3            Parents and their relatives

I have pictures of my mother and father—I think one.  I had a picture of my mother sitting down, and your father mentions it, but I don’t have that picture.  I only have the one of her with her hair curled on the top of her head.  She was a very pretty woman, and my father was a very handsome man. 

Whoever I love becomes gorgeous.  I have pictures of Hy where he was good-looking.  It’s hard to believe, because Hy was not good-looking.  But I have pictures of him; he looks like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.  Or Senior.  I don’t remember which.

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It was very common for families to split up.  Whole families.  You didn’t have a job, you ran away from responsibilities.  You got married because people came over from Europe, didn’t want to stay with their spouse any more, and left them. 

My mother was Litvack, my father was Galizianer.  Their dialects of Yiddish were different.  I think they met here in the US.

My mother, she came from Latvia—but he was...I don’t know.  They met here in the United States.  I’m not sure where.  He came over when he was about 6 years old, my father.  I spoke Yiddish as my first language; English was my second language.  I don’t speak it any more.  I can understand a lot, but not enough to speak. 

I really don’t know their story, how they met.  My mother was a beautiful looking woman, and my father was a very handsome guy.  But I never heard the story of how they got together.  They came here at different times. 

I don’t know any stories of what it was like to get here or what life was like before they came. 

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I didn’t know my father the way some people knew their father.  He wasn’t around that much.  Years later, when I saw him with you and Judi and David, he was very lovable.

I don’t know how old my father was—his birthdate is probably on my birth certificate.

He would come to visit, and he’d give my cousins $5 and $10—Aunt Mae’s children.  And I’d say to him, “I need money for stockings.”  At that time you could get silk stockings for 50 cents.  He said, “I gave you money last month.”   I didn’t get the money; he would try to show everybody he was such a big shot.  He was always very, very good to my cousins.  They thought he was wonderful.  I never liked my father.

I don’t know if my father hit us kids.  He was gone before I could remember that much.  He probably did hit my brothers.

Before he deserted the family, my father made a good living.  He was a furrier. 

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Aunt Bertha was my mother’s youngest sister.  Everybody used to tell me that I was Aunt Bertha’s favorite.  She was very sweet.  She brought me an outfit, a plaid skirt and a velvet blouse, which I loved.  Until then I had very little clothes except the clothes from the home, and nobody worried about getting me any clothes.  It wasn’t important.  This is what goes on when you come out of a home and you're the orphan in the family.  I had hand-me-downs, I think from Elsie.  I had an uncle who, when I got older, would bring me fabric so I could make myself some things.  Because he worked for [Oscar Renta?].  The Rentners that are now called Oscar de la Renta.  He was their cutter.  Renta is a relative of Uncle Dave’s, Aunt Mae’s husband.  At the time it was Oscar Renta, the father.  Now it’s Oscar de la Renta, the son or the son of the son, for all I know.  I don’t know how old he is.  After all, I was a kid.

Aunt Bertha died of blood poisoning.  She was sweet, but she died.  And Eddie tells you that she had been a very sick person.  She got blood poisoning.  She was sewing, and she got a needle in her finger, and they didn’t take good care of it.  She lived with my mother in New York and she got sick, and they didn’t do anything for her, and she died after that.

Before that time she was living with my mother, with 6 kids at the time.  My father wasn’t there.  And she wasn’t well enough to work most of the time.  One night, as Eddie tells you in his, one of the gas jets turned on by accident, and we had gas coming through the whole apartment.  (In those days we didn’t have electricity; we had gas.)  She woke up to go to the bathroom, and she fell down and realized something was wrong.  So she woke us.  The police came, and the fire engines came.  We were in the newspapers.  We once had our picture in the newspaper.  It was probably the Daily News.  I was eleven, ten, nine, born in 1923, and it was after the Depression started.  It was due to her, my Aunt Bertha, that we’re still alive.  If she hadn’t woken up, we’d be dead.  There was one person in the building who died that day—Eddie’s tells about that.  I remember being in the newspaper, I remember being rushed out of the house.  I was a little kid—I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 probably.

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My mother was a very sick woman—she had TB, though I don’t remember how young I was when she had it.  I remember her taking me once to see her parents in Pennsylvania, and I remember going on the train.  You know, there is no more train to Allentown.

Julius in Allentown was my mother’s brother; he was married to Aunt Sadie.  They had a grocery store.  She had a daughter, no other children.  They doted on her.  As far as I know, the daughter is still alive.  When Julius died, they got in touch with me.  He died in Allentown but was buried in Queens somewhere.  I last saw Sadie and her daughter when I was married to Leo.  My mother had sisters: Aunt Helen, Aunt Bertha, Aunt Sadie—not Julius’ wife.  She also had brothers, but I can’t remember their names.  There was an Uncle Joe, probably dead by now.  His son got in touch with us about five years ago because he was building a family tree.  I told him to call Ed, who doesn’t remember this anymore, but they did talk.  I don’t remember his first name—he was a Greenberg, my mother’s maiden name.

My mother’s side of the family was estranged from my father’s side, probably because he used to run around with other women. 

Some family relations: Stevie is in my family.  From Mae’s (Mary’s) family.  Her daughters are Ruth, Flo, Elsie, Harriet, Sylvia.

Ruth had Bunny, Francine, Merry and Mike.  These are people I lived with for years.  Flo had two children.  Her son died.  Elsie had no children.  Harriet had no children—she died from an overdose.

Elsie was married to Miltie.  When she died, he married his third cousin.  Harriet died; we used to call her Terry.  Sylvia’s son, Butchie, was a very very bright student.  He married young, and he had 6 or 8 children.  His wife died, too—she had phlebitis.  I don’t know his children’s names.  He had twins, too.  One of them became pregnant and had children before she was married.  One of his children was born the same day as his grandchild.  It’s like any family—they all have problems.

Table of contents

4         Deaths in the family

I was 12 when my twin, Irving, died.  I remember him pretty well.  He was in the hospital.  We were in the home, the two of us, Abe and I.  Before that, Eddie had taken us out for the day, to see a movie or whatever.  My sister was with us.  My sister pulled me aside and said, “I will tell you something, but don’t tell Eddie.  If he hears I told you, he’ll kill me.”  So I said, “What?”  And she said, “Irving died.”  When she told me he died.  I was in shock.  I didn’t cry out or anything.  Eddie brought us back to the home. I was 12 years old—I had to keep my mouth shut and not scream or cry.

