"Got silk?" If you were around in the 1930's or 40's and answered "yes" there's a good chance that your silk came from the looms of H & H Silk Co. on Matlock St. in a grimy section of the mill town of Paterson New Jersey. Paterson was my home town and known the world over as the "Silk City".
One of the H's was Leo Hampel, my father, who tended to his six looms like a rancher to his flock. Weaving was the skill my father brought with him from the Polish textile hub of Lodz so it was no surprise that upon arriving in America he teamed with his brother Isadore and bought a half dozen looms from Crompton & Knowles on credit, a lot of credit.
I must have been about seven or eight when , as a treat my dad took me to the shop. In my family it was always the shop, never the mill or the factory. On first confronting a loom, I remember stepping back from the monster, a complex machine about the size of an armored personnel carrier and looking just as warlike. Parts were interacting every which way, shuttles east and west, reeds north and south plus quills and bobbins and warps. All working in tandem and creating a din that jarred the teeth and buckled the floor. Oil and grease stains served as floor coverings. This was the way my father earned a living every day, six days a week and many hours of overtime in that dirt and noise. No wonder he shouted when he talked. But from this cacophony and drudgery came lustrous,slinky, sexy silk, prized by fashionistas far and wide. I knew then and there this was not how I wanted to spend my life.
The language of our house was Yiddish. So I spoke Yiddish before I spoke English. When my parents didn't want me to hear something, they spoke to each other in a very broken English. Both immigrants from Poland, they were in America longer than I was.
My father's skills really came to the fore whenever there was a "smetsh" Leo Hampel's word for smash, a monumental screw up that came with the ominous grinding of metal and a halt to weaving followed by silence as if the machine needed to take a break. A smash was costly as production stopped and the output of silk diminished. On his knees or his back, Dad had little time to find the cause of the breakdown and fix it. Loom fixers were a special breed with intimate knowedge of every inch of the loom and how to get the beast working again. My Dad was an ace loom fixer and later in life he applied his skills in other shops.
The specialty of H&H Silk Co. was tie silk, the very finest of the breed that became the costly cravats that adorned the necklines of gentlemen who could afford the finest. There was no room for error in the manufacture of tie silk. Nary a slub was acceptable. Any misweave voided that day's production. Money down the drain.
I like to think that H&H silk went into the making of the luxury ties that a short salesman named Ralph Lipschitz was selling to fine stores everywhere. Ralph Lipschitz went on to become Ralph Lauren. Leo Hampel went on to become bankrupt. Alas as the textile industry began to abandon Paterson New Jersey for more profitable climes in the South where labor was cheaper and unions non existent. Caught in that squeeze, H&H was forced to sell its looms for scrap. And many times I thought those mashed, chopped up H&H looms came back to haunt America via Tokyo and Iwo Jima. Ironically much of the world's raw silk came from the silkworms of Japan.
At home, Mary, my mother cooked and baked, cleaned and washed clothes by hand and hung them on the line to dry. No one cooked and baked or cleaned like Mary. Oh how I lust today for that home cooking and special baked goods that I didn't appreciate as a kid. Gefilte fish, matzo balls, potato balls vegetable soup, stuffed cabbage, stuffed veal, stuffed derma and stuffed family and friends around the dinner table. All cooking done without referring to a recipe and never anything written down. What happens in Mary's kitchen stays in Mary's kitchen.
But what Mom did best was importune her kids, my brother Dan and me, to excel in school. This we did without fail lest as she would say, " You'll wind up working in your father's shop." If any mother was the driving force behind her kid's success, Mary would be at the wheel of a stretch Rolls Royce. My brother went on to a hugely successful career as an electrical engineer. Me? Well I went into advertising.
Once when I came home without a gold star on my report card, my mother asked, "What happened to the honor roll this term?"
"I didn't like the teacher very much."
"Why not?"
"She came to my desk and told me that Palmer was probably spinning in his grave and my handwriting was better left in the ink well."
"When she leaned down she had bad breath. She eats ham sandwiches."
After Dad's business failed, household income dwindled.
We were also in the last stages of a depression so like most families in our neighborhood we made some adjustments to maintain some semblance of our comfortable lifestyle.
