Henry Warbasse (his middle name having been the namesake) and was subsequently willed to my father who has offered it to me. Though appreciative, I thought it would be appropriate to learn a little more about the man who's ring I may wear to symbolize my wedding vows. To that end, my father produced a (apparently mimeographed?) copy of a typed, informal, autobiography of Henry Dyer Knight's dated 1905. I read the document last night and, my interest having been piqued, I googled his name today ...low and behold. My hope is that you can share more information that you learned about him – as the more complete the picture the better of course. In fact, I would LOVE to see related copies of whatever you are willing to share from your collection. I would be happy to reproduce the autobiography that I mentioned, as well as any other information that my father has, assuming he is comfortable with the sharing of it (which, since you have the Henry's diary – I can’t imagine there are privacy concerns left to be agonized over)..."

Thus began my acquaintance with Eric Warbasse and his father, residents of Phoenix, Arizona. Eric promptly sent me a photo of the ring and the autobiographical typescript prepared by his great-great grandfather late in life.

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One sometimes thinks of Brooklyn in the mid-19th century as a large and anonymous place, when in fact at least the confines of the waterfront Brooklyn Village and its adjacent Vinegar Hill neighborhood as well as the western reaches of Williamsburg were fairly small communities with frequent interlocking acquaintances. Nothing has brought this fact home to me more strongly than a sentence in Henry Knight Dyer's autobiography describing his childhood in the early 1850s in the Adelphi Street area where his parents made their home.

Those readers who are familiar with my projects may recall the book I published in 2007 entitled "Butchery on Bond Street: Sexual Politics and the Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-bellum New York." It chronicles the infamous murder in 1857 of a rapacious, misogynist dentist and the acquittal of his Brooklyn-bred paramour, Emma Hempstead Cunningham, after her trial on charges of homicide. Emma grew up at various Vinegar Hill addresses as her father plied his trade as a ropemaker in various ropewalks and lofts down near the Navy Yard. Her younger brother, Christopher Hempstead, Jr. became a milkman in the western reaches of Williamsburg in the 1840s and 50s. Reading what Eric Warbasse sent me, I stumbled across a few words in the Dyer typescript and suddenly self-levitated from my office chair. Guess who earned a few pennies on the weekends, riding on Hempstead's dairy cart in the neighborhoods? "When I was about 10, Saturdays, I went the rounds with our milkman, Mr. Hempstead," wrote Henry Knight Dyer in 1905, "who called on us about 7 A.M., had a route which took him as far as Bridge St. and Flushing Avenue, and ended at Court and Carroll Streets. Then he started for home somewhwere in the direction of Canarsie and dropped me back of the Penitentiary, at perhaps 2 P.M. For this I got 2 cents, and was happy thinking how to spend it." After his duties were finished, young Henry could go blackberry picking in the summer in the vacant lots and fields that still dotted Fort Greene. Winters were for skating at the various Brooklyn ice ponds, including the Union Grounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Grounds

For a mid-1850s view of HEnry Knight Dyer's childhood neighbrohood, click on the following link and zoom on the map from the NYPL Digital Images collection:

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=667583&imageID=1268437&word=Plate%2021%20Cumberland%20Street&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=1&num=0&imgs=20&pNum=&pos=1

More was to follow, though: Caroline Price Dyer has not lain in peace. Through yet another blog comment, I finally know the reasons why she is all alone in a public lot. In April, 2010, I received the following from the grand-daughter of one of the housemaids in the Dyer residences in Brooklyn and Cape Cod, who married the Dyers' chauffeur:

Hi--I was thrilled when I saw your wonderful research on Henry K. Dyer. I am in no way related to them. However, my Grandmother and Grandfather worked for the Dyers in New York and in Falmouth MA. where they had a summer place. My Grandfather was Mr. Dyer's driver and my Grandmother took care of Mrs. Dyer. I have a few 'tid bits' of information about them if you are at all interested. A few come from an oral history that my Father took of my Grandmother talking about them.

Further correspondence revealed that poor Caroline Price Dyer developed an endocrine imbalance shortly after the birth of her only child Agnes, and ballooned from 100 lbs. to four times that amount. With no medical treatment available for her condition, Caroline spent 34 of the 36 years of her marriage to Henry Knight Dyer in an immensely adipose condition. Family photos reveal a bit of her condition:

Caroline is in the bottom left of this picture, about 1905

Here's Caroline again, in the center, about 1895...

At some point, her husband took up with the Swedish house-mistress of 86 Lefferts Place, according to the oral history that my correspondent possesses. That woman retired to her homeland, a wealthy owner of fistfuls of shares in the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company. Who knows what Caroline knew or didn't know about her husband's relations with the Swede. If he was ever asked, perhaps Henry Dyer privately expressed mixed feelings about having a 400 lb. woman lie on top of him for eternity (he died before Caroline, and had she been buried in the Dyer family plot, she might well have ended uppermost in the three-deep stack cutomary in such family plots, closest to the surface.

A trip to the Framingham History Center as well as research at the New York Historical Society have shed light on Dyer's substantial career at The Dennison Manufacturing Company. From modest beginnings in Maine as a maker of boxes for jewelry, Dennison came to dominate the paper products business in late 19th and early 20th century America as well as have a large presence in South America and Western Europe. Greeting cards, tags and labels, crepe products of all kinds and office supplies were just some of the weveral thousand products constantly invented and marketed to businesses and consumers through a network of wholesale sales offices and drummers as well as retail stores and showrooms. Though his tenure spanned only a decade, Dyer's elevation to the presidency of the Dennison Company marked the triumph of the sales staff over the manufacturing and design arms of the company: his roles in previous years were all at the New York City headquarters where no manufacturing took place.

In 1897 the company movied from its Roxbury, Massachussetts complex to a larger location in a former rubber products factory in Framingham. There Dennison was to grow and prosper for almost a century, expanding on the site and becoming so large and important an employer that Framingham was nicknamed "Tag Town." Dennison's name was attached to numerous philanthropic gifts to the city's institutions, where it remained until the 1990 takeover by the California-based Avery Corporation. In short order, the factories in Framingham were all shuttered and the Dennison name erased from the local scene, living on locally only in a tiny and virtually unpopulated office on the eastern edge of the huge complex. The Tag Day parade is no more, the floats disassembled. Where dye vats and production lines fulfilled the offerings of colorful catalogs, now community college students click mice and try to enter a sadly-reduced local labor force. Along with General Motors and a substantial local airport, Dennison has flown the coop, impoverishing a city that once flourished and grew.

Tag Day circa 1910

Tag Day circa 1910

Dennison's Framingham, MA box factory circa 1910

Dennison Tissue Paper catalog - 1891

Little remains to recall the size of things: Dennison in Framingham, Caroline Dyer's form, the mansions at Penzance Point and 86 Lefferts are all long gone. In the case of Caroline, I and her relatives have taken a remedy: soon a dignified stone will mark the vacant patch of grass hard by Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn under which she lies for all eternity. With that, another step will be trodden. A Rite of Return will continue on.

A Con Grows in Brooklyn

2011-01-01T06:03:00.000-08:00

A CON GROWS IN BROOKLYN...

Brooklyn, March of 1961: The Cold War shivered America, the perils of internationalism evident all about. Camelot's reign in the Kennedy White House had just begun, though, and Jackie's hiring of French chef Rene Verdon to reign over America's presidential kitchen heralded a new day in what had been a bland palace under Ike and Mamie's control. Kate Smith would have to yield the right of way: foreign artists of all kinds would be welcomed in the staterooms of the executive residence going forward. Cellist Pablo Casals played in November of that year and America's hoi polloi would just have to adjust to a bit of culture and finesse in the Blue Room.

Mimicry was all about in America, and Brooklyn, New York, always playing catch-up ball, answered with Ralph Cramden's take on haute cuisine. To most borough residents, European dining was far out of reach. The closest a random Flatbush resident came to a four-star joint was through the pages of Holiday magazine or a glance through Craig Claiborne's restaurant reviews in the New York Times, among them his March 28, 1961 write-up of the newly opened Lutece. Concerns over the lack of "American" standards of hygiene and xenophobia about foreign cooking and the possibility of being short-changed by larcenous waitstaff bedeviled many stay-at-homers, but the lure of the exotic continued to inspire many meals out. A solution was cooked up by a clever fellow, who took his cues from De Daumier Smith.

A con grew in Brooklyn, Casseroles of All Nations its name. One dialed ULster 6-0255, (and I do mean DIAL), and made a reservation for a Saturday night. Perhaps you lived in the far reaches of the borough and put on your fancy traveling clothes to take the BMT to Prospect Park. A few steps from the subway station, late of the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island RR, stood (and does to this day) 99 Ocean Avenue, a/k/a 1 Lincoln Road, built in 1927 when the Lake Road entrance to the Park still retained a glimmer of its former grandeur. One block away at Flatbush Avenue and Lincoln Road had stood Getrude Vanderbilt's "country" estate, when much of Brooklyn was quasi-rural, even in the first years of the 20th century, and residents of those areas identifying more frequently as parts of Long Island through the First World War.

Here's how the building looked in mid-1962, and today, as well as the BMT station with my friend F. in front.

Through the Lincoln Road entrance to this turretted apartment house one entered a restaurant foyer. The proprietaire of the establishment sat in a suit and tie at a trestle table, looking up from his studious attention to an Escoffier or Larousse Gastronomique as each customer entered, a distracted look in his eyes. He, (was he Leonard, or Sheldon, or maybe a Sal ?), made a pretense of paging through his sources, scouring the pages for new recipes. Sirio Maccioni, famous in our times for sitting at the entrance of Le Cirque at a table for one, greeting his esteemed patrons by name, took a page from this elegant resto. On the walls of the dining room were travel posters galore: Naples, St. Petersburg, Paris, Madrid were in the immediate offing for the clientele, without impossible costs, the risks of unclean food, the waiters who spoke no English, for God's sake, and other inconveniences and dangers of true foreign jaunts. For the price of a subway token, Casseroles of All Nations took you there, wherever you ventured. Clean and accessible, it was foreign cuisine without those foreigners with their BO and larcenous ways. This was American efficiency, through and through.

My friend, F., worked as a waitress there in 1961, helping pay her way through Pratt Institute's graphic arts program. 19 years old and needing the dough, F. kept her hair-net clad head down, hustling the eponoymous casseroles from kitchen to table, laying steaming hot dishes in front of eager patrons, their mouths watering for a taste of the exotic without the need for a trip from what was then still known as Idlewild Airport on Jamaica Bay. Down she'd set the gourmet dishes and make a modest and trepidatious retreat as soon as she sensed that the customers no longer required her presence at table. Her fears were not baseless. Once-in-a-while, after the first forkful of some fancy lasagna or a layered pastitsia was partaken, she'd be called over to cope with disgruntled diners. All was humbug: the jig was up.

Lenny or Sheldon or whatever his name was, sat in the entry-way spinning dreams for his customers, off a Lincoln Road paved with yellow bricks. Back in the kitchen though, nothing was cooking; all dishes were pre-baked in their mini-serving dishes, and then frozen. A giant microwave oven (new-fangled and as pricey as a compact car) figured as the owner's prize possession. Frances would rush in with the orders and the "chef" would go to the freezer racks, select the coded dishes, nuke them good, and whoosh in five minutes, the entrees were served..

Khutspeh frequently trumps its master's seykhel: Nerve and impudence sometimes overcome calculation, and if the owner of Casseroles of All Nations had both, he'd have made sure that a suitable interval was maintained between waitress order and table-side delivery. All I know is how the bubble burst. Frances was occasionally summoned to a tableful of disgruntlement: though steam poured from the edges of a customer's dish, the first forkful from the middle was ice cold. Bigtime swindlery was afoot. Venetian gondoliers, Parisian souvenir sellers or a Brooklyn wise-guy: what's the difference where you get rooked. Right there in Brooklyn, four years after the Bums took a powder from just down Lincold Road, two years before Idlewild was sadly renamed, a con grew in Brooklyn. It lasted a few months. By year end, it closed.

In her memoirs, Julia Child recounts the tension between herself and her co-authors of Mastering The Art of French Cooking and their editors at Houghton Mifflin and then Knopf, before its publication in October 1961, over the length of the draft manuscript and the complexity of some of the recipes. Though the published work contains few, if any, simple, quick dishes to prepare, the overwhelming trend in America towards that which would be easy and fast to put on the table, at the expense of quality and taste, bedeviled Ms. Child and her co-authors. They put the book to bed and largely resisted the editors' imprecations to appeal to industry misimpressions of the desires of the largest cookbook readership in the USA. Editor Avis DeVoto, in her extensive correspondence with Ms. Child, pre-publication, bemoaned the post-war dearth of servants and the consequent impoverishment of the upper-middle class American diet: "I can't wait to see what you do about casseroles...There isn't one casserole in a hundred that is fit to eat. ***** says that she ducks invitations to dine with young married people because she can't, at her age, take the casserole any more-- she described one composed of roast pork and canned Bing cherries, after which she came home and was sick..."

Bona fide efforts buck cultural trends, even create and define them. Casseroles of All Nations lacked an honest bone in its short-lived body, though, and within a year of its appearance, a different restaurant, catering to another fantasy, opened in the space. Tower on the Park showed Pisa's landmark on its wrap-around sign at the corner of 99 Ocean in 1962.

It, too was destined to fail. Mrs. Joyce Forte moved into the all-white building in 1968, and her largely Jewish neighbors fled in droves, as they did from buildings all over the neighborhood as block-busting and racism tore the heart out of Flatbush. Millions of dreams were crushed underfoot as poverty and drugs overcame the once elegant streets.

The facade of 99 Ocean Avenue, a study in mixed metaphoric pretension in its 1927 design, still looks dignified, even fancy, from a distance. The terracotta medallions above the entryway, alluding to Christopher Columbus and maritime adventure, still adorn the mock-palazzo tower. Indoors, allusions to 15th century Genova seem long gone: the trashed plaster walls at the inside entry door, the missing sconces in the now-bare lobby's niches, all echo the sadness of fantasy gone wrong.

Long ago, oaken trestle tables and faux Persian carpets adorned the grand ground floor space. Residents could enter the restaurant without going outdoors as was the fashion in finer residential hotels in Manhattan and at the St. George in Brooklyn Heights. In the early 1930's Brooklyn phonebooks listed the dining room as "The Traymore" restaurant, quite possibly named after the apartment house itself when it opened at the end of the roaring 20's, in a mini-paean of elegance and Anglophilia for the benefit of its all-rightnik predominantly Jewish tenants.

NYC Buildings Department 1944 Floor Plan of the Restaurant

The residents' porte to the dining room was long-ago changed to a steel door with a peephole; the income from an apartment or two carved out of the grand space having long-outstripped that available from retail rents on a sparsely-trafficked and long-dangerous street.insert pic of apt door to resto space. It's been many decades since a fire, gas-log or otherwise, burned in the manorial hearth at 99 Ocean. Today the ownership trumpets the appeal of the building to impoverished hipsters and musicians. The New York Times has taken note:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/realestate/03habi.html?_r=1

Microwave ovens are now ubiquitous. Jackie's gone and so are the Dodgers. Perhaps one day, though, greatness will return to the corner of Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Road. But Casseroles of All Nations is dead and gone.

An Indecent Encounter

2010-10-28T05:43:00.000-07:00

Behind the coffee counter, Hyapatia seemed pained when I asked for my usual two pounds of Soho Blend. It took but a moment to find out why. Just as I mouthed “percoloator grind, please,” her tormentor reappeared. “Eks-kyewz ME !,” a lacquered young East Sider spewed. I blanched in shock as I wiped myself off.

Perched on Stephanie Jappy’s hand, three carats prismed the ceiling lights, blinding me momentarily to the poverty of her soul. My other senses faired just as poorly. The scent of a bitch in heat made me retch. A tiny bag of ground coffee, the remainders of some obscure beans, dangled from a silk-tipped right thumbnail and forefinger. “I’ve gotta GO, now,” she barked into her cell phone, “I’ve gotta DEAL with this IDIOT, Oh my GOD ! I’ll call you laaaater.” Her privileged squeal pierced the air like a slingshot ball as she snapped the clamshell shut with a resounding thwack. Nothing less than total surrender, an abject apology to this modern manor mistress, would suffice.

Peak experiences have been Stephanie’s birthright: in coffee, in men, in pre-school for her toddler daughter. Paper, scissors, stone, all day long and into the night, everything measured for value and status. Life’s obviously been one long bat mitzvah party, her Torah portion of the seven fat years...“I wanna thank my mother and father, and . . .”

Led back to Hyapatia’s station by a resolute Jamaican floor manager, Stephanie skipped nary a beat laying into the offending servant in the lingua franca of upper First Avenue. The accent of those whose shit stinketh not filled the air. Hyapatia almost melted with rage as a torrent of words assaulted the wrinkles in her tender, aging face. The sounds Stephanie let out with were so nasal they seemed to flow from an improper orifice. “You cannot possibly understand what embarrassment you caused me at dinner last night!” Gushing from her coraled lips, Stephanie’s outrage coated me like her spray-on tan. Mercy or understanding in her complaint ? What would be the point of that? Everything was about whom Stephanie desperately wanted to be, the next scene in the Movie About Me being shot over and over inside her head.

With the floor manager brandishing her cat-of-nine, and Stephanie Jappy about to take Hyapatia’s head off for a hideous infraction of New York’s Slave Code, 2010 edition, the field hand dared not speak a word. A mortal insult had been done to a customer’s existential well-being via a bag of unexpectedly weak-tasting coffee beans. Insult followed injury, and pain poured forth: “You told me this was a good strong coffee when I asked and you’re supposed to know ! What was I supposed to do ? I had twelve guests at my dinner table.” Suddenly, the whine became a shriek. “THE WHOLE THING WAS RUINED BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPIDITY, YOU KNOW.” I grimaced as I watched the coup de grace delivered. “I DON’T JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK. I DEMAND AN APOLOGY.” Did conversation flag mid-meal at that dinner party? Perhaps the seating arrangements didn’t gel.

Money and an absence of want coat the Upper East Side’s Yorkville streets like paint, but if one looks beyond the stylish clothing, listens with even one ear, one sees and hears the famine of the local soul. At the curbs and in the stores, orders are shouted to servants a generation older than their taskmistresses and masters, the rhythm practiced each morning with each thump of toned glutes on Equinox treadmills as personal trainers urge them on. “We give these people jobs and a way out of the hells where they came from.” Stephanie harried the manager as she led her to the rear of the store to confront the offending counter clerk. “They should be grateful, and learn how to listen. How dare that woman speak back to me that way!” You hear it everywhere, every day, in the gourmet stores, at the dry cleaner, in the ubiquitous nail salons. Lips purse, jaws tighten, tongues cleave to the rooves of mouths. Out comes a plague of misfortunate words.

Hyapatia stood her ground, her eyes bowed and narrowed to slits, a fog of furious disbelief swirling among us. Curt instructions were given about a store credit, and Stephanie and the straw boss marched off to the manager’s upstairs office den. The gulf between me and the clerk was unspeakable, but I could not hold my tongue. There was nothing right to say; mere comprehension would have to suffice. The stench of shame overpowered the oily Arabica around us. Loose grounds of self-respect scattered over the filthy floor.

It all seemed so Old Testament, and my mind surfed on wave-tops of rage. All I could think of was an eye for an eye, and in my mind's eye I gave Stephanie Jappy her just reward, the slap resounding across her made-up face. Looking straight at Hyapatia, I blurted out what I’d imagined. I raised my right arm, then turned to glare at the departing vixen, half hoping that Stephanie would wheel about, mad game. I was spoiling for a fight, so sweet it would be. Visions of flying prosciutto and adenoidal screeches burst like Roman candles in my head. I aimed my full battery of Yiddish curses at this yakhne, this witch, this ignoramus, as she pushed past a senior citizen with a cane blocking the aisle with a peremptory glare in her impatient eyes.
Luck was not with me, though: Stephanie paid no attention. Hyapatia took no consolation from my anger. Why should she? I looked down to the floor so hard, my neck hurt. The coffee grinder banged and whirred. We went about our respective tasks, me essaying decency, she doing my polite bidding. Humanity resumed its place, pushing back the darkness, if just for a moment. We both wiped silent tears away.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

2010-09-08T09:56:00.001-07:00

Tears poured from my eyes as I paused by the windows of the jetway, girding myself for the flight abroad. Through the glass, I gazed upon the 747, an old warhorse with "Jerusalem" painted on its brave nose, the Magen David proudly adorning its tail. What made me choke with emotion and recognition? Was this a sign of where my heart belongs?

Thomas Friedman, in From Beirut to Jerusalem, explains what made me cry. American Jews have a custom as their El Al plane touches down over there. The landing gear hits the concrete of Ha-Aretz; applause bursts out, and cheers are heard. A Jewish airline, with a Jewish pilot, has landed at a Jewish airport in a Jewish land. When in modern history could such a thing have happened? Each of us suddenly becomes Odom HaRishon, Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as we accept the gift of life from a Messianic hand.

Once in Tel Aviv, the challenge of communication in a tongue not one's own sets a table where it's tough to sit. Angling away from King George Street in downtown Tel Aviv, runs a little alley, אָלמניתּ (anonymous in Ivrit), its name changed from that of its original creator, Getzl Shapira, when Mayor Dizengoff decided that street names oughtn't be named after property owners. In town to study Yiddish literature at Tel Aviv U., I also intended to improve my modern Hebrew. The heartwarming feelings that ensue as I communicate with any grammatical skill is second to none in the pleasures of my life. It's like being invited to a society home for dinner and worrying oneself silly over which is the correct utensil, then aceing the fish with a proper fork.

My fist thrusts into the air when no one is looking and I've just turned a phrase well. I celebrate: I've done it: used the correct tense, the correct declension, the proper adjectival form, spoken however briefly as one speaks in the street today in Tel Aviv. In my sillier moments I really believe I've fooled them, the sabras with whom I interact, at least into thinking I am a recent immigrant and not just a tourist. At least for a few words or sentences, if I keep it simple and to the point, "I belong here," I say, beaming to myself.

Superficial conversations with strangers can be boring, though, after a while: therein lies another therapy session's (or three's) thematic curl. But stretching the envelope is where things get built, and so I asked my waiter in the Almonit restaurant about a bit of philology. Almonit sounded to me like the Hebrew words for widow and widower: אַלמן /אַלמנה. So I inquired if the shoresh, (the usually three-letter root) of the words was the same. It struck me that when one loses a spouse one loses one's name, becomes literally anonymous. One would not ask a random waiter in New York about English etymology immediately after hearing the specials of the day...