I heard about my mother’s death and Abie’s together.  And I passed out.  I think I did that three times in my life.  I went on vacation, and when I came back, I was looking for Abie.  I couldn’t find him.  I had gone to a camp for two weeks.  I’m looking for Abie, and nobody knows where Abie is, and no one will tell me anything.  All of a sudden, I’m called to the office, and Hy is there.  Maybe it wasn’t an office—it was one of the school buildings.  Hy tells me that Abie and Mama died.  Ha!  Then I fainted.  What I couldn’t do for my brother...  I had to carry it.  Hy and I were very close—Eddie was a little jealous, I think, of that.

[Do you still feel like part of you is missing?]

No.  At the time, yeah.  I didn’t feel differently when my twin, Irving died, from when Abie died, because they were very very close, a year apart.  Abie and Irving were the best of friends, and I was the sister.  We were close.  Irving had more a special bond with Abie than with me. 

The first time I passed out was because of Eddie.  He scared me.  I thought he was going to hit me.  The second time was when I heard about my brother and my mother dying.  My twin had died already.  I couldn't pass out then; my brother[2] would have beat up my sister.  The third time is in here somewhere.

My mother’s death.  That was a real tragedy.  She had TB.  That’s why I ended up in the orphanage, because there was no place else.  At times someone would come and stay with us until they knew she wouldn't come home again.  There was no real treatment for tuberculosis.  They kept putting her in the hospital and they sent her to the sanitarium.  It was care, but I don’t know if they gave her anything.  I don’t know if they had anything in those days, like they have for asthma.  (Nobody dies of asthma today if it’s caught.  Because Iris has asthma, and Sammy had, and Rebecca had.  She has bronchial; hers isn’t bad.  Iris is the worst.  They live normal lives.)

I was in the home.  I didn’t know too much about it, except what my sister told me.  I had gone to visit her, and Irving was there at the time, and Abie.  I think it was at the beginning when she was in the hospital.  After that, they wouldn't let us in.  We had all visited her in this great big room with a lot of other beds and people.  It was very sad.  She was very sick.

She would stay with us, period.  And then, when they knew she wouldn't get well, they put us in the home.

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5            Growing up

When I was little, my friends and I would play jacks, or we’d jump rope.  We didn’t wander very far.  You were scared to go further than your corner unless you were with some adult.  I went to school after my twin brother, because I was in the hospital when he started school.  I had St. Vitus’ Dance.  I would twitch.  I’ve known people who had it all their lives; I outgrew it—I was very lucky.  My hand might suddenly jerk; if that happened, I would jerk on the other side, too.  I think my father yelled at me and said, “Try not to do it!”  I had it for many years.  I lost it after my mother died.

I had friends, very close friends at one point.  One was Beatrice.  Her mother was alone, no husband.  She had a brother named Murray who finally became a doctor.  Another friend, Lily, was very pretty.  She had a mother and father at home.  That was unusual compared to what I’d seen around.  I didn’t know many people with fathers.  It happened.  I knew them until I grew up.  Lily moved to Brooklyn, near the beach.  We were kids.  We played dolls, and we played jacks, and we played whatever little girls did.  Jump rope.  No imaginary friends.  We’d walk down the block.  You never walked very far.  You walked from one corner to the other.  Lily lived on Second Ave., but very close to 4^th St., so we’d go there and come back again.  We lived on 4^th St. 

My mother always wanted to do something for me, but she never really had money.  At that time Shirley Temple became very popular, and all I wanted was a Shirley Temple dress.  She took her dress that she had worn once, twice—a white dress.  She got some piping. Shirley Temple used to wear this little white dress with piping around it, red or blue.  Very fancy.  And she made me one.  I didn’t see the movie; I saw it in pictures.  You would see pictures all over the place about Shirley Temple—very important.

I remember I was cold one day, and my mother still had a fur coat, seal skin.  My father was a furrier, so she probably had one from then.  And she had these big cuffs on it, and I would put my hands in them to keep warm.  She never minded it.  I don’t remember her too well.  I only remember that she was a sweet person, a very gentle person.  I don’t remember her ever hitting me.  My kids’ll tell you I hit them, but I don’t remember her ever laying a hand on me.

My mother was very poor.  Even when she worked she didn’t make much money.  We were six kids.  Six kids—whatever you make, it’s never going to be enough.  She would buy a quarter pound of chicken and this chicken she made soup out of, and then we’d each have a piece.  You know what a quarter of a chicken is?  Like the white meat with a wing?  She’d share it among us. 

We’d have a pail to go down to get our milk or our cream.  These were the days you didn’t have deliveries, in glass bottles even.  Everything had to be siphoned out from a big container.  These were quart buckets.  They were made so you had a cover on them and you could walk with them.  Or you'd get some sour cream.  None of the stores would give you a container.  You had to bring your own.  Then you had an ice box that you had to put it into.  The iceman came.  For ten cents you could get ice.  He came very often because an ice box doesn’t hold ice that long.  I don’t know if it was every day or every other day.  But I remember that we once forgot to change the pan under the icebox, and we had a flood.  You had to take the pan out and spill it out.

My mother kept kosher.  My aunt kept kosher somewhat.  You couldn’t bring tref in the house, but she did mix dishes except on Passover.  She would kosher pots for Passover.  You put them in the oven til it gets very, very hot.  Then you have to put a hot, hot stone in it.  You get a stone in the yard, wash it, and put one in each pot.  I’m not sure if you heat them separately.  It could be that you just heat the stone.  I used to think it was so funny.  She knew her kids ate bacon, but they had to eat it outside.

