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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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ACCENTS
Growing up, I was aware that different people spoke differently. My mother, and her friends who were born in Eastern Europe, and who spoke “Jewish,” spoke with a Jewish accent. Italians spoke with Italian accents. Irish spoke with Irish accent etc. Some had stronger accents than others. It may have depended on how long they were in the US, or how young they were when they came to the US, or how adept they were at losing their accent. Henry Kissinger and his brother came to the US at the same time. Henry has a heavy accent; his brother does not. When his brother was asked why, he replied, “I listened.”
A popular book in the late 1930’s by Leo Rosten (whose nom de plume was Leo Q. Ross) was “The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N.” It was about a night school English class. Whenever Mr. Kaplan spoke, (as well as some of the other students) it was with a Yiddish accent. The mispronunciation is apparently what made the book funny. First President George Washington was pronounced by Mr. Kaplan, “Foist Prazidant, Jawdge Vashington.” V’s become w’s, and vice versa. Th’s become d’s. Already is awreddy. Girl is goil. Fancy is fency. Letter is ladder.
To me, American-born grown-ups did not have an accent. My mother’s friends’ children and I, born here, did not have an accent. Many of us were embarrassed by our parents’ accents. Some of the black and Puerto Rican kids in my junior high and high school, did speak with black and Spanish accents. I assumed it was because they may have been born in the southern US or Puerto Rico, and they lived in predominantly black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods (called ghettos, for blacks, and barrios, for Puerto Ricans.) Many of New York’s Puerto Ricans, called Newyoricans, continued speaking Spanish, and would shuttle back and forth between New York and Puerto Rico. My Puerto Rican classmates, born here, spoke unaccented English, as did my friend, Frank Torres. His father was born in the US, and, in fact, was elected to the New York State Assembly from our neighborhood.
When I entered CCNY, and took “Public Speaking,” I was told that I spoke with an accent. Whaddiya know! It was evident to the instructor that I “dentalized” my t’s and d’s. I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that students like myself (having grown up in a Yiddish speaking home) tended to place their tongues on their teeth, instead of their upper palate, when pronouncing t’s and d’s. That was wrong. I was told to change it, and like a good boy, I changed it. Non-New Yorkers insisted that New Yorkers spoke with a New York accent. We came from Noo Yawk, and would go to toidy-toid street. Just as Bostonians dropped their “r’s” (Pack youa ca in Havad Yad), New Yorkers emphasized and hardened their g’s. (Going gover Long Gisland), and tawked different with regard to sentence structure from WASPs and other “Real Americans.”
In the 1940’s, there was a radio program featuring a speech expert who could listen to a person and tell where he or she grew up, just from the way the person spoke. I was told that eventually, he would no longer be able to do that because we will all have radios, and it will wipe out regional speech. From listening to the radio, all native Americans will begin to speak like one another. In addition, with increased ease of travel, people will be moving around much more. The different regions will no longer be isolated, and regional accents will become lost or corrupted.
Hollywood both added to, and detracted from, this phenomenon. It spread American speech all across the country, but it also gave us movie stars who spoke wonderfully accented English: Charles Boyer, Akim Tamiroff, Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Dietrich, Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, Katy Jurado, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, as well as American born James Cagney, Will Rogers, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Katharine Hepburn, John Garfield, Tallulah Bankhead etc.
A great play, which became a great movie, is “My Fair Lady,” from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. It is all about accents, and the fact that speech reflects class, and socio-economic status, as well as ethnicity. Cockney speech in England is much like New Yawk speech in the US, but worse. And just like Public Speaking at CCNY, Henry Higgins undertook to get Eliza Doolittle to lose her cockney accent, to stop dropping h’s, and mispronouncing a’s. It was her newly acquired speech that transformed a flower girl into a lady.
In high school, we all had to learn a foreign language. Just as important as learning grammar and vocabulary, was learning how to pronounce the words, and how to speak with a proper accent. It was not easy. It required careful listening and repetition. It helped if you had an ear for languages. One of my all time favorite TV programs was Sid Ceasar’s “Your Show of Shows.” He frequently played a foreign character and appeared to be speaking French or Russian or German or Italian. He was actually speaking gibberish, but with a perfect accent. He had an ear for languages.
As I noted earlier, my friends and I grew up in Yiddish-speaking homes. (The homes did not speak Yiddish; the people who lived in them did.) Yiddish was our first language. Perhaps that is why when we went to college, we had to be taught how to speak and form words in English somewhat differently from the way we did when we were children. These days, when we speak Yiddish, even though we have forgotten words, and never knew grammar, we still speak with good pronunciation. We learned the language at our mother’s knee. It is referred to as “mamaloshn,” mother tongue.
There is a new generation who would like to learn Yiddish, but who did not have the same good fortune as my friends and myself. They did not hear native Yiddish speakers, and most of them have trouble pronouncing the words correctly. They are unable to make the proper guttural sounds, unable to roll the r’s. I suspect they will have to be taught to “dentalize” their t’s and d’s. (My son David is an exception.) My friend Bob has a good command of Yiddish, to such an extent, that he was once asked by a Russian born, native Yiddish speaker, “Vere vos you born?” He was astounded to learn that Bob was American born, an “Americaner goboiriner.”
I never know how to react when I am told that I do not have a New York accent. I tend to be annoyed. I certainly do not say thank you, or take it as a compliment. It is as if someone would say to me, “You don’t look Jewish.” I am a proud New Yorker (and a proud Jew). When anyone asks me these days where I am from, I respond: currently or originally. From my speech, it is clear that I am not a native Bostonian. But, thanks to my CCNY Public Speaking classes, I do not sound like a stereotypical New Yorker, whatever that is. I am pleased when a fellow New Yorker recognizes a connection. There are subtle differences across the city, but it is generally agreed that the best New York accent comes from Brooklyn. And to quote Lenny Bruce: If you are from New York and you’re Catholic, you are still Jewish.” We all have New York accents.
Just as we in America are aware of the different dialects across the country, it exists equally (or perhaps more so) among Yiddish speakers, the most prominent being the Galitzianers and the Litvaks, The academics describe three groupings: Western, which is where it all began—in Germany; Northern—Litvish, Lithuania (Litvaks); and Southern—Poland and Galicia (Galitzianers). The Litvaks say “kugel,” and the Galitzianers say “kigel.” They also have differences in taste.
Finally, speaking of taste, America was once called “the melting pot.” People came here from all over the world. They spoke different languages, and when they learned English, they spoke with different accents, and made different contributions. Eventually, they would all be melted down and be alike. Rather than melting pot, I like the designation I once heard: salad bowl. We are an American salad bowl. We maintain our identity, our different tastes, colors, origins. It is all right for each of us to have our own accent, dialect, or regional speech. I like that image. Don’t homogenize us. Whaddiya say?
2-3-15
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application/msword
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Accents
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Growing up, I was aware that different people spoke differently."