Bits of religion, philosophy, and sociology mixed with philology in my mind, producing an inflammable inspiration about which I just had to inquire of this 20-something boy with a razor-cut hairdo. So I asked about the words in pretty darn good Ivrit and was met with what I understood as a quick "No, they're not related." He quickly thought the better of it and trotted off to ask other wait staff, while offering me a Hebrew-language colored xerox page with a history of the founding of the little alley by the Shapira family. Ten minutes later the boy re-appeared, his face all smiles, his lanky length striding towards me in the gravel-covered garden under giant date palms and humongous fig trees. Yes, I was indeed correct, and so the day, lonely and questionable, suddenly was perfect to a satisfied me.

Take a walk in Tel Aviv, down Dizengoff, over in Old Port, where the nightclubs abound, down on the beach, or on Sderot Rothschild. See if you agree with me about one thing. I've noticed that men don't bother women on the street in Israel, in general. No cat calls, no whistles, no honks from passing cars. It's just not cool, apparently, and I gather that Israeli men know that they will be met with derision, forcefully expressed, if they cross the line. The society, hardly perfect, seems, at least, more egalitarian, women more confident of saying what they want, toe to toe with men, on fields of battle. Army service jumps to mind. Certainly there are employment inequalities and discrimination, sexual harassment cases abound, both in the military and in general society. But all in all, excepting the ultra-religious of all faiths, women seem to me at first (and perhaps ignorant) glance to enjoy more respect and more equality in Israel than most places on the earth.

Because Lonely Planet can be dubiously reliable as to phone numbers, and its middle east politics prone to maudlin, head-in-the-sand posturing; it was with a bit of skepticism that I phoned an off the beaten track ovo-lacto regetarian restaurant in the run-down Florentine section of south Tel Aviv given a big send-up in the latest edition of LP to make sure that it still existed (NOT the case when I visited another of the recommended cafes in the crunchy granola friendly familiar blue guide). To my delight, Esrim v'arba Rupees (24 Rupees) indeed still exists down on Rehov Shoken 16.

Would that NYC still possessed such a place. Barely within human memory: in the early 1970s, when NYC hit its nadir and the blight of Times Square stretched its tentacles east towards Fifth Avenue, Reverend Moon acquired the lease to the northwest corner ground floor space at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue and opened a vegetarian health food cafeteria named The Good Food Cafe where generous portions of kookshit were served up with the brown rice and seaweed at nominal cost...The descendant lives on at 35th Street and Fifth Avenue.

The cuisine far better than its New York spiritual ancestor, and with no sign at street level, 24 Rupees sits on the second floor of a concrete warehouse above a moto-sport dealership along a half-vacant strip of crumbling pre-WW II buildings on a desolate, divided Tel Aviv thoroughfare. Various scenes from Midnight Cowboy could well have been shot nearby; the street resembles the blocks of 12th Avenue in Harlem under the Riverside Drive viaduct BEFORE Fairway and Dinosaur Barbecue showed up. Littered, battered truck loading docks spill onto the street from half-stories above curb level; stray cats wander in and out of cracked doors. Windows in the dangerous tilting walls of the vacant warehouse across the street from the restaurant stare vacantly through their half-sealed sockets in the nighttime gloom at my arrival, the splashes of mortar sloppily applied to the concrete block crumbling before my eyes as I waited for beer to arrive at table-side.

Up the stairs one hies oneself, and off with the footwear. One wouldn't want to expose the soles of one's shoes to what seems to be ground into the carpets covering the plain concrete floors, but all in all a sense of friendly filth envelopes one's soul as you take your seat at one of the low tables and park your arse on a floor cushion or a re-purposed beach recliner waiting to be smiled upon by the feel-good waitstaff.

In short order a smiling girl greets you, offering menus in Ivrit and English. The language matters not: the main choice is between the "Special" and the "Special Plus," an assortment of dals and rice dishes whose elevation to Plus means one more stainless steel cup of spectacularly well-cooked vegetarian heaven proferred, low fat and hot off the stove a few feet away, where many huge pots sit simmering.

My first essay of this spot was made late in the evening with my classmate D. from the Tel Aviv University summer Yiddish program. My bad: a questionable choice but better than going it alone, I thought... A novice at the town, D. is 66 years old, a doctor born and raised in Long Island, but a long-time resident of a foreign land, where his personal life resembles, by the account offered to me, that of Swede Levov in Roth's American Pastoral. Company is company, understood, but I regretted it after five minutes at table, despite the euphoria I felt at actually finding the place in the dark, using public transportation without a wrong turn.

I sensed it coming as the server approached our table, a perky young 20-something from the sub-continent with a nose-ring and a 100-watt smile. D. Melted as if a blow torch had been applied to his brain. Disequilibrated:she could have fed him manifest poison and he'd have scarfed it down. What a desperate, hungry soul. The youngster went over the menu and asked our druthers. I could feel D.'s heart pounding as he leered back "Bring me anything, just so long as you keep smiling at me like that." I cringed and looked away. Did this have to be? Luckily the room was uber-busy; an early round of the Mundial was on the large screen in the room, Chile vs. Brasil, and D. had been a varsity soccer player at Cornell. I managed to mostly distract him for the rest of theevening with a string of questions about the game on the wall. Every time the girl came to check on us, though, I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the next bit of D. Making, at best, a fool of himself and embarassing me. When it was time to go, though, D. insisted on taking care of the check (perhaps an attempt to buy a friend?). Stupid me allowed this, and I ran to the restroom while D. approached the cash register his credit card aloft.

Out I came a few minutes later, and I spied my dining partner ensconced at the register, pinning down yet another young female whose job it is to smile at everyone, plying her with too many questions, giving her too much information, too large a smile. I mused upon the proper size crow-bar to extract his face. What does one do with a slob and a creep? I could have throttled him; what could have been a pleasant drunken evening turned in to a slough of shame. I avoided D. for the rest of the summer, a pox upon him.

The celebrated YIVO founder and philologist, Max Weinreich, once defined the Yiddish nation state: a kingdom with neither an army nor a navy, but a kingdom nonetheless. New York City and suburban Rockland County's Kiryas Joel community may be home to more native Yiddish speakers than anywhere else in the world, but I now feel that Tel Aviv is true north. There to study Yiddish language and literature this past summer with the world's pre-eminent scholars, my program included numerous cultural performances at venues downtown. I've sat through innumerable concerts and plays in mammaloshen New York, and when they end, I step out into the night, usually excited, kvelling, mumbling senselessly, "Yiddish lives..." The feeling is transient, though , as I come up for air. New York isn't really a Jewish place. Tel Aviv is. Thus, true north.

At the Felijia Blumenthal Music Center on Rehov Bialik, we were entertained one evening with Yiddish love songs. Members of the center took turns presenting, Young and old, they tried to pose. Several were excellent, most were middling, but the sense of possession, of a cultural territory that is owned, made up for what otherwise palled. "Yiddish belongs here..." I whispered to myself softly as I left the hall and went outdoors. Jews aren't others here, that's the difference. Most whom I see, dance at the ball. The songs may be corny, the singers way too old for their roles, but what matters is simple, a truth to be told. In Israel, despite Ben Yehuda and the Ivrit language police of yore, the connection remains unbroken. Di Goldene Keyt, a golden chain, six million links strong. Unlike New York, Yiddish here is a higeh,, a local personage, one who belongs.

Despite its secular reputation, Tel Aviv is in one sense frum; 544 synagogues, by one count, dot the streets of a city of 400,000 that looks more, from its count of skyscrapers, like downtown Chicago. The peace of Shabbat descends Friday at sundown and traffic withers. Perhaps the owners of the public bus lines are observant. The Egged and Dan systems shut down tight, leaving the secular to rely on their private autos, if they own them, or the expensive white taxis that roam this seaside town like hungry flocks of white seagulls, swooping down for fares. A new choice has recently surfaced: through some halakhic loophole, it seems that some of the same companies that operate the main buses also operate sheruts all seven days of the week and late into the night, plying the same routes and only slightly more costly.

Accomodating ten, these huge bumblebees buzz by, their drivers scouring the curbsides along the entire route for flag-downs. With no official bus-stops, the sheruts cruise the right-hand lanes, just like the dollar vans on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn's Jamaican center, bobbing, weaving, suddently stopping when two driver buddies encounter each other in the clogged streets, a healthy slice of conversation chewed and swallowed to break the monotony of the day.

After a couple of bungled late-night misreadings of regular bus route signs, The 4-אַ became my lifeline to downtown Tel Aviv, a 30-minute, jolting jaunt from my end of the line toward the University, then over the bridge from Ramat Aviv to the center of town. I quickly figured out that I should head to the back once I boarded and paid my fare. Otherwise one becomes a human link in a curious daisy chain exercise in honesty: Most of the people boarding take a seat before paying their 7 shekel fare. The driver is too busy trying not to run over Vespa drivers to make change right away. Then an elaborate ritual transpires, the latest passenger proferring coins or bills, even a 200 shekel note, all passed seat to seat along the five row aisle until it reaches the driver's right hand, stretched out backwards for saftey's sake, and the passenger calling out how many people he or she is paying for. Then the reverse: the change is handed back, palm to palm, not a wink or a nod, just trust and faith. God help the dozer along the route; one is soon roused if one fails to play ball.

In New York one sees them occasionally, the Lubavitch Chabadniks in their mitzveh tanks, blaring Hasidic rock music over the loud speakers, idling at the curb as the bearded passengers stand outside and solicit Semitic-looking men to step inside and wrap tefilin and pray. The price of admission is in one sense steep. Tel Aviv lowers the ante: along the promenade at the Mediterranean shore, in the shadow of the high-rises, bars, and seedy hotels, up and down the tayelet a minivan plies its route, American top-40 blasting from the hi-fi, young men in payes and no headcovering save the mandatory yarmulke crammed inside. Whoa ! What are these guys doing now? Up over the curb the van pulls, its driver side wheels aloft, the other two six inches lower on the street. Thrown in park, the fun begins. Around the sound a crowd of shirtless young men gather, their bikini-clad girlfriends stepping back five paces from the vacant eyes of the pious. The roof of the van carries a platform, and several boys, naked to the waist, clamber up the tailgate ladder, standing aloft, their bodies swaying to the music, the van rocking and pitching in a cacophony of lust. I wonder if Reb Nakhman of Bratslav really had this in mind....

The sherut, long distance from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, traverses one of the most storied routes on the face of the earth. Until 1967, the corridor to the Israeli owned part of Jerusalem was a skinny highway through Jordanian land, much like the autobahn that snaked through East Germany to reach West Berlin from 1945-1990. God forbid if you ran off the road. Somewhat less forbidding today, the road much improved from its former condition, the extension of the old Jaffa Road into a superhighway still carries one past dozens of Arab villages perched on hillsides that are a throwback in time.

One of my major accomplishments early in my trip to Israel was figuring out how and where to catch the sherut back to Tel Aviv on a Saturday afternoon. The streets downtown were dead, hardly a car stirring in the blazing Sabbath heat. I persevered and was doubly rewarded. Searching along the Jaffa Road, I came upon Rehov Rav Kook, and there, sure enough, at 15:00 on Shabbat afternoon, a yellow sherut idled, filling up as customers came along. Parked off the main road to avoid Haredi censure, we quickly maxed out and off we rolled. Seated next to me, the last to board, was a tall young boy from Eritrea. Between the two of us we managed, in Ivrit and English. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm alive. The story he told me shook my bones.

A few days before The New York Times published an article about Eritrea's young men, who have fled the country in droves recently to try and avoid conscription into life-time civilian government service. Leaving families and friends behind, they escape through the desert. Many end up in Israel, where political asylum is part of the country's heritage. My seat mate had spent five years traveling there, way-laying in Ethiopia, Somalia, Egypt and then Israel, smuggled over borders, fearing for his life. With a final push, he'd made it to Israel, where his application for political asylum was granted. He now chops vegetables in a restaurant in Petakh Tikvah, saving money when he can, waiting, with little hope, for the situation in Eritrea to change so that he can return to family and home. What awesome bravery: coyote'd through Somalia and those other violent lands. Sometimes I feel little, polluted in spirit. Imagine the guts this guy has inside. I felt blessed by the anonymity of the sherut. Here I was, a wealthy American Jew, but dressed like any down-market tourist, riding on the cheap. We sat squished together. I would have paid just to listen to his story. Somehow I feel bigger for having been on board.

The jitney dumped us all off on a random street corner near Tel Aviv's central bus station. Out I clambered into the late afternoon heat, onto a littered curbside near Rehov Na'ave Shanan. The street is an open air pedestrian plaza, the permanently closed to vehicular traffic.Shabbat had hours to go still, the day of rest for workers, Jewish and gentile alike not yet over.. I quickly grasped just where I was. An extra bonus had come my way. An extraordinary shuk spread out before my eyes.

On Shabbat, the immigrant workers who make Israel run congregate here on their day off, drinking beer, eating roasted watermelon seeds, listening to the American pop songs blaring from dingy bars, dubbed in Tagalog, Xhosa, and more. Barber shops and seedy cafes line the edges of the plaza, along with arcades to back buildings where young men pair off hand in hand to who knows where. The sidewalks are bedecked with well-used goods ostensibly for sale. I never, in three visits, saw ANYONE buy a thing, but if you want computer cables from pre-laptop days, 8-track tapes, or household appliances from 1972, Na'ave Shanan is the place to go. The vibe is a safe one; you'd have to be out of your mind to risk arrest for some petty crime in Israeli if you aren't a citizen. Security is an art form in this land. One slip and you're out, for good.I felt safer than anywhere in New York.

What better way to introduce oneself to the mise en scene of Israeli cities than by public transportation? The Egged Bus 480 to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv's Arlozoroff Bus Station (amisnomer if there ever was one) is a case in point. Perhaps in ancient times a station building once stood where the Masaf Alpayim (Gathering 2000) parking lot now sits on the eastern edge of Rehov Arlozoroff in central Tel Aviv. A single wide, beat-up aluminum trailer sits at the edge of the asphalt lot, its ticket windows closed, no public restrooms, no sign of human habitation. Like so many things in Israel so poorly signed, one just asks around. Turns out you pay on board, look at the somewhat functional outdoor tote-board to determine the schedule, and walk across the lot to the Savidor train station if you really need to go...

I traveled twice this way to Jerusalem on Friday afternoons before Shabbat. Everywhere in Israel, those hours are filled with young soldiers hurrying home, their weapons carefully slung over their shoulders, huge government-issue backpacks strapped on their backs. The constant reminder of the importance of the IDF to Israel's daily existence confronts one at every step. Universal service obtains at age 18, excepting only Arabs, the Haredi, (ultra-orthodox), conscientious objectors, and married women, be they pregnant or not yet.

The state is vitally interested in Jewish procreation. Children are everywhere, not just tolerated, and pregnant bellies abound, Jew and not. Free medical care for life and a modest government subsidy to new parents encourage this breeding. I neglected to inquire if the 100 NS per month comes only to Jewish new parents.

The outcry over religious hegemony in Israel is enormous; nowhere is it more pronounced than in Jerusalem, where the Haredi (literally, those who fear God) are everywhere and rule the road. Flocks of black hats beteem downtown streets, and the proximity of the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods of Mea Shearim and Geulah to the main drag Jaffa Road only emphasizes their numbers.

What's so different in Israel, as opposed to Brooklyn, is how I was treated by the religious guys. I wander frequently in Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and my fluency in Yiddish makes it easy for me to converse with friendly local men, who abound in the middle of the day, most of them ready to help explain to me a Hebrew religious acronym on a Yiddish broadside with which I am not familiar. Half the time they try to convert me, inquiring thoroughly if at least my ancestors were frum. If so, I'm deemed to still have a chance...

In Israel, though, I am a shtik treyf , beyond salvation, and when I ask directions (like in Jerusalem, standing outside the central bus station "Which way is the Jaffa Road?" to which any fool knows the answer, as the station sits right on top of it) the guy hanging out outside the station with payes and a velvet kapelyush (a minimal skullcap in lieu of the larger black hats of various sizes worn by various sects) shakes his head at me: "I dunno..." It's not a matter of language: I asked in three of them. What rudeness.

In Mea Shearim it was 180 degreees different from the bonhommie of Brooklyn, my apparent worldliness in dress and body language as well as lack of head covering marking me for a zar, a stranger. No one would make eye contact with me in Mea Shearim, and all the broadsides were in Hebrew, not Yiddish. There was no spark to start a flame, and I felt distinctly unwelcome on its public streets. The Haredi own the streets in Mea Shearim; their level of authority over daily life in Israel is enormous and they know it. In Israel they have EVERYTHING TO DO with the government and are supported with tax dollars in great disproportion to their demographic count. In Brooklyn it's exactly the opposite: any contact with the government is shunned or at least minimized. Taxes go unpaid, religious schools are entirely separate and unsupported by tax dollars; the less the government knows about one, the better. In Yiddish when one counts people in a room one rolls off not one, two, three, but rather nisht eyns, nisht tsveym, nisht dray... giving a false count out loud. The devil or some other soyne Yisroel (an enemy of Israel) might be watching. We can throw him off, whether it be the IRS, the NYPD, or just a random malicious goy, by remaining anonymous, going uncounted. False license plates are widespread. Take a look at this Borough Park flyer tucked under windshield wipers that I snagged a while back warning the community against that practice, the DA being said to be going around now, taking names.... It says it all about the difference between Israel and the USA:

"PAY ATTENTION: IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE COUNTERFIET LICENSE PLATES, ETC. KNOW THAT THE D.A.'S OFFICE HAS A LIST AND THEY ARE SEARCHING FOR YOU ! GET RID OF THEM! BE ADVISED !"

Where but in Jerusalem are the orthodox so comfortable as to use public restrooms with aplomb? It's been my experience, both in Israel and the US, that black-hats eschew the use of these facilities, preferring to hold it til they're among their own. One day a few years ago in Rockaway Beach, NY, when I was at a kosher amusement fair, hol hamoed Sukkes (the interrmediate days of the Feast of Tabernacles that immediately follow Yom Kippur) I witnessed a five year-old little boy, clutching his crotch and screaming in pain, with no father around to accompany him to the porto-sans, who managed to convince his babushka clad 22-year old mother, standing behind a triple stroller with his three younger siblings in tow, that it was safe for him to go inside because, as he pleaded in geshmak Polish Yiddish S'DU YIDN ARAYN...!!! (There are Jews inside !).

No problem, though, in the holiest city of Jews worldwide: there in the new Central Bus Station on the Jaffa Road, even the porcelain is kosher. My foray inside the facilities proved rich. If only I had a secret camera with me. I must need counselling, but I confess the sight remains striking to me. At one urinal stood a Hasid in full dress regalia, minding his business and more importantly, taking his time. On my other side, stood an IDF soldier, a rugged looking red-headed gever (a hunk) his weapons pointing where they ought to be; an extra clip for his M-16 ready and waiting if the need arose. You all know what concerns the vast majority of men when it comes to caliber. Standing between these two I just didn't measure up.

It was 2:00 pm when I arrived in the Golden City, so I took my time walking to my accomodations, cater-corner from the King David and hard by the YMCA. The El Dan Hotel is convenient and the breakfast fabulous; I'd stayed there before five years before, and I felt unadventurous in my choice this time. Same-same would provide me with an emotional base to go out and explore. Though it was Friday and the Muslim-owned shops would be closed for their Sabbath, I quickly showered and headed down to the Jaffa Gate.

There have been huge "improvements" in the roads and parks adjacent. Broad urban plazas and landscaped berms furnish a vista of the forbidding walls. One hikes up a hill to approach the Gate; construction trenches slow one's entry to what is already a narrow passage into an antique world. Suddenly one is thrust into a place whose layout has changed little since the 16th century; The Ottoman Turks reconstructed the Old City walls in those times, and they remain essentially the same. Very few "streets" can accomodate even motor scooters; the main thoroughfares are perhaps eight feet wide, made of worn marble steps, and packed on each side with metal-shuttered kiosks... Hummus stands, spice shops and trinket stores pack the busiest lanes, interspersed along the slightly wider Via Dolorosa. Down it to the Lion's Gate I wandered Friday afternoon, its lower stretches offering blank stone walls and quiet respite from the hubub of the shuk nearby. Suddenly I heard the muzzein's cry, and as if by magic, the faithful started to pour into the streets from all directions, Sunni Muslims, men in burnooses and Western street clothes, their women and girls clad in exotic colorful long clothing, heads covered in gorgeous veils but faces all shown. One might call it modest, the way these women dressed. I'd call it gorgeous: the older women dressed the most ornately; the teeneage girls skirting the line: tight designer jeans, fitted tops, but a modest headcovering that only emphasizes their beauty and desirability. As worshippers poured through the Lion's Gate from the Muslim precincts outside the walls, I soon realized that it sits close to one of the access points to the Dome of the Rock. I knew better than to approach the metal stanchions in the plaza that leads farther in..

Saturday is a busy day in the Old City, no different than any other in the density of foot traffic, as the Orthodox Jews flock to the Wailing Wall to pray on their Sabbath, and gentile summer tourists crowd the alleys and bazaars. On the sides streets off the main drag, Shalshelet, local commerce goes on, oblivious to the tourist trade that dominates the larger allee. The vendors cries are all in Palestinian Arabic; no call for English or Ivrit in these lanes. Barber shops, butchers, spice shops, and green grocers line the narrow cul de sacs; Men sit cross legged on the paving stones to the side, puffing non-chalantly on hookahs, and sipping bitter coffee from tiny mugs. Wizened faced elders poke slowl along, canes in hand, their heads crowned with the black bands of snow-white burnooses, 1001 nights never passed.

Down a side street I wandered, deep in the Muslim Quarter, quiet blank walls surrounding me as I explored. Ten yards ahead of me, men worked in the middle of the pavement with picks and shovels, but there was plenty of room for me to pass by. All of the sudden two little Arab boys appeared and motioned to me insistently "Street Closed!" they cried, "Street Closed!" I took a harder look, saw that this was untrue, and started to pass them. They would not permit it. "Street Closed! What you want?" was all they could muster in English, but the look in their eyes told me I'd better obey. I turned and retreated, figuring it safer. Later I sorted it out with a map.

Since the end of the second intifada there has been an agreement: non-Muslims are not allowed on the Temple Mount. Though technically speaking, the older treaties provide for shared access, the single non-Muslim entrance to the Mount has been off-limits to Jews and Christians for years. Proceeding downhill, I was coming dangerously close to one of the entrances to the Temple Mount reserved for Sunni Moslems (Shiites do not pray there; The Dome of the Rock is a shrine to Mohammed, not Ali, the prophet whom the Shiites revere instead of Mohammed. The little boys were trying to tell me that I was too close. Sometimes a look in the eyes tells all.

