It was Columbus Day, a school holiday, and I was going to my father’s store. Unfortunately, Sam, my older brother would not be coming. He and Bobbie Lewis were going to work on their puppet show. That wanted to get it ready to present in a few weeks.
Bobbie, who was 10, like my brother, lived across the street in one of the few brownstones on St Marks Ave that had not been subdivided. It had a stone and brick front, with a flight of outside stairs going to the second level. Inside, the house had four bedrooms on the second and third floor and a living room/dining room combination on the first. When folding chairs were put out, that large room became the puppet show theatre.
It was more fun going to the store with Sam. I was almost 7, two and a half years younger than him, and we played well together always finding interesting things to do. Otherwise, the time went slowly. Mainly I watched Danny, my baby brother, four months old, and in the carriage. That allowed my mother to help in the store, waiting on customers, pricing and shelving merchandise. My mother always complained about the lack of prices on items she sold.
It was probably around 11 o’clock before we were ready. My mother had made tuna and egg sandwiches for my father and the two of us, and filled my father’s thermos with hot soup. She also prepared a bottle for Danny. I carried the food bag from the second to the first floor, where the carriage was stored, near the basement entrance.
My mother carried Danny down the stairs from our apartment. Then put him in the carriage for the last five steps from the building to the street.
It was a nice day and we headed down St Marks Ave to the corner, where there was a light. When the light turned green, I held onto the carriage as my mother and I crossed the trolley tracks amidst the screeching and honking of cars, trucks and trolleys maneuvering for too little space on 5th Avenue. The street was lined on both sides with owner run small stores: groceries, pharmacies, candy stores, barbershops, salons, a variety store and even a pawnshop.
When I realized that Sam wouldn’t be coming, I thought a new coloring book would make the time go faster. The variety store that we would pass had a good selection, and I thought I would ask for one when we approached the store.
I even tucked my crayons into the food bag before we left the house, hoping that my mother would agree to buy me one. As we came to the store, I built up my courage and asked.
“ Mom, could you get me a new coloring book. I have finished most of the ones I have, and it would give me something to do while we are at dad’s store.”
I felt anxious, as my mother could sometimes be hard on me. Perhaps it was to balance my father’s indulgence, or perhaps she felt I was too demanding and needed more limits. Also, I knew we didn’t have much money and I always hesitated to ask for things. Sam, my brother however, felt, I was much less restrained than him. But, I thought, a coloring book did not cost a lot and it could keep me busy for hours.
She stopped the carriage she was pushing and looked into the store window. That’s when I saw her reflection. She was petite, with light brown hair cut somewhat short, greyish eyes and soft facial features. Although inexpensive, her dresses were stylish with collars and other ornaments she added to the dress. She had worked in the millinery trade trimming hats, before she married, and had a creative flair and adventurous spirit. She wore low heels and comfortable shoes. Altogether, she
made an attractive figure. Her appearance was important to her.
She looked in the window, thought for a moment and replied, “You can have a coloring book or an ice cream. You choose, but remember once you decide there is no further discussion.”
“A coloring book ”, I said immediately, “ it would give me something to do while taking care of Danny”. I thought it was clearly a better choice than ice cream, which I would finish all too quickly.
Sam and I grew up with a sense that money was tight, and we knew not to ask for things. We didn’t get toys, but created imaginary play-things with what we had around us; trucks out of small wooden cheese boxes, houses out of cigar boxes, or imaginary people out of ice-cream sticks. I had only one doll, which my aunt gave me, perhaps a hand-me down from my cousins. We tried to get free toys from the prizes in cereal boxes or offerings from the Good Humor ice-cream wrappers, which I carefully washed and saved in a cigar box. Sometimes I even picked wrappers up from the street to help me reach my target faster. I remember my mother once described playing with an abandoned and broken umbrella she found when she was a child in Europe; the imaginary games she made up, and how much pleasure it gave her. She never had store bought toys, and wasn’t convinced that children needed them to amuse themselves.
Sam was more closely tuned into my parents’ financial anxieties. I will never forget his reaction, about a year earlier, when my mother told us she was going to have a baby. I was secretly excited, feeling all my nagging about a baby sister had finally paid off. Sam felt differently, and in a chiding perhaps angry tone, said to my mother, “ but we can’t afford to have a baby.”