Date
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2015-02-03
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application/pdf
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text
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en
Identifier
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ACCENTS
City College (CCNY)
Humor
Jewish Identity
New York City
Observations
Reading Out Loud (R.O.L.)
Yiddish
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
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MY FIRST DENTIST
Everybody I know has a dentist. He (or she) is almost as important as a doctor, who is also called a physician. In fact, dentists are doctors. I called all my dentists “Doctor.” They used to say that a dentist is a doctor who flunked out of medical school. But that is not always the case. I am sure that lots of dentists wanted to be dentists. When they were asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” they answered, “dentist.”
I had a memorable dentist, and a number of years ago, I wrote a piece about him. Unfortunately, I cannot find it, so I decided to write this. If I find what I had previously written, I will compare it to this, decide which I like better, and will either keep it and discard the other, or vice versa, or combine the two.
“DR. SOLOMON MAGGIN, DDS.” His name conjures up for me a larger than life figure. No other dentist can even come close to him. The story of his life that my mother told me, is the story of a legendary human being. It was living history. Dr. Maggin never revealed anything to me about his early life. However, when I was in my teens, and was imprisoned in his chair, unable to speak, he went on non-stop about contemporary politics. I therefore concluded that all dentists are political and harangued their patients. It came with the territory.
Solomon Maggin was from Kishinev, which is where my father was from. It is possible that they knew each other, or more likely that my father learned about him through a “landsmanshaft.” My father was born in 1884 and came to the U.S. around 1904, the same year that my mother left Vaslui, Romania and made her way to Toronto.
Dr. Maggin (I cannot refer to him as anything else but Dr. Maggin) may have been a few years older and was a teacher in the Kishinev schools. When my mother told me this, I found it hard to believe. I thought all Jews were poor and the only education they received was in a Talmud Torah or Yeshiva. Here was a young man who graduated from the Gymnasium with teaching credentials and was teaching the children of Kishinev in a public school. That was a very prestigious position for a Jewish young man.
Apparently, Dr. Maggin was also active politically at the time. He was a Socialist and took part in the 1905 revolution. The Czar put down that attempt to overthrow him, and Dr. Maggin was sent to Siberia. He escaped, made his way to the US, landing somewhere in California. The he made his way to New York where he earned a living peddling, and went to dental school at night.
He was tall, or I thought he was tall when I was small. He stood erect. He had a big bushy moustache. He spoke with a distinct Russian accent. He read two papers a day: the Russian paper and the NY Times. He was a right wing Socialist. He was on the board of the Rand School. He was convinced that the well-meaning Democrats were unaware of the evils of the Communists and the Soviet Union and of Josef Stalin. He was even upset with Norman Thomas. He knew all about the Moscow trials, and Trotsky and Soviet anti-Semitism. He once said the difference between Stalin and the Czar, was that one could escape from the Czar.
When I first started going to Dr. Maggin, his office was on Southern Blvd. and 149th Street. It was the mid-30s. Like every other child, I did not want to go to the dentist, but it was carved in stone that we must brush our teeth twice a day and see our dentist twice a year. And it turned out that I had poor teeth and required fillings almost every time I visited him. I know that he charged my mother very little. By the early 40s, he moved from Southern Blvd to the Grand Concourse. I believe it was 1235. (I can’t remember what I had for lunch but I remember that Dr. Maggin’s office was 1235 Grand Concourse, near 167th Street. Where I used to walk to his office, I now took the trolley.
His was a one-person office. He did everything. He had no secretary, he had no assistant. He booked appointments. He did the cleanings. He took the x-rays. He drilled, and he filled. He also did extractions. However, on one occasion, I had an impacted wisdom tooth, and he decided that it required a specialist, so he sent me to some hot shot who had a fancy office and an assistant.
This “specialist” took several x-rays, studied them carefully, gave me novocaine, and proceeded to extract my wisdom tooth. He had a whole bunch of tools that looked more appropriate for a wood worker or carpenter: pliers and hammers and chisels. He pulled and pulled, and kept looking at the x-ray. Then he took the chisel and proceeded to hammer, apparently trying to separate the wisdom tooth from the adjoining molar. Back to pulling. He then triumphantly pulled out the wisdom tooth. Unfortunately he pulled the adjoining molar, which Dr. Maggin had spent a great deal of time trying to save. No way to put it back. I was almost hysterical. On top of that, his idiot of an assistant, when she saw that two teeth had been pulled, asked the dentist if she should charge me for two extractions.
Original Format
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
My First Dentist
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Everybody I know has a dentist."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014/2015
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application/pdf
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text
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en
Identifier
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DENTISTS
Childhood
New York City
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
I Take My Cousin to Her Prom
My cousin Rozzie is 3 ½ years younger than me. A most remarkable coincidence is the fact that my two cousins, Barbara and Rosalind, were born on the same day: May 13, 1931. Rozzie is the daughter of Louis Goldstein, and Barbara is the daughter of Ruth Goldstein Kestenbaum, brother and sister. At one time I wondered if the two couples planned to conceive at the same time.
As I was growing up, the Goldsteins and the Kestenbaums were the only cousins I knew. My mother and I would visit them from time to time. Actually, my mother would visit, and I tagged along. My mother would be engaged in conversation with the grownups, while I sat quietly by myself. I had little or nothing in common with the grownups, or with Rozzie, her younger brother Eddie, or Barbara.
When I entered college, I felt more comfortable talking with both my older and younger cousins, but I saw less and less of them. By this time, I chose not to tag along. From my earliest years, both fathers, Louis Goldstein and Arthur Kestenbaum, served as role models and I admired them both. Louis taught biology at Clinton High School, and Arthur sold men’s clothing at Bancroft’s on Madison Avenue.
Louis and his wife Esther were teachers, and they pushed their children, not only to excel in school, but to accelerate, to skip classes. Rozzie was two years younger than her classmates when she graduated from high school.
For many high school graduates, the culmination of 12 years of school (or 10 years of school for Rozzie) is not the graduation ceremony but the prom. When I graduated from Stuyvesant, I chose not to attend the prom. I certainly did not believe I missed anything. I didn’t have a girlfriend, and it struck me that it would be silly for me to get dressed up and spend all that money to take someone to a prom for whom I had no feeling, and to take her someplace where I would feel uncomfortable. That was 1945.
It was now June 1947, and I was completing my sophomore year at CCNY. One evening I received a call from my cousin Louis. He wanted to ask me for a favor. Would I take Rozzie to her high school prom? Wow! I was taken aback, and after a few moments of hesitation, I stammered, sure. I really don’t know how these things work with girls. Rozzie attended a coed high school. Do the boys ask the girls to go to the prom with them? Do the girls ask the boys? I believe Louis explained that no one had asked Rozzie to the prom, and her friends were going. It occurred to me that she may have been seen as “too young,” by the boys in her class. An unanticipated disadvantage of skipping. Louis explained that he would like me to take her to her prom. He told me that he would take care of all expenses. I said I would be delighted.