I returned on Saturday morning, my guidebook and Ivrit dictionary in hand, ready for more. Down in the Armenian Quarter I turned a corner into a quiet cul de sac. On my left a well-dressed man with a short gray haircut approached me. "Excuse me," he spoke in quiet broken English. "I am learning for my tourist guide license here. May I show you around? You don't have to pay me. I need to practice." Eager to practice my Ivrit, I fell for his dodge. Off we traipsed. The hook was in.

What is the difference in this kind of hustle from that of a streetwalker in high-heel boots?
To climbers preferring Babel to the mons veneris, looks are not everything, sex not the reward. This mountain guide's solicitation dictated our commerce. The fellow sized me up in the blink of an eye, his entreaty a sophisticated "Hey, good-looking" to a language john. Time for the soft sell; these Americans dislike aggressive hustle. "You don't have to pay me..." was quite a creation: It was I who was going to be doing the favor. Like a kid glove, he fit himself around my hand, knowing instinctively, only through my expression and body language, how and when to take the next step as we sauntered along, him teasing me with foreplay, gentility, interest in my personal thoughts. Deftly, gently, he got me aroused.

Needless to say, we finally arrived there, the goal he'd always had in mind. My guide soon suggested that we "just look" in a shop of his friend. Again I was greeted with the uber soft-sell. Turkish coffee was instantly served. The six-foot wide shop, crammed with jewelry and religious objects of a tasteful variety , was empty of customers save I, my accompanist, and the owner, a dark haired, close-cropped Arab in his early 50s, quick to size me up, also, but coming on a bit too strong. Like a piece of road kill, he pecked at my carcass, softening his manner instantly, not taking offense with each "no, thanks" I shot back, as he urged various items upon me, "just for inspection." Slowly but surely, though, he wore me down, pushing, probing, finding the G-spot of guilt and curiosity inside my soul. Squeezed out of me easily that my wife was not with me on this trip to Israel, he sugggested to an all-too-willing audience that I return with a gift for her, "something small but precious." The hook dug further in. I wriggled with joy.

"A Khamsa would be perfect," said I, trepidatiously. His eyes glistened. His ears stiffened visibly. "Gold plate, gold-filled, or would you like solid gold?" The emphasis on the final world resonated like a gently tapped kettle-drum. I chose the middle ground, it most likely a fraud. Out he trotted three large display trays, much like type-cases, with each delicate pendant individually displayed. From among them I selected a mixed gold and silver filigreed item, a beauty I thought would decorate the nape of my missus' neck quite nicely. How much was the question. I tried to stay calm. "650 shekels for you, my friend." came back the reply. No claim of a bargain. A college try. The ultimate pussy responded with candor, "I know I'm supposed to bargain with you but I just don't want to." His face remained motionless his expression blank. Perhaps he'd never heard that one, ever before. The bills were peeled off. No mercy was shown to a lamb led to slaughter. The knife was again lifted, forthwith, ever sharp: "What about your two daughters, surely something small for them too?" I was breathless and sheepish but hadn't the moxie. From somewhere I summoned the strength to say no and then no, five times no. After pleasantries and good wishes my guide and I left with smiles all around. Behind the shop- owner's face might have sat hate.

Outside on the sidewalk, my man led me onward. What do these guys think? I'm made of money? It's never enough, they'll bleed you dry gleefully. I got out with my life, a bit shaken, but stirred. We did a slow two step up to the Damascus Gate. My good fellow and I had walked more and chatted, but the wind had changed. It was time to bid adieu and parry his final thrust. I knew I had to pay him some for his time. An hour and a half had already gone by. "I'd like to give you something," I offered in parting. "500 shekels, please," instantly came his reply. I cringed with his khutspeh. The sum seemed outlandish. He'd get a nice kickback from his friend the jeweler. He didn't care that I knew. $125 was a lot for 90 minutes, given the fact that we'd kept our clothes on and never touched. I offered him 300 and said that would tap me, showing him my remaining single 20-shekel note. Ever the gentleman, my man offered to walk outside the Gate with me to a nearby cash machine. What a gracious fellow! I declined. His last sally came out quite weakly. I should take a taxi to my next stop, he said. The Damascus Gate is teeming with Arab drivers. I declined the offer and he sauntered off, head down, visibly disturbed.

Back in Tel Aviv, down at the seashore, I gazed into the Mediterranean waters lapping the sand, littered with other dangers: meduzot, jellyfish, all about. The word's French etymology only enlivens the sight of these hideous local creatures, grown in summer waters to the size of inflated plastic grocery bags, their tentacles shining through translucent rubbery hides. Swimmers avoid them when they can: stings are painful and cause welts. Those allergic can swell horribly. I come as close as I dared.

In Tel Aviv's Shuk HaCarmel, twisting and turning off Allenby Street, again in Mahne Yehuda's covered aisles off the Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, the vendors' cries deluged me, the urgent business of making one's way through the crowds overwhelming all other thoughts. From a given hawker's lips a cornucopia of languages poured forth, whatever he surmised the passerby spoke: Ivrit, Arabic, French, Russian, even English poured forth in the words needed to make a sale: a cup of fruit juice, a mound of fresh halvah. A knife sharpener sat in front of a shuttered kiosk, business slow at noon on Sunday, but but spiritual matters deeply occupied his mind. The Levantine cast of the pious Jew's quiet face provided a curious counterpoint to the hubbub surrounding him.

For the equivalent of four dollars, one can ride the clouds on a magic carpet at a random food stand in the middle of the Shuk HaCarmel; all differences of culture and ethnicity and religion evaporate over the counter of commerce. The Palestinian proprietors are there to do business; Jew and Arab are welcome alike to savor the lamb kebabs sizzling on an open flame. In a minimum of space, a grill, sink, refrigerator and salad washer all sit; silken hummus and jasmine scented rice are served with the freshest of pita and salad. Friends drop by, credit is extended to known faces; the noises and smells surround one; the ambience infinite, the price near zilch.

As I made my way out of the narrow lanes at the south end of the shuk, a bakery stood before me, its proprietors a couple in traditional modest Yemenite dress, their swarthy faces straining as they struggled to produce some kind of living from the sale of life's basics. I knew to ask permission before taking a photo, and was just as pleased to be able to do so totally gramatically and fluently and be told it's forbidden as if I'd been granted an ok..

Over and over I asked myself a question: what would I capture and what would it mean? Nearby the answer screamed out to me, plain as the handwriting on the wall. But the words were different, not the famous mene mene tekl upharshin (You've been weighed in the balance and found wanting), from the book of Daniel at Balthazzar's feast. No, the handwriting drew from me something different, not an abengation of self, but a showing of the way. Like the lamp unto my feet spoken of in Isaiah, graffiti appeared on a warehouse wall. Could I listen to the famous voice of the Hasidic Master, Reb Nakhman of Bratslav, urging me to value myself above all: Na, Nakh, Nakhma, Nakhman M'Uman: "Peace, Tranquility and Comfort... from Nakhman of Uman."

Once years long ago, my godfather, Uncle Miltie, sat as the sandek at my bris, charged with holding me ready for the moyel's knife. His family had come over to the New York from Reb Nakhman's burial place, Uman, only a few decades after the Rebbe's death. I survived the delicate procedure, but ten years and more ago Uncle Miltie gave up holding me, and what's left of my soul is a vegetable peel, the proverbial klipeh of Kabbalah, an empty shell. I am game for the handwriting, if just for an instant. My days are unpeaceful. I am alone.

Out I walked into the blazing sunlight, headed to Old Jaffa along the beach side. Down on the beach I avoided the jellyfish, my mantra adopted, having made it my own: Na, Nakh, Nakhma, Nakhman M'Uman. May peace and gladness come to me soon.

Getting In Her Licks...

2010-08-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

Lourdes draws the faithful, and Mecca has the Hajj, while hot June brings masses of pilgrims to Jerusalem. But New York has the strangest shrine of all. Earlier this summer I sat in a vest-pocket park down on Perry and West 11th Streets. In ones and twos, earnest acolytes appeared out of nowhere, each clutching a tiny cardboard box. What is happening? I asked myself slowly, as a curious pattern emerged. Across the street they sauntered, bent on a mission, bakery boxes in hand.

Ten yards away I spotted one, already sitting when I arrived. Her lips barely parted, the young woman's eyes focused on her prize, narrowing, greedy, almost trembling with desire, creek-side at Sutter's mill. Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer came to mind as I watched slender hands with silk-tipped nails behold an obscure object like a delicate Faberge egg. The single-mindedness struck me the most. This was a moment that mattered.

Invested is the word, this 23-year old girl's entire being subsumed in a baked good. Yes, she's really taking a cell-phone picture of her coveted prize. What in God's name could be so interesting, so precious, about a fecking cupcake?

I've been to the Wailing Wall many times this June and July during a 5-week long trip to Israel, watching the faithful kneel at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, witnessing the faces on those answering the call to prayer at the Dome of the Rock, streaming through the Lions' Gate. But nothing compares to this...

What is this girl doing, taking a carefully aimed cell-phone photo of her precious cupcake before she places the host, body and soul, on her pointy little tongue? Come down to Bleecker and West 11th any day of the week. Sit in the park, cater-corner from the Magnolia Bakery. In five minutes you'll be reminded, way too much, of disturbing things about what I hesitate to call our American "culture.".

There I sat a couple weeks ago, an innocent, a total naif, scarfing down two dogs with kraut and mustard from the vendor's nearby cart, a can of Pepsi cooling my hot tonsils while the sparrows pecked at my heels and the local winos and dope-pushers filled the benches on the fringes of a filthy, brick-paved expanse that passes for a public park. A deal's been struck here, though: I noticed that the benches directly across from me were all empty while those at the park's edges were full. Up trundled a tourist threesome, Aussies I would guess, all tentative, clutching shopping bags. Down they plopped themselves, no business apparent and waited, chatting.

Suddenly the plaza began to fill; Young boyfriends in I LOVE NY T-shirts, gripping digital cameras, middle-aged women with fanny-packs and slightly shell-shocked faces, accompanying their young adult daughters, grouped around a bench near me, as a tiny, rail-thin fashionista trotted over from the nearby patisserie, a huge shopping bag in hand, and proceeded to unload...

"Gather round, peoples!" she squealed, the Five Towns timbre of her voice matching the shellacked look of the grown-up she essayed with all her 90 dripping-wet pounds. Maybe I need my glasses changed. Did that name tag of hers really read "Stephanie Jappy?" Quick as lightning, the girl's deft fingers extracted three outsize cardboard cake boxes from the shopping bag, their tops peeled back, their contents exposed to the fetid summer air. Her hair was plastered to her temples, upswept over her tiny pate, oversize costume jewelry hanging everywhere, her straight skirt, just above her knees betraying a bottom sorely in need of some nourishment. Viewed sideways, only her copious adornment prevented this smiley-faced shade from evaporation.

"Take a cupcake, they're munch-a-scrumptious," the girl yelped to her forty charges. Little round chocolate-glazed hand grenades gleamed at me from afar. Dreams of sugar plums danced in my head as I pondered the ironic juxtaposition of this waif-like guide and her all-too probable struggle with bulimia and anorexia against the present carpet of iced bombs. Then I looked leftwards, and suddently it all became clear. This was a tour. That white elephant parked over there on Bleecker Street is a tour bus. This is a holy shrine to gourmet chi-chi, and the glorious single life, and I am eating Sabrett. Carrie Bradshaw once sat here eating a cupcake. I am in a sacred space.

This is where it all comes together: Self-image. Selling yourself to the highest bidder. Who am I and what do I want? I just want to be just like her. Carrie made it. Why can't I? This is a place of laughter and contemplation: The younger I remain, the happier, me. Close my eyes and dream much harder. This is where I'll be what I can be.

I see their faces, watch the parade pass. Yes, I understand what's going on. Sarah Jessica Parker is a fine, fine actress, her character, Carrie Bradshaw, a glass of aqua vitae truth. But what have we come to when TV-show film sets take on such importance, provide meaning in life, deliver such a potent reward?

Why, this fascination with the remnants of verisimilitude? Why not visit where real NYC history was made? Fictional characters, vestiges of their realization: to value and be excited by a tour like this bespeaks such poverty of the soul. Compare, if you will Edna St. Vincent Millay and Margaret Wise Brown. Their home and writing studio in the Village are coherent destinations, places to touch the Blarney Stone. But cupcake heaven is one level closer to spiritual corruption: we're talking about a place that has no true existence, belongs to no one, has an entirely different purpose and function in life. I hope the tour bus company is paying the winos to leave empty those certain benches, pole positions in the race for dreams never true. Karmic justice, I maintain, should be done: one flask of Mogen David 20/20 at a time.

Twenty minutes passed, the tourbus people standing around, munching and staring, conversation falling off, no movie-stars in sight. No comets appeared, no aurora borealis gleamed forth from the heavens above. What, in truth was the point? Here, things happened, life was lived large. But now not a trace remains, all glamour vanished, transient, evanescent. The tour guide busied herself urging useless calories into her charges, then quickly tidied up and called for all to re-board.

Slowly they turned, their disappointment evident: This was all there was to adore? Back on the bus and on to the next scene. Maybe someone famous would stroll by later on. Meanwhile broken dreams and quotidien reality intruded most unwelcomely, those $42-apiece fares paid long ago. Into the trash went chances for redemption, along with the empties not fit for the store.

Perhaps a lesson could be learned, maybe real life's not worth living? So try having an inner one, try to keep score. The only alternative isn't too tasty. Pick up that remote and turn on the show.

COLD STORAGE

2010-08-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

My wife tells a story that I never get right. The details don't really matter, though it's the moment that counts: A precious thing bonds her psyche to mine: the Yiddish inflection of older relatives (though hers was Bronx-ite and mine through parents who fled Philadelphia to live among the lost tribes in East Tennessee). Di goldene keyt, the golden chain, binds us, linking our pasts, adorning our days together.

It's 1957. An 8-year old girl rides the D train to Manhattan from Yankee Stadium on a winter Sunday morning with her older and younger sisters. Back in the day it was nominally safe, no parents along. The three girls would sometimes spot a lady in a mink coat in their car. The upper middle class still flourished on the Jewish Grand Concourse, and automobile ownership was not nearly as widespread as today. A trip to "New York" on a Sunday morning might well involve the wearing of fur by an all-rightnik balebusteh, an older female member of the urban bourgeoisie. Of the three sisters, only littlest Ellen had the nerve to cozy up and surreptitiously feel the silky pelts, closing her eyes in a reverie.

Likely as not, that very same coat had made the trip uptown on the subway, from one of the retail fur shops that used to line Seventh Avenue from 28th to 31st Streets. And likely as not it had been sewn together in one of the huge, gray loft buildings towering on the very same blocks, by old Yiddish-speaking workers who lived in the Bronx. John Knubel’s skyscraper at 345 Seventh opened late in 1928, its 24 stories devoted to only one trade. (His surname means garlic in Yiddish, go figure…) Two generations of Jewish workers filled the work-rooms in buildings, spending long days matching and stitching the stoles and capes to bedeck those who had made it partway up the ladder. One wonders if Bergdorf and Goodman spoke Yiddish at home? (Probably not – those are yekke names, those of mid-19th century German -Jewish immigrants).

Starting with rabbit, ascending to sable, a fur coat in those days was much more a mark of wealth and achievement than it is today. No PETA activists disrupted the show; no environmental consciousness made goose down more trendy. A chinchilla, a fox: these were a woman’s goals.

A victim of ever-changing tastes, New York’s fur district is now a pale simulacrum of its former self, just as Yiddish has vanished from its midtown streets. The district once housed hundreds of adventurers in the skin trade, predominantly Jewish owned and staffed. Tanners, sorters, stitchers: the men and women turned out fox wraps and mink stoles for buyers across America from the early years of the 20th century onwards labored long hours in the dingy shops, seldom able, before WW II to afford the meals at Hershey’s Dairy Restaurant where their bosses from the Protective Fur Dresser’s Association and the Fur Dresser’s Factor Corporation gorged themselves on blintzes and noodle kugel.

Two cords helped the workers fashion the pelts together: Yiddish and Communism, interspersed with a healthy dose of mobbed-up labor “settlements.” The streets ran Red more than once in the early 1930s when disputes turned into violent confrontations with lead pipes and acid flung on faces with the help of the likes of Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and Jake “Gurrah” Shapiro. Poor Isadore Gelman got it bad: there he lay in Coney Island Hospital early in June 1934. Gelman was a foreman at Berchansky Sons Company at 345 Seventh and union delegate to the American Federation of Labor furriers union. Radical groups seeking control of his local were blamed when Gelman was attacked on the morning of June 3rd as he left his Coney Island home. His condition was listed as grave the next day. A police bodyguard instituted because of earlier threats and a bungled assassination attempt was suspended only two weeks before the latest attack.

(n.b. the photo is symbolic: it's early 20th century, and is of Yiddish speaking strikers in a garment factory dispute from the Lower East Side)

Yiddish was the lingua franca of the district, as it was in so many other Jewish-dominated industries in New York after the waves of Eastern European immigrants first started to wash through the Lower East Side and other precincts in the 1880s. The furriers are now all but gone, a few shops and a few retail stores remain. The cadence of Yiddish is gone from the streets that used to hum with its music. The giant buildings are now filled with secondary office space and alternative uses: film and recording studios and editing rooms, internet businesses, small accounting a law firms, the mish-mosh of small outfits needing cheap space in a central location, close to so much public transportation.

Mamaloshen lives on, though, within these sooty piles of brick and stone. I found it after I answered a call, stuck to the walls, embedded in the plaster. All I had to do was scrape the surface and a chorus poured forth, high on the 16th floor at 345 Seventh. There, this past spring I stitched a new stole.

I’ve an acquaintance named Erik Anjou, a brilliant independent filmmaker with several credits to his name in the Jewish film world. Erik’s in post-production of authorized documentary about the Klezmatics, perhaps the most famous klezmer band in the world. Out of the blue came a favor requested of me. The question remains, though, who favored whom. Quite a bit of the footage involves Yiddish conversation among two members of the band, an older gentleman (recently deceased) named Pesakh Fishman, a revered leader of Yiddish language instruction, and a singer and translator of his generation named Teddy Schwartz. Poor Erik is Yiddish-impaired, as is his film editor, Lisa Palatella. So I was asked if I would come down to the cutting room for "4 to 5 hours" and lend a hand in manufacturing subtitles.

I instantly said yes and then started to worry. “Will I embarrass myself and be unable to understand all of the words?” My confidence swelled when I heard it would be mostly Pesakh speaking. I’d been in his classes and knew he spoke a clear, grammatical, Litvak, rule-book Yiddish. So I decided to take a stab. It appealed to my ego: I’d never been in a cutting room, ooh, vah ! I’d get a credit. But it had to be perfect, every word understood, every inflection massaged, every idiom and expression truly conveyed. No seconds, no imperfects, this mink coat had to come out Neiman-Marcus first class.

There we sat, Lisa and I, at a task Erik promised would be half a day. It ended up taking more like 20 hours, over four days, but what a pleasure, what a joy. And the very first day, I noticed where I really was. In a twenty-first century cutting room? Not. Gazing out the tall window in Radical Avid’s warren of studios, the dingy towers surrounding me like giant dirty parsnips turned on end, suddenly I located my cultural GPS. A mink coat would have come in very handy, something to take the chill away on those damp winter mornings, like the tens of thousands stitched together right where I was sitting, when 345 Seventh hummed with furriers’ machines.

In the quiet and all of the sudden it hit me: here I sat, doing with words, exactly what the lingering ghosts had done for decades. The Klezmatics have done so for 20+ years, and the film about them will for many more, linking generations in a culture of Yiddish words and song. Indispensable to a thorough enjoyment of their talent and the material is knowing what the lyrics mean, wrapping oneself in the cloak of memory, touching the delicate fabric, feeling its caress.. That’s where I’ve come in, the proverbial messenger, the stitcher of that inheritance: I the furrier, I the tailor, designing and fabricating a warm cloak of language in which those who watch can snuggle and stay warm.

There on the wall was the pattern to follow, the film’s storyboards showing the bias and cut. There in Lisa’s smile was the glow of appreciation. Now she knows him a little better: her husband Barry Sherman, nee Borukh Shevinsky sat with us unseen through the hours of work. Shleppers and ganefs may no longer teem Seventh Avenue’s precincts. Their curses have fallen silent, but their language lives on. Scratch the stone walls and you hear the music. Yiddish is everywhere. Yiddish lives on.

MORE from The New York Wanderer about wanderings in Yiddish land is at:

http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2009/01/guide-to-my-posts-re-yiddish-land.html

and at

http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2010/08/ad-dlo-yada-til-one-doesnt-know.html

and at

http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2010/08/hillbilly-kheyder.html

Ad D'lo Yada: Til One Doesn't Know...

2010-08-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

"Until one doesn't know,” goes the traditional imprecation towards insobriety for Jews celebrating the hanging of Ahashueros' evil minister Haman and his ten sons. The group had plotted to kill all the Hebrews in Persia, and were foiled only by the intervention of the King's favorite dancing girl, the Jewess Esther, implored by her cousin, the courtier Mordecai, to whisper sweet nothings into Kingie-poo's ear. A few words were all it took, and the Jews were saved. Once a year, Jews are commanded, “Drink until you don't know the difference between the righteous Mordecai and the evil Haman.” In Williamsburg and Borough Park they do it up right.

My Israeli cousin Daniel, just out of the IDF and working as a waiter in Chestnut Hill, PA came up for Shushan Purim, the second day of the early spring holiday. His family, though not apikorsim, non-believers, live on a Labor Zionist kibbutz near the Lebanese border. Participants in many years in pacifist Conservative movement Reconstructionist congregations, they have no reason to go to the orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem or other Israeli cities and settlements, where the females of the family will be disparaged and the men disrespected. At a family bar-mitzvah last fall I encouraged Daniel to come to Hasidic Brooklyn with me to celebrate Esther and Mordecai's triumph. I love to dance, and all Jewish men are welcome there on this special day.

Looking more like a pair of mismatched hipsters than Jewish wannabes, we sauntered off the #6 train in Manhattan at Spring Street, hoofed down Bowery to Delancey: Daniel, 23, all eyes and ears. The lower east side of Henry Roth and Chaim Potok is long gone; even the Yiddishkayt that remained hanging by a thread into the 70s is almost invisible. I hung us a sharp left onto the bridge, promising him a havdole, a separation, as sharp as that at the Wailing Wall sitting hard by the entrance to the Dome of the Rock.

It was late afternoon as we strolled over the Williamsburg Bridge in our multi-colored knit caps, the chill late winter air putting a spring in our step. We ambled off the pedestrian walkway and headed south on Bedford, across Broadway, the erstwhile dividing line between Jewish Williamsburg and the other world. Down Bedford we traipsed, children in costumes everywhere, baby strollers galore, while from every other street-corner Hasidic pop music blared from the rooftop speakers of kosher Winnebagos, rented for the holiday to bring party-goers from upstate communities down to the tukh, the core of Hasidic revelry.