When I lived with my mother, I was very young and didn’t do anything.  Hy and Eddie did the koshering of the house.  We had to cover everything with white paper from the butcher, and we had separate dishes for milk and meat.  I never kept kosher for Passover.  Once I ate tref, I didn’t feel I needed to be kosher any more.  The first time was when my father took us to a Chinese restaurant.  I was living with Aunt Mae, after my mother died.  I was maybe 14.  Oh—I did eat shrimps.  I used to go with Sylvia’s sister-in-law.  We used to go to a Chinese restaurant.  You know what it cost to have shrimps?  25 cents, for a whole meal!  It’s so hard to believe.  When I was 16 I was making $4 a week, so that was a lot of money.  Everything is relative.  At one time you got around New York for a nickel.

I never sneaked under turnstiles.  I was a very honest person.  Maybe it was common for the boys to sneak under.  Today girls are more brazen in what they’ll do and how they’ll carry on.

I didn’t do naughty things.  When I went to work, I would take off a day and go see plays—when I was 16 or so.  When I was younger, I was too well-behaved, a goody-good.  Eddie scared me so once.  I don’t remember what it was, but I passed out.  Hy went to work.  Eddie was still in school.  Hy would get paid and pay my mother money.  He would give me a dime—that was a lot of money.  You could buy so much candy for it.

I adored Hy.  Ed was a lot of fun.  He used to play games with us.  My sister, Sylvia, was a very selfish person.  She’d scream until she got whatever she wanted.  If my mother couldn’t give it to her, she’d have to find a way.  My brothers and I, the little ones—Irving and Abie—were closer. 

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I remember going out with my mother on 2^nd Ave, because we lived between 2^nd and 3^rd.  All of a sudden there was a woman there, and my mother and she started screaming at each other.  I found out later that this was my father’s sister, my Aunt Mae.  When my mother died, she took me in.  I never hated her.  I resented her at times, because people when they came to the house used to think I was the maid.

Anyway, on 2^nd Avenue, when I was very young, my mother and Aunt Mae saw each other, and they yelled at each other.  My mother was already not with my father.  My aunt thought my father was the most wonderful person in the world.  You know—it depends on what side you want to believe.  This was the first time I had ever seen my aunt.  I had never encountered anybody in the Yanowitz family at that point (the Glicks—that’s Aunt Mae).  She had children, too.  I never saw her again until after my mother died.  At that time, I didn’t remember that she was the one my mother yelled at.  I don’t know how I remembered that.  It just came about for some reason.  My cousins, Aunt Mae’s children, had been talking about how they used to live on 2^nd Ave.  That’s how it came to pass, talking about what I went through with them.

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When you’re behind everybody in school...  I’m behind my twin brother in school—he’s bright, I’m stupid.  I never felt I had the brains until I finally realized when I went to work, learning all the things I had to learn compared to what the other workers would do, that I had more brains than them to try—to go ahead and learn different things so that when I lost one job, I could go on to another one.  I wasn’t afraid of using different sewing machines.  Some people are.  They stay on one single machine the rest of their lives.

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My mother once heard somebody say, “nigger,” and she got very angry.  She didn’t believe in people talking against other people.  She was a socialist. 

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Did I say much about the Hebrew Orphan Asylum?  I went in there.  My mother had gotten sick, and we went to the asylum—sounds awful that word.  The home.  We were put in quarantine for the first couple of weeks, I think, to see if everything was all right.  Mostly for tuberculosis, because my mother had TB.  We were there for awhile, and we met other kids.  That was my first boyfriend I met there.  I was a whole 10 or 11 years old.  He liked me.  It’s very good for the ego—a young girl who doesn’t think she’s pretty.  Nothing happened.  It’s just that he paid attention.  And then we went on to the home, which was in the next building.  While I was in quarantine, somebody said to me, “Do you like niggers?”  And I said, “Why?  I never tasted them?”  I never knew what that was supposed to be. 

I have to put that in because I can never forget when I found out what it was.  I was playing with some black kids.  The home was not sectarian (even though it was a Hebrew asylum).

Then I went into the main building.  You stayed in a room with like 20 other girls.  You had your own bed, and you had to change the sheets.  We’d have to take the top sheet and put it on the bottom.  Every week we would change.  You kept your top sheet for your bottom, and you'd get a clean top sheet.  It left a real memory on me.  Certain things do. 

They gave you clothes.  Eddie used to come and visit us very often.  One day he came in and he kept looking for me, and he couldn't find me.  He finally asked somebody, “Where’s my sister?”  And she said, “There she is.  She’s been there all along.”  I was standing at a window, looking out, looking for him.  But my body had changed so much that he hadn’t recognized me.  It isn’t how long he hadn’t seen me.  He never realized from the back of me.  I was a skinny kid, and all of a sudden I had matured.  I had breasts, I had a behind.  Didn’t look like the same person.  It happens almost overnight.  I was 12.  This is before my mother died, just before.

After quarantine, Irving, Abie and I went to the main home, but not Eddie.  He was left in quarantine and sent somewhere else.  I was 12 and he was 16, something like that.  17, I think.  They put him someplace where he could go out and look for a job. 

When my mother died, my father took me out of the home.  Hy got in touch with him after my mother died, and my father took me out and put me in with Aunt Mae.  I went there when I wasn’t 13 yet.  I know I was there when I was 13, because one of my other aunts brought me a gift, which I remember very well: I didn’t receive many gifts.

There was a time when they would shush and hush.  I once shouted at my aunt for doing that.  They were talking about my mother, and I started to yell and scream at Aunt Mae.  I was a very docile child until something hit me.  I let them get away and get away, and then all of a sudden they’d just hit the wrong spot, and I’d sit up and scream at them, and they’d have to hear me.

Aunt Mae had daughters.  Harriet (they called her Terry) and Elsie were home.  The others were married and out of the house.  Mike, her son, was home.  On Friday you had to clean.  She had this great big old-fashioned wood table in the dining room, and you had to polish it.   You had to wash all the wood walls.  The others were supposed to help, but they always found something else to do, especially Elsie.  Harriet helped, but she was younger, so she got away with things.  I was called Mickie at that point.  My cousin, Mike, called me Mickie, which I hated.  I didn’t cook—my aunt did the cooking.  She used to brag: she was going out one day, and she was in her gown, and she didn’t like the way the floor looked.  And she washed the floor and didn’t get a bit of dirt on her...so how come I couldn’t do this??  [Chuckle]

Cousin Flo, one of Aunt Mae’s daughters—the oldest one—would wait for me to come home from school, and she’d leave right away and I’d have to watch the kids.   I wasn’t even a reader then.  When I got used to it, I realized it wasn’t my life I was living. 