Thinking about Louis’ request, I had all kinds of mixed feelings. First I was flattered; then I wondered if I was called out of desparation. No where else to turn. Or was it a stroke of genius? Ask Jacob! He is our handsome, smart, cousin who is in college. How was I really seen? For years, I believed we were looked upon as the poor relations. That was then. This was now.
The evening of the prom, I put on my best (and only) suit, and took the trolley to Rozzie’s house on Sedgwick Avenue, corsage in hand. Rozzie and her friends had arranged for a limousine, and off we went to the Copacabana. By now, my ability to make small talk had improved considerably. Besides, I was a couple years older than the others. I was very gallant, complimented Rozzie, and entertained her friends. I had never been to a night club, though I had been to a few jazz clubs on 52nd Street. I looked forward to the show with great anticipation. The featured entertainer was Jimmie Durante! I loved Jimmie Durante. I used to do imitations of Jimmie Durante. I couldn’t have been happier, and more important, Rozzie was happy. We danced, we talked, we ate, we drank, we laughed. We had a great time. The night club photographer took a picture of our table, and before we left, we each had a Copacabana match book with our picture. We all looked great. For a moment I wondered if I would have had an equally good time at my prom.
1-2-12
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
I Take My Cousin to Her Prom
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"My cousin Rozzie is 3 ½ years younger than me."
Date
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2012-01-02
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1931/1947
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I_Take_My_Cousin_to_Her_Prom
Adolescence
Bronx
City College (CCNY)
Cousins
Family
New York City
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
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I Really Am Lucky
When you add it all up, I really am lucky. Maybe it depends on your point of view: the big picture vs. the little picture. Still, big or little, now or then, I suspect, I come out ahead. Even the bad, has a little bit of good, even though you don’t know it at the time.
Let’s start with place: That’s an easy one. Who is luckier than the person born in the U.S.? I have always been aware that if my folks hadn’t come to the U.S. and if I had been born in Eastern Europe, I may not have survived the Holocaust. And if I had survived, what a different life I would have had. And being born in the U.S., even though I was Jewish, I was also white and male and heterosexual and without disabilities. At one time, just a few years before I was born, it was fashionable to be anti-Semitic. These days, being Jewish is a plus..
And what better city to be born in than New York. The Big Apple. The center of culture—music, art, theatre, literature. The best musical organizations, classic, jazz and pop, tin pan alley, where aspiring musicians and composers headed; the best museums, art schools, where aspiring artists headed; Broadway, where aspiring actors headed; the best publishing houses, where aspiring authors headed. I grew up surrounded by all of this.
Which brings me to:
Time: I was born in December 1927. During the first couple years of my life, things were great. I was living in the lap of luxury. Those were very formative years
The depression
The New Deal
Education
The Golden Age of almost Everything: Movies, Radio, Jazz, Folk Music, Theatre, Literature, Transportation, Manufacturing, Organized Labor, Medicine,
The exceptions: Art, unless you are a big fan of abstract expressionism; digital technology; social media, poetry, unless you are a fan of free verse; Classical Music, unless you are a fan of modern music like John Cage and composers like him.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
I Really Am Lucky
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"When you add it all up, I really am lucky." (Fragment, early draft)
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A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012
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I_Really_Am_Lucky
Fragment
Judaism
New York City
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Dublin Core
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Autobiographical writing
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FIGHTING THE LANDLORD
As if I had nothing better to do in the spring and summer of 1953, I found myself in a legal battle with my landlord. I had been living in apartment B63 at 783 Fox Street, the Bronx, since 1934, when my mother and I moved in. I was six years old. It was the depression. The apartment house, with 82 apartments, was the newest on the block. It had a large courtyard with a garden and an elevator. The landlord, Mr. Gordon, lived in the building, as did his nephew, Marvin, who became my friend. Mr. Gordon had set the rent at $30 a month for the apartment, but because it was the depression, and he had few takers, and we needed a place to live, and he was a good guy, he agreed to charge my mother $25 a month. And so the rent was $25 from 1934 until 1951, when we were charged a 15% increase bringing our rent to $28.75.
We had a new landlord, Mr. Lorber, who was granted a 15% increase in our rent. I felt that he deserved it, especially since the apartment was supposed to have been rented for $30 in 1934, and costs had gone up considerably, ant it was no longer the depression. The following year, we received a new refrigerator for which we paid an additional $3 a month. Our rent was now $31.75. I could go along with that, too. Thank the Lord and the “Temporary State Housing Rent Commission” that it wasn’t more.
Then in April 1953, a new landlord, Mr. Haskell, who knew not Gordon, decided he wanted to increase our rent, and came up with the scheme of charging us $2 a month for a television antenna. He may well have charged every tenant $2 as a way of squeezing more money out of the building. At this time, there were TV antennas springing up all over roofs in New York. It was a sight to behold. A very ugly sight. However, we did not have a TV antenna on the roof, and did not intend to put one up. In fact, we did not have a TV, and did not intend to buy one.
We therefore refused to pay Mr. Haskell an additional $2 a month. However, the 1953 Rent Law allowed an increase in rent if there was an increase in dwelling space or services. Mr. Haskell and his lawyer interpreted allowing us to put up a TV antenna as an increase in services. On April 26, we were notified that as of May 1, our rent would be $33.75 per month. We filled out a Form 23, then a Form 60 to complain of an overcharge.
On June 4, I received a postcard with a Docket number regarding our complaint. On June 14, I was notified by the Bronx Municipal Court that my rent would be $33.75 a month. The next day, the Rent Commission informed us that the maximum rent is $33.75, which “includes right of tenant to install TV aerial.” I was told that I was entitled to appeal, so I appealed on July 3. Three weeks later, the landlord argued, in response to my appeal, that he only owned the premises since February 1953. I was not sure how that was relevant, but more to the point, tthe Rent Commission found the $2 charge to be valid.
The final document, dated Sept. 21, 1953, and signed by State Rent Administrator Joseph D. McGoldrick, found against me on a technicality. Administrator McGoldrick said that the order increasing the maximum rent was issued May 28, “but no protest was filed within 30 days of that date. A review cannot now be obtained of the said order.” Administrator McGoldrick then dismissed my protest. Damn! I shrugged and gave up.
I looked through all my papers and was unable to find any record of a May 28 decision. The first I heard of an increase was June 14, and then June 15, but no May 28 notice. July 3 is less than 30 days after June 14 and June 15. I really do believe my protest was timely. But by September, I figured I had had enough. I had a file folder filled with lots of legal papers. It cost my landlord more in lawyer’s fees than he was going to get from the $2 rent increase. I also felt that in 1953, $33.75 for my apartment was a heck of a bargain. We kept that apartment until 1957. Twenty-three years is a long time to live in one place, and only have a rent increase of $8.75.