A few blocks from the bridge we passed 440 Bedford, a nondescript edifice, perhaps 50 feet wide, four stories of 125-year old bricks, dating from the time that tenements were required to have neither windows on the sides of the buildings nor light and air wells. The original apartments were true railroad flats with the only ventilation coming through street and rear windows, many interior rooms fetid and dark. Today 440 houses a small congregation, the Strozhnitzer kehile, T'feres Asher Mordechai, (To the glory of Asher Mordechai), named, I believe after the Grand Rabbi Usher Mordechai Rosenbaum.

Out of the doors of 440 Bedford popped two silk caftan-clad young men, their celebratory shtraymlekh (those round, beaver or sable-trimmed hats worn on festive occasions and high holidays including Shabbes) glistening in the late afternoon sun. Bent on a mission, they lacked the requisite ten men to form a minyan, the legally-required number for full prayers to be recited at the prescribed thrice-daily times. With a bit of desperation in their eyes, Daniel and I were regarded, and then came a hesitant inquiry: "host shoyn gedavent minkhe ?" (Have you already said afternoon prayers?) Apparently the rule is that one can't be counted towards the requisite ten if one has already done prayed for the afternoon.

Could beggars be choosers? We'd soon see....Though obviously lacking in other Jewish mayles (virtues), one thing was for sure: Daniel and I were white as the driven snow as far as the klotz kashe (the tough question) was concerned. Neither of us had been inside a shul at any time of the day or night in many months, much less earlier that afternoon. Too much information, though; we just answered the question, and soon were let in.

The Strozhnitzer Beys Medresh (house of study) serves the religious needs of many descendants of the survivors of the Romanian / Nazi massacre in Strozhnits, Ukraine, where 250+ of the local Jewry were shot in June, 1941 and placed in a mass grave, as others were herded off to the Transnistria camps. Like a typical yeshiva, the room was stuffed to the gills with long tables and dilapidated chairs of various provenance. Religious texts used for daily prayers lay strewn about and volumes of more arcane religious writings sat on overloaded shelves covering every inch of available wall space.

Though reluctant at first, I accepted the invitation in Yiddish. In we went through the entry hall. But not so fast though: the sidewalk hookers may have been eager to count us in, but just inside I was stopped by another congregant and challenged as not being Jewish. Pointing at my semitic-cast nose, I said "take a look, it's a noz fun ale nezer, a nose of noses, vu denn (what of it) ?" But it wasn't enough to quiet the doubts of my interrogator. Ken zayn farshtelt... I was told (It could be a false one, that proboscis of mine). But I insisted , and we were in like Flint, taking our places in an empty row. Almost immediately, prayers began..

Though fluent enough with the prayer books used by Conservative movement Jews as well as Reform, I easily lose my way in the text commonly employed by the orthodox. Though the prayers are familiar, the order is somewhat different and I'm thrown off by the speed and the cantillation employed. Afternoon prayers start with the Amidah, a lengthy set of paragraphs that takes its name from the Hebrew word "standing." I mumbled the 18 sections, rocking and bowing, doing as the Romans do, but my inability to follow along was soon rendered moot. From the corner of my eye, I'd been watching a particularly inebriated boy. This bokher, a young man, of no more than nineteen, braces still cladding his ill-kept teeth, wore a holiday caftan, gray silk instead of the usual black, with a bright, damask-like pattern. He'd regarded us with scorn from the very start.

I'd thought all was copacetic with our presence in shul, but in the midst of the davening a debate broke out. In Yiddish they thought I couldn't understand, (or perhaps they didn't care), Daniel's and my bona fides were challenged again. The young man yelled to the ostensible prayer leader that we shouldn't be counted and had no business being there.. A back and forth ensued, ending with a profuse apology issued to no one in particular, what a shandeh (how shameful) it was, said the leader, that guests for the minyan were to be embarassed so. Nisht neytig, I cried out: no need for apologies. The praying continued but not for long.

My eyes cast downward, I had no forewarning. Gvald, I cried as I clutched my groin. From my left a missle had flown across the aisle, a spray bottle full of water tossed grenade style to the left of my balls. Looking up I'd no doubt of who'd done the hefting: the drunken gray-clad youngster was feeling his oats. Shock broke out among the congregation, screams of derision headed his way. Turns out I was not the intended target. Behind me stood a khosid who was talking on his cell-phone in the middle of prayers. Order was regained but not before the aimless plaintiff himself made a call on his phone. I guess the truly pious are exempt from the rules.

Ten minutes later, prayers ended with the kaddish, the traditional verses for the peace of the dead. That I knew by heart and recited. Daniel and I were quickly on our way, running a friendly gauntlet towards the door, each congregant thanking us for joining them and wishing us a Happy Purim. I felt relieved in DMZ air.

For an hour we wandered, taking in the sights and sounds of Williamsburg on what is perhaps the happiest of holidays save only Simkhes Toyreh when Jews celebrate the giving of the Torah, their holiest possession. Up and down Lee Avenue we walked, Daniel's mouth agape at the strange signs in Hebrew orthography, many a mix of Hebrew and Yiddish, a field day for me, translating the Yiddish for him, and he helping me with the Yeshivish Hebrew with which local broadsides are liberally sprinkled. Then it was time to get on board.

7:00 pm and darkness was falling. Children and their parents were headed homewards, the men now free to begin the beguine. Though a B110 bus roared off as Daniel and I rounded the corner, the wait was a short and rich one. Along came a couple, the wife pushing a stroller. A smile of recognition crossed the handsome young khosid's face, his wife instantly falling a few feet behind him as he greeted us: "Mir hobn nur vus frier minkhe gedavent !" (We just said afternoon prayers together.) Though a mile from 440 Bedford, the young man recognized us and then we, the same

Try and envision a so-called normal New York street encounter: running into a young family with whom one has shared a police barricade at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. It doesn't translate, I maintain. The expression of welcome, of inclusion in what is ultimately a virtual community is peculiar:. Daven with me and we are brethren once more. Surely my grandparents were orthodox Jews, they think to themselves (and sometimes tell me). I've still got a chance to rescue my z'khus, my spiritual account.

Ken Kesey was crazy, it's well established: the Merry Pranksters had a gas on Furthur, their bus. On Shushan Purim, I feel like Tom Wolfe, riding a ride high on Jewish Electric Kool-Aid. Psychedelia abounds on the private B110, shuttling the orthodox between their Brooklyn abodes. We boarded and paid at Lee and Division. The bus was jam packed and the party took off.

S'iz Purim, gib a shmeykl insisted one elder of Zion: (It's Purim, so smile!)An old Jew kept intoning to anyone who caught his eye. Exhausted children sat on caftan-clad laps: on Purim even the men could relax and do a little child-care. Meanwhile, at stop after stop, Jews came aboard, the women with baby strollers, remaining unfolded, somehow herded to the back, where at one point no less than ten clogged the aisles. At our final stop in Williamsburg before we boogied onto the expressway towards Borough Park, a turban-clad mom, all of 20 years old, boarded with two children both clutching one of her child-like hands, a third babe in arms held barely aloft. The aisles were jammed, not a seat was empty, but did any of the dozens of seated men in the front offer this beryeh (a capable woman) a seat?. Fortune shined upon me and her: I was seated in the last "men's" row, and promptly offered my window spot to her, getting up and squeezing past my seat mate, motioning and offering in Yiddish, my place. Slight astonishment greeted my largesse, but she accepted modestly, barely acknowledging my presence much less my act. The Jew beside me hopped up in an instant, and the woman and three children made themselves safe.

Off we hopped when we reached 13th Avenue. Almost everything was shuttered and we were ravenous Light gleamed in one porcelain-tiled eatery. The sign had Daniel instantly laughing: Sushi Meshuneh. Strange Sushi in English. The place was barely open and the menu boring. We decided to hoof it and head south of the border. I know a place on 13th south of the F-train station that probably was serving on a Sunday night. We stepped inside of Vostok's doors.

Been there for lunch on a random weekday: cold fish par excellence and ambiance on wheels. Sunday night was even more promising: balloons were everywhere. An Uzbeki birthday party was ramping up. The owner, a 50-something man in a black kipah, a simple knitted version of the traditional men's skullcap, greeted us a bit tentatively at the door. Did Daniel and I know what we were in for? I asked if dinner was being served. We were waved right in.

With a swipe or two from a dubious wash-rag, our Formica dining table was made aright, the Russophone waitress crisply solicitous, no alcohol offered. What the heck are you doing here gleamed from her eyes. We were seated near the entry door, I suppose not to disturb the evanescent party. Alongside us stood three long tables, one piled with prayer books, a character straight out of central casting sitting motionless alongside. In a full, white Uzbeki pate-cover and placquet-less black robe sat Mr. Natural. With his long white beard and olive-toned skin, he might as well have stepped into the boite with a crook from the sheep-pasture hills around Tashkent. The rabbi (it turned out) said not a word and soon made himself scarce as a polyester-suited, middle-aged crooner mounted the stage and started belting out Frank Sinatra-like tunes in Russian with a karaoke machine to his rear. The birthday party's hostesses, two rotund ladies in their 60s, matched the Soviet-era My Way with toasts that went on (and on and on....)

Food from a former SSR is of one kind: animal protein, then more and more. Shashlik and kofta, beef throat on a skewer. Only some borscht broke the meat-eaters' spell. Uzbeki round bread and some vodka from my backpack: Daniel and I relaxed as we gorged. We'd arrived in Borough Park too early to dance. Things get cooking well past 9:00 in most shuls; the Purim Shpieler (traditional Purim plays) begin at midnight or more.

Well-nigh comatose with lamb fat, we left Vostok by 9:30, taking our bearings on deserted 13th Avenue. Back and forth we wandered the avenues, first to the Stoliner shul, then Munkacz, then several ones unknown to me. Everywhere we entered was freylekh (jolly); the basement of a girl's yeshiva, open to all for a now wound-down party, yielded some shmoozing with non-Hasidish young men. All doors were open, all I had to do was ask, particularly in Yiddish, and we were greeted and welcomed. It's my magic ticket to get through the door. These young guys understood me fine but could not respond in kind. Only the Hasidim learn to speak Yiddish fluently as children.

The inside ground floor rooms of the larger shuls we visited were dominated by huge pipe-work grandstands. Hundreds of young men stood on them waiting for the Rebbe to enter and sit at the head of the tish, the table, where the acolytes would wait for him to bless a giant khallah, (braided bread) hoping to eat the remains from his plate, the shirayim, the leftovers. Upon those lucky ones a special blessing would fall.

Madly swirling,the men in a large shul east of 12th Avenue, grabbed at me and Daniel as we do-see-do'd our partners. Tables were strewn with empty wine bottles, no hard liquor in evidence. Round and round we went,he music unending, Hasidic rock blared at deafening levels: AD D'LO YADA... until you don't know (the difference between Mordecai and Haman). The words rang out, filling my ears. When Moses came down from the heights of Mount Sinai, there were the Jews, dancing round the Golden Calf. All hell broke loose, but this time the opposite: On Purim Hashem commands his flock to uncork. Thirty minutes and I was exhausted. Sweat poured from my brow, and I'd tired of being grabbed by drunken strangers in their dubious embraces. We hit the bricks and breathed deeply, the cool night air refreshing our brains. I had no idea what was still in store.

Borough Park is a low-rise neighborhood. Even the side-street McMansions built on tiny lots where tear-downs from the 1920s once stood are no more than three stories. Private parties lit up the windows of many two and three-family houses, each glimmering plate glass luring me inside. Halloween-esque creations adorned certain lamp-posts, retelling the fate of the bad guys du jour.

As we sauntered along, I heard some electronica, spied a strobe-lit disco ball crackling with lightning from an otherwise darkened second floor. I stopped and motioned to Daniel. "Should we give it a try?" Two young men in traditional attire stood on the house's concrete steps at the sidewalk, smoking and talking as we passed by. An open door disclosed a stairway to heaven. "Megn mir arayngeyen?" (May we enter?) I ventured in my politest tone. "Ihr zaynen fun du?" (You're from around here?) came a polite but firm question. I didn't dissemble, but pushed a bit forward. "Neyn, ober mir zaynen dokh yidn und avadeh nisht kayn farbrekher." I shot back.: (No, but we're certainly Jewish and not criminals.) Again the Yiddish had magical charms. With a smile and a wave we were sent right up and instructed to enjoy ourselves.

The tower of Babel could not have been noisier. Rave and house filled my every pore. The floor-boards groaned in a free-style bedlam. Young men of very Jewish persuasion, but not a caftan in sight, danced feverishly. I was at home. From the corner of the room, a rabbi watched over us, a middle-aged man, his tish loaded not with candlesticks and khallah, but other kley kodesh, (tools of sanctification) in the form of sound boards and speakers, Hashem's shekhineh (holy presence) roaring forth. From a backroom door at the corner of this disco-converted parlor of the host's floor-through, a group of young women in colorful dresses stood and mingled, peering into the fun, but forbidden to join. Out on the dance floor scared looks greeted one dervish. Even I was totally fooled. In a babushka and a gray-blue, tightly fitted but otherwise modest straight skirt, a not-so-young, pancake make-up laden brieh (creature of God) danced by herself in a frenzy, fear and condemnation from the onlookers swirling about her. The prize goes to the best drag queen of the evening. I should have asked her if she had lost the beauty contest to Queen Esther and was dancing away her disappointment. King Ahashueros (shades of the Donald...) held a beauty pageant when his queen, Vashti, refused to dance naked for his courtiers. Esther won her place on the throne.

Track after dance track exploded my eardrums, stomping and writhing, I'd dance all night long. Off in an anteroom jello-shots multiplied while onto the sun-porch we were urged by the locals. There a catered spread fit for a Shushan harem was served up by an Hispanic maid. The mix was fantastic, people and procas (stuffed cabbage). I had to enjoy a little bit of all: Chinese dumplings, beef keiebasa, brisket and chulent and salads galore. We fressed and we sampled, on beyond zebra. I name it a smorgas, definitely not bored

Ultimately, finally, we'd had our full serving, so out we stumbled to head back home. Thinking gypsy cabs would be cruising I stood forlornly at curbside on 13th Avenue a good ten minutes. Gornisht. (nothing, absolute zero) came along. My heart full, my desires sated, we clambered up the stairs at New Utrecht and 55th Street, just as a D-train roared out of the station. The chill night air assaulted us as we waited on the wind-swept platform. Inside, though my soul felt toasty warm.

Next year I'm a baln (Yiddish for "you can count me in"). And the next and the next, and all night long. Here's to Mordecai, Esther and Slivovitz. Ad D' Lo Yada is my new favorite song.

Hillbilly Kheyder

2010-08-05T16:29:00.000-07:00

August 1966. I'm fourteen years old, an acne-ridden, hook-nosed Jewish kid from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on the train to Jordan, a Greyhound bus neaded up north, alone through the summer night. My parents trusted me to spend an entire week wandering around New York on my own, staying with my uncle in his tiny rent-controlled apartment. I'd studied New York on Five Dollars a Day like I had my haftorah portion the summer before, imagining the sites I'd see, the sounds I'd hear, the smell of cheap chop suey and food-cart knishes. Pop art shows, Tompkins Square Park, Yonah Shimmel's, the Jewish Museum: all sounded delicious. I couldn't wait.

My longing to visit a place where Jewish was normal overwhelmed my senses. As we rolled along, I fitfully dozed. Several rows in front of me three old men sat kibbitzing: I could have sworn that Henry Roth, Alfred Kazin, and Chaim Potok were shmoozing in the dark as I escaped from goles, the Jewish diaspora. No more isolation among hordes of small-town rednecks. Nostalgia in its literal sense gripped me: up in the City, I'd be finally be home, walking streets paved with bagels and bialys, a yellow brick road topped with a shmeer. Fourteen years I'd wanderered in the desert, halvah in a vacuum-packed tin imported from New York my manna. Finally I'd taste freedom, look out upon the land of milk and honey masquerading as Times Square. Each small town bus stop along the way, reeked of Lucky Strikes, stale urine and lard-fried doughnuts. Off I'd clamber for a snack or a leak, shifting my burden, marking off the miles along the way, each tick another step towards my reward.

My New York uncle was an inveterate wannabe, his Eastern European parents not those he would have chosen. Our Crowd called to him. His Uncle Max had married IN, a poor, polite boy chosen by a rich yekke heiress to the Riverside Memorial Chapel fortune. The style of his aunt and uncle's Reconstructionist temple on West 86th Street was too liberal for Uncle Tinney, though, so on Saturday morning he escorted me to the ultimate place for a well-starched Jew. I sat next to his buttoned-up fastidiousness in a back pew of Fifth Avenue's Temple Emanu-El ,waiting in silent marble-trimmed splendor for the opening prayers. Suddenly, along with an unseen choir, the stentorian tones of an enormous organ bellowed forth. My gorge rose as the sound overwhelmed.me. Organs were for goyim. These rich folks weren't Jewish. Maybe this trip was all for nought..

It's 44 years later and I hear them cry: "You grew up in TENNESSEE ?" Over and over this happens to me, as if I were a remnant of the ten lost tribes. I mug with a flourish, presenting my profile to a new acquaintance who quickly sees that I was blessed with what is referred to in Yiddish as a noz fun ale nezer, a nose of noses. Growing up down South, things were pinkt farkert, 180 degrees different. A random young redneck would intone: "You're a Jeeeeew???" The uninitiated questioner, who, on average, was an 11-year old Southern Baptist boy, had never laid eyes on a card-carrying Hebrew before his chance encounter with me.

Half a century later, enormous ignorance still rules the day. My usual questioner, a New York-born person of Jewish extraction, has never, ever met a member of the tribe from an American city of less than 500,000, and finds it hard to believe that I am telling the truth about growing up among Baptists in a Southern Appalachian town. 30,000 souls inhabited Oak Ridge, with seventy houses of worship adorning its Bible Belt roads. That's twice the proportion in today's Tel Aviv.

Here are the Jews, shovels in hand, a handful of congregants of Temple Beth-El in 1953, at its red clay building site right off Michigan Avenue in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

That's my late God-mother, Ruth Carey (nee Goodstein), in the foreground, resting and smiling. Born in Sohocin, Poland, she was brought as a one-year old to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1921 with her older sister Ida. Her parents joined in operating a grocery store in a poor, racially mixed neighborhood, where Ruth's aunt and uncle already lived. Knoxville had a thriving Jewish community, two synagogues, one Reform and the other Orthodox, a Jewish community center, and an amateur Yiddish theater company producing classic works. Ruth married at age 16, a boy named Milton Carey (f/k/a Chodokoff) who arrived in 1936 on a train from New York. There he is, my beloved sandek, a slender sport, peeking out from the background in the photo. Milton and City College had gotten a divorce after he was caught shooting dice on campus. His home life on Fox Street in the Bronx had been miserable ever since his brother committed suicide and his bereaved mother took away Milton's violin. With jobs scarce in the pit of the Great Depression, what did Milton have to lose? He'd heard that TVA was hiring in Knoxville and got on a train.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee was farmland in 1942 when General Leslie Groves laid out the production facilities for the top-secret Manhattan Project. Remote and unknown, the area had the requisite heavy electrical power available from TVA's nearby Norris Dam to run the energy-intensive uranium enrichment equipment that would provide bomb-grade U-235 for the precious payload of the Enola Gay.

Built to order by Stone and Webster and the Army Corps of Engineers, Oak Ridge, as an army base, boasted one house of worship. The Chapel on the Hill stood in the center of town, where many denominations shared the space. Jews were lucky: their Sabbath needs conflicted with no one other than the Seventh Day Adventists (I'm unsure there were any in town during the War), and the Oak Ridge Jewish Congregation used the facility until 1953 when Milton, Ruth, and many other congegants pitched in and built a cinder-block all-purpose structure on government-owned land. My mother stayed away from the building site: with four children at home, ages 9 to 1 (I being the baby) and with my little brother almost born, her pick and shovel days were over for the nonce.

Hundreds of chemists and physicists were imported to Oak Ridge to assist in the war effort, my father one of them. The GI's on the training field in basic at Fort Benning were ordered to step forward if they'd had two years of college training in those fields. Several dozen men were from the northern urban Jewish neighborhoods. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo were well-represented during the Beth El Amidah, and a vibrant Jewish congregation, many of whose male members were kheyder-educated, substituted for the lack of family on the base. Add to that the wartime marriages of Southern Baptist girls who met Jewish GI's and we had a wonderful mix: Mary Ginsburg often led the charge at Hadassah meetings.

95% of the Oak Ridge kehilah were scientist families. Among the exceptions were Mel Sturm and his wife Fran, Jews born and raised in the Cumberland Gap area, Mel's family had a store in Jellico, TN, a coal-mining town up near the Kentucky border. Oak Ridge was considered remote enough for Army security when it was built, but Jellico was truly ek velt, the end of the earth. When the Cuban Missle Crisis hit in October, 1962 our local Civil Defense drills, Conelrad warning system alerts on the AM radio stations and the daily noon time air-raid siren whistle tests suddenly became deadly serious. Fidel Castro and Krushchev had their sites set on Oak Ridge, for sure. I didn't sleep for nights on end. The siren would blow on a school day, and we filed out of Elm Grove Elementary School lickety split, onto those yellow buses for a practice ride to safety, up in the "hollers" of Jellico, away from the deadly roentgens of Soviet ICBMs.

Kheyder, with its sadistic melamed, and rigorous instruction bore no relation to my Oak Ridge Hebrew school. No cat-o'-nine tailed kantchik hanging on the wall, no ears pulled, no bare-ass whippings. Learning was gentle in Oak Ridge Hebrew School, but limited by the lack of a professional teaching staff. Religious school was held two weekday afternoons and Sunday morning. Mollie Horn, the fire-plug mom of one of my classmates, would cruise by Elm Grove at 3:00 pm in her Buick 88 and stuff five or six of us in the front and back seats. The 5-minute drive to the shul included a mandatory stop at Jackson Square Pharmacy to load up on candy and gum. Learning wasn't happening without sugar up front.

Into the little classroom we poured, ten in my age group, five boys and five girls. Seating arrangements were de rigeur: the little girls sat quiet as churchmice in the back row. The vilde-khayes, wild animals masquerading as little boys, spread out in the front two rows, high on fructose, taunting the lay teacher's ardent efforts to instill in us some respect for Bible stories and teach us the aleph-beys. Then the recess-bell rang out. On rainy days, we'd wander the linoleum-tiled building corridors with our few minutes of freedom, congregating in the restroom with our World Over magazines rolled up like batons. One wise guy would douse the lights and we'd go after each other like Judah Maccabees, our batons twirling, hitting and beating til we all had enough. Sunny days were even wilder.