One day she had company, and I understand it was cousins of mine.  I was 13, I think.  I’d been living with Aunt Mae for 6, 7 months.  This child said to her mother, “Does Aunt Mary...”—Aunt Mae is Aunt Mary, too—“does Aunt Mae have a maid?  Is she the maid?”  That made me sit up and think what the hell is going on here?  Even at that age, I didn’t want to be a maid.

I wrote to my father who was in the South, and said I don’t want to stay there.  People think I’m a maid, and I’m not a maid.  This was when I was 14 or 15.  So he came back and took me down South for awhile.  I lived with him and Jean and Ed for a time.  They had a little place where they sold knick-knacks, all these pretty little things that people buy.  In Memphis.  I really had a good time with Ed.  It was just the two of us.  He didn’t have a job.  He went to shool.

According to my father, when I was still with my Aunt Mae, we were up in the country.  We took a coupling, a country place where you can cook, but they have many stoves in the kitchen, 2-burner stoves for families.  We stayed up there, and we had the whole kitchen.  My Aunt Mae made one of the Jewish holidays up there then.  I was fourteen, fifteen—something like that.  I had gone up with my aunt.  It was in the summer.  I had a very bad asthma attack, so I had to sit up all night long.  My father would come up with Jean, and I would have to sleep in the living room, because my uncle came, my aunt.  Up to then I’d sleep with my aunt. 

It turned out my aunt made this big dinner for the holidays, and my father and I got to talking.  He said to me, “You know, don’t think so badly of me.  I was very young when your mother and I got married.  I was too young.

So why did he have six kids if he was that young?  [Brief chuckle]  And your father’s story tells that every time he had a child, he would dare to make the child, but then he would leave.  There was one time that she gave birth, and he was sitting at the table.  You know, all these neighbors bring food?  And one of the women told me later, and my aunt told me later, he sat there eating like a pig while she was screaming in the bedroom giving birth.  I think it was to me, because it was twins. 

So it was his explanation that he couldn't take it because he was too young.  I think he was  pretty young—in his early twenties. 

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Before Hy and Eddie went into the CCC, they had no money.  They'd come to visit, and every once in awhile my aunt would let them eat.  But then she got tired of it.  Hy, it seems, used to go to Ruthie’s, and Ruthie would help him.  But Ed would come to see me.  One day he came and he hadn’t eaten.  He wanted to take me out for a walk.  So I sneaked back in the house and I made him a sandwich.  I felt terrible.  It’s my brother, he’s starving.  He was thankful; he was hungry.

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[3][Did the Jewish kids have gangs?]

Not that I recall.  But individual kids would come running back.  It was a tough area, like it always is in such places.  I wouldn't call it a slum.  We had our own bathroom.  How could you call that a slum?  We had lights, we had electricity, we didn’t have gas any more.  So this is a big thing.  I don’t know what kind of stove we had.  Eddie and Hy did the cooking when my mother...  Especially Eddie did most of the cooking, because Hy got to work and Eddie was still in school.  I was 12 years old when my mother died, and it was before that when we moved to Eldridge St.  Your father was a teen-ager.  A young teen-ager.  He’s 5 years older than I am.

I remember seeing a fight there on the street, a gang of kids.  I don’t remember too much about it.  These were my young years.

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6            Theater and film

I wasn’t a reader in those days.  I was a poor reader.  I didn’t like movies; they scared me.  There were no talkies at the time, so I didn’t enjoy it.  Even when I got older and lived with Aunt Mae, and she went to the movies every day, she said, “Why don’t you come?” but I said no.   Movies were a dime then.  If I babysat, I’d get a dime for babysitting all night.  Or they’d give me money and say to go to the movies.  My friends weren’t scared of the movies.  (I don’t remember having many friends when I was living with Aunt Mae.)

People around me loved the movies.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t want to get so involved in other people’ lives.  I didn’t even read so much at that point, so it was a lot to deal with.

I remember Harriet even would go to the movies and I wouldn’t go.  I don’t remember how that fear started.  I was probably afraid something on the screen was going to come out and get me; I don’t know.

It started with piano in the movie.  You went in and they had a piano playing and subtitles.  This was before the talkies.  I’m 72 years old, you know!  So they had a piano going, and you never knew what they were really saying.  And I couldn't read well enough to see what was on the screen.  I couldn't read.  That was probably it. 

I didn’t see movies until my mother died.  When I moved to Aunt Mae, this was the thing.  The house was on Simpson St., and the movie theater was on Southern Boulevard, just a block away.  And she went all the time.  She went practically every day.  I wouldn't go.  She wanted to take me a lot of times.  Her daughters would go.  Movies were like a nickel in the afternoon.  It was no big deal.  On a Saturday or something.  But I didn’t like movies.  It took me a long time before I really enjoyed it.  I liked plays.  I did go with Aunt Mae a couple of times because she kept insisting that I have to go so she could get the dishes.  They gave dishes out.

They were talkies now.  I kept thinking it would be the same way.  I just remembered that I didn’t like them, and why should I bother?  People used to tease me, but I didn’t like it.  My brothers were enamored with movies.  They went crazy over movies.

But I liked it better.  I understood. 

With my mother, when we lived on 4^th Street, she would take all us kids to Wanamaker’s on a Saturday.  Saturday or Sunday, Wanamaker’s always had a theater, and they sometimes had ballets, sometimes other things, like plays.  That’s when we started to see things like plays.  Wanamaker’s was on 8^th Street and Lexington Ave, I believe.  It’s not there any more.  It’s right near where David had a play.  It’s diagonally across from the Shakespearean theater.  We could walk there, because we wouldn't ride on a Saturday.  And this was free, so there was no money involved.  We couldn't ride on Saturday but we could see the play because we didn’t pay for it.  There’s a difference because you didn’t spend money and you could walk.  It could have been Sunday; I may be wrong about what day it was. 

My Aunt Mae used to take me to plays, and those didn’t scare me, because they were people up there.  And you knew they were performing.  Besides, they were funny.  They were Jewish[4] plays.  There was Yiddish theater up in the Bronx.