The three of us were in the kitchen, Sam’s back to the table, which I was facing; my mother at an angle where she saw us both. We were both startled by Sam’s outburst, and my mother reached out to hug him and then me. She tried to reassure us that everything would be all right.
Many years later, when my father shared his anxieties about being able to pay the doctor and hospital bills, I realized that Sam had intuited the situation correctly. My mother needed a “high class” specialist from Manhattan because she was having a difficult pregnancy. She was 38 years old at the time and “her tubes” had been tied, after I was born, about 6 years earlier. I remembered my father said, “ I didn’t know how I would pay the doctor, so each week I took money from the household budget, to save money for the bills. Fortunately, by 1943, the business had improved. Dan was born prematurely and stayed in the hospital for at least a month afterwards. When he was seven months old, he had surgery for a hernia, which my mother believed he developed after birth, while in the hospital. “The nurses just let him cry”, she said, and “he was small with weak muscles.”
My mother stopped at the store, took some money out of her change purse and sent me in to look for a coloring book while she stayed outside with Dan and the carriage. ‘Don’t be too long”, she said, “we’ll wait outside”.
I loved that store. There were so many things to look at and touch. The display tables ran the length and breadth of the store, divided into different sections: one for hair ribbons, hair nets, barrettes and bobby pins; another for sponges, brushes, cleaning cloths, polishes and cleaning solutions. Then there was a section for nail polish, another for needles and pins, zippers, patterns and sewing items and a large section devoted to school supplies. I headed over to the toy section where coloring books were displayed, and quickly chose one with interesting pictures from all over the world.
We shopped at that Variety store often and about a year later, it became the site of my greatest ignominy. As my mother stood by the counter giving Mr. Newman, the storeowner a list of what she needed, Sam and I wandered around looking at the merchandise displayed. We picked up erasers, paper clips and a pen or two to look at more closely, and when we realized that Mr. Newman was busy with my mother, we stuck them in our pockets. We had no plan to do so, but we both recognized the opportunity of the moment and were caught up in the challenge and excitement. We wandered in the store some more, trying to appear nonchalant, and while my mother’s bill was being totaled, we headed outside. We were bursting at the seams, gleeful with what we had just pulled off. We found it hard to contain ourselves, but tried mightily as my mother joined us on the street, tucking her packages into the carriage.
We didn’t look at each other, for fear we would give our secret away, but we were struggling to act as if everything was normal. By the time we reached home, however, my mother suspected us of mischief, and asked, “ what is up with you two, what have you done”. “Nothing, nothing,” we replied, trying to keep straight faces and act normally. She wasn’t convinced. We were behaving differently; looking at each other excitedly and trying to contain our feelings. We were behaving like we had a secret between us.
She kept asking, and the more she asked, the stronger our denials became. But finally we couldn’t keep it in any longer, and burst out with our story.
For a moment, she was quiet and then replied matter-of–factly, “ We will go to the store to return what you have taken.” She asked Mrs. Milano, our next-door neighbor to watch Danny for a little while, and we headed out. We walked silently. I hardly heard the traffic, and didn’t notice the street-lights that were coming on, with the approaching darkness. My mind was a blank and I was scared.
When we got there, my mother said, “Mr. Newman, my children have something to say.” Fortunately, the store was empty and we were the only ones there.
With great embarrassment, we reached into our pockets, retrieved the items and put them on the counter. “We are sorry, we took these items without paying,” we said. Mr. Newman looked knowingly at my mother, and kindly at us. “ Thank you, for telling me, and bringing these things back. You have done the right thing.”
Sam and I breathed a big sigh of relief. We felt deflated and chastised, and we never spoke about the experience after that. Our shame lasted for quite a while. More than 70 years later, I reflect on it with great admiration for my mother. She did the right thing; letting us face the consequences of our actions, with no chiding or lecturing. Later, as opportunities presented themselves, we got pointed lessons about how hard my father and the other store-keepers worked to earn a living for their families.
My father’s store was a little over a block away, and we walked with the coloring book tucked under my arms. I was happy, and I wanted everyone to see what I had.
My father greeted us warmly. I felt he was always glad to see me and showed me off to his regular customers and salesmen. “That’s my favorite daughter,” he would say. I was pleased and slightly puzzled, as I was his only daughter. Later, I saw the humor in his description.