Temple Beth El sat in a sward of crabgrass, raggedly covering the Tennessee clay. Out in the yard recess was bedlam: a game called smearball ruled the day. Known up north as "kick the can," the rules are simple: The contestants form a wide circle and a piece of detritus is pitched in the middle. Shimshon Hagibur grabs the item and runs like hell, his pursuers mad after him, tackling him and piling on unless he's too fleet to be caught.

I was a wus at Beth El and in public school: I secretly cringed with guilt as my classmates taunted the teacher, and took my place in the smearball circle only to avoid total humiliation. Maybe once in five years did I actually steal the can and run. I was a spaz in common parlance. Boy was I glad when the recess bell rang again, calling us back to our classroom tasks..

Here we are on our way to Camp Judea, three of the better-behaved members of my Hebrew School class, me, Jackie Lawson and Freddy Kramer. It's late July, 1963. I'm eleven years old and it's my first time away from home. The Carolina Special took us over the mountains to Hendersonville, NC from the Sourthern Railway's station at Clinton, TN. I was scared but look hopeful. Little did I know what was in store.

Sadism was absent from my religious education. If anything the teachers were all too patient, almost desperate that the children grow up with some Jewish identity and connection to the past. Not so with Camp Judaea, though. Perhaps it was a case of a bad apple. It might as well have been Kasilryevke, 1884. Sholem Aleichem's evil Boaz the Melamed jumps to mind.

Waiting at the curb at the Hendersonville station was a counselor named Dick, a creep sadist momzer. Tall and lanky, he'd been sent to meet the train and escort the new campers back. The camp station wagon was a pale blue, wide-bodied Plymouth galleon with a speedometer display that filled little columns with a red indicator bar as each 10 mph mark was reached. We careened down the mountainous, two-land country roads at a death defying speed, the red columns pouring over into one another as we closed our eyes and prayed. Each crease in a little boy's brow was met with derision. Dick's face broke out in a shit-eating grin. Later, at riflery practice he'd come up and apply his bare knuckles to our crewcut heads, giving us a twist as he bore down with full force on our closely-cropped pates. "Here's a burr, you little pecker! Quit your shraying !! " Ron Patimkin's evil twin...

Trips to area sites like Sliding Rock were not conducted as they would be today. Fifty campers piled into the back of an open truck; wooden stockades formed the sides, no roof, no seats, not much at all. We'd hang on best we could as the truck barreled over the mountian roads. No seat belts, no safety. Luck of the Irish I guess, but no one got hurt.

Two weeks was plenty for me and camp. I was horribly homesick and couldn't compete. The toilets were stopped up, the bug juice intolerable. All I wanted was to go back home. Adding insult to injury, my crush on Myrna Jaffe had to be shared. Two years older and well-developed, Myrna wore a white sweater that beckons to this day. A Knoxville jeweler's daughter, a sun-tanned tsotske with a sweet Southern drawl. How I ached to investigate her knitting as we sat next to each other one evening at the outdoor showing of the Three Stooges Go to the Moon. Slowly I nestled my left arm around her back, investigating the upper middle where her bra strap would be. What was this! My trembling hand met an unwanted obstacle: on Myrna's other side sat a far handsomer suitor. Schvartskheynevdik Steve Meyers had the upper hand; instead of her bra strap, my hand encountered his. I cringed with fear. Steve might well beat the crap out of me after the movie. He was older and built like an ox. When the film ended, I took it on the lam like the Egyptian air force. I barely lived to tell the tale.

Next year back in Oark Ridge, bar and bas mitzvah preparation was intense. My class of ten kids all did the whole hog. No mere leyning from the Torah and a thank you Mom and Dad speech. Each kid in Oak Ridge learned to lead Shabbes services from Friday evening thorough Saturday musaf, memorizing every prayer by rote, learning the separate trop, the cantillation, for the Torah and Haftorah. No hotel parties, no rock bands, no dancing, no separate rooms for kids and adults. In Oak Ridge all was heymish; the mothers cooked for weeks in advance for each simkhe, freezing knishes, making pots of chopped liver. Once the final kaddish rang out on Saturday afternoon, the ark was securely fastened, and the folding chairs were rearranged around tables on the shul floor. One, two, three, a banquet for 120 appeared.

Two instructors guided our bar and bas mitzvah learning. Joe Spector was a community teacher without rabbinic certification, but his learning was deep and his basso voice like a trombone's. American-born and urban kheyder-educated, Joe trained us all in the haftorah trop. The rest was left to the rabbi, Alexander Gelberman, an old-school European-born authoritarian, whose stay in Oak Ridge neared the end of his road. With limited funds and well in the hinterlands, Oak Ridge's congregation was not the first choice for many with smikhes. Several times we resorted to accepting a recent graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary whose stipend in New York required two years of post-graduate service in the boondocks. Those conscripts beat it back to civilization as soon as their debts to society were paid. Gelberman was close to retirement age when he gave up a position in New Castle, PA. Heaven knows the circumstances nor the choices he had, but his stay in Oak Ridge was't easy for him.

Hazzones was Rabbi Gelberman's specialty, and in a Litvak bel canto fortified beforehand with a liberal shpritz from an atomizer that surely was filled with molten chicken shmaltz, the Rebbeh would regale the congregation with traditional melodies, his voice reaching ever-higher in divine aspiration, while the khutspehdik bar-mitzveh boys winced and smirked. We'd wheel our heads around, sitting in the back row of the shul, searching for any place to rest our gaze except the Rebbe's carried-away face. Often as not we'd fix our gaze on the electric yizkor placque, remarkably unadorned with nameplates, its dozens of still-empty sockets staring at us like the vacant eyes of a corpse. Yhe molokh ha moves lurked inside each one.

Death was far away, though, especially to a 12-year old. The congregation was formed during the War and few grandparents or parents of congregants moved to the town to be close to their offspring. Virtually none of my Hebrew school class had ever visited the Jewish section of the local graveyard. Life was in front of us, we weren't afraid.

The absence of connections to the land and the distance from family, albeit one in gantsn meshugeh, bred in me a fierce desire, to find some roots, a place to be Jewish, where it felt comfortable and good. New York beckoned, as later did Yiddish, and I left behind a graveyard, then empty. That was 1969.

It's a very long time since the late 1960s. New York's been a brukhe for me,on a stick. Add Yiddish, I've learned it, and I feel very different. I carry it with me wherever I go. Now when I visit what the hevrah kadishe has accomplished, I feel somehow peaceful, though Oak Ridge is more Christian fundamentalist than ever before. Despite lacking religious belief, I feel the ground sacred, my footing much surer, knowing inside, my right to belong. Gone is the pain and fear of the anti-Semitism that informed every day of my boyhood down south. I've lived for 40 years in a place that supports me. New York is my shtetl. Feet first out I'll go. But hillbilly kheyder gave me direction. Those voices and accents provided a goal. For that I am grateful. My bus ride is over. I've finally, finally found my way home.

WHAT'S IN A NAME ?

2010-03-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

[Author’s Note: This essay, like several I’ve written, is liberally sprinkled with Yiddish words, transliterated with English letters via the standard system adopted by the YIVO Institute many decades ago. In most places I’ve translated the word(s) in a parenthetical immediately thereafter].

WHAT'S IN A NAME ? goes the popular refrain. Redolence, I say. Taste and smell. When I encounter something delicious, I’m often tempted to take a Dagwood-sized bite. Sometimes, though, caution dictates just a nibble. Especially when I walk through a burial ground.

Fear whacked me right in the face as I ventured across Richmond Avenue in Graniteville, Staten Island a few weeks ago. Don’t Walk cried the red khamsa (five-fingered hand) on the street corner, warning me not to dare scurrying across the newly-paved boulevard on my way into Baron de Hirsch Cemetery. Graveyards can be creepy places, filled with sadness and prematurely-ended lives. Unkempt lots and forgotten tombstones, vandalized memorials fill so many Jewish graveyards. I already knew my destination to be no exception.

It’s another country out there. The sidewalks were empty; cars rule the road in the land where John McCain carried the day. I walked past Castellano’s House of Music, its cheesy signs blaring ads for wannabe metal-heads who amp up their Fenders and pound on trap sets all over Richmond County, dreaming Springsteen sugarplum dreams. Salinger’s “DeDaumier Smith’s Blue Period” somehow comes to mind. New York City overflows with strange juxtapositions: across the street from this local Juilliard sits stone-cold quiet Baron de Hirsch Cemetery, with its thousands of permanent residents.

Founded by the philanthropy of its British railroad-magnate namesake, the burial ground is home to the sacred plots of dozens of Jewish burial societies. Many were part of landsmanshaft (homeland kinship) societies, owned by the benevolent organizations of immigrants from Eastern European cities and towns. Chernigov, Pistyn, Tysmienica, and many, many others are represented in force. Other societies served vanished Jewish congregations from Hudson County, New Jersey. The ner tamid, the Eternal Light, long ago flickered out behind the pulpits of nearby synagogues: Gone are the congregations of Tifereth Israel of Jersey City, ditto, Adas Israel of Bayonne.

Novigroder Young Mens Benevolent Association - Erected August 30, 1918

Jews were joiners: from the earliest days of the Eastern European immigration, the drive to assimilate, to become all-rightniks, was a monstrous thirst, slaked by becoming part of a club. The burial societies give witness: The stone gates list, in Yiddish and English, the names and titles of the many. Despite the ocean voyage, (most times in steerage) at the sweatshop you were still a galley slave; nothing had really changed since the era of Pithom and Ramses. But here, in America, you could be someone: an officer, a dues-payer, a member in good standing. Deracination barreled ahead. International organizations that admitted Jewish chapters are well represented at Baron de Hirsch. The Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias chartered many Hebrew lodges. Officers, past and present, gate committee members, recording secretaries, financial secretaries: all are listed, their yikhes (pedigree) recorded.

The persecution, both economic and religious, that drove so many millions of Jews from Eastern Europe to America, also tarred them with the name of anarchists. Belief in Jewish complicity in events such as the infamous 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square bombing was widespread. Left-wing Jewish agitators in Europe and the USA were a mortal danger to those of the chosen people who wanted nothing to do with socialist politics. So names were chosen to cloak the many centrist tailors with the flag. The William McKinley Benevolent Association at Baron de Hirsch is only one example. Daniel Webster, James A. Garfield and other Americans of unquestionable patriotism and integrity were embraced whole-hog, everything but the treyf (un-kosher) squeal put to good use. I wonder if the old Yankee Doodles would have minded had they known to what assimilatory advantage their good names would be put?

In Honor of Di Goldene Medine, The Golden Land

Nearby the cemetery, the arching Bayonne Bridge leads from nowheresville to ek velt (the end of the world): Bayonne, New Jersey is literally a corner, a narrow peninsula jutting out into Newark Bay. A bridge of sighs to the world to come, this graceful steel span carried countless funeral processions that led across the Kill Van Kull from Hudson County to the Staten Island final resting ground. In the late 19th and early and mid-20th centuries, Bayonne was home to a significant Jewish population. Who knew?

Three times I’ve visited Baron de Hirsch in the past 18 months. What draws me back there? It’s the promise of uncovering unknown histories, revivifying lives that are lost to our collective memory. And in some sense connecting to relatives I never knew. Just this past visit I stared grimly at one of the freshest graves, a polished black granite tombstone of a Soviet Jew named Alexander Dikshteyn, containing his portrait, photo-etched on the stone.

Their custom seems so un-Jewish to me, but among secular Jews there is long precedent. In Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens, one sees porcelain photo medallions on many graves, sadly deteriorated after seventy and more years of weather. But then I was put off by a different reason... The unfortunate Russian’s first day on earth was all too familiar: June 24, 1952. Intimations of mortality shivered through my frame. That’s my birthday. Maybe this whole project was DOA.

I fought back, though: riches beyond measure were strewn all over; each society’s plot a mystery of place and affiliation to be untangled from the vines of neglect. Inscriptions in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, Russian, even the Albanian tongue, decorate the stones and portals of fenced spaces. Cyrillic and Arabic effloresce on many of the newer markers. Ashkenazic Jews have not dominated the count of daily interments in Baron de Hirsch in many years.

In A Field Not Far From The Tower of Babel ...

Despite the wilderness of unkempt gravesites, this sacred Jewish resting ground is covered with a holy cloth. Much like the gold-trimmed, wine-velvet fabric that bedecks the table on which Torah scrolls are laid to be read in the synagogue, a blanket of history covers the entire site. No matter the six-foot tall reeds that obscure all stones in the most-neglected plots; no problem the broken, un-mended gravesites: The dishabille of the place amidst the brilliant autumn colors sharpened my eyes and then delivered a huge reward.

Tkhies hameysim, the raising of the dead, can be done with very large groups. At Baron de Hirsch, whole populations can be levitated. Jewish bagel bakers rose before my eyes. How many years have gone by since they did it, unionized Jewish men, in numbers great enough to organize, baking our favorites, forming a lodge?

The day before my Staten Island visit I’d come across a listing of archives of fraternal organizations at the YIVO archives. One title stood out, almost laughable in these times. Ershte Beygl Beker Krankn Untershtitsung Farayn. First Bagel Bakers Sick and Benevolent Society. Warm aromas filled the air: Poppyseed, Salt, Garlic, Everything: Perhaps I could find a remnant of this group’s existence. My question would be answered: What’s in a name?

Then next day I returned and walked the cemetery, totally naïve, unsuspecting, then boom ! A piece of mazl (good luck) came my way: Leaning against the granite columns at the entrance to the plots of the United Varshaver Sick Benefit Society were three rusted iron gates, a pair and an odd one. The single belonged there, the other two not. The entrance to the world to come which the matched pair guarded lay immediately across the path. The name on the iron mirrored the inscription of the pediment cater-corner: Ershte Beygl Beker Krankn Untershtitsung Farayn, The First Bagel Bakers Sick and Benevolent Society.

Before the 1937 formation of Bagel Bakers Union Local 338, smaller organizations served the needs of this critical trade. Bagel bakers belonged to Locals 505, 507 and 509 of the larger Bakery Worker’s Unions. Jewish Bakers Associations were organized in the Bronx and Brownsville Brooklyn. Membership meetings of many groups were held in downtown halls where not a trace remains today of their glorious union past.

Local 31 of the Jewish Bakers Union was formed on the Lower East Side in 1885, but it was short lived, even after its resurrection in 1890. It’s no wonder a sick and benevolent society was needed. Bagel bakeries on the Lower East were basement gehennas of filth and squalor, where the men labored bare-chested among roaches and mice fourteen hours a day. The heat, fatigue and germs surely shortened many bakers’ lives. For $665 the First Beigel Bakers Kranken Unterstuetzungs Verein of 145 Suffolk Street acquired a place in the country for its members to take a final break. Section G, Lots 1100-1109 would be the site, Baron de Hirsch the resting place.

1937 saw the formation of Local 338, its offices located at 111 East Houston Street (sadly now demolished) and at other times at 121 University Place. Membership in Local 338 was nepotistic. Sons and other male relatives were accommodated. Others not. Closely affiliated with the United Hebrew Trades movement and other large-scale labor organizations, Local 338 pushed hard to make all bagel bakeries union shops. The invention of bagel-baking machinery and the rise of Lenders Bagels in West Haven, CT in mid-century spelled the end of Local 338, though. An industrial irrelevancy, its remnants merged with Bakery Workers Local 3 in the early 1970s.

Ledger of Westchester Branch Bagel Bakers Union Local 507, Yonkers NY: 1938

From the Forverts, n.d.: "Bagel Bakers Boss Leybovitz Has Settled With the Union" - The Bagel Bakers Union Local 338 makes known that the protracted strike against Boss Leybovitz from the Rockaway Bagel Company is settled with a victory for the union. Boss Leybovitz, whose bakery is located at 4814 Rockaway Boulevard, Rockaway Beach, has signed a contract with the union agreeing to all the union requirements....

The names on the Bagel Bakers' tombstones smelled as rich and tasty as the dough they rolled: M. Stein, Helk Ziperstein, Yankev Shoykhid (a misspelling of shoykhet?: Jewish kosher slaughterer) Where did these men live? How long were their days? Did they love to play pinochle? Bet on horses or drink?

I’ll keep working the archives for some answers, but next time I visit the graveyard, I’m taking precautions: I’ll carry a box of Sterling Kosher Salt. Every three steps I’ll stop and pour some. A handful to throw over my shoulder like my elterbobe (my old great-grandmother) did for good luck. Dusk was falling as I walked along Baron de Hirsch’s Section G paths. It was nearly closing time when I spotted bagel baker Harry Fertel’s stone. Again, a chill grabbed me. “Maybe I should high-tail it outta here,” I said to myself quietly. Harry Fertel died the day I was born.

Acknowledgements:

For intellectual guidance on the broadest scale in the preparation of this article and ongoing inspiration I am indebted to my friend Benjamin Sadock. His contributions to this effort are second only to the guidance and support of my wonderful wife and partner of 32 years, Frances Stern. I am also tremendously grateful to Baron de Hirsch Cemetery’s brilliant and kind Superintendent and General Manager Raphael Bochbot, to Leo Greenbaum, chief archivist at YIVO, Larry Gutterman of Gutterman's Funeral Home of Bayonne, NY and the members of HudsonJewish.org who so rapidly assisted me in my research; to Gail Malmgreen, Associate Head for Archival Collections and her staff at Tamiment Library/ Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU, and authors Matthew Goodman (at work on a screenplay about Local 338 and bagel making in general) and Maria Galinska (who just published a marvelous account of that most Jewish of foods entitled simply The Bagel.

A Pesach's Worth

2010-03-02T15:25:00.000-08:00

The Passover holidays are upon us at the end of March and I've some urgent business to transact. Does anyone know how to get in touch with the Bureau of Weights and Measures of the Yiddish-speaking nation? Time is short ! Perhaps I'd best apply to the French Academy of Sciences for my particular need. Pesach calls out for special assistance, and I've no Talleyrand to help me promulgate a slight revision to the metric system...

Like so many of my fellow tribe-members, I buy matzoh once a year, one of those giant five-pound boxes. I feel so rich as I cart it home. Pesach brings such special pleasures; the absence of leavened bread is more than recompensed. Our forefathers wandered in the desert, delicious manna sustaining them, but in modern times we have better in store: Butter slathered on a sheet or two of Streit's or Manischewitz is an out of body treat, even better when the lumpy sheets are strewn with a devilish measure of salt.

I'm feeling a bit cautious, though, now in my late 50s. I know that some margarines are far healthier than butter. Salt is a no-no. I'm in a box. This year it's time to make a deal with the Almighty, start buying myself some extra time. I'll procure a container of canola oil margarine and spread it on. But no salt, not a crystal, and eight days and it's gotta be ALL gone, all crumbs removed and the tub licked clean. Being an olive oil fanatic for my morning toast, I can't abide leftovers when the holiday is over. Here stands the problem with which I need help. Waste is a shandeh, and those Country Crocks look huge ! How do I garner the right size tub?

My proposal is simple, illustrated below: the first know photographic recording of a "Pesach'sworth." The term is destined for universal application: defined by the exact quantity of margarine necessary to evenly spread on 24 sheets of matzoh (breakfast plus a snack, you know, all eight days of the holiday).

Once accepted by the authorities, I expect my new standard to far outlast other now obscure Biblical references: cubit, arshin, their memories long gone. Almost 6000 years of Jewish history and only the shekel is still around. Perhaps I'd better start buttering them up, greasing a few palms in the sanctum sanctorum where such matters are weighed. Help me out !! Talk it up and we'll be victorious; no moldering tubs of oleo in our post-Passover fridges in years to come. Tell General Foods, Kraft, the FDA: there's a new sheriff in town and all food industry giants better behave. A Pesach's worth gets added to your grocer's dairy shelf. Screw the bar code and UPC: we have a higher purpose. Eat and be merry. Mighty Pharaoh is long gone....

Come Hear Me Perform at The Mid-Manhattan Public Library Thursday March 4th - 6:30 pm - Free Admission !

2010-02-19T10:02:00.000-08:00

January READINGS !!!

2009-12-30T05:24:00.001-08:00

PLEASE attend one or both of the upcoming early January readings for my recent book "Call Me Daddy - Babes and Bathos in Edward West Browning's Jazz-Age New York."

I will be co-presenting with author Michael Greenburg whose "Peaches and Daddy" also appeared earlier this year. Our joint programs are:

Sunday January 10, 2010: Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery near Bleecker Street) 2:00-3:30 pm

Monday January 11, 2010: Mid-Manhattan Public Library (Fifth Avenue and 40th Street) 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

IN ADDITION, I WILL BE READING something completely different AT A SOONER EVENT AT THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON JANUARY 3RD STARTING AT 2:00 PM: My friend Steve Zeitlin, head of City Lore and New York writing workshop leader par excellence is holding his annual New Year's reading of New Yoirk Stories. I will read a piece entitled "Satan's Utensil, or My Palm is My Pilot," a tale of one of my wanderings in Hasidic Williamsburg and an unexpected find on a broadside plastered to a wall near Marcy Avenue...

Please join us for these !

Thanks and HAPPY NEW YEAR !

The Great Unwashed

2009-12-17T15:02:00.001-08:00

Walk the moonscape of far East 38th Street today: the sidewalks are empty, devoid of life, though the streets hum and clog with traffic at rush hours as the entrances and exits to the Queens Midtown Tunnel spill forth. Those who emerge from the taxis and limos are well-scrubbed, their private baths drawn and terry robes donned. Toilettes in the neighborhood were not always this way. Where once, sidewalk games filled the air and factory whistles shrilled their shifts, not a trace remains of life as it was, circa 1900. Close your eyes and imagine the Gashouse District. It’s open to question if improvements have come.

The ultra high-rise Corinthian apartment house and an unused, sterile First Avenue garden frontage dominate its 38th Street block. 50 years back, the pavement roared with smoke-spewing buses headed in and out of the old East Side Airlines Terminal, bound for Idlewild.

The express truck warehouse at the northwest corner of First Avenue was long ago converted to office uses, and at # 325 a mauve-brick building houses the Philippine mission to the United Nations, its several street-side entrances hinting of a former use.

Few remnants exist in these northerly reaches of what was known for over a century as the Gashouse District. Con Ed’s Waterside generating station, torn down for Sheldon Solow’s latest and greatest development, stood among coal-gas storage tanks across the Avenue that decorated much of the East Side in the 20s and 30s, between the East River and First Avenue.

1899 Map of the Area

Tenements covered many of the small lots in the East 30s from 1890 onwards. Their residents found employment just yards from their vestibules: the Hupfels brewery and the Hoffman Cigar factory were two of the largest non-energy enterprises near # 325. As late as 1899, many lots in the immediate vicinity either vacant or the site of ramshackle wooden structures devoted to low-skill industrial or agricultural uses. Abbatoirs and packing houses filled the streets just north of 42nd Street from the early 1850s until the United Nations was constructed in 1952.