Dad picked up temporary jobs as a loom fixer in assorted mills. At one point my mother took a job as a quill winder, a less labor intensive task in the weaving process, one more suitable for a woman. But one day an errant shuttle which could become a dangerous flying missile hit her in an ear and impaired her hearing ever after.
Despite the cutbacks we continued to live at 348 East 23rd Street in a wood frame four story house and never missed a rent payment. Dad shoveled coal ,kept the fire alive and hauled ashes to keep our flat warm and in hot water during the winter. I shared one of our two bedrooms with my brother. The apartment was located over Freed's grocery store which was very convenient since we had an arrangement with Mr. Freed to buy groceries without cash. Freed recorded our purchases in a ledger and at the end of the month we would pay up. I was never sure about Freed's bookkeeping or arithmetic but we enjoyed mutual trust.
I wasn't aware of it at the time but we were living a sort of generic existence. My parents, especially my mother slaved to maintain our standard of living. She was so good at keeping us afloat in the style to which we were accustomed that I can't say I was deprived. I would never have described us as poor. We were just very, very not well off.
Nevertheless the signs of poverty were clear and omnipresent. We had no car so we relied on the Madison Avenue bus to take us downtown and back. The fare was ten cents for a half hour ride with lots of stops along the way. Once in a while our generous neighbor, Mr. Resnick invited us for a ride around the environs of Paterson in his vintage Packard. Oh how I looked forward to this treat to glimpse a bit of the world outside my small circle.
The only phone in the building was in Freed's so we were permitted to make and receive emergency calls on Freed's phone.
I had no bike and no sled to enjoy the steep eighth avenue hill in winter. One January day when the snow was packed tight, even icy, a friend let me use his sled. It was the loan that came close to ending my life at an early stage. As I reached the bottom of the hill at an incredible speed, a car made a turn right into my path. I steered to avoid a collision but not enough to avoid ramming into the right rear tire of the oncoming car. Thrown from the sled and deposited in a snow bank at the side of the road, the car stopped and out came the driver, a woman who had heard a jolt and looking as though she had just run over and killed a kid with her car. There I was immobilized not by the snow but by terror, terror of what might have been and how I would have to explain it to my mother.
During this embargo on what little luxuries we might have enjoyed, there were still ways a kid could pass the time enjoyably if even in the imagination. I would invent games and actually execute some of them out of available cardboard and a pair of dice. Football and baseball with teams drawn up from box scores in the Daily News provided many hours of fun with or without a friend to play with. I announced these games as though I was on radio fancying myself Mel Allen or Red Barber. I created a game of chance constructed on a wooden crate with a circle of seven numbers, and a spinner in the middle. A poor man's roulette. With a meager allowance I bought a small board game called Kentucky Derby on which you moved your horse one space at a time according to where the spinner landed. The horses were named War Admiral, Twenty Grand, Omaha, Gallant Fox, Cavalcade and other great race horses of the time. Of course I described the races as any good announcer would. While the country was caught up in Monopoly mania, my friends and I made do with a pale and cheaper imitation called Big Business. None of us could afford the real thing.
There was never a shortage of food during this time of need. Our family was eventually forced to enroll in a poverty program sponsored by the city of Paterson. It was called being "on relief" and it consisted mainly of food stamps. My mother hated this dole but she swallowed her pride to keep her family in calories. I remember one Thanksgiving a big truck came through the neighborhood delivering the equivalent of CARE packages to those "on relief". I was so embarassed I ignored the delivery man seeking out our apartment to make the ignominious drop. Yet the special Thanksgiving package found its way to our door. We were the recipients of a turkey and all the trimmings. My mom sorted through the goody bag keeping the pareve items but disposing of the turkey, lard and other non kosher items. Our Thanksgiving was more of a kosher chicken and shmaltz event.
Aunt Selma, my mother's older sister came to America several years before the rest of the family. In her mind this endowed her with a sense of superiority which characterized her demeanor ever after. She shed, she thought, all semblance of her roots and spoke only English. But it was English with a pretty heavy Yiddish accent, although everyone kept it hidden from her so she really considered herself a "Yenkee". a grand dame who always knew more about all things than anyone else. "Mary" she would say to my mother,"You need to take Elvin (for Alvin). to a doctor; he's too skinny. I can see his heart beating in his chest. That's not right. You let him join the Cub Scouts? oh no, they take the Boy Scouts first when there is a war.