10-11-12
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application/msword
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Title
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Fighting the Landlord
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"As if I had nothing better to do in the spring and summer of 1953, I found myself in a legal battle with my landlord."
Date
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2012-10-11
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application/pdf
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application/pdf
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en
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1953/1957
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FIGHTING_THE_LANDLORD
Bronx
New York City
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2dcbbb956a9b6db6ac490a00c9fc3cdd
Dublin Core
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Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
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DRESSING UP
By the time I entered high school, I knew there were occasions when one “dressed up:” Bar Mitzvahs, visits to relatives, going to Shul—and toward the end of high school, going to a party or on a date. The other 340 days in the year, I wore whatever was lying around.
Going to Stuyvesant, I passed Klein’s Department Store on 14th Street, which practically gave merchandise away. From early on, I bought my own clothes, and I was a sucker for a bargain. And Klein’s specialized in bargains. My mother taught me about quality—the feel of the material, the stitching, the matching patterns—and I learned about the different manufacturers’ and retailers’ labels. I continued shopping at Klein’s through college and beyond. While working in mid-town Manhattan, I discovered Gimbel’s Basement, which also had quality merchandise at bargain prices. But I felt like a traitor (to Klein’s) shopping there.
The point is: I dressed well when it was required. I should point out that not only did I check the clothes for quality, I always checked them for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union label. Over the years, I accumulated an impressive (union made) wardrobe, which I took with me when we moved to Washington in 1965.
By this time, my sartorial routine was well established. I went off to work each day in my uniform: lightly starched shirt, carefully knotted tie, pressed suit, shined shoes. Also, I was showered, shaved and neatly combed, ready to face the world. In Washington, I eventually had to supplement my wardrobe, and found Woodward and Lothrup (Woody’s) and Hecht’s. They didn’t come close to Klein’s or Gimbel’s Basement, but you make do with what there is.
Of course, when I moved to Boston in 1979, I discovered “shoppers heaven,” FILENE’S BASEMENT. I suspect it out-Kleined Kleins. By this time, my Klein’s wardrobe had sharply “declined” (get it?). I restocked, in keeping with my position as a Federal agency Regional Director. I continued to dress sharp, as above. I continued to check the quality of the goods, and I continued to look for the union label. However, in 1997, I retired. I no longer had any need for suits, dress shirts, ties, or even shined shoes. I had come full circle. As in high school, there were only rare occasions when I was required to “dress up.” I didn’t even need to wear a suit when I went to services at the Newton Center Minyan. My wardrobe remained in my wardrobe closet. When I take out an old (union made) suit, I am impressed how well it looks, after all these years. I am pleased that the waist size is still the same, and the jacket still fits, but strangely, the trousers are too long. I am three inches shorter than when I bought the suit!
So what have I been wearing for the past 15 years? The casual wear that I wore on weekends the previous 15 years: slacks, sport shirts, sneakers, sweater, though I have acquired a few new items. I regret to report that Filene’s Basement is no more, and search as I might, it is almost impossible to find union made garments. I bought a few items from T. J. Maxx, in my neighborhood, and sneakers from the nearby New Balance outlet.
The fact is, there is no need for me to dress up. Who do I have to impress? I remember going to the theatre or a concert, or a fine restaurant; everyone dressed up. Some restaurants demanded that men wear a tie and jacket, and if you weren’t wearing one, they provided it. No longer. It is rare to see any man with a suit and tie at a theatre or concert. When I do, I assume he is coming from work and didn’t have time to change.
These days, my suits hang undisturbed in one closet, and the slacks and shirts I wear are in another closet. During the summer, I may wear shorts, and polo shirts and T shirts. I now wear sneakers year round. My ties hang on a fancy tie rack, lonely and neglected. I make a great Windsor knot, and miss it. No style changes with regard to underwear and socks. (I was going to write “I have not changed my underwear and socks,” but I was afraid it would be misunderstood.)
I have not mentioned coats. I have two classy overcoats from the old days, which I no longer wear. It is time to give them away. Instead, I wear a variety of outer jackets of different weights. I love my leather jacket, and I have a down jacket. Also a raincoat. I don’t carry umbrellas, but wear caps. I have a brown cap and a gray cap, and I alternate them, depending on the color of my outerwear. As with my underwear, I haven’t made any changes regarding gloves and scarves. (You will never catch me in a Burberry scarf. Such ostentation!) I also have lots of baseball caps, which I don’t wear.
I am perfectly happy with the way I dress. I realize that I have to get rid of a lot of clothes that I no longer wear. However, most of the items are too worn to give to Goodwill. I suspect I will give it to them anyway, and let them make the decision. What I will do is take my suit pants to a tailor to be shortened. Next month we will be going to a Bar Mitzvah in New York. I will be dressing up, and I don’t want to have my cuffs dragging.
12-26-11
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Dressing Up
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"By the time I entered high school, I knew there were occasions when one 'dressed up'..."
Date
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2011-12-26
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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text
Language
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en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dressing_Up
Adolescence
Boston
Clothing
Money
New York City
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2e2cf9b375281ba9ae68665dd4bea1cd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
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My Life in Art
When I was in elementary and junior high school, I don’t remember art classes. (I remember music, but no art.) Kids today bring home reams of artwork, but not then. In junior high school, there were shop classes: wood shop, metal shop and print shop. I had all three. There must have been a print-making class since their work appeared in our literary magazine, The Knowlton Herald. They did linoleum cuts, and some of the art was very impressive. I didn’t take it, and I still have trouble understanding how you cut away material to make a picture. My son Lewis can do it.
Whatever drawing I did at the time, I did on my own, usually in class, like doodling. I would draw the back of the head of the person in front of me, and I would draw the classroom. The heads were easy, but getting the perspective of the room was much harder.
I should mention that there was art in our little apartment, which I simply took for granted. A French watercolor of a young woman in a field. Two small oils of a Dutch interior. And a marble bust of a woman on an ornate marble stand. There were hand painted plates from Limoges, and lots of cut glass. My mother had collected them in the ‘20s. I assumed every home had them.
My first exposure to clay was in summer camp, and right away, I loved the feel of it-- holding the clay and shaping it into different forms—animals, the human figure, and heads. I liked making heads and working the clay into ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, a chin. Clay had a water base and hardened. We were also given plastiline (sometimes called plasticine), which had an oil base and stayed soft. At camp, it was part of “arts and crafts.” I don’t remember any instruction. The counselor was usually involved in teaching the kids how to make lanyards.
No arts and crafts in high school, though there were mechanical drawing and shop classes. And though there were studio art classes at CCNY, it never occurred to me to take one. We had “art appreciation” or art history, and learned about art from Egypt, Greece and Rome to the present day. I went to the art museums—the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Non-Objective Art, which became the Whitney Museum. A friend, Phil Bernstein, introduced us to the art galleries on 57th Street, and, as a college student, I felt I knew art. And I also knew the artists I admired the most: Michelangelo and Rembrandt. About this time, I started collecting art books—usually remaindered, and cutting out the art reproductions from Life magazine.