Take a sharp-pointed trowel and dig into the architraves over the identical doorways to # 325. Your efforts would yield a clue of the building’s former importance to its neighbors. These separate men’s and women’s entrances meant sanitary facilities, back in the day. A turn of the century photo from the Byron Studio tells the tale:

Barefoot and filthy, a bareheaded boy in ill-fitting, unbelted knickers stares at the camera, standing on the sidewalk in front of # 325 on a late afternoon in 1904. His pals surround him, a lone, braided girl striding by. Perhaps they're taunting him, the two youngsters in sailor frocks and nautical caps standing around him, somewhat better off. On the stoop of #325 a gaggle of boys roosts, sporting skimmers, pushing at the western entrance door to the building, their school day at nearby P.S. 49 finally over. In the distance, the iron superstructure of the 2nd Avenue elevated train,appears (demolished in 1942), along with a gas-lit street-lamp. All we see in the photo is long gone excepting #325, its history and origins obscured by the years, a rare remnant amongst today's icy glitter.

Although the city government began assuming responsibility for the construction of desperately needed public bathhouses in poor neighborhoods at the turn of the 20th century, private philanthropy did not abandon the public bath movement.

Water closets in hallways and simple taps in the kitchens were the most that could be expected in many late 19th century tenements in New York. Bathing was only possible by filling tin bathtubs from the kitchen tap, a cumbersome procedure in crowded and busy flats. A once a week full body was custom and practice, and many went without for longer periods of time.

Hollow-eyed faces and clothes hanging off gaunt frames cover the photo of the interior of the men's waiting room at the Milbank Baths, also taken by the Byron Studio in 1904. At the right, men wait in line, bowlers askew and towels in hand, while to their left, younger men cover the benches waiting their turn. A NYPD cop in a "bobby" hat stands guard in the back of the room, his stern visage insuring order among the handle-bar mustachioed fellows in the hall, 30 years of age and under for the most part.

In June 1902, Elizabeth Milbank Anderson announced that she would donate a public bath, to be built on a 50 by 98-foot lot on East 38th Street (# 325) on behalf of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (the "AICP"). Anderson was heiress to one of the founders of the Borden Condensed Milk Company and was a leading New York philanthropist. During her lifetime she donated approximately $5 million to various institutions, with Barnard College as the chief beneficiary. The bathhouse which she donated, known as the Milbank Memorial Bath, opened in January 1904. A large and imposing facility, it cost $140,000 to build and could accommodate 3,000 bathers daily. The AICP also built The People's Baths at 9 Centre Market Place, across the street from the new castle-like headquarters of the New York Police Department. In 1914, after a canvass of the neighborhood, the AICP established a wet-wash laundry at the Milbank bath.

Mrs. Anderson (1850-1921) and her brother, Joseph Milbank, inherited an eight figure fortune, rumored to be as much as $32,000,000, in equal shares from their father. Jeremiah Milbank, whose success in his Front Street Grocery burgeoned into a fortune based on milk dsitribution and banking. Married at age 3thirty-seven to artist A.A. Anderson (whose studio was located in the roccoco Bryant Park Studio building that still stand on the south side of Bryant Park on the 6th Avenue corner), Mrs. Anderson donated a large share of her inheritance to charity. She and her husband lived on East 38th Street also, but at the fashionable 5th Avenue end. Their residence at 6 East 38th Street undoubtedly included more than enough plumbing to avoid even the servants needing to use their mistress' charity facility near the East River docks. Her largesse also included deeding three and one-half acres of prime Morningside Heights land between Claremont Avenue and Broadway from 116th to 119th Streets to Barnard College for construction of the Milbank Quadrangle at the northern end of the campus as well as Milbank Hall thereon, in memory of her mother Elizabeth Lake Milbank. Millions more were given to Barnard and to Teachers College of Columbia University to fund science instruction for women and other academic purposes.

Money could not buy everything, though: In 1892, Elizabeth tried to impose her friend Dr. Francis Kinnicutt (Secretary of the Children's Aid Society) as the director of a new medical pavilion at The Roosevelt Hospital, with his successor to be chosen by the "medical staff" of Columbia University, Roosevelt demurred, and the donation was aborted. The Milbank name is ensconced in the annals of New York philanthropy, physical reminders ever present in Morningside Heights and elsewhere in the metropolitan region. 105 years after its founding, funds originally provided by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson continue to support the operations of the Milbank Memorial Fund, which, according to its website "is an endowed operating foundation that works to improve health by helping decision makers in the public and private sectors acquire and use the best available evidence to inform policy for health care and population health.

What we take for granted today in New York for all but our poorest and usually homeless residents was once neither easy nor commonplace. The very basis of public health, a daily bath, and clean laundry facilities were made available to legions of Gashouse District residents by the Milbank largesse. It's hard to believe when one stands on the sidewalk. #325's stoops once teemed with needy visitors. Today they're all but silent. Imagine those days.

The Return of "A Rite of Return" - Part 6 herewith !

2009-06-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

The internet is a marvelous thing, and thus a few months ago, more than two years after I started this series of pieces about an 1870 expense book kept by a young man in NYC unknown to me, but later identified as Henry Knight Dyer, I was contacted by a gentleman from the midwest with what I hesitate to say is "priceless" information. In fact it was filled with Price, my generous informant being married into the Price family, that of Henry Dyer's mother Emma Price, and perhaps also his wife, Caroline Price Dyer. I had long ago lost the trail of the Price family, and have not published on this matter in 32 months to the day.

Herewith are photos of Henry Knight Dyer's mother and father (Samuel Owen Dyer), both mistakenly captioned "Byer." My correspondent's connection with the Price family makes the provenance of these photos indisputable.

Emma's christening record is as follows, taken from

England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906 Source Citation: Place: St. Saviors, Southwark, Gravel Lane, Surrey, Eng; Collection: Dr. William's Library; Nonconformist Registers; Date Range: 1820 - 1820; Film Number: 816019. Source Information: Ancestry.com. England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2008. Original data: Genealogical Society of Utah. British Isles Vital Records Index, 2nd Edition. Salt Lake City, Utah: Intellectual Reserve, copyright 2002. Used by permission.

Description: This database contains information extracted from birth and christening records from various counties in England and Wales. The records date from 1530 to 1906. The records included in this database do not represent all localities in England and Wales and for any given area, coverage (both records within a year and total year range) may not be complete. Some parishes and counties are more complete than others.

Name: Emma Price Gender: Female Birth Date: 14 Sep 1820 Christening Place: St. Saviors, Southwark, Gravel Lane, Surrey, England

Father's Name: James Price Mother's Name: Elizabeth Maternal Grandfather's Name: William Hunt. Maternal Grandmother's Name: Elizabeth

****

Samuel Dyer's obituary was published in the New York Times on April 3, 1894; Henry Knight Dyer was at the peak of his career when his father passed away, still residing at the 76 Quincy Street address in Bedford Stuyvesant near the younger Dyer's palatial residence on Lefferts Place.

Sauce for the Goose...

2009-05-31T05:34:00.000-07:00

...is the title of my latest undertaking, an essay and perhaps a book in the making about a strange breach of promise (i.e. marriage contract) case that dominated New York City's newspapers during early July 1835. A so-called gentleman named George G. Barnard, of Hudson, NY, sued his erstwhile correspondent lover, Mary Power, a hometown rich girl, who had suddenly broken off their engagement after a many-year courtship. James Gordon Bennett, founder of the newborn New York Herald, took great umbrage at Barnard's nervy attempt to extort money from the young woman, who had despatched Barnard in favor of a man with better prospects.

I'm presenting a paper about it all early in June in Plattsburgh, NY at the annual conference of the New York State Historical Association, and speaking elsewhere in the metro area thereon this summer.

Read all about it in my new website Sauce for the Goose... at http://sauce4thegoose.blogspot.com/

UPCOMING EVENTS...

2009-04-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Please join me at the following events where I will be the featured speaker:

On Sunday April 26, 2009 at 4:00 p.m.I am the guest speaker at the annual membership meeting of Historic Hudson in Hudson NY at the old Cannonball Factory at 4th and Columbia Streets. Historic Hudson is a history and architectural preservation organization. The topic is my latest large project, a strange breach of promise case from 1835 in which a tradesman sued in NYC and won a judgment against a wealthy young woman (both Hudson born and bred) after she blew him off for a suitor with "better prospects." Take a look at Historic Hudson's gorgeous website at http://www.historichudson.org/

I am presenting a paper on the breach of promise case at the annual summer conference of the NY State Historical Association, on June 5, 2009 in Plattsburgh, NY.

On Sunday July 12, 2009 I will give a talk about my newly published book Call Me Daddy - Babes and Bathos in Edward West Browning's Jazz-Age New York at the historic Warren and Wetmore Chapel at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Check back for time (early afternoon) and telephone number for reservations (HIGHLY recommended).

I am the resident guest lecturer on all of my projects at Circle Lodge Camp in Dutchess County, NY for three days in late July this year, July 20-22. For further information about the camp, take a look at www.circle.org and the summer camp brochure at http://circle.org/files/CL2009.pdf

I am the invited guest speaker at the Woodstock Havurah at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday July 18, 2009.

STARTING OUT...

2009-04-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

It's April 22, 2009 the birthday of my blog about the City that I love so deeply. Inside and from time to time you'll read essays and see images that I've collected and created over four decades of a blessed love affair. I welcome hearing from you and broadening the net of information and personal contacts that make creating and sharing this passion so wonderful for all of us.

One of the first items I offered in 2006 (n.b. the works are presented newest first on these pages !) was an essay about the closing of the Fulton Fish Market in New York. I've called it a cultural crime. I can't think of a more fitting word for an act (albeit "progressive" and certainly in the best interests of health in the food chain), that I nonetheless feel impoverished us terribly. I lost a family member when the market closed. More dear to me than some of my blood relatives, if the truth be told. I don't think I'll ever recover.

There are many essays and photos about my interests in Yiddish language culture. I learned to speak, read and write Yiddish fluently over the past 5 years. Though not an observant Jew, and most decidedly secular and left-wing in my outlook on life, I relish my adventures in Borough Park and Williamsburg, where I wander now comfortably, at least in the linguistic sense. Crossing the bridge of language is always a wonderful journey. This one is special for me, as it involves making oneself understood and establishing human contact across a cultural divide that is almost unfathomable, in a tongue whose warmth and expressiveness is like no other.

Since Memorial Day 2000 I've spent thousands of hours researching and writing a definitive history of a now long-forgotten 1857 murder case that dominated the newspapers in that tumultuous year, much as OJ Simpson did in our times. The grusesome death of Dr. Harvey Burdell in his dental clinic captivated the minds of New Yorkers, and the trial of his ex-lover, Emma Augusta Hempstead Cunningham set the City on fire.

Quite a few years back, my older brother passed on to me a little leather bound expense book and diary from 1870 that he found when he was cleaning out the house of his late in-laws. The book belonged to a then 24-year old single man. I was intrigued by the contents, a day-by-day account of the expenses and activities of its author, but had no clue as to his identity or later life. I read the book quickly and put it aside, knowing that one day I would return to the mystery of it all. I've finally found the time to do it, and once again, I've been swept away. A more careful perusal of the pages has set me on a rich path. Yesterday's trip to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and to the author's homesite in Bedford Stuyvestant from his later years have set my mind on fire. As the project develops, I'll share not only what I find out about Mr. Henry K. Dyer (b. 1847 in Manhattan, d. 1911 in Brooklyn), but also the joy and pleasure that the whole process brings to me.

Lastly, (for now...) I'll add items of linguistic and my wider personal intellectual interests to this blog, many of which will have little apparent relation to New York City history. It's all of a fabric, mind you, that piecing together of history. The larger framework informs my life each day with what makes life worth living: the blending of memory and anticipation is who I am, and words are its motive force.

I hope you enjoy what I offer up.

Ben Feldman

A guide to my posts re Yiddish-land

2009-01-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

For those of you who show up looking for my essays about Yiddish culture, old and new, here is a list of links to same:

Ad D'Lo Yada http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2010/08/ad-dlo-yada-til-one-doesnt-know.html

Hillbilly Kheyder http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2010/08/hillbilly-kheyder.html

Into the Promised Land http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/06/into-promised-land.html

Satan's Utensil, or My Palm is My Pilot http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2007/12/satans-utensil-or-my-palm-is-my-pilot.html

What if God Were One of Us http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-if-god-were-one-of-us.html

Glossolalia http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2007/01/glossolalia.html

Dressed to Kill - Part I http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/10/dressed-to-kill-part-1.html

Dressed to Kill - Part II http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/10/dressed-to-kill-part-2.html

Cold Storage http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2010/08/cold-storage.html

The World to Come http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/07/world-to-come.html

I'll Take the Portobello...

2008-10-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

Famously mad for most of his adult life, scholars have long attributed George III’s apparent mental illness to repeated bouts of porphyria. Frequent incapacitations blackened his 60-year reign, and the ardent efforts of the royal physicians with what today seem dubious remedies probably only worsened the sovereign’s health. Towards the end of his life, legend has it that every sentence out of the King’s mouth ended with the word “peacock.” One wonders what that was all about... I’ve done some research, though, and taken a trip. It turns out G3 and I were swapped at birth…

Madness can be induced in many ways. Mine certainly was exacerbated by the sudeen and unexpected death of my father when I was 37 years old. Tragedy struck our family on the morning of March 1, 1990 when my father keeled over from a stroke. Bereft, I wandered in a haze, halting in mid-step, bearings lost. It was dangerous for me to cross the street without first thinking how to accomplish the task at hand. A year and a half passed in that bell jar, my mother, Rose, even worse off than I. The dozens of hours I spent on the phone with her long distance from New York to Tennessee served mostly to just make my own pain effloresce. What could I do to distract we two?

A trip to London might make sense, and when I mentioned it to her, it was like offering a cup of water to a woman who’d crawled on her hands and knees through a parched desert for days on end. The distraction of the trip would serve two purposes, comforting her, and taking me away from New York. My whole world was on fire, New York City the locus delicti where I’d carried on an extra-marital affair for a few months the previous fall, yet to become known to my wife and children. I felt rotten inside and seethed with pain.

It was summer, 1992. London teemed with American tourists, the dollar being especially strong. Shopping seemed a pleasant distraction if Rose were otherwise occupied, so one steaming June day I trotted off among the antiques and collectibles stalls in Camden Passage and in the melee of Portobello Road. The mix of dowagers and Johnny Rotten look-alikes among my fellow browsers interested me just as much as the off-price bric-a-brac that bedecked folding tables in the crowded streets. A mesmerizing foreignness from even the most ordinary late 19th and early 20th century junk exuded from the strange labels of perfume phials, ceramic liniment jars, old pessary cases and the like. My legs ached and my brain fogged up after a few hours of meandering, but I pressed onward, looking for something truly rare.

Though reluctant to enter the enclosed stores that lined Portobello Road and adjacent side streets, my foray into one jeweler’s shop paid a magnificent reward. I’ve always been magnetically drawn to the finest things in a dealer’s showcase. There lay a doozie: I asked to see an enameled medallion in the British royal colors, 3.5 cm in diameter, nestled in a silk-lined, antique velvet-clad case.

The shopkeeper handed me the open casket, and I gingerly removed the item, my breath almost ceasing as I marveled at the brilliance of the cloisonné-like perfection of intermingled colors. Inscribed in gold above a crimson-trimmed crown were three words that explain the medal’s provenance: “REGI * AMATO * REDUCI” adorned the field. Under the crown in elegant script, with an ornate capital G to the left and R to the right, the royal headwear sat atop a florid “VIVAT III,” attesting to the maker’s and wearer’s ardent sentiments that George III enjoy a full recovery, as declared by Parliamentary proclamation on the date that adorned a navy blue field at the bottom edge: “MART X MDCCLXXXIX.”

Some items one simply must own. This exemplar had to be mine. Outside in the stalls, bargaining was de rigeur, despite the genteel British customs. Indoors seemed quite a different story, though. I imagined bad luck if I quibbled over pence and pounds. It’s sixteen years later and the receipt is misplaced, but I remember what I forked over. The sterling equivalent of $700 was a lot of money to me then. It still is now, but I’m glad I sprang for it. I’ve gotten my money’s worth many times over.

“Love Cured the King” says the medal (in loose translation). Queen Charlotte is said to have been uncommonly devoted to the care and nursing of her illness-plagued consort. When the royal physicians declared George well on February 26, 1789, and after Parliament’s proclamation twelve days later, the Queen had several of these medallions privately fashioned and presented them to her favorite courtiers. Fanny Burney, Keeper of the Robes, recorded in her diary gifts to herself and Lord Harcourt in the early months of that year. A thanksgiving service was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on April 23rd which the King attended, but out of concern for his health, he did not participate fully in the Recovery Balls that were held throughout England at private gentlemen’s clubs like the still-extant Brooks, and at fetes sponsored by foreign members of the diplomatic corps. The French and Spanish ambassadors vied to outdo each other, with the Iberian claiming victory when his guest list swelled to 2000, more than double the Gallic count.

****************

Two hundred years after that last quadrille, I held the Recovery Medallion in my hand, knowing that I could not leave the shop without it, though its cost would blow my budget sky high. My need for an amulet was as deep as the ocean of pain in which I was swimming. Something tangible might help me to tread water, to bob in the waves in which I might well drown.

Sixteen years of shifting tides: my grief over my father’s death still resides in me, though not so much as in the early days of awe. The little jewel-box I brought home sits tucked in my wife’s upper dresser drawer. I open and check its contents now and again, touching that saddest of places I know. I rarely wear it out in public. It’s too decorative for my form. I had no idea of its precious provenance when I spied it in Portobello. But I knew it would help me get along. My wife cares about me as deeply as Queen Charlotte. I would come to know that, many moons on.

Turns out Queen Elizabeth has the same medal, displayed in Buckingham’s Royal Collection. She was crowned the year I was born. Perhaps I’ll stay sane, not die like old Georgie, out of his mind with a regent in charge. Regi Amato Reduci: let this be my motto. If I deserve it, let me be not foresworn...

"Call Me Daddy - The Life and Loves of Edward West Browning, New York's Jazz-Age Lecher King"

2008-09-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

The New York Wanderer Press is pleased to announce the May 2009 publication of its second title, Call Me Daddy - The Life and Loves of Edward West Browning, New York's Jazz-Age Lecher King. Take a gander at its website:

http://www.edwardwestbrowning.blogspot.com

A New Article by The New York Wanderer on The Gotham History Blotter

2008-08-05T09:43:00.001-07:00

Click here http://www.gothamcenter.org/features/blotter/index.shtml to read a new second article by me that CUNY's Gotham History Center recently published about a most unusual boyhood of an acquaintance of mine who grew up during the early years of the Cold War on a once-derelict cabin cruiser that was berthed in Inwood boatyards in the Harlem River from 1949-1958. "A Cold War Atlantis - A Boyhood Uptown" tells a story of a time and place that will open your eyes to a vanished world....

Ciao bella,

The NYW

Hevel Havolim: A Vanity Plate

2008-06-25T04:39:00.000-07:00

Down the Taconic Parkway we flew, my wife and I late one recent Monday morning, she at the wheel, the stillness of upstate weekday field and forest, beauty all around. It’s hard to believe that such quiet exists so near to New York City, such greenery and access, the Parkway an IV from heaven so little used, save weekend rush hours.

Suddenly, though, the spell was broken, a silver coupe intruding as it sped onto the road. An Audi or Lexus (I’m a klutz at cars) bore down in front of us from the on ramp at Jackson Corners Road, its lone occupant bent intently over the controls. I’d not seen his face, just the brunette comb-over and shape of his scalp. In a trice, though, I could see him head on, even as he paced far ahead of us. The New York State license place bore a single character. Right in the middle, a number, “1.”

Client number 9 has retained his dignity. They couldn’t take his plate away, at least not yet. Eliot’s long had a place in Gallatin, a rural community just over the Dutchess County line. In days gone by, a black Explorer or two (well, maybe I do know cars) would thunder ahead, bearing his majesty to and fro. Now much reduced, the poor fellow’s his own chauffeur. Weekends alone, Silda and kinder, God help them all, on their own.

Hevel havolim goes the expression. Vanity of vanities, in Yiddish: plain nothing. Still he clutches. They can’t take it from me. The shield and the sword are mine, for the nonce. When he cops his final plea, will the Feds cop this medal from Eliot, too? Or will it be the DMV to strip him of his last epaulet? (What’s the use? David Patterson doesn’t drive).

Perhaps they should let him keep it, spare him some dignity. Have some rakhmones for a crazy fool? I’ve heard tell, about in the City: There’s a man goin’ round takin’ names.

Satan's Utensil, or "My Palm is My Pilot..."

2007-12-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

Charles Saatchi, Donny Deutsch: name any flog-master you care to. In my opinion they’re second best, though, compared to the holy ones, those who bedeck Williamsburg’s streets with the word of G-d. Suddenly last summer, out for a bike jaunt, my mind did a double take as I stopped to answer a cell-phone call. Plastered on a wall of one of the many Satmar institutions in Williamsburg, the fires of hell jumped out, licking at my heels. Was I in Brooklyn ? Not.

On a Yiddish broadside, Sodom and Gomorrah burned in front of my eyes. Orthodox Jews (and many short of that) wear a Khamsa around their necks, the five-fingered hand, an amulet of protection from the evil surrounding us. Palms come in many forms, though, or so I learned, as I finished my chat and read the bill.

Gvalld screams the poster: the ultimate warning: beware, yikes, oy vey to the max. Gehenem flakert ad leyb ha shamayim: “The fires of hell are blazing into the heart of the heavens.” Hollywood’s best could do no more: the Khamsa’s evil twin is a Verizon Palm Treo.

Going things one better is an adman’s goal; the ultra-orthodox advocates know no bounds. Not only do flames erupt from the typescript; not only is the Palm engulfed in a pillar of fire. There on a screen of innocent plasma, a picture too grim to imagine shines forth. Rows of barbed wire and death-barracks doors tell us forthwith from whence we text. Der Auschwitzer merges man and machine. Use it and know: you’re a Sonderkommando on speakerphone.

It’s seldom I take sides with Charlton Heston, agreeing with the NRA that people, not guns, kill others, are at fault. But here I am at the same intersection. The orthodox misfire, and strays run amok. There in the small print, the details are explained, how we’re at risk from the evil of ubiquitous Palms. And they’re only a symbol of a wider pandemic. The tool of the devil gives access to all: Untern shlayer fun internet/cellphone/text messages vern farbrent teglekh umshuldige, rayne yidishe n’shomes: “Under the shadow, the veil, of these specified items, blameless, pure Jewish souls are burned to a crisp on a daily basis.” Oyb mir veln nisht tuen kol mah sh’b’yadeynu tsu rateven dem matsev, konen kholile farbrent vern milionen yidishe n’shomes. Forwarned is four-armed: “All possible hands to the task that confronts us, to save us from this dangerous condition; if not, God forbid, millions of Jewish souls will be roasted.”