When I went to school, in first grade—I have to outdo my brothers, that’s why I have to give you this one.  I was in first grade, and they asked me to be Betsy Ross.  I think I was the first one in the family to act.  Your father acted in school.  I don’t know if it was before me or after me.  But I always said I was the first one in the family.  I never acted after, but that’s all right.

As an adult, I used to play hookey, when I went to work and I knew there was a good play on Broadway.  All of a sudden I got sick, at three o’clock.  Two o’clock.  To go to a matinee.  I saw Oklahoma that way.  I saw a lot of good plays that way.  I found out that if you go to the office just before the show began, you could get in.  I went over to the office and said, “I haven’t got more than $25.  Do you have a seat?”  And I would get in the orchestra.  This is when I was still working.  I worked until about 6 years ago.  They would let me in, as long as there were seats available.  They'd rather fill it up than have it empty.  I learnt it as something that happened, to see if I could get in for $25, and then I realized you could do this.  Sometimes I’d stand on line and get tickets.  Lately I haven’t seen any plays. 

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7            Sylvia

Sylvia had to be sent to Craig Colony.  That’s a hospital, or a place for people like her.  Her elipepsy was grand mal.  She was very bad.  She would have her fits, and she’d get banged up with them.  It would be very awkward.  There was one time years later, when Eddie and Mae were married, they took Sylvia home.  They were still in the city, lived on the west side in the Bronx.  They took her out of the home, helping to be able to help her.  Mae was pregnant with you.  I came home one day.  Mae was very upset.  I had gone to work, she was home, Eddie was out working.  She told us that Sylvia had tried to beat up on her.  So they couldn't keep her under those conditions.  You can’t keep somebody that way.  Mae was very tiny compared to Sylvia, who was about 5-6, 5-7, and Mae is no more than 5-2.  And Sylvia was big, and Mae is very petite.  It’s hard to believe we were all petite at one time.

Anyhow, they decided it was no good.  It was too dangerous to keep her around.  I tried one time to take her out, and it didn’t work at all.  She became very nasty and abusive.  It didn’t work.  She had grand mal, and as far as I know it’s much worse than normal epilepsy to live with the person.  I have an aunt who was epileptic.  All her life she raised a whole family.  She never had this.  She had petite mal.  She would have a fit, it would go past.  I’ve known a couple of people who’ve had petite mal.  But when you have grand mal, you bang your head so often, you're bound to do some damage, I guess.

[I sense a lot guilt in the family around Sylvia.]

Yeah, you always feel guilty.  We went up to visit her, Leo and I.  Sammy was a baby at the time.  And all she wanted was pennies.  Sylvia had this thing that she had to count pennies.  She gave her dollar, she would change it into pennies.  The bulk of it was important to her, not the actual money.  Everything had to become something she could carry.  There were times when I worked for Uncle Irving that I bought her clothes, and I would send it to her; and when I would visit her, I found out that she had sold it so she could have pennies.  To me, I spent $7 on one of the skirts I sent her...  It was so beautiful, I had wanted it.  But I had to send my sister something.  It cost $7, and when I came up, she didn’t have it.  I was about 17.  And she had turned it into pennies.  I don’t know what happened to the pennies.  She didn’t have that much money; she didn’t get hold of that much money.  She didn’t turn $7 into pennies.  She may have turned it into a quarter of pennies.  It wasn’t the value of the thing, but how many pennies could somebody give her.  She would take the pennies instead of the garment.  It wasn’t the value that she used.  For me it was $7, and I worked for it for a week.

She was fixated on whatever she wanted.  She used to want different things, and my mother would go and buy it for her.  Like a doll.  She saw something.  Or she wanted a hair ribbon. 

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Sylvia was always disturbed.  Then she became religious.  She became Catholic.  She believes in Christ.  You know, you don’t tell people, “Don’t believe,” just ‘cause you're a Jew.  You say, “If that helps you...”  She was a very pretty girl, and she was very strong, and very capable.  I don’t think she ever had dates.  She went to school, but there were problems because if she had a spell, she’d have to come home.  A spell meaning a fit.  I don’t know when she actually got violent.  That time she got violent with your mother is the year you were being born.  So she was about 22. 

Sometimes she had fits, sometimes it would be days, and then all of a sudden it could be every day.  It was never more than several days between fits.  When she had a fit, she was out.  She had to be put to bed.  She was exhausted.  The violence was something else.  The only person she hit was your mother.  I don’t what happened.  We don’t know what happened with other people because she wasn’t living with us until that time.  I don’t remember her losing her temper or speaking abusively.  I have no idea what led up to that incident with your mother.  All I know is that your mother was pregnant and she had been crying, and she had been hurt.  That was enough.[5]

We always felt guilty.  We did.  We tried, but you still felt guilty.  There was a time when your mother and father first got married—she was pregnant then, too.  I don’t know if your father puts this into his, because he stopped before this, before he knew your mother.  There was a time he and Hy had gotten hold of a car, he and Hy.  And I was with them, and Mae was with them, and we picked Sylvia up from the Craig Colony and went up to Niagara Falls.  That was an important time.

I tried once to find my sister Sylvia.  In fact I was up there, but they told me they moved her.  She was in Craig colony.  I pass it when I go visit some friends.

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8           Teen-ager and young adult

Hy was very enamored with a cousin of mine—Ruthie—at a point, and she with him.  First of all, Hy was an intellectual, and she was trying to be one, which is very important to some people.  She read and read, and Hy would direct her what to read.  She wasn’t interested politically.  I never heard her say anything.  That whole family wasn’t political.  But they weren’t anti-anything.  I never heard them say anything very nasty. 

By the way, I don’t know if you want to put this down.  I saw my cousin, Francine, the one I told you about.  Her husband had died a few years ago.  She’s very depressed about it.  She took care of his children—8 kids, all went to college.  They're all professionals.  Her own son, from her first marriage, also went to college and is doing very well.  (She was Hy’s—Ruthie’s youngest daughter.  Ruthie is my first cousin.)  And even if she reads Eddie’s thing, he mentions something in there—he doesn’t think Francine was Sidney’s child.  I told her that I wanted to introduce her to her cousins.  She said, “No, Sidney was my father.  I have a lot of people, a lot of children, I don’t need any more life with anyone I don’t know.”