In my late teens and 20s, I tried my hand at pencil drawing, interiors and landscapes—trees and fields and buildings. After my mother died, I remember sitting in bed late at night, listening to music, with a book of art reproductions and a small drawing pad on my lap, using a conte crayon, copying paintings and drawings. I was amazed at how much time it took--- how quickly the time passed, and how much more I saw in the work of art by trying to copy it. The exercise was therapeutic, and some of my drawings were pretty good.
In 1951, I went to work for Local 38 of the ILGWU, and learned that the union, as part of its educational program, had an after-work sculpting class. I asked if I could take the class, and was told I could. It was held in the studio of Arturo Sofo, at 134 McDougal Street in Greenwich Village. I still remember the excitement I felt when I first walked into the studio: a large room filled with sculpting stands, plaster casts of various pieces of sculpture, boxes of plastiline, and shelves with students’ work. And 10 to 12 garment workers, young, middle-aged and old, men and women, who wanted to express themselves through sculpting. Our teacher was Arturo Sofo, a short, wiry man in his 50s, bald, always with a black beret. He was a respected sculptor, and a wonderful teacher.
For all of us, on entering the studio, the problems of the day were forgotten. We became sculptors. But first, Sofo had to tell us how to go about it. There was a lot to learn. What tools to get; how to build an armature; the proportions of the human body—skeleton, muscles; how to see and to translate what you see into a piece of sculpture. I went back to the Metropolitan Museum to look at those Greek statues (and Roman copies) again. Our first assignment was to copy the half size plaster cast of the Venus de Milo. Once we did that, we could go on to anything else. I found a sculpting stand, built an armature, put down a base of plastiline, and started to pile more plastiline on the armature. Eventually, it began to take the shape of a torso. Sofo would come over, look at it, and point out where I was going wrong. I would look at my figure, look back at the plaster cast, and, hopefully, see my mistake. I was learning what the human figure was like. It was great. I completed my first piece.
When a piece was completed, it was cast in plaster by an associate of Sofo’s who was a “master caster.” Sofo did not have the facility in his studio to do casting. When the piece was cast and returned to us, we would finish it, filing away the seam where the pieces were joined, and then giving it a patina. Sofo showed us how to paint the cast so that it would look like bronze or marble. I was pleased with my Venus, and then went on to do a head of Sylvia. Since I could not have Sylvia posing each week, I had photographs taken of her—front, sides and back—and had them blown up to life size. I built the armature, and worked from the photographs. When I completed it, and it was cast, and I gave it a marble-like patina, My second piece of sculpture. Way to go.
After I completed Sylvia’s head, I was ready to tackle Michelangelo. I had a book with photographs of Michelangelo’s Tomb of the Medici. I picked out one of a seated figure. It looked doable. An old man with his right hand on his heart and his left hand at his side, draped in a toga, It was hard, sculpting the face and hands, but I did the best I could. It still sits in a place of prominence in my home. I love when people admire it, and look surprised when I tell them I did it. When I visited Italy, I went to the Tomb of the Medici with great anticipation to see my “old man.” It is true that it is one of the smaller pieces, but there it was. I stood in front of it, transfixed. I foolishly told a guard that I made a copy of it, and he said casually that Michelangelo did not sculpt it. It was done by an assistant. He really knew how to hurt a guy.
I loved those two years of sculpting in Sofo’s studio. However, it came to an end in 1954 when I was finally drafted. Though I wasn’t sure what I would be doing in the Army, or where I would be assigned, I thought I might have the opportunity to sculpt, so I bought 10 pounds of plastiline from Sofo and took it along with me, just in case. There was a wood shop at Fort Dix, so I built a sculpting stand, and took that along as well. From Fort Dix in New Jersey to Camp Rucker in Alabama to Camp Gordon in Georgia, I shlepped those 10 pounds of plastiline and the sculpting stand. A year and a half, and I never took the wrappers off the plastiline.
When I returned to New York after my discharge, I returned to the ILGWU and to Sofo’s studio. It was wonderful being back, and I graduated to bas-reliefs. I did a bas-relief of my daughter Carol, and when the Jewish Labor Committee received a grant to establish the William Green Memorial Library, I sculpted a bas-relief of William Green for the library, both under the watchful eye of Arturo Sofo. By the late 50s, the ILGWU and Sofo came to a mutual parting of the ways. Sofo sold his wonderful studio and moved to Oswego New York, and the ILGWU was making major changes as well.
The sculpting stand and the plastiline were now in the basement of our apartment house in Brooklyn. One of our neighbors, Henry Zelwian, was a real artist. He taught art at Boys High School. Henry was a serious painter of landscapes, still life and portraits. We bought a wonderful painting of the flatlands in Brooklyn from him, and he did a portrait of Sylvia. She was now immortalized in plaster and oil.
We continued visiting art museums and galleries, and after we moved to Brooklyn, we added the Brooklyn Museum to our museum-going. It had some great sculpture by Lachaise and Maillol.. And we would take Carol, and then Lewis, and would push Martha in a stroller. The move to DC meant no more New York Museums, but we now had the National Gallery and the Phillips and the Corcoran, and then the Hirschhorn. I took a sculpting class at the Corcoran, which turned out to be a class where you assembled found objects and called it sculpture. I kept an open mind, but it felt like a children’s class to encourage creativity.
Turns out that my children were creative. Carol as a dancer and later, a photographer, Lewis as a print-maker and Martha as a potter. Whenever we went on vacation, I took a sketch pad along, and would sketch the cabin in which we stayed, and the landscape. And I took lots of pictures. As the kids got older, I bought each of them a 35mm camera—a Pentax K-1000--and they all became good photographers. For a while, I took photography seriously, learned how to print and enlarge my photographs, and thought about setting up a darkroom, but didn’t pursue it.
In 1979, when I moved to Boston, I found the Boston Center for Adult Education, and their sculpting class. The Center was located on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, only a few blocks away from my apartment on Beacon Street. That same feeling—forgetting the troubles of the day—returned when I entered that studio. The instructor was a talented young woman who graduated from Boston University with a Master’s in Fine Arts. Our class differed from Sofo’s in that we worked in clay, which was fired. And we had live models! Did I have a good time! Not only was there the thrill of creating “a work of art,” but I could look at naked ladies at the same time. Occasionally, our instructor brought in a male model. Oh well.
It was in this class that I began to learn about the importance of understanding the skeleton, and the body’s proportions—head, torso legs, arms. The model stood, or was seated, on a platform, which rotated, and the students did their best to reproduce the pose. It was important to work on the whole figure, constantly turning the model and your piece. I tended to work quickly, and usually completed a figure in one session. When our instructor had enough pieces, she would have them fired. After a couple of years, I accumulated a lot of pieces, and began to give them away to my children and friends. When Fran and I married and we moved to Brookline, I continued to take classes, but after a year or two, I gave it up.