Circles and circles of false protection. Avert your gaze and your soul will stay pure. The pious and I are different in thinking. I think they’re self-blinded. They think I’m treyf. The magical device of shielding one’s eyes, does little, I think, to balance one’s life. The deep-seated belief in magical devices, reminds me of Jesus perched up on that cross. True belief consists in its very own absence, the doubt He exists or can do spit for anyone. No gun and no cell phone can fix what’s the problem. Phyllo-layered, like arm-wrapped tefillin, the layers of rules keep one dozing through life.

In the upper right corner of this screed against deviltry sits the authority for what’s shown below: Hayakhteh ish eysh b’kheyko, u’bgodov lo tisarafnah? A beautiful Hebrew verse from Proverbs is twisted to fit their devices: “Would a man rake coals into his bosom and his clothes not catch fire?” But Qwerty is blameless. Ring tones are just sounds. Pushing oneself away from the table of evil consists not in mere physical choice. It’s there in the realm of one’s inchoate struggle: there will you find Him, if He’s to be found.

Still, standing still, I admire the pious ones. On average a purer and better type folk. Life was just fine without all these gadgets. Our time to reflect has been stolen by default. Better I think, though, to try some hot raking, to smell the stench of one’s wool gone asmoke. Each to his own, sure. But doing the choosing renders one chosen. If not, one’s decision is just one palmed off.

In the Distance...

2007-12-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

Walking down West 79th Street the one morning many weeks ago, on the way to session, I'd little on my mind except my own troubles: my sense of distance from other human beings, my lack of relationship skills... Cold and damp, the air seemed to enhance my ennui, albeit a pleasant one in the midst of rare moments of feeling somehow ready to spend $6 a MINUTE being with a genius who takes no notes, drowses occasionally, and dresses in $30 socks and an assortment of loafers the count count of which would make Imelda Marcos blush with shame.... Great work, if you can get it.

Close by the facades of an unbroken line of buildings I trod, purposeful but un-hurried, my stomach full, my bladder emptied, heading to the safest place I know. Suddenly a doorman stepped out of an entry lobby, thrusting the heavy glass door open as an older 70-something, well dressed gentlman strode out and turned right, heading down the block in front of me. "Good monring, Mr. Roth," the uniformed man said cripsly. No answer, no acknowledgement followed from the tenant, not even simple eye contact made. I didn't see the older man's face head-on, but I didn't need to. Philip Roth's footsteps would be mine now, the air he exhaled could fill my own lungs. I made sure to follow, behind but almost alongside, non-chalant, giving no sign of recognition, even though I ached to violate. The question being what.

How does it feel to have the world tailing you? How surprising that the master of the past and the essence of the Upper West Side, lives in an anomalous modern post-war building, 20 years old. It just doesn't fit: Nathan Zukerman in a glitzy tower.

As the eminence grise stopped at the nearby newstand-cum-candy store I passed by him, stifling the urge to stop and stare. At the end of the block, I waited for the light as a middle-aged blond woman with a cane, elegantly dressed, approached the intersection and waited for the light. How did she know, this beautiful lady, when to stop, when not to cross? Her eyes were wide open but sightless, all the more strange for one unbalanced as I, supposedly un-cursed with her malaise, at least not yet.

Two strangers stepped to her side as she edged the curb, making sure she'd not make a false move and get splattered in the road by a garbage truck. Roth had dawdled in the newstand. He hadn't rushed over to help. I stepped ahead and wandered on. Blindness befuddles us. Sometimes there's a helper. God bless his genius in helping us see.

Casting Call

2007-12-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

New Orleans, apres le deluge, but it was my first visit ever at the start of December: two days and three nights of enchantment and wonder in this living, breathing palimpsest of its many pasts. Slowly, I inhaled the atmosphere, the street names, Desire Iberville, Elysian Fields: so redolent to a newcomer, a sudden lover such as I. Two days and three nights of wandering, with music, music everywhere. The ice-cold oysters on the half shell and vodka martinis left me shaken. I am stirred.

Steel and iron abound in this ruined City once so deeply entrenched in commerce written large. One thinks of Louisiana, past and present: refineries, shipping, docks and gantries. The ghostly remains of recently busy foundries and sheet metal shops litter the landscape from the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain to the banks of the Mississippi at Algiers. Dreams of rebuilding fill the air, but the loss of half its population and the devastation of its economy have all but stopped large scale construction.
The flood waters overwhelmed so much: though wrecked cars and toppled trees are rare sites today, even in the poorest wards, the streets are buckled. Ruination of Carthaginian proportions happened here, but among the few things left untouched when the waters receded are the manhole covers and sewer grates.

Melpomene, Terpsichore, Urania, Euterpe, Thalia, Clio, Erato, Polymnia, even Calliope (though now hiding under a tangle of highway overpasses) flower in the gaggle of street names just outside the Garden District. “Beautiful of speech,” perhaps this last muse of epic poetry waits in the offing, to tell much more fully of New Orleans’ rebirth. The muses of tragedy, history, many poesies - even song and dance yet abound in the damage all about. Some special god, though, provided protection to the sturdy ironwork that lies at gutter level and in the street beds.

Moon and stars, diamond patterns: the varieties bespeak an art form now largely lost, but local examples abound, saved from the flood, emblematic of those who have returned to find a way to live here once again. The challenge of rebuilding lives scattered in the hurricane winds, of finding new roles in a much altered landscape, made me stop and catch my breath. Sadness crept over me, though, as I encountered underfoot, one after another, these antique entries into damp basements and the netherworld beneath the streets. My heart feels unrequited, a lover of the vanished erstwhile variety (though it’s cornucopic, still) a ferrous richness of a greater past.
Mental note, made and filed: Somewhere I must find an catalog, not a modern antique dealers coffee table book, no, a 19th century catalog of iron street products, gutters, drains, architectural ironwork. The flood covered, the flood destroyed. Iron stayed, now clean, no longer defiled.

Breakfast at the Rampart Café, Saturday morning so quiet where once the traffic streamed by on its way east to Gentilly and beyond. This namesake street, once legendary, now lies distraught. Even the prime section across from Basin Street and Louis Armstrong Park is silent, much less the deserted environs to the west where the New Orleans Athletic Club’s gold-leafed oak doors warn that it is a Private Club, Members Only.
Who's left to object, though? Rampart Street lies stripped of its workaday functions, now a naked dividing line between the apparent renaissance of the French Quarter and the denouement to the north.
The few pedestrians each greet me face to face, each essaying “Good mawnin” with cotton-soft drawls, their eyes downcast, as if they’re grateful I’ve bothered to visit, to acknowledge their existence by walking by.
Walk Poland Street in northern Bywater, course down Esplanade,
the asphalt warped but the live oaks flourishing in the sub-tropical air. Here a recently proud house careening at 30 degrees off its foundation; next door the ubiquitous FEMA trailer and Tyvek sheeting.
Up in Lakewview and out at Lake Vista, appearances can be deceiving - but the 17th Street Canal break poured through just as close by, inundating blocks of spacious brick ranches, twenty years old or even less. Most homes sit vacant, the water lines barely visible, but recent plywood doesn't lie.
Banks, shopping strips, gas stations lie desolate everywhere, not the re-purposed varieties with off-brand names so common to inner-city neighborhoods. No, here in bourgeois Spanish Fort, off of upper Carrollton Avenue in Mid-City, stand Chase and BP, Starbucks, Staples: closed and stripped, the properties worthless 'cause no one's home.

R. drove me around in his beat-up Nissan. New Orleans bred and born, he returned as soon as possible after the flood, his home destroyed, his business wrecked. There, he pointed out,was his friend’s warehouse up near the Industrial Canal. Though open and re-roofed, the streets hard by look just like Baghdad, gaping wounds staring at us from all about. In the midst of sorrow and unutterable loss, R. has survived, rebuilt his IT business, recreated himself and heeded the call.

Hope springs out of the fertile Delta loam. The Big Easy made life slow and free for generations of post-War searchers. (That’s post-Appomattox, not after Pearl Harbor). Post-Katrinans who returned when the City reopened have been forced to reinvent themselves from the letter A. Cobbling together a modus vivendi with cash and barter, those who work outside the CBD's much-vacant office towers make do and breathe. Daily existence is improv theater. Auditions are held nightly down on Frenchmen Street, along Fulton and Thalia, muse to it all. Life, like the fire-molded manhole covers, has become an open casting call.

Not in their lifetimes, regardless of age, will the City return to what it was. Dealt a body blow by the loss of the petroleum industry headquarters in the late 1980s, its shipping, petrochemical and fishing industries in a long decline: then New Orleans took Katrina’s hit. The storm came and went and all was quiet. Google Maps of the area went suddenly dark. The sounds of children playing, the honk of car horns will never return to these battered streets, not in my remaining years, not in those of lives in being

Down by the waterfront you could think all was normal, if Harrah’s depicts us at our best. Through the lobby of the convention center Hilton, thousands of conventioneers pour in, ready for fun. The Association of Southern Schools (chartered 1895) is holding their annual convention this weekend. I crash the party among those dressed for success. Along French Market money jingles. Gaggles of no-neck monsters jostle and swear, their shaved heads and ripped torsos bursting with the hubris of living elsewhere and slumming here. It’s 11:00 a.m. and the LSU game starts soon. How can you start drinking on a Saturday morning? Guess I’m a pansy in this game of sports.

Three blocks north, though, traipse down Royal Street. Hog the sidewalk, it’s yours, all your own. Antique stores and fine galleries all beckon brightly. Nary a customer, nary a sound. Only the click of the banker’s meter: interest on inventory loans totting up, desperation shining in the salesgirls’ eyes. “The owner is here and would be happy to speak with you. We’re having a pre-Christmas special.” What’ll be thrown in gratis to seal to the deal? Think of the stalls in the shuk in Jerusalem’s Old City. You’re a hostage the moment you stop these days.

East of the edge of the fabled French Quarter: Faubourg/Marigny’s Frenchmen Street is place to go. The ambience is knee-deep: in and out of the clubs and bars stroll a mish-mosh of locals and itinerant junkies of music and more.
Deshabille is haute mode here, studiously unstudied, save for the fedoras that the young men sport. Felt or straw, you’re not a good hipster, unless you rake yours: proper, so. At Snug Harbor Elvin Marsalis ticles ivories two nights a week; down the block at Café Negril, Margie Perez weaves her delicate, plaintive thrall: “Whooooo’s your Daddy…” and “I’m goin’ down…” pouring like warm caramel from her warbler’s throat. Her lithe young body is clothed so perfectly in mode non-descript, She moves and sways, merging herself, her songs, those listening: as one. Café Negril is of its own volition, a case of first of impression for those who enter. All are welcome, no cover, no minimum, buy a drink or not, bring yours in from your previous engagement. Many do: plastic takeout cocktail cups are de rigeur in the watering holes. Just enter this place and be what you want. But one silent rule: live and let live. In both nights of my recent engagement, an old man entered and paid his respects. Drunk as a lord, 70 years if a day, one never knows what modest celebrity one's looking at through jaundiced tourist eyes. By the usual definitions the customer, an African American man with gray hair and disheveled clothing, reeking of liquor and unbathed for days: one would assume him to be an impoverished fellow, drinking away to his end of days. The man's gnarled, dark knuckles were bedecked with thick silver rings, the glints complementing the flash of his broken-toothed smile. The music would move him and up he’d get from his barstool, pouring himself onto the dance floor in front of the tattered couches like those found in indie coffee bars. There he’d dance and stop just short of hassling any young women he spied nearby. (After all, Terpsichore Street runs not far away). The second night the fellow traipsed in clothed in full battle dress: in one hand a clutch of golfing-irons, bound with a thick rubber strap; in the other a new broom ready for striking hot licks. Café Negril welcomes jammers. Cat gut, steel string, broom straw, all.

Bands that play here hang in the ‘hood, even if their gig is all played out. Down the long bar, the guyz from Friday's band tossed back shots of Jack and glowed. Their van out front had been parked there for days. Crib and studio, this dirty panel truck sported flimsy curtains in the front seat windows. Daytime zzz’s need some kind of dark. Suddenly past me, the lead guitarist bolted, a barmaid in tow, then out the door. Passenger side-door, creaked open loudly: he, then she, clambered aboard. Out in the street, atop a barstool, a middle-aged guy made eye contact with me as I stood at the bar near the open doors. Our eyes rolled upwards in sync as the van bobbed on its axles; its shocks and struts did yeoman’s work.

Two days and three nights flew by like magic. I bade Café Negril a sorry So Long. Royal Street midnight, back to my lodging, pissing between parked cars with urgent abandon, knowing the pavement's washed each day before dawn. Along came a kid playing a flatch patch bucket, not drumming it upright as so commonly seen. Using it as an echo-chamber megaphone, the boy held the bucket to his mouth at an angle, as he sang a gorgeous melody, tapping out a rhythm, soft.

All around me stood hundreds of houses, the richest collection of well-preserved, unpretentious mid- and late 19th century urban structures in all America. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. From the iron roundels, broken downspouts, Circe called me, she the mistress of potions and spells: “Here's a place that's safe from change; It’s time, to come and play your part.”

Three hours sleep and I’m up Monday, mourning. The Southern Crescent leaves at dawn. Though tucked in my sleeper, I refuse to really board. Compartment door securely fastened, my iPod holds me, spiked in place on the railroad ties. Liquor Boxx and Smokey Greenwell, Margie and Bif Naked: over and over I rolled on their tracks.

All along the steel underneath me: the clickety clack made a syncopated call. Come to New Orleans. Make your new self. Heed her open casting call…

When You Learn How to Do It, Please Let me Know...

2007-12-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

Stepping out of Yonah Shimmel's Knish Factory the other day, down on Houston and Forsyth, a giant belch escaped my gorgle, in studied satisfaction with my late-day pit stop. Yonah’s is the only restaurant that I frequent with a working dumbwaiter. Its greasy tables and unwashed floor only add to the taste of the diet-busting delicacies that I relish.

Decades pass but the faces and voices remain the same: There probably never was a Yonah Shimmel; today no scion rules the roost. A succession of modern-day Russians have run the joint, but they might as well have stepped of the ferry from Ellis Island a year or two ago. Greenhorns on their way to becoming All-Rightniks, the managers of this little curiosity shop can depend on a steady stream of tourists and locals, 7 days a week, digital cameras in hand, to knosh a knish and then take some to the Times Square Marriot or on the subway, still piping hot from the basement ovens.

Why do I love the place so much ? Because it's a part of me that never was, that entered my soul by osmosis, not by birth. A son of first generation American Jewish parents from modest (or lesser) Philadelphia backgrounds, I was born and grew up in East Tennessee. I consider myself a casualty, though unbloodied, of the Second World War. My late father had a Master's Degree in Chemistry, so when basic training ended for him in 1944, he was herded aboard a train bound for parts unknown to help the US Army develop a secret weapon that required his skills in spectroscopy and analyzing enriched uranium. That’s how a boy with a Jewish soul grew up in gustatory goles, the exile of the Diaspora in a Southern Baptist version of the tkhum ha moshav, the Pale of Settlement from Czarist days.

Oak Ridge retained a Jewish community after the War ended and the gates of the secret base were opened. The hundred families in our cinder-block shul were almost all soldiers and their wives and children who remained at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory instead of returning to the rapidly changing, soon-to-be blockbusted Jewish neighborhoods of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit. My town was situated in a “dry” county - even kosher wine was illegal to possess. A 90-mile drive to Chattanooga for that most basic of ritual necessities was required, and subito in any event. Traditional Jewish food was only available in people's homes. The nearest Jewish deli was in Knoxville, an hour's drive away back in the day, on a two lane road through farms and fields bestrewn with billboards announcing JESUS IS LORD !. My parents rarely bought food at the Knoxville oasis due to our tight budget and Harold Shersky's immodest prices. Halvah was a once a year treat at Hannukah in a vacuum-packed dark blue tin that we opened by turning a tiny key round and round to unwind a metal band separating the lid. Five kids and two grown-ups made do with 8 ounces, carving off wafer thin slivers to melt in our mouths.

Knishes are a lot of work to make, and have no special holiday connection like matzoh balls for Pesakh or cheese blintzes for Shavues. My mother never made them. And thus I arrived in New York in 1969 to matriculate at Columbia College without bodily memory of a delicacy supreme. Yonah Schimmel filled a void I never knew I had. There I remember the bubbes I never knew, the zeydies who lived with us for a year apiece, the two old men, so different but so Jewish, who knew the world that Yonah baked.

I sit at one of those well-worn cafeteria tables, perched on one of the variegated wooden chairs, selecting my own silverware from the stainless steel dishwasher holders that adorn the Formica tops. A kasha knish is brought to my table, steaming from the inside out due to the miracles of microwavery. Salt and pepper and a healthy dollop of hot mustard, some cole slaw and pickles and a glass water tumbler of creamy cold borsht. Suddenly I’ve crossed into oylem habe, the world to come. Sitting across from me with his gentle smile, speaking Yiddish with me in his loving way is my mother’s dad, Pop, we called him. The screaming and yelling in mamaloshen that pierced the air when he lived with us and my mother and he fought is absent. Spread out on the table is our game of checkers and hand of "War" all dealt, but now it’s time for a bite to eat.

But Me? Eat this stuff ? I'm five years old, and no way am I even going to taste these funny smelling, weird looking things Pop has on his plate, the herring (feh!) the kasha (my father HATES the smell), the beets which seem like deviled poison. Pop digs in and I sit silent. He’s from a different planet but I don’t mind.

I still like the PB+J that I preferred then. But I've grown to love what I then despised. Pop loved me unconditionally in his own way: a poretz, a peasant, in every way, his understanding of people was plain and his needs simple. But food he enjoyed and I miss his face, his rough carpenter's hands, his unfiltered Camel cigarettes that he would light with a match that he snuffed between his fore-finger and a well-calloused thumb. One day soon, Pop will come sit beside me at Yonah's. It's his place, too, and I'll wait 'til he comes, wiping the seat and setting it right, the kisey ha kuved: the throne of honor, seat of love.

******************************

Purple has many connotations: purple prose, purple robes, purple bruises, and in the days of flower power, purple acid. I came to New York as a freshman at Columbia College in 1969; it was then that I first discovered Yonah's. The year that followed included other trips. J. Edgar Hoover and AT+T occupied similar turf in my druggie friends' minds. Dropping acid, using fake long distance calling credit card numbers, and attending protest marches with the SDS were indistinguishable in our minds. Two years after the Summer of Love, New York's Lower East Side was in full bloom when I arrived on the Greyhound Bus with my worldly belongings crammed into two sturdy sample cases that my father’s dad had used for years as he flogged the northeastern Pennsylvania haberdashery route for a New York-headquartered men’s shirt manufacturer. And one day in Central Park, my very first autumn in my longed-for new home, I met Adam Purple, a man about town.

With his long beard and elfin looks, Adam was a sight to behold, a counterculture Rip Van Winkle, high as a kite. With his companion, The Purple Woman, he rode around on a dinky bicycle, handing out leaflets with arcane sayings, strings of numbers, orderless prose, all printed in purple letters. Tie-dyed purple clothing and matching hats complemented the couple’s odd behavior, she never saying a word as they approached you on a lawn in Central Park with their gifts of precious secret paper weaponry to defeat the evil designs of the Man.

In coming years, many buildings on the Lower East Side were abandoned by their desperate owners as drug dealers and prostitutes took over the 'hood. Fires followed by the dozen, just like in the South Bronx, and vacant lots appeared where knish-fressers had once made their homes. Down on Forsyth Street, Adam Purple and his frau made their home in one squat or another, and their bicycles sprouted strange contraptions at the rear.

Paris has its Tulieries, London its Hyde Park, but Eldridge Street became known for the Purple People's garden. A veritable Eden, the couple painstaking graded and cleaned a vacant lot, building graceful, winding brick pathways, adorning the space with a plethora a of flowers and vegetables. Horse manure collected from the Central Park drives and trucked downtown on shopping carts rigged to their bikes made the plants grow to gigantic size. Decades before their time, this crazy pair made the earth bloom where before only tears and sweat had ruled the day, Bulldozers later destroyed it all for low-income housing.

The couple split up years ago and no one seems to know what happened to The Purple Woman. But Adam Purple has survived, collecting cans, sleeping God knows where downtown. Just like Pop’s, his ghost lingers in my mind, reminding me of a gentler time, when I was young and New York shone like a cinder-clad diamond.

**************************

My knish consumed, my legs well-rested, Palm Pilot safely stored, I saddled up on my bike the other day and headed into the Houston Street maelstrom, heading east and on to home. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I spotted a figure that made me stop short. His colored fleece hat gave him away. A few yards ahead of me an old man with a battered bike, its rear basket brace loaded with returnable soda cans, turned onto Eldridge Street and headed south.

In his long white beard and gentle face I instantly recognized a man once famous. At least to me, back in the day. Heading home took on a new meaning, so I pedaled off, veering south instead of north, hoping to catch the aging denizen. It didn’t take long, and I found him stopped beside a trash can, foraging for empties and a bite to eat. From a respectful distance I called him by name, offering two singles from my outstretched hand. “You’re Adam Purple, aren’t you?” I said. “And what’s you name?” he responded with caution. I smiled and instantly we were on the same page. “Ben,” I said. “You’re famous to me. I remember your garden. I miss it so.”

Clear as a bell, he blamed Giuliani, even though Koch was the boss when this Third Temple was destroyed. “Have you ever read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography?” Adam asked me, innocently. I told him I had many years ago. A few more words and I made for the north woods, wishing I’d asked for his picture and more.

Photos are easily obtainable though. His is above and it'll do just fine. But possessing the past, now there's the trick. When you learn how to do it, just please let me know.

The New York Wanderer, Read Aloud...

2007-12-01T05:13:00.000-08:00

For those of you who'd like to attend a reading of material I've written recently about New York City history and culture, come to the CUNY Graduate Center at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue on Wednesday evening March 26, 2008, [exact time to be announced] when The Gotham History Center of CUNY will sponsor a reading of essays posted on its Gotham History Blotter, which can be viewed at

http://www.gothamcenter.org/features/blotter/index.shtml

Among the readings will be a piece that appears on a recent page of this blog entitled "Mister Dog," about a wonderful New York City architectural treasure and my personal connection with Margaret Wise Brown's last children's storybook published before her tragic premature death.

Stay tuned for further details:-)

Stella, STELLA KOWALSKI !!!