Once when I spilled my chocolate milk, she wiped up the mess with a wash cloth then squeezed the contents back into my glass. Since I was away from home and a five year old guest at Aunt Selma's summer rental in Goshen, N.Y. I thought I better do what I'm told, so I drank it. .
Aunt Selma's only child was Florence, the wunderkind, best in everything she tried. She also was, hands down the best spoiled brat in all of Bensonhurst, where the Waxmans chose to settle as immigrants. Uncle Nathan was a kindly old soul who worked as a furrier and served as a living ATM for Florence. Aunt Selma ran a sewing machine at a dress factory close to home. Friends at work were always giving Aunt Selma gifts, some of which she tried to pawn off on us. In a closet in the Waxman apartment there was a bag filled with brand new, tags still on, merchandise. Most of it was assorted items of clothing. None of this loot was ever appropriate for my family, but one time Selma insisted I take and wear a brand new pair of blue suede shoes. "You look good in them. " My new blue suede shoes were about three sizes too big, but Aunt Selma made sure we took them home because they were beautiful and expensive. So before there was Elvis there was Elvin and his blue suede shoes. I never wore them. ,, My family and I were convinced that Aunt Selma's friends at work were stationed right where all that stuff fell off the truck.
Lest I forget let me tell you about my flat feet. How flat? It was as though all the air went out of my tires and I was walking on the rims. Some expert on all matters, probably Aunt Selma, strongly advised that I should be wearing arch supports. Thus I was outfitted with clunky metal arch inserts that were so uncomfortable and sharp along the edges they cut through the leather of my ugly high top shoes. As though the kids in school needed more material for jokes. If I had ever passed through a metal detector with those arches I would immediatly be taken into custody. And the front page headline in the next day's New York Post would read, "8 Year Old Shoe Bomber Caught Flat."
I had fun with cousin Florence and actually enjoyed her craziness but one time as we were in the bathtub together. Don't ask how that ever came about but during that infamous scrub down, cousin Florence bit me in the stomach and left the imprint of her teeth on me for months. It's a good thing her aim was not too good or we'd be going to another bris.
The main thing I liked about visiting Aunt Selma and Florence was the location of their home, just ten minutes by trolley to my vacation paradise, Coney Island. It wasn't exactly St. Bart's or Barbados but it didn't have jelly fish or urchins to avoid in the surf. All you had to look out for were used condoms. I could think of no place that would be more fun for an eight year old than Coney Island. After a day at the beach we had the boardwalk to look forward to. The boardwalk had all the glitter and excitement for kids that Las Vegas held out to adults. On the boardwalk you had many games of chance in the numerous penny arcades. Payoffs were mainly in free plays. Skee Ball was a game of skill and you would accumulate cards redeemable in junk prizes, most all of them stuffed. Steeplechase Park was the Taj Mahal of amusements on the boardwalk. The only way I gained entry was via someone' s throwaway ticket that had some unused rides. So one time I did get to hold on for life and scream in terror on the legendary Cyclone roller coaster. I also rode the famous race horses and walked the rotating barrel and drove the bump'em cars and saw Coney Island from the huge Ferris wheel. While Coney didn't have the great restaurants of Vegas it did have the best frozen custard and the one and only Nathan' hot dogs which were well worth risking the wrath of God for eating treyf (non kosher). I have never eaten hot dogs as fabulous as those. I now salivate at the memory.