In our new home, I set up a workshop in the basement, and finally took the plastiline out of its package. I made a few small figures (without a model) and left them on the sculpting stand, gathering dust. When David was around five, I suggested that he might like to play with the plastiline, and we tried sculpting animals together. We did it a couple of times. A few years later, Fran enrolled David in a children’s art class at the Museum of Fine Arts taught by Leila Rosenthal, and a few years after that, David graduated to her father, Ralph Rosenthal’s sculpting class. Coincidentally, I took an adult class with Ralph which I enjoyed very much. It was a new experience, sculpting a piece, and then breaking it up. I returned to sculpting from photographs. No models. In fact, Ralph encouraged his students to use their imagination. David spent several years with Ralph, and enjoyed sculpting (as I did) and made some fine pieces. I get a kick out of the fact that all my children have surpassed me in their artistic endeavors. I refuse to take credit for their accomplishments. I believe it is their talent, not my genes.
After I retired, I learned about the Evergreen Program at Boston University. For $20 you were able to take any class at BU that you could get into, limited to three classes. I couldn’t believe it. Looking over their catalog, I felt like a kid in a candy store. What an opportunity to take all those college classes that I could never fit in. Flipping the pages, I found the School of Fine Arts, and there they were: classes in sculpture! Three hour studio classes twice a week. Wow! I then looked for another class—in English, history, art or music appreciation, religion, economics--that I could take either before or after the sculpting class, and registered for both of them. I followed this routine for several years. The prices kept going up, traveling to and from BU was getting harder, and I took every sculpting class they gave, at least two times.
In my first sculpting class in Sofo’s studio, I was the youngest person among a group of older garment workers. Now, I was clearly the oldest person in a class of undergraduates. But I was finally getting the hang of it. If you are going to be a sculptor, you must learn how to use the tools of your trade: the material you will be sculpting—clay and plaster--and the utensils you will use to sculpt them. It took me a while to understand how to work the clay so there were no air holes, and how to keep the clay wet from one week to the next. How to mix plaster so that it is not too thick or too thin. How to build an armature. How to make a mold, and how to take it apart. How to repair a plaster cast if there is a break. How to finish the cast. I used many of the same tools that I bought when I was in Sofo’s class, tools for both clay and plaster. I made a few bas-reliefs as I did with Sofo. I did lots of torsos and figures from life, as I did at the Boston Center.
But I began to feel that, not only was I not improving, I was actually regressing. I reluctantly concluded that “liking to sculpt” is not enough. I seemed unable to progress beyond the fundamentals. With each piece, I had to relearn what to do. Someone said that art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I had neither. And it was getting harder to get to my sculpting class at BU.
The Brookline Senior Center started a drawing class. I signed up, and attended for a couple of years. The instructor was very encouraging, but I could see that my work left something to be desired. Something was missing in both my sculpting and drawing, and that something was talent. You’ve got it, or you don’t. I will “potchke,” from time to time, as the spirit moves me, recognizing that I am no artist. I will devote most of my creative energies to writing my memoirs, recognizing that I am no writer.
“Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And I’ve gotta write this stuff ‘til I die.”
January 31, 2010
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
My Life in Art
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"When I was in elementary and junior high school, I don’t remember art classes."
Date
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2010-01-31
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application/pdf
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text
Language
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en
Identifier
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My_Life_in_Art
Army Service
Art
Boston
Childhood
Children
Family
Hobbies
ILGWU
New York City
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add8e3f2bb4db5131db121270186d72c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
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A & P Files for Bankruptcy
I have a new routine. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I take the T to Boylston Street and walk over to Tufts Medical School to take part in a study. At the Brookline Village stop, I pick up a copy of the free paper, the Metro, then board the trolley. I almost always get a seat because I am carrying my cane, and there is usually a thoughtful young woman who offers me her seat. And these days, I always take it, thanking her profusely. (Yes, it is interesting that it is almost always a young woman.)
This morning, as I sat down and opened my paper, I was shocked to see a featured story headlined: “A & P grocery files for bankruptcy after 110 years.” The memories the story brought back. The formal name of the A & P is The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. When it opened in my neighborhood on Southern Boulevard off Longwood Avenue, I was around 10 or 11. I wondered how they could grow so big selling tea. It may have started as a tea company, but it has certainly come a long way: taking up a quarter of a block, and selling a lot more than tea. I had never seen such a big food store.
At that time, the late ‘30s, I was an experienced shopper. My mother regularly sent me to the neighborhood grocery store to buy bread, butter, milk, cheese, an occasional “measure sour cream,” canned goods, paper goods; to the fruit store for lettuce, tomatoes, apples, bananas, string beans, potatoes, carrots, and “soupn greens with a petrushka.” And even to the appetizing store, for lox (real lox, not Novia Scotia) and halavah and pickles and “mislinis” (black olives). My mother only entrusted me to buy “chop meat” at the butcher. She bought the chickens, meat for roasting, lamb chops and liver, herself.
We knew all the storekeepers. They were our neighbors. Many people had an “account” with the different storekeepers. They would buy something, and the storekeeper would keep a record of the amount, and every month, they would “settle up.” My mother didn’t do that. She paid for everything she bought, and if she couldn’t pay for it, she wouldn’t buy it. She gave me the money for whatever she asked me to buy. I was always impressed with how fast the storekeepers totaled up the bill. They would taker a paper bag and a pencil, which was always behind their ear, look at all the items I was buying, write down the cost of each item, and immediately come up with the total. Then put everything in the same bag. When I got home, I would occasionally, check the arithmetic. It was always correct. It was helpful to know the storekeepers because we went to the grocery stores for cheese boxes, and to the fruit stores for fruit crates. They were essential for so many of our activities. But I am digressing.
Even though it was still the depression, the neighborhood stores stayed in business and life went on. All the stores on Longwood Avenue between Southern Boulevard and Fox Street seemed permanently in place: the fruit store, the shoe repair store, the candy store, the Chinese laundry, the delicatessen, the grocery store, and on the corner, the drug store. When the economy started to improve, it was assumed that the storekeepers would do better, as well. That is, until the invasion of the monster store.
Food stores were rather small. You step in from the street, and there is a narrow aisle. On one side is a counter with a cash register, and behind the counter is the proprietor. Behind the proprietor are shelves. Under the counter is a case displaying merchandise. Sometimes on the opposite wall are more shelves with merchandise, and sometimes there is merchandise in the window. Always, there is merchandise in the back. You tell the storekeeper what you want and he gets it for you. You do not handle the merchandise. Fruit stores were different. They had boxes of fruits and vegetables on stands from the street to the interior of the store. There were prices written in large colorful numbers on paper bags stuck on the boxes. As with the grocery store, you did not handle the merchandise In some neighborhoods there were markets made up of several small stores huddled together in one larger indoor store. But then came the monster store, much larger than any market anyone had ever seen. It was a “super market.”