2007-08-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

For a decade and a half I suffered from nerve twinges and occasional numbness in my right arm and shoulder. Nothing seemed to help. One sorry attempt at homeopathy years ago brought only yellow pee from ingesting great gobs of Vitamin B-something. But having just turned 55, and sensing more than ever my body falling apart, I finally decided to do something about my condition.

The American health care system does things bass-ackwards, so physical therapy was ordered only after three doctors and two labs billed Empire Blue Cross like there’s no tomorrow for MRIs, X-Rays, EMGs that showed a perfectly healthy man. Mirabile dictu, the PT started helping the problem, cheaply and quickly. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, though. One piece of neuralgia on the mend, and another cropped up. But a different sort of pain in a very different place.

Physical therapy at the local sports medicine gym is an out-of-body experience for an older, middle-aged man. This was my third stretch at a site that will remain anonymous to protect the innocent. A dispensary where the clinicians are mostly young, attractive women creates much more customer loyalty in a guy like me than free samples of some miracle energy drink. Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth is the Bible for what goes on when you pass through the door.

There I lay on a cushioned table, a soft pillow under my neck or knees, being ministered to with a caring smile, a Girl Friend Experience par excellence. But all legitimate, this quality of mercy. Submitting to Kate felt a bit like the first weeks of dating someone new: the novelty of exploring what we’ve in common, what to appreciate about each other, feeling the spark that physical closeness induces. But it was a paid encounter, nonetheless, as she twisted my neck from side to side, a sweet bit of imaginary brothel-breath making my nostrils flare.

Fantasy fastened its iron-clad grip. My age, my wrinkles, all time disappeared: Perhaps Kate lingered a bit longer than necessary as her soft hands gently torqued my cervical spine, the glint of her wedding band catching my eye. Perhaps her pendulous breasts brushed against my chest on purpose. Perhaps I ought to see my psychiatrist twice a week. And maybe I’d just roll off the table and die. All around me visions floated, soft rock oldies on Sirius Radio pulsing blood through my veins, with no where to go.

Customer relations dictate that the young women in the PT gym flirt a little, talk playfully, make favorable comments about a man’s clothing or muscle turgor. I used to fall, a willing victim. This time not, though, not so easy. Kate said something just a bit weird. She meant nothing by it, said it unknowingly. A single rich moment made up of two words.

Session One: I showed up as instructed, a sleeveless athletic T-shirt clothing my upper torso to optimize shoulder manipulation. I own very few of these garments, and none plain white, so I wore a threadbare tie-dyed edition, one precious to me that my two grown daughters created on our country house porch one summer day many years ago.

There I lay, baby-faced 27-year old Kate bending above me, her colleague Tara doing someone else next to me. Delicate voices, grace and beauty. A peep-show of Heaven where I’ll never be. Kate was pleasant looking and cheerful, hail fellow well met, but Tara was something else: broad shouldered, slender, long dark blonde hair, subtly streaked, high-voiced but reticent. Her symmetrical features and broad brow belied a touch of Cherokee blood, adding a masculine cast to her beautiful face. Tara rarely made eye contact with me, thank goodness. Something told me she knew I’m weak-kneed, and keeping a safe distance seemed the best thing to do. I’m actually grateful. One extra polite word from her might have decked me for good.

Was the delicious tension permeating the air totally a figment of my dementia? Sex seemed to rule all over this land. The older female clients assigned to the hunky young men who work there are clearly pleased, while the older guys like me enjoy the opposite assignments more than a chocolate milk shake. This time around, though, the contrarian in me decided to kick the ball back. Kate said what she said and I took the upper road.

“Get a load of Ben’s tie-dyed wife-beater,” Kate chirped to her buddy Tara. “It’s so cool, that 60s style.” I wonder if Kate noticed as my body tensed, the grimace in my eyes when she used those words for my shirt. Stanley Kowalski made the fashion famous, though the appellation is absent from Streetcar’s script. Tara mumbled something in polite acknowledgement. I wonder what thoughts were going through her mind. I’d give long odds that they were far from mine.

Sometime about thirty years ago or so, these sleeveless undershirts began being called tank tops. It’s much more recent that “wife-beater” became au courant. Perhaps some Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ play caused some wag to coin the term. That domestic violence has become cute and trendy utterly boggles my imperfect mind. The prevailing storm may never let up: through John Bobbit and OJ, the sicko term has stuck. It’s cool to wear this badge of rage. During the 80s, hitting women (and being hit by men) staked its claim on 7th Avenue, hard by the Gucci ads in the Times Sunday magazine with smack-snorting models wearing $1000 belts cinched tight around their necks.

Of late I’ve decided to let things stew a bit before I shoot off my eager mouth. I tucked it away, my discomfort at Kate’s words, knowing full well what I already thought of them. Should I tell her, school her a bit? This could wait while I thought it over, with the uneven power dynamic. What would be the point? The customer is always right. She couldn’t have a free-wheeling exchange of ideas with me. Stewing in my own juices, knowing I’d be detected with impure thoughts: perhaps calling her to task could drive away the darkness and my shame.

Poor Kate: I don’t think she knew what hit her. Three days later I come waltzing back in, clad in a newly acquired, plain white version of the garment in question. There I lay for our second encounter, she chirping along in her too-friendly banter, playing me like a bongo drum. Mr. Supposed Nice Guy piped up soon, all tentative and asking, like he fantasizes all women love. “I couldn’t decide whether to say anything or not about this, so I talked to my wife about it and I’m gonna take a chance.” Kate startled a bit. Uh-oh crossed her face. But she knew she had to stand there and smile, rain or shine.

“I was thinking about what you called my t-shirt the last time I was here, Kate. Maybe you don’t even remember. It was a nice compliment you were trying to pay.” The look in her face told me Kate remembered every word. New client, you pay attention. “That name, ‘wife-beater’ - Maybe it sounds cool? But think for a minute, what’s cool about that? I don’t mean to criticize you. I’ve used those words myself to call that shirt. But I stopped when I thought about it. And you should, too. It says not so good things about you, about some kind of club you’re trying to be a member of. Just think for a minute, what’s so cool? What fashion does it embody, that ugly term? If you know anyone who’s been beaten by their boyfriend or husband or sometimes even their wife, then you’ll think twice about using this name.” Kate got an earful and turned on a dime. No more flirting. Fire with fire worked like a charm. It was a stretch to reach the higher ground. But try she did, ‘til my third time at bat.

In I bopped for my next session, feeling all self-righteous, wondering just how much Kate would squirm when we met. “Hey, buddy, how’s it going.” Kate started out. Now we were strictly man-to-man. A firm handshake, a deeper tone more suited to a boxing coach, Kate had switched gears to the only other one she knew. “Hey, I told everyone here about what you said and we all agreed to call them tank tops. No more ‘wife-beater,’ is that OK ?” No one else in the place had the nerve to look me in the eye that morning after Kate piped up so very loud. Tara stared at the floor though she stood nearby. Not a glance, not a word, her silent complicity in the event now forgotten. My guess at her two cents with those gimlet eyes: “Whatever, another kook-shit horny guy. A carom shot from an old, bent cue.”

It didn’t last long, though, Kate’s chastened approach. Hormones trump all for the vast majority. My addled brain has forgotten how long: it might have been later that very same day. Kate and her crew are not personal trainers. They do three or four clients at the same time. In between bursts of personal attention, I take a turn on the bikes, the Universal, the column strapped with therabands. Sometimes Kate and her co-workers take a short back-office break. After my allotted eight minutes on stationary wheels, I dismounted. Next to me yawned a wide open door to where Kate and her friends were enjoying a basket of fresh-cut fruit on wooden sticks, delivered that morning from a source unknown. Catching my eye, Kate instantly offered me the sweetest morsel, a skewer of fresh pineapple running with juice. “Where’s the fruit from?” I inquired.” “It’s from my secret admirer,” Kate shot back. “I’m not going there,” I meekly replied. But had she served or was this a volley? It doesn’t matter: we both love the game.

That was enough of a round for me, though, and I dropped my racquet on the floor. I’d rather talk to my shrink about it than play for keeps on an uneven court. It’s the moments that matter, the puzzle of parsing, that intrigue me the most. Not the simple handling of toys. Gym-porn has meaning, the power to inspire. One can belittle oneself and those around you, join a club whose admission criterion consists of merely having been born of woman. Or you can use the same banter to teach and learn.

There’s really no happy medium between two strangers. I took the high road, at least for a while. Between a rock and a hard place: I’ll totter along. There beside me stride Blanche and Stella. Each found their way with Stanley K. Not so certain, we stumble and totter. Kate and I have far to go.

BUTCHERY ON BOND STREET IS FINALLY OUT !!

2007-05-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed, it's really true: my book Butchery on Bond Street - Sexual Politics and the Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-bellum New York is AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE NOW. On the right hand menu bar of this blog you'll see a link to my new blog site which gives publication and sale details and supplements the story and images in the book. Lots of material will appear on the blog: a walking tour, many images, and much information about the crime too voluminous and expensive to include in the book. It's been wonderful journey thus far. I hope to keep adding to the scholarship about this fascinating chapter in the history of New York City and this nation in the years before the Civil War.Thanks to all of you who have encouraged and helped me all these years with this project.

With My Head In the Clouds...

2007-05-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

The attendants at the garage where I park my van are always gracious when I show up with that expectant look on my face. It’s not because I love my car. Prostate cancer treatment has perhaps forever altered my bladder management, so before I head out, I routinely ask to use the little concrete-block enclosure that sits behind the pay-station in the basement of the apartment house where I stow my wheels. Little do the boys know, though, of my ulterior motive: their outhouse contains one of the strangest signs I’ve ever seen.

A row of hooks adorns one wall of the 4’ X 8’ space. On them the employees stow their street clothes and jackets, all items of value having been carefully transferred to their uniform pockets. A large chipped mirror hangs above the single toilet. There’s no room for it above the tiny bar-sink nearby where one washes one’s hands. The light switch lacks its cover. I always wonder when I’m going to electrocute myself because of the lack of paper towels with which to dry my hands. “Damp jeans are better than 120 volts up the arm,” I think to myself, as I do the right thing at the end of my business.

The instructions that confront me, though, upon unzipping my fly, still take the cake. There on a large yellow sign are black block capitals, telling the uninitiated in no uncertain terms the house rules:

KEEP-THIS-TOILET CLEAN-ORDER’S-OF-MANAGEMENT-PLEASE-DO-NOT-STAND-ON-TOILET-BOWL-THANK-YOU

What in God’s name could the author possibly, everly have had in mind? What exactly does one DO when one stands on a toilet bowl? We’re not talking peeping Toms here: there are no other stalls nor any windows in this little water closet. No one to look at, nothing to see. The mirror above the toilet is at eye level for a modest sized Labrador retriever. So we’re not talking personal grooming. In many parts of the globe, particularly those from which the majority of the garage attendants hail, one finds a form of public accommodations that my older daughter christened “Mister Squatty-Man” when she traveled to Japan as a 13-year old. But you use those with your feet firmly planted on terra firma, not suspended two feet above grade. Perhaps old habits die slow deaths.

The sign may have been imported from another location operated by this particular garage mogul, where these risks and activities were nothing to sneeze at. Cleanliness of employee facilities, as prescribed, is certainly a concern in all workplaces.
I really wonder what gives here, and one day I’ll get up the nerve to ask. Or perhaps maybe I should just try it once: balance myself and stand up there. Maybe I’ll see and feel something different, something I’ve been missing all these years. First I’ll make sure that the dead bolt in the inside of the door is securely fashioned. Then I’ll try it and set off the motion alarm…

Mister Dog

2007-02-10T08:40:00.000-08:00

My father was a gentle, quiet, swarthy man, slow and decisive, both with logic and love. It was Summer-time, 1957. The day at a close, he’d read me a picture book. Sitting beside me on my trundle bed, Daddy was all mine. The four others could wait. My favorite story, for the umpteenth time.

Once upon a time there was a funny dog named Crispin’s Crispian. He was named Crispin’s Crispian because he belonged to himself. In the mornings, he woke himself up and he went to the icebox and gave himself some bread and milk. He was a funny old dog. He like strawberries.

There the dog stood on the facing page, a hairy fellow just like my father. My dad, at all of thirty-eight, seemed so old to me, a benevolent giant, telling a story that made me brave. I hung on every word, bathed myself in the colors and rhythms, headed at last for a happy ending in a five year old’s always tumultuous days. Night after night, my father’s deep voice carried me safely, softly, off to sleep.

Mister Dog’s home was a funny old house, two stories of ramshackle painted clapboard, gables akimbo, chimney perched precariously on top. Despite its obvious structural imperfections, I hadn’t a care when I stepped inside. It was me in that story, my spitting double, out in the woods behind our house. There, a hound named Crispian’s Crispian ran into a boy at the fishing pond. Five-year-old me with my new best friend.

"Who are you and who do you belong to?” asked the little boy. “I am Crispin’s Crispian and I belong to myself,” said Crispian. "Who and what are you?" “I am a boy,” said the little boy, “and I belong to myself." “I am so glad,” said Crispin’s Crispian. “Come and live with me.”

My childhood copy of Mister Dog lacks its cover. I never knew the author’s name. But the book was precious to me for what it meant, the feeling of being special and loved so deeply by my father when I was young.

Years went by, and I lost track of many things. Then my father died suddenly and unexpectedly when I, too, reached thirty-eight. A piece of me also passed away, leaving me bereft, and my two little daughters without their bed-time story man for months on end. Tattered and stained, my childhood treasure lay on a shelf in my widowed mother’s home where I found it after Daddy died.

One year later, still treading water in a river of grief, I wandered one evening in the West Village, and stopped at the corner of Charles and Greenwich. I peeked over a wall at a very strange sight and chills ran up and down my spine. I looked behind me. No one was watching, and I was alone. There I found the start of healing, a way back to a place once known. In the little clapboard farmhouse that sits downtown, the real Crispin’s Crispian kept his mistress company while Margaret Wise Brown wrote what turned out to be her very last book. The name of it was Mister Dog.

********

Out in Brooklyn's Greenpoint, just off Manhattan Avenue, a two family house still stands on Milton Street. The house at # 118, probably built before the turn of the twentieth century, was a genteel, brick-clad residence with a slate mansard roof and elegant ironwork surrounding its yards. Today it’s somewhat the worse for wear, having been cheaply re-clad, its noble crown masked behind asphalt shingles. The original iron gates have somehow survived.

The block looks much the same as it did in 1915. Across the street, immaculate houses from the late 19th century still shine. At the head of the block up by Manhattan Avenue, in what has been for decades a Polish neighborhood, a giant and still well-attended red-brick Catholic church rules the hill-top. Five-year-old Margaret could swing on the gates along 118’s perimeter, listening to the freighters' horns as they docked nearby. Wharves with magic names end nearby streets. India, Java, spices and silks. Milton was a “city street with high iron gates, a red brick church at the end of the street and the sound of boats on the river,” she later recalled. The ironwork at her home perhaps seemed tall to a five year-old. Perhaps there were other gates, truly tall. It doesn’t matter. When I discovered this house and its connection to her, again my heart thrilled with a bit of repair. I can go there any time, where she was born, this woman who cast such magic on my five-year old soul.

Here on Milton Street Margaret took her exercise in what she later called the “painful shy animal dignity with which a child stretches to conform …” And here in Greenpoint she spent the first five years of her emotional life, building, brick by brick that “ ‘wild and private place,” a place to which we return truly only by accident.”

*********

The Brown family moved away from Milton Street when success at the American Manufacturing Company allowed Margaret’s father to build a house in then bucolic Beechhurst, Queens. They moved again to Great Neck, and Margaret finished her schooling at Virginia’s Hollins College after graduating from Dana Hall and studying in Lausanne at Chateau Brillantmont. Suffering through a failed romance, she then chose a different path from that of most of her classmates. Margaret moved into her own flat at 21 West 10th Street while studying at the Bank Street College of Education. There she became an adherent of Lucy Sprague Mitchell, working in the avant-garde of enlightened children’s literature, and soon her own work took shape. With the appearance of The Noisy Book in 1939, Margaret Wise Brown established herself in the forefront of American picture-book authors. Known today chiefly as the author of The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, Margaret developed long-term relationships with several publishers and illustrators, and produced more than 100 works for children during the next thirteen years.

Her tumultuous affair with Michael Strange, a wealthy socialite and ex-wife of John Barrymore, lasted many years. The two co-habited in Strange’s apartment at 10 Gracie Square during Michael's divorce from her second husband, Harrison Tweed, and then occupied adjacent apartments at 186 East End Avenue. After spending her first royalty check buying a flower vendor’s entire cartful of blossoms for her home, Margaret devoted some of her income to renting a separate writing studio, an unheated wooden cottage that sat in a back lot behind a tenement on the west side of York Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets. There she spent the days writing, and many evenings held dinner parties in a living room with walls Margaret covered with animal fur. Crispin’s Crispian, a Kerry blue terrier given to the author by her lover, had the run of the place. The two-story cottage, nick-named Cobble Court, had been part of a farm family’s dairy operation in the previous century, and more recently was used as a neighborhood dining room.

By the time I was born in 1952, Margaret Wise Brown was long-accustomed to the company of elegant, well-educated New Yorkers, and lionized by many. Her eccentric personality and extravagant life-style are hardly what one might imagine for the author of tender children’s books. On a whim she’d make extravagant purchases: exquisite china, a shiny Chrysler touring car. During an April vacation in the Georgia Sea Islands that year, Margaret met a dashing man at an evening cocktail party. A decade and a half her junior, James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr. was a “gentle-spirited romantic and sailing enthusiast,” about to embark with two buddies on a three-year, around-the-world voyage in his sloop Mandalay.

“Pebble” Rockefeller’s boyish manner and lack of pretense (despite both Carnegie and Rockefeller lineage), charmed the ever self-effacing Margaret. During an early morning walk on the beach the day after they met, James inquired if Margaret had ever been married. Her suitor was as much younger than she as Michael Strange was her elder. Along with her answer, and with uncharacteristic immodesty, Margaret told James of her more than seventy published children’s books, and the one kept by Queen Mary by the royal bedside. Margaret let down her guard, confessing that one day she’d write “something serious.” Suddenly, she felt again a rare event in her troubled life. The “fidget wheels of time,” as she was fond of saying, slowed mercifully, and love crept in.

James kept his plans for his sailing trip, but first they were betrothed. Margaret’s new lover saw her off at dockside for her solo vacation trip to the Cote D'Azur on September 23rd. After visiting, Cannes, Eze and St. Paul de Vence, a side trip to Florence was cancelled when she developed acute abdominal pain, diagnosed in a French hospital as an ovarian cyst. Its removal was accompanied by a prophylactic appendectomy. Despite predictions of a full recovery, Margaret lay in Nice’s Clinique des Augustins in a somber mood. On October 30th, she penned a note on Cobble Court stationery, a codicil to her will she rewrote the past August:

I wish my ashes to be given to James Stillman Rockefeller, Jr. and thrown into the Atlantic. They can put a stone up … according to the Will if my family wishes…For Walter Varney, [an old friend of Michael Strange's] thanking him for his generous help to me and my friend Michael Strange, I give this check dated October 20th for $2,000 and the care of my dog if he wants him. Otherwise he goes as in the Will…I ask [that] James S. Rockefeller, Jr. have anything of mine he wants since he is the closest to me, and that he is to have the use of Cobble Court and 186 East End Ave. until all is settled. He has the keys and I consider these places to he his home as well as my own.

Despite her deathbed preparations, by November 13th, the patient was ready for discharge. When her nurse arrived in mid-morning, Margaret was in a jaunty mood. She did an imitation of a one-leg high kick, but suddenly, without warning, she fell unconscious and passed away. An undetected embolism had formed in her leg and suddenly traveled to her brain.

Mister Dog was the last of her works published during Margaret Wise Brown’s life, around the time that I was born. I’ve always felt that the book were written just for me. Over five decades, it’s given me confidence, strength and finally, hope. My father died in the very same way. Though no can-can artist, he, too, was felled by a stroke, passing instantly from my life. As a child I never knew Margaret, but when I stood on Charles Street I knew that we’d crossed paths. It’s possible to miss someone you never met, who died before you could hold a spoon. I do, the child who didn’t know her name. Because of Margaret’s understanding of what makes little children tick, what repairs their hurts and pains, what can make them whole and well, I feel I knew her while she was alive.

Her work has born fruit that she of the giant imagination would never know, she who told whimsy what to do. Goodnight Moon sold 6000 copies in 1947, the year of publication. Sales leveled off to 1,500 copies a year for many years thereafter and then began to rise. By 1970, almost 20,000 copies a year were sold. Then an explosion: during the next two decades, almost four million copies of the book were sold. Heaven knows what the total is today.

Though creator of magic for uncountable souls, Margaret had no children of her own. In an act that failed to surprise many of her friends, she willed the royalties from most of her works published up to the time of her death to Albert Clarke, a little boy who lived in the tenement through which she passed on her way to her back yard writing cottage. And though Margaret didn’t know my name, I feel like I was mentioned in her will. Stroll down Charles Street, stop and gaze. The clapboard house is #121. There on a lot on a northeast corner, behind a stucco wall, sits Cobble Court, trucked down in 1967 after threatened with demolition when the 1335 York Avenue and its neighbors were assembled for a new nursing home.

********************************

My father's long gone, but I can still stand there, under the moon, hearing his smooth voice reading the story one more time: You can be the boy who belongs to himself. A few steps away stands a woman with taffy-colored hair in a poodle cut with a funny black dog, softly reminding me how the words go:

Crispin’s Crispian was a conservative. He liked everything at the right time --dinner at dinner time, lunch at lunch time, breakfast in time for breakfast, and sunrise at sunrise, and sunset at sunset. And at bedtime –
At bedtime, he liked everything in its own place— the cup in the saucer, the chair under the table, the stars in the heavens, the moon in the sky, and himself in his own little bed.

****************

Notes:

The 1940 Tax Lot photos taken as a WPA make-work project show every tax lot in the city. 118 Milton Street is gorgeous and still well-kept in its pre-war photo.

The quoted material in M.W. Brown's own words is taken from Leonard S. Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown - Awakened by the Moon, Beacon Press, Boston: 1992, Chapter 1. Brown’s own words cited here from Marcus's book appeared in articles written by her for the 1951 and 1952 Grolier book of Knowledge annuals, cited in Marcus’ work.

The events concerning Brown's relationship with Rockefeller are for the most part paraphrased from Marcus, op. cit. and his interviews with J.S. Rockefeller, Jr.

From Mister Dog, by Margaret Wise Brown, illustr. by Garth Williams, copyright 1952, renewed 1980 by Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Golden Books, Inc., an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc. For on line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Inernet Web Site at http://www.randomhouse.com