I told her about Hy.  She took it.  In fact, we were talking and she said that her oldest sister was always very embarrassed by her mother’s affairs.  Her mother always had affairs.  So they knew of all these boyfriends, and she was a little bummed.  I love Ruthie.  I told her if she wants to change, she could get in touch with me.  I doubt it, though.  She’s got MS.  And it’s been fine all these years.  She has to watch it.  The doctor said to her, “If you feel like running, walk.  If you feel like doing any big exercises, take it easy.  Don’t over do it.”  And she’s been doing very well.  She has a wonderful sense of humor. 

She says to me—we were talking about family—“You know I always really thought you were the smartest one in the family.”  [Chuckling] I said, “You kidding me?  I’m the dumbest.  Or at that point anyhow, I always thought I was the dumbest.  But I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.”  You know, it’s a good thing.  They thought I was smart.

I told her she had two brothers.  But she has no interest in meeting them.  I know Henry would want to meet her.  That’s Henry. 

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Hy and Ruthie made me a birthday party.  I can’t remember what year.  I know I didn’t know Evelyn until I was like 18 years old or something, and they asked her to get my friends.  She didn’t know my friends.  So she brought two black guys to the birthday party that I never knew.  Those are the only people that were at my birthday party.  [Laughs]  I know it was Evelyn who brought the guys because nobody else I knew would have done that. 

I had loads of friends in the Bronx, but nobody knew who they were, including Evelyn.  I met her in Brooklyn.

That party, I had a cake.  I think they had music.  I don’t remember.  Just the five of us.  We went out to the candy store or something and had a soda later.  That was it.[6]

Nobody made me a birthday party when I was a kid.  I still don’t have parties.  My mother couldn't afford them.  If anybody would have done anything, it would have been Eddie.  Eddie always tried to make big things out of all the holidays and all.

The only present I remember is when my aunt, Irving’s wife, gave me the present.  I was 13 years old at that time.  I don’t remember any of the kids in the family getting birthday presents.  We knew it was our birthday.  Probably we said happy birthday, but that was about it. 

Anyhow, I don’t remember birthday parties at all.

I always gave birthday parties for my kids.  I always baked a cake, and if I didn’t bake a cake they would get very angry.  They didn’t want a birthday party from a bought cake; they had to have a Mama cake.  I loved to do it.  Poor Rebecca.  Her girlfriend was on the same floor.  She had the exact same birthday, so I had to have her name on the cake, too.  It was cheating Rebecca a little.  But my kids always had birthday parties. 

When I was grown up, my family would be very nice to me on my birthday.  They would push Leo to buy a present for me or something.  I don’t remember any big deals for me.  I always made something for Leo, but he never reciprocated.  Men are very funny.  You have to tell them to do it.  I’m sorry, but it’s true.  

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In Roosevelt’s time, before 1936--when he started in with the CCC camp, in his first term—my brothers both joined the CCC.  My father had money to a certain extent because he worked—and this was the depression: a lot of people didn’t work, and he had a car.  He was a salesman and went South, selling chances to the farmers and people in the villages to buy things.  You could get blankets, or you could get dishes.  It was a mail order house.  My father worked for his brother, my Uncle Irving.  He was the head of a crew that went to poor people

Eddie and I used to get along very very well.  We used to do the dishes and sing The Mikado and all the Gilbert and Sullivan songs, and some other songs.  We had a very good time.  I was going to school.  I flunked English because I couldn’t understand the English teacher.  Her accent was so deep; it was like she did it deliberately.  English was a good language for me; here in NY I had no problem, but there [chuckle] I couldn’t speak English.  I failed.

I had friends there, and they were black, and you’re not allowed to do that.  At that time. 1937, many people there were still very anti-black.  I don’t know what they are now.  But at that time, “What do you mean, you have black friends?”  People don’t want to know you.  Whites.

Being Jewish was an issue to a certain extent with my father.  He used to call himself Mr. Louis [7] I never hid anything.  I didn’t have a hard time.  He had a hard time sometimes.  But I don’t think they knew what a Jew was.  Some people just don’t know.  They’re not brought up to discriminate against somebody they never see.  They’re brought up to discriminate against blacks because those they see.

I had no problem.  They lived behind us.  Blacks lived in the alleyway.  You were on the street side, and they were in the back.  There were no blacks in our school; the ones I knew were from the neighborhood.  I didn’t know about discrimination until it hits you.  There was no reason I shouldn’t know blacks—there weren’t that many where we lived.  When I was in the home, I was very friendly with an Oriental girl.  My father wouldn’t say anything, because it would only come back.  He may have said he had a different name, but he wasn’t about to...  They could be customers, too.  And he wasn’t anti-black.  We never talked about it.

My brother, Eddie, worked in the store.  He was going to school down there.  I think he had some problems in school because he was Jewish, but I don’t remember what they were.  We used Yanowitz when we were in school.  You had to register.  My father didn’t deny being “Yanowitz.”  He used “Mr. Louis” because, he said, it was easier for people to remember.   Jean picked up a Southern accent and never lost it.  Even I had a little bit of something when I came back, at about the age of 15.  I wasn’t there long—a year or two.

Then I moved in with Flo when I came back, about 15, and when I was 16, I moved out again and found my own apartment.  I went to work for Uncle Irving, and as soon as I found that job, I moved out.

While I lived with Flo, I went back to school.  My brother, too, went back to school.  We both went to a school in Brooklyn where you had to pay.  He needed only one course.  They said he had to do history.  (This is late 1930s, before he knew Mae.)  He had a teacher who was a real reactionary.  This was before the US was in the war, but the war was on in Europe.  The teacher believed the Germans were right.  Try to learn something under such a teacher!  Ed didn’t get his diploma then, because he couldn’t take the teacher.  I understood far less.  I was a very naive person compared to other people that I know today.  People at that age today are so much brighter and know what is going on.  I didn’t.

I didn’t finish high school at that point, but I did after I had children.