For the first time, shoppers found themselves in a store with lots of aisles, and with lots of shelves overflowing with lots of merchandise. And you were able to help yourself. There were carts that you would wheel through the aisles and load up with whatever struck your fancy. The prices were marked on the shelves, and on the merchandise. In the old grocery store, you asked the storekeeper for an item, and asked how much. If it sounded too expensive, you said, “never mind,” In the “super market” you saw different brands with different prices. The real bargains were the items which carried the “super market’s” own brands. That you couldn’t buy in the grocery store. The “super market” had a fruit and vegetable section where you could help yourself, so you no longer ended up with bruised, green or over-ripe produce.
The section that really impressed my mother was the meat department. She took pride in knowing her meat, and she could not get over the meat on display in the “super market’s” display cases. Not only did the meat look fresh, and just like the meat in Mr. Margolis’ display case, the prices were one fourth. It took my mother many months before she brought herself to buy meat from the A & P. It is one thing to overcome the feeling of disloyalty to the local storekeeper, by buying groceries and fruits and vegetable from the super market. It is a much greater hurdle to overcome to buy meat from a non-Kosher butcher. My mother’s rationalization: “It is better to pay Kosher prices for non- Kosher meat, than to pay non-Kosher prices for Kosher meat.” What my mother didn’t know was that the meat sold by the A & P was the same meat sold by Mr. Margolis’ Kosher butcher shop.
I have no idea how many years it took for the A & P to drive out the local merchants. The change was compounded by the changing character of our neighborhood. Following World War II, there was a transition from Jewish to black and Puerto Rican. Gradually, the Jewish storekeepers were replaced, but some of the new merchants specialized in merchandise for a specialized clientele, which the super market didn’t carry. The bodegas and carnecerias survived, but in countless neighborhoods, when the A & P moved in, the local storekeeper was driven out.
I drove by my old neighborhood a few months ago, and noticed that the old A & P had been replaced by a super market with a Spanish name. What its significance is, I don’t know. I learned from the news article that the A & P also operated under the names of Waldbaums, Pathmark, Food Emporium etc. That came as a surprise. I thought that the A & P was the A & P, and that Waldbaums was Waldbaums, not that Waldbaums was A & P. However, if here in Boston, Star Market is Shaw’s, then one retail store can be another. The article noted that A & P had assets of $2.5 billion (a lot of money) and debt of $3.2 billion (even more money). And it was the wholesale clubs that did them in. That’s capitalism.
12-16-10
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A&P Files for Bankruptcy
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"I have a new routine. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I take the T to Boylston Street and walk over to Tufts Medical School to take part in a study."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-12-16
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
en
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1938/2010
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
A&P_doc
Boston
Childhood
Mother
New York City
Observations
-
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3e9dd95ac9f0f40ac2e221ca98007c08
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
A Marriage of Twenty Years (and two months)
Some time ago, I wrote about my courtship of, and marriage to Sylvia. I tried to be honest and I tried to put into words my feelings, my hopes and dreams as we were about to start our life together. I acknowledged that ours was not a story-book romance, though I saw myself as a 23 year old who was deeply in love. I rationalized that Sylvia’s initial reluctance was the way women thought they were expected to react to an expression of love and a proposal of marriage. We didn’t have a traditional wedding because we didn’t have the money for a traditional wedding. I wanted to believe that we loved each other and that life would be wonderful.
We were young, we were smart, we thought alike, we were adventurous. How can it go wrong? The world is our oyster, whatever that means. December 22, 1951 represented the start of a magical life together. We transformed apartment B63 in 783 Fox Street into our love nest. We hitch-hiked across the country the summer after we married. We worked, went to school, partied with friends, went to the theatre and concerts, and traveled. In June 1954, I was drafted. When I was sent to Camp Rucker in Alabama, Sylvia joined me, and when I was reassigned to Camp Gordon, Georgia, we packed up and made our life there.
I felt I was able to make the best of every situation. We had a lovely little home off-post. Sylvia got a job on post. We went to work together; we came home together. We took advantage of all that Augusta had to offer. When I had leave, we drove home to New York. We had it made. And when we decided to make a baby, we made a beautiful baby. Sylvia got the best medical care at the army hospital. When her water broke the morning of October 12, 1955, we drove to Camp Gordon and went to the nice OB-GYN doctor. He examined Sylvia and told her that she should go home. She hadn’t dilated, despite the fact that she was having labor pains. Sylvia went to the army library. Later in the afternoon, she called me and we returned to the hospital. Sylvia was admitted, was taken to the labor room, then to the delivery room, and at 5:25 pm, Carol was born.
We were thrilled. Our baby was gorgeous and healthy. Everything was going our way. Five months later, I had manipulated an early discharge, and we returned home to Fox Street. I returned to work and school. Sylvia was a wonderful mother, and she had help from her mother. Our friends were beginning to have babies as well. A pattern had emerged: everyone got married by their mid-20s, and over the next ten years or so had three children. My gang: 1955, 1958 and 1962. Eventually, we all left the neighborhood, but we remained close.
We moved to Brooklyn in 1957. By 1962, we had three wonderful children. We were involved in the community: the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, picketing Woolworth’s. Sylvia joined an amateur theatre group. We found a lovely summer place on Bantam Lake. We were happy. I loved my job. I loved my children. I love my wife. There were tensions, but everyone has tensions. Sylvia found a psychotherapist. Sylvia stayed out late at rehearsals.
In the fall of 1964, I was offered the position of Education Director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Washington, DC, a very exciting prospect. Sylvia and I talked it over. Let’s do it. We found a lovely house for rent in the Shepherd Park section of Washington, the family moved from Brooklyn to Washington in December, and a new life. Carol and Lewis loved their new school, and Sylvia got involved in our neighborhood organization Neighbors Inc. I felt that we made a smooth transition and that we have a good marriage. Sylvia found another psychotherapist and suggested that I find someone as well. I did, but it wasn’t a good fit. Tensions continued, but I didn’t give it much thought.
More pressing were problems at work. The job wasn’t working out, and I started looking for something with the Federal Government. First, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which didn’t materialize; then the US Commission on Civil Rights, which did. Another pattern of the times: wives didn’t return to the labor market until their last child went off to school. We still had a few years before Martha would join her brother and sister at the Shepherd School. When that time came, Sylvia found a job with the Internal Revenue Service as a technical writer.
Vacations: Living in Washington, most people vacationed at the beach resorts in Delaware or Maryland—Rehobeth, Bethany, Ocean City. I discovered the State Parks in West Virginia which were cheaper, cooler, and to my mind, much more attractive. I loved the cabins, the lakes, the woods, the mountains. Sylvia preferred the ocean. We alternated. Driving to places we hadn’t been before was always tension-producing. I became anxious. Sylvia became annoyed. The kids became upset. As Martha became older, she took over as navigator.