At the southern end of the boardwalk was Luna Park, the other assemblage of rides and fascinating freak shows. It was theater to hear the barkers make extravagant claims of the rarities to be seen inside: the sword swallower, the fire eater, the snake charmer, a hermaphrodite, the bearded lady, the world's strongest man, the tatooed wonder and more. From the fast talking comedic pitch of the barker, I took my first lesson in writing ad copy. I could never afford a ticket and I was too young for them to sell me one but just hearing about these wonders of the world triggered all kinds of images, none so vivid as the beautiful Tirza In Her Amazing Bath of Wine. Yes, up on the stage was this huge color poster featuring a gigantic wine glass into which Tirza "naked as the day she was born", the barker said, was shown lolling in Bordeaux , legs sexily dangling over the rim. At first I thought "this is funny; didn't she turn all purple? " Does the ticket include watching her shower afterwards?" These were the thoughts of a wide-eyed kid mesmerized by the beautiful Tirza seen only through a deep purple cheaply silk screened back drop, but even then what started out as funny became a more serious but not unpleasant sensation. In my young but fertile mind I probably saw more of Tirza than the paying audience did
A case of identity theft? No, a case of identity transference. One summer, the YMHA of Paterson sponsored an all expense paid two-week stay at a summer camp for kids whose families could not afford to send them. It was sort of a Fresh Air Fund of the day. Naturally my mother enrolled me. " You'll make new friends. You'll play sports. You'lll have a good time." She could not have argued more convincingly to get this response: "No way." With the registration form came a list of required camp clothes of which I owned precious few. Next thing I know a box arrives special delivery with more than enough camp gear for two weeks, each piece with an i.d. label sewn in the shoulder. Names I never heard of. All garments, as they say of used cars, previously owned. "I'm not going" I protested even as I boarded the Lehigh Valley train to Port Jervis,N.Y.and then on to Milford, Pa. and Camp Cedar Crest, a picturesque sylvan retreat in the Poconos my home for the next two weeks. As predicted I soon adjusted and even began to enjoy camp. Apparently former wearers of my new identity outfits left some extra base hits in their tee shirts and some amazing basketball shots in my shorts. They must have been jocks and for this I belatedly thank them very much. They not only helped me trade the tar bubbling pavements of Paterson for a cool and welcome,but all too short,respite in the country. I learned to swim, was elected captain of the basketball team. scored some points in games and actually hit the softball out of the infield. All of this for a kid whose only previous athletic experience consisted of rooting for the Boston Red Sox.
I never suffered the expected identity crisis despite labels to the contrary. In two weeks I became known as Alvin, that fun kid from Paterson.
Bubbe, my maternal grandmother, often spent time in our flat. When my mother went to work, Bubbe played nanny, baby sitter, cook (pasta with ketchup) and wise old storehouse of amusing and often ridiculous bubbemeises (myths, superstitions, old wive's tales).
Bubbe never did learn English, so from her I learned Yiddish, many words of which no English translation can accurately do justice.
While Bubbe didn't invent the spitless spit, she surely was one of its seasoned practitioners. "Ptooey" . I first heard the sound and saw the gesture whenever the name Hitler was mentioned. Her head would face down and with an emphatic shake would spray "Ptooey" meant to curse the ruthless dictator and wishing him in drayed (buried ). Grandma's only son, Herschel, my uncle, and his family perished in the holocaust. "Ptooey" was also emplyed when treyf ( non kosher foods) or chometz (not kosher for Passover) were mentioned, in an effort to ward off the ingestion of such foods. Bubbe would look skyward as if to imply God is watching. I was so impressed with these incantations that I did not violate the rules until many years later and even when I did eat something I wasn't supposed to I believed I was committing a sin and would be punished. I didn't eat bacon,ham or shell fish until I served in the Navy many years later and to this day I shun such foods.
Some typical bubbemeises:
If you let your fingernails grow long you will have bad luck.
If you eat standing up the food will go to your legs.
The best physic (laxative) is an enema.
Eat a flat piece of toast (a panetzl) liberally slathered with garlic (knoble) and you poison all the germs in your system
The one and only cure for acne is urine.
The best cure for digestive problems is a mixture of rhubarb and soda. Bubbe compounded this remedy at home by combining shavings from a well aged chunk of rhubarb with baking soda. The results were preserved in jars and looked exactly like jars of mud. It's been written that uncooked rhubarb is about as delectable as pond algae. Those who could stomach this concoction swore it worked.
It was a time of highly publicized kidnappings in the country, headlined by the Lindbergh tragedy. To prevent my being snatched, Bubbe was assigned to get me when school let out and one day in the boisterous crowd of parents and schoolkids that milled about at session's end, one woman grabbed my arm and said, "Come to momma". I do remember the event and to me it was simply a case of reaching for the wrong arm. But to her dying day Bubbe remained convinced that I was about to be kidnapped and that she saved my life. If she was right it would have been the world's first kidnapping ransomed with all that my family could afford to pay - a homemade sponge cake.