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Some time after my mother died, my Aunt Helen (my mother’s sister) wanted me to go live with her.  She lived in Rockford, Illinois.  But I was already 18, 19 years old by this time.  She had wanted me earlier, while my mother was still alive.  My mother had 6 kids, and Helen felt if she took me, it would unburden my mother.  But my mother told her no.  She wouldn’t give up any of her children, although we were very, very poor, we were on welfare, and she was a very sick woman by that time.  So some time after my mother died—I was about 18—my aunt again offered to take me.  But I said no.  I was already working, I was very independent.  I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think she knew for maybe 5 years that her sister had died.

She had children—two or three children that died in a tornado where they lived in Illinois.  Two were killed in a tornado, and the other one died fighting in the war.  She lost all her children.  I think that’s when she decided she wanted me to come and live there.

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There was a time when I needed pajamas.  When I had come out of the home I had some clothes from them, but I didn’t have much.  So my father said, “You’ll make your own.”  I didn’t have a sewing machine.  Everything had to be done by hand.  He was very stingy when it came to me.  He was stingy period—when it came to Jean even.  For her birthday, he’d go out and buy himself a box of cigars.  This was typical of him.  He’d say, “I bought you a present.  I’m smoking them.”  It sounds funny, but it became a joke.  You just didn’t expect him to do any better than that.  That was a big story in our family.  He always did it; he thought it was funny.  He would do this every year.  “She wants something?  Let her go out and buy it herself.”  He wouldn’t worry about giving Christmas gifts.

Jean worked in the store with him.  I guess she had access to the money.  She’d been a bookkeeper at one point.  She could have gone out and spent if she wanted. 

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Eddie worked in Idaho.  Eddie, according to what he tells in his story, worked chopping down trees and things, and because he knew how to drive, they made him a driver.  Then he had to cook, because a driver had to cook for the crew.  Hy must have gone somewhere else, because I know the story with Hy is that while they were up in the CCC camps, he was helping people to learn how to write and read English, because they were very uneducated.  I don’t know if this was his job or just something he did on the side.  And one of the guys that he taught to write English ended up to be a crook, and when he stole something he wrote a beautiful note,  [Laughing]  I don’t know what he did, but he wrote it.  Hy told the story that this guy who didn’t know how to write English all of a sudden became a writer. 

Hy had like s photographic mind.  He never finished high school.   But you couldn't compete with him in knowledge because he read anything and everything. 

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9            Work and unions

At one point I wasn’t working for some reason.  I went from my uncle’s place when I was 16 or 17.  I can’t remember these dates.  I quit school at a very young age—I think it was 16.  I went to work for my uncle.  The war in Europe had already started then.

It was a mail order house, and I was filling envelopes.  My uncle was giving me $4 a week, and I said, “I want an increase.”  He said, “Go ask Sokoloff,” who was his partner.  Sokoloff said, “Yeah, sure,” and he gave me an increase.  But a few weeks later, I said this is ridiculous—from $4 to $6, something like that.  I was working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week.  (But it was only a nickel to get a hot dog, a nickel to go on the subway.  It’s all relative.)

And then I went out and found myself this job working on table cloths.  I was a sewing machine operator.  It was a sweat shop, but it was clean and nice and neat.  I don’t think I belonged to a union yet.  It was in the West 30s in Manhattan.  I got $17 right off the bat.  I was making tablecloths—decorative tablecloths.  There was no pattern, and I would know in my head that if I held the tablecloth in a certain way the decoration would be right.

From there I went out and found other jobs.  Underwear and different things.  Everything was seasonal.  I’d work at one job, maybe several months, until they laid you off.  I’d find another job right away.  I didn’t collect unemployment, not because I couldn’t but because I didn’t want to.  I would always find a new job.  I’m the type of person who, if they showed me one machine and somebody else was working on a different type of machine, I had to learn it.  Not because the boss said learn it.  I wanted to learn everything.  That’s why I was never out of work—because I knew everything.  I learned so many different things.  These were all garment industry jobs.  The salary kept getting higher and higher.  Especially during the war, it went into the 40s.  That’s a lot of money, when you’ve started at $4 and a few years later you’re making a lot more.  And even after the war you still made.

I worked on parachutes.  Not parachutes for men, but parachutes for supplies that were dropped.  I’d sew the parachute.  I had a 4-needle machine, and it flops over and makes...it would have a seam—on your shirt, that’s only 2 needles, but ours was 4 needles, so I’d be sewing 4 lines at a time.  You’d just hold it, and it goes.  This was the parachute itself.  The parachutes for men were silk, but these parachutes were nylon; they weren’t worried about a person’s life, but just to send down ammunition or whatever.

After the war, I still worked in the garment industry.

When I was working during the war, they used to say, “Loose lips sink a ship.”  And people would say, “Oh, that’s a lot of baloney.”  And I said, “Wait, I’ll show you.”  Now we had a 4-story building where I was working.  And I said, “Watch this.”  Somebody passed me by, and I made a statement—I forget exactly, something about, “Oh, we’re going to be laid off.”  In 20 minutes, it came down, “Did you hear we’re going to be laid off?”  I mean, this is the way rumors can go.  I was trying to prove a point to somebody: “Watch, if you say something here, the 4^th floor is going to get it, and then we’re going to get it.  It will go through the whole building.”

I was just saying there are certain things you don’t talk about, even in your own private life.  You keep your mouth shut about certain things.  But some people go overboard with it, too—I had a friend who did that.

What else did I do?  I even did dressmaking.  I worked in non-union shops to try to help organize them.  The trouble is, the ILG is such a horrible mess, that I would help out to try to organize, and then I was in a place where they literally had me fired.  The ILGWU had me fired.  [David] Dubinsky, no less.  They felt that everybody should contribute to the Labor Party, and there were a lot of people who weren’t Labor Party people.  And I don’t feel you had a right to force people to contribute.  This is after the war—the American Labor Party, Henry Wallace’s party.  I just felt that people were complaining, and I don’t think the union had a right.  We had to give one day’s earnings to the Labor Party.  One day for the year.  You have about 50 people working, it’s a lot of money.  And they insisted you had to do it, and I talked about not doing it.  Then I got in trouble, and then they had me fired.

The shop was now a union shop.  I had organized this place.  They didn’t fire me—they had the boss do it, and they wouldn’t defend me.