As our seven years together in Washington passed, our children were growing up, developing their personalities, and their talents. We took pride in their accomplishments. (It is true that Carol picked on Lewis and Lewis picked on Martha, but that is the way of the world.) They did well in school; they asserted themselves; they made friends; they became real Washingtonians. We had moved from one “integrated” neighborhood, Crown Heights, to another, Shepherd Park. We were making a political statement, but Sylvia and I were in total agreement. I think that, for the most part, we were good neighbors and good parents.
We loved the area. After a year in our rented house, 8160 Eastern Avenue NW, we began to look for a house to buy in Shepherd Park. We found just the place: 7516 14th Street NW. My nasty little joke of the past several years: In 1966, we bought our house from a little old lady who was living there all alone. Forty years later, there is a little old lady living in the same house, all alone. I really loved that place. My first opportunity to play “Harry Homeowner.” For the next six years, I did all the minor repairs: plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, painting, and gardening. We bought tools, a hand mower, and I became a regular customer of Hechinger’s, Washington’s home supply chain store. In the last year, before our separation, and in anticipation of Lewis’ Bar Mitzvah, I finished the unfinished basement, with a little help from our friends.
As I look back over those last years of our marriage, I recall areas of disagreement, but (though I may be kidding myself) more areas of agreement. We went to the theatre and concerts. We had a wonderful circle of friends, and maintained close contact with our New York friends. Early on, we agreed that whomever feels more strongly about anything, will prevail. There was the classic division: I dealt with the big issues like Viet Nam, civil rights, and economic policy, and Sylvia dealt with the small issues like our children’s education, health, after-school activities, and the house. We did have different views about our children’s Jewish education. I wanted them to go to a Shule in Silver Spring; Sylvia didn’t want to shlep out there. Carol endured it. Lewis started there. Then we sent him to the Hebrew School at the nearby Tifereth Israel synagogue where Martha went as well.
Bickering increased. I realize now how unpleasant it was for Sylvia to have a frugal husband. I resisted spending money, always looking for a bargain. (Unfortunately, I haven’t changed.) When we went out to a restaurant and if expensive dishes were ordered, my annoyance was evident. Yet I never thought that it was the sort of thing that could precipitate the end of a marriage. I didn’t see myself as controlling. I looked on our relationship as a partnership.
In the last year of our marriage, Sylvia made it clear that she wanted out. (All this is very hazy. I can’t remember if there was a precipitating incident, or a particular conversation, though there must have been.) We may have been just hanging on at the time of Lewis’ Bar Mitzvah. I suspect we put on a good act in front of our friends and family. I may have not believed it would happen. I know that in our conversations about separating, I kept insisting that our relationship was not any worse than any of our friends. I asked Sylvia to participate in couple’s therapy. She refused.
By the late fall of 1971, the handwriting was on the wall, and it was beginning to be transmitted to legal documents. Sylvia found a lawyer, and I was advised to get one. I kept hoping this was a bad dream and I would wake up. I have two distinct memories of those last months when we were acting like a married couple, though the marriage was falling apart, and I was in real pain. We had tickets for a show. We went. We were sitting in the dark, and I began to feel very sad. I left my seat and went out to the lobby, and remained there until it was over. The other memory: Our friends, Dan and Ruth urged us to go with them to a club to hear a musician Danny liked. Again, we went. And again, I began to feel very sad. I then told them that I was in pain because our marriage of twenty years is ending. I cannot close my mind to that reality, and enjoy the music.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Marriage of Twenty Years (and two months)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Some time ago, I wrote about my courtship of, and marriage to Sylvia."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
en
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1951/1971
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
A_Marriage_of_Twenty_Years
Divorce
Love
Marriage
New York City
Parenthood
Sylvia
Washington DC
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a8222b9a7e25e8d28958bde7b0d53b2c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
My Career as a Substitute Teacher
In May 1951, I had “graduated” from the ILGWU Training Institute, but because I was now subject to the draft, I was not given an assignment. Arthur Elder, the director of the Training Institute urged me to go into the Army, get it over with, and on my return, I would begin to work for the union. No thanks. I was going to figure something out, and I did, but right now I needed to earn some money.
The year before, I had taken the NY Board of Education exams for a substitute license to enable me to teach Social Studies in Junior and Senior High School. I had passed them both, and in February 1951, I received my Certificate of Salary Differential, having gotten my MA in Education. This meant that I would be paid $16 for each day of substitute teaching. Not bad for 1951. Now, no longer a part of the ILGWU, I quickly got to work notifying elementary and junior high schools that I was available. I was told that it is almost impossible for a new substitute to get a high school assignment; so I should stick to elementary and junior highs in Harlem and the Bronx.
On May 8, 1951, I received my first call from PS 89 in Harlem. I gave my Substitute Teacher Service Record to the school clerk and was assigned to “HI.” I have no memory of that first class. I apparently survived, and returned to PS89 the next day and given class 3-3. On the teacher’s desk, there was a lesson plan, and the substitute did his (or her) best to follow it, I subsequently heard that many substitutes gave their students busy work and spent the day reading a newspaper.
I see from my Service Record that I had a fairly busy May and June. I taught 19 days, including four days at my old junior high school, 52, and two days at JHS 60, the girls’ junior high in my neighborhood. Though it was less than 10 years since I was at 52 as a student, the composition of the school had changed dramatically. Both JHS 52 and 60 were largely black and Puerto Rican, and most of the students were quite disruptive. Teaching was not easy, and a great deal of time was taken up with trying to maintain discipline.
At 52, there were always a couple of wise guys who would try to disrupt the class. One of the favorite devices was “nodding off.” There had been a lot of publicity about marijuana in the schools, and the kids would act as if they were high. And it was an act. Once in a while, I did get their interest and managed to teach. It seemed clear to the students and to the administrators that very little would be learned when the class has a substitute. As long as you kept them from acting up, you earned your pay.
The toughest two days I had was at JHS 60. In each class, there were several girls who were out to give the young substitute a hard time. On two different occasions, when I had turned to write on the board, some young lady called out, “teacher blows, “ and then, “teacher sucks.” I turned around and said, “pardon me?” The class laughed, and we went on. In the middle of a “lesson” a student got up and walked over to the teacher’s closet, opened it up, stood in front of the mirror and started putting on lipstick. I asked her to sit down. She ignored me. I walked over to her and she said, “If you lay a hand on me, I’ll have your ass.” I suspect she was right. I continued with the lesson, and she took her sweet-ass time to amble back to her seat. I closed the closet door.
My three days at PS 89 weren’t too demanding. I had a lesson plan for the two different third grade classes to which I was assigned.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
My Career as a Substitute Teacher
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"In May 1951, I had 'graduated' from the ILGWU Training Institute, but because I was now subject to the draft, I was not given an assignment."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
en
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1951
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
My_Career_as_a_Sub
Career
Education
ILGWU
New York City