Nevertheless, a “myth” developed in the family that in my father’s eyes I could do no wrong. Perhaps it came from his references to me, “as his favorite daughter, which he only did in the store. Maybe the family observed his doting behavior towards me, in contrast to his more critical reactions to Sam. When Sam married, Herta, his wife teased me about it. A few years later, when I told them my husband and I were separating, she wondered whether that would shake my father’s view, that “I could do no wrong.” I wondered too, but I don’t think it did.
But I don’t really know, because my father didn’t criticize me directly. Instead, he complained to my mother, expecting her to correct me, and communicate his feelings. That is what she often told me. I remember, when Julie, my husband and I told them we were planning to go to Israel for a year or two after graduate school, my mother who sometimes lived vicariously through me, more or less understood. But she said, “your father thinks you should settle down, accumulate some savings, and think about starting a family.” If she thought that too, she never said so.
My father held Sam, the eldest son and first born, to a high standard. As an American child, he had interests that were foreign to my father, and seen as a waste of time, and useless. Sam was a fervent baseball and Dodger fan. He followed every game, filling out the scorecards and updating batting averages after each game. At the same time, he did very well in school, always receiving high academic honors. Yet my father fretted about his “dreamy ways”, saying to him, “ If you don’t buckle down, you will end up as a garbage-man.” I felt my father’s criticism were unfair and felt sorry for Sam.
Many years later, I saw the disconnect between Sam’s aspirations and my father’s world -view. On a visit from D.C., my parents and I decided to take a boat ride to Bear Mountain, one of New Yorkers favorite recreational sites, up the Hudson River. During the trip, my father pulled me aside and said, “ I don’t understand why Sam is planning to leave his teaching job at Rutgers University, for a position with Lehman Brothers. He is well liked at Rutgers, and has a secure future.” I was dumbstruck by his reaction, and assured him that it would be a good change, giving Sam opportunities for growth.
We entered the store, and after greeting my father, my mother walked with the carriage down Dean Street to the 10 -foot high black steel gate, that accessed the alley behind the store. My father walked through the store, stopping only to tear about 4 feet of brown paper from the roller, near the back counter. He opened the gate from the inside, giving us access to the alley, where deliveries were made.
My mother positioned the carriage near the stairs, and my father pressed the sheet of brown paper he was carrying, to the four concrete stairs behind the store. He wanted me to have a clean place to sit.
I took out my coloring book and crayons and my mother showed me where in the carriage she had tucked Danny’s bottle. She then entered the store, with my father, through the back door.
I settled onto the steps with the coloring book and box of crayons, and started flipping through the book to find my first picture. It was a scene from Hawaii, with mountains and ocean and people on the beach, with leis around their necks, doing the hula. I could see that a variety of colors would be needed, and I went through my crayon box picking out the ones I would use. I was only partly through coloring the picture, when Danny awoke and started fussing.
I figured it was time for his bottle. I carefully lifted him from the carriage, grabbing the bottle and taking him to the stairs where I positioned him on my lap. He was fussy, but managed to take most of the bottle. I burped him, played with him a little, put him back in carriage and changed him.
I walked the carriage the length of the alley, which ran from my father’s store on the corner of Dean to the ice-cream parlor, fronting on Flatbush Ave. All the stores had back cellars on the alley, which was where deliveries were made.
Danny dozed off, and I continued coloring. But then he started fussing again, and again I walked the alley shaking the carriage. He was restless and it was getting hard to stop his fussing and intermittent crying.
I continued my routine of shaking the carriage, picking him up, offering the bottle, walking the alley, but with little success. I was kept so busy caring for him, I hardly had time to color, beyond that first picture. Finally, I went into the store to tell my mother. It was clear that Danny’s hernia had flared up and the only way to comfort him was to apply warm compresses to the site of the pain.
We left the store shortly thereafter, and as we turned the corner to St Marks Avenue, where we lived, I saw the Good Humor Ice Cream Truck parked right in front of my house. Oh no, I thought, I cannot want ice cream. I averted my eyes. I shouldn’t want ice cream, and I cannot ask for it.
As we approached our building, my mother reached for her purse. I froze, looking longingly at the ice cream truck and then down at the sidewalk. She took out some coins, and said, ““Today you have earned a treat. You stuck by our agreement and you were a “mamala” (little mother) to Dan. I am proud of you and you deserve an ice-cream” as she handed me some coins.
The ice cream I ate that day, was the very best Good Humor chocolate covered vanilla ice cream bar, I have ever eaten. Cross my heart and hope to die!