What Am I Doing Up Here?
The Bronx
Finn!, Finn! You can’t catch me! Mrs. Levine, was our next door neighbor. Pretending to be baffled, she ran after me until this three-year-old settled under her tottering dining room table. I was lost, she pretended, and feigned a call for help from another neighbor. Without children of her own, I was the light of her life.
Within a year, we moved from Stebbins Ave. in the Bronx to Seabury Place in the Bronx, a street on which I evolved from an infant to the time I returned from the Korean War.
Seabury Place and its intersecting East 172 St. was like a European shtetl. In the summer, windows and apartment doors were left open allowing summer breezes to circulate. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. But what mysterious business would anyone have during the Great Depression?
Newspapers? Unlike the shtetl where the bookseller occasionally pushed his cart through the mud, and the rabbi bought a month-old newspaper to announce the latest news, we waited until our employed neighbor, Mr. Suslow finished his two-cents Daily News, and then sent his daughter, Sandra to deliver it.
If she wanted the latest local news, Ma went to Brodsky the butcher. News circulated there like the illuminated news spinning around the NY Times building. As Brodsky cut up pieces of chuck for Ma, (she wouldn’t buy his ground meat “Who knows what’s in it.”), he announced that Mrs. Linder’s sheets were knotted to the her clothesline because she had no clothespins.
“If you have any extra clothespins bring them here. I’ll give them to her.”
Phone numbers, for those who had one, were exchanged with the hope that a shiddach (a marriage) would eventually happen. So, meat of another kind was ready to be grilled from Brodsky’s butcher counter.
The Duke of Wellington said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton; perhaps WWII was won on the asphalt streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. Stickball, street hockey, two-hand-touch, pitching in and off-the-curb wore down the sneakers of the teenagers. Of course, the police tried to find the “criminals” with the stickball sticks, so we had a kid named Stanley “playing chickee” to inform us if he spotted a police car.
Why were girls absent from the social scene? The odds of giving birth to a girl or boy is 50-50. Why weren’t there many girls in the neighborhood? Who cared? The candy store provided more fun than we could possibly have with girls.
It was a mecca, a hub, a hangout where we would meet after a game, or in the evening. Almost everyone who passed through its door was plastered with a nickname based upon his or her appearance, or manner of speech. For example, Strictly. She hated the name, but Nervous, the candy store owner’s son tagged her after he listened to her phone conversations.
“Flame-Glo lipstick? It’s strictly for the birds.”
“Strictly speaking, she wears too much pink.”
“I strictly wore blouses until I found the right sweater.”
Her mother was in the candy store when Strictly opened the door.
“What’ll you have Strictly?” asked Nervous.
“Sure she’s Strictly,” shouted her mother. “She’s strictly kosher.”
“Strictly kosher my ass,” he replied. “She’s strictly bullshit.”
The laughs flowed like water over a dam, but the time came when we had to go to work or go to college.
Hey bigshot! You graduated high school with an academic diploma. What are you going to do with it? An academic diploma didn’t mean a thing unless you went on to college. I never met my grade adviser, and my parents were as green as the day they emigrated from Lithuania. I wasn’t directed towards college. Money was needed in the household. Pa tried. Oh, how he tried. The poor man worked his needle to a point of bluntness. Ma’s frugality in the kitchen kept five stomachs full and healthy.
I found a job in the Garment Distict. The floorboards of the E. 174th St. subway station were abraded for years by the grimy soles of laborers waiting for the 7th Ave. Express to take them to the Garment District. It was 7:00 AM, my shabby shoes joined their soles.
The train pulled in. By the time it had reached Intervale Ave, my breathing was impaired by incoming passengers forming a girdle around my ribs. How long was I going to be corralled in a subway by these poor overworked and underpaid souls?
The history behind a manufactured dress and its journey to the store has numerous stories. You can read mine in my blog, From Racks to Tracks.
Brophy?, McBride?, Alistair?, Squires? I didn’t come across these names after twelve years of public school.
Brophy introduced our group of men to the switch. It was a metal bar about four feet long with a ten-pound weight attached to its end. The switch, connected to a base pivoted in a semi-circle. When lifting and pivoting the switch, then dropping to its opposite side, the track switches to an adjacent track; thereby allowing the train to move on to that track.
“How do we know when to throw the switch?”
“Either you will get a phone call if you’re in the tunnel, or by hand signals when you’re outdoors.”
Well, the job was simple enough and it paid $25 a day which was more than my father was earning after forty years of drudgery in the Garment District and more than my four days at Loma Dress Corp..
Three months of switching tracks passed, then the dreaded day came. We were in the shape-up room where names were being called. My name came up last. Brophy said that Roberts called in sick and he had no brakeman to replace him.
“Dan, I’ll show you how to brake a freight car. Come with me.”
We approached a freight car connected to an engine at the top of The Hill. The Hill had an incline of about 30 degrees. It led to eighteen tracks where empty freight trains were being assembled. When a freight car is released from an engine, it will roll down The Hill and hump (connect) with a waiting empty freight car.
Brophy climbed up a ladder at the rear of a freight car with a brake stick the size and shape of a narrow softball bat.
“Watch me. When I tell you, pull on that handle. It will release the freight car from the engine, then I’ll put the bat into the space of the braking wheel as I move down the Hill.”
He turned the braking wheel manually, then placed the bat into a space in the wheel. As the lone car sped down The Hill, Brophy pulled harder on the braking wheel with his bat until the car gradually slowed down. He jumped off and his freight car’s knuckle engaged the knuckle in the standing freight car. Brophy approached.
“Come on, give it a try. I’ll go with you.”
He handed me the bat and, like a robot, I climbed up to the braking wheel. A nearby switchtender released the freight car and we were on our way to an empty freight car at the end of the Hill.
What am I doing up here? Am I going to do this for the rest of my life? This is not for a kid from Seabury Place.
From the top of the freight car, on my left, I could see the factory for Ripley’s men’s clothes, on my right, was the burned out Palisades Amusement Park overlooking the Hudson River.
Am I going to see this again? Is it worth the fifteen extra dollars more working as a brakeman? Well, I was up here. Let’s get on with it.
As we sped down The Hill I saw that my expiration date closing in on me.
When I started turning the braking wheel Brophy shouted,
“When you jump off, land on your rear leg. Your front leg will stop the fall.”
My front leg will stop the fall???
That was it. My name was no longer on the shape-up list. Without a job, without a skill what was my future?
Elaine was happy, but the glue between us was diluting. We had no common interests. She realized I was immature. I could only see the forest, but noone planted the trees. I was in no shape to form a lasting relationship. I was sure she would find someone who had a job and was mature, and dependable.
Finally, I found a job! US 51118844, was my army serial number and my MOS (military occupation specialty) was a rifleman in the infantry..
For the complete story, read Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoir
danielwolfebooks@aol.com