Another time I irritated them because the ILG decided that instead of us having 2 weeks vacation, they would take our vacation money and split it with everybody.  All the union members who were working had to split their money with people who weren’t working.  But I didn’t believe them.  I believed they took it and put it in their pockets.  I never found anybody who didn’t work who ever got anything from the union.  So I fought it, because I felt it was just another thing that the union was doing.  The ILG tried to say that they were a liberal union.  They were far from liberal.

I was in the Communist Party at the time and I realized—a lot of people told me, “Hey, the ILG stinks.”  The ILG claimed to be a communist union, but with Dubinsky, you had to be very careful.  I knew enough, because I was in the Party, that you don’t just accept people because it’s a union.  Like my union that I ended up in—the last one (at GHI), I used to fight with them.  I knew that they were only going to fight as hard as you want to make them fight.  You don’t accept unions because they’re unions.   Somebody even told me this, whom I didn’t agree with at the time, but she was right: she hated the union.  This was the first union she ever was in.  But it’s true.  You just can’t ignore what could be happening under your nose, because they don’t want you to know.  You have to be careful even with the more progressive unions.

I don’t know if they were all this way.  My father was in the Furriers, and he believed in them.  And yet my father was a sceptic, because he used to say to me when I was in the Party, “Remember, nobody is a god.”

People would get up and sing, “Browder is our leader.”  I couldn’t do it, because I remembered that, although I never liked my father, I felt what he said was true.  Never put anybody up as a god.  There is no such thing.  So I would never be able to sing the song.

I wasn’t what you would call a good communist.  I didn’t believe in everything.  Hy was a much better communist than I.  He and Leo were very much Stalinites.  I didn’t know enough to be a Stalinite, and I couldn’t bring myself to do certain things.  I was in the party, I recruited people, it’s true.  But not on the basis of Russia.  Rather: you’re a worker, and you have to understand what’s going on.

Hy was in the party when we still lived in lower Manhattan.  My girlfriend even joined.  I got in early 42/late 41--around Pearl Harbor.  I lived with Eddie and Mae, but just before that I lived with some people, I boarded there.  (We lived in a basement apartment near Jean and my father in Brooklyn.  I don’t remember the street—it’s a long time ago.)  I was just 20.  My joining had nothing to do with Hy.  It had more to do with these people, these friends of mine.  I ended up living with them, being very friendly with them, and then when Ed and Mae found an apartment, I went to live with them.  They were party members.

I never really resigned from the party.  I don’t agree with it any more.  Basically, I agree with it.  I just don’t believe in men being honored to the point where they could do no wrong.  Like Leo still believes in Stalin no matter what he was.  I know a number of people who are like this.  You prove to me that something’s wrong, then something’s wrong.  Nobody is an idol.

I’ve always been in unions.  I believed in unions.  My mother believed in unions.  My mother was a socialist.  My father was in the Furriers Union.  He had to be careful because he had lost his [American] citizenship.  He was a naturalized citizen.  He was a big man with very big hands.  They would go into open shops at night, where they had workers working at night.  He was caught banging heads around.  So he went to jail, and he lost his citizenship.

He actually beat people up, with other people.  He was a strongarm guy.  The object was to make people scared so they’d join the Furriers Union.  The union sent him and these people out as a conscious organizing activity.  Who was head of the union at the time?  Ben Gold?  When he was running away from the police, I understand that he stayed at our house to hide.  I was probably still a kid.  It was before my father was with Jean.  I don’t know if Gold got caught.  There’s a book we have somewhere on the Furriers Union.

When you go to an open shop, you can’t just walk in and say, “You can’t work here.”  They’d call the police and throw you out.  So you have to go in and be sneaky.  I didn’t know what he was doing.  I only heard these stories later on.  The police may have come while he was there.  I know he was arrested.  But he told me he had lost his citizenship.  If you go to jail, you lose your citizenship.  It was brought up on TV recently.  I was watching a show.  I don’t know how long he went to jail.  Maybe it’s that you can’t vote any more.  But he couldn’t go out of the country.

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I had no problem when I went to GHI, which was the first job I had in an office.  Before that, I worked for Head Start.  This is after I went back to school.  I volunteered: all my kids were either in school or day care.  This was in a Methodist church.  I got along very well with the minister.  The girl who got me into the work was the educator.  She did everything, except she was afraid of the minister.  It was her minister, but she was afraid he wouldn’t do what she asked, so she used to send me to ask him for things that she wanted.  He asked, “Why doesn’t she come and ask me?”  He was an easy guy to get along with.  He was black, and she was white, although she didn’t discriminate.  I got along with her and all the mothers.  The only thing is, I had a very bad memory for names.

When they closed this head start and opened it where I was living in the project up in the Bronx near 233^rd St., they asked me to take over as the main homemaker, for $100 a week, which was a lot of money.  I said I can’t take the job because I have such a bad memory that I’m embarrassed not to be able to know the mothers’ names.  They said, “But you’re so much better than the one who’s there.”  The one who was doing this work in the church was a black woman, very aristocratic, and the mothers didn’t like her because they couldn’t talk to her.  She always had a smile, and she was sweet, but they felt no rapport.  Most of them were black.

The whole idea at the beginning of the Head Start program was to mix children of different ethnic backgrounds and different financial backgrounds.  Some of the kids we had were very wealthy.  Now it has become really for the poor.  I think they’d like the ethnic background to be there, but they’re having a problem with that.  There are places I’ve been out of town where the children are all white.  They have them everywhere, but they don’t have rich kids in there.  The rich kids are the hardest to deal with.  They want more than you could give.  Our children were very good, very bright.  The next step was to go into school, and we felt they didn’t need to go into kindergarten because they’d already learned a lot of things, more than most kindergarten children.

I enjoyed the work there, but I found it was a little much.  I had a bad inferiority complex.  I was unsure of myself, didn’t think I was worth anything.  It was awful.  When I finally got this job in GHI, my doctor called the boss up there—the president—and told him she wanted me to work 3 days a week.  But they didn’t have 3 days a week—they had part-time work, but it was 5 days a week.  She felt I shouldn’t be working too much, because it was after I’d been ill.  This was 25 years ago—I started there in 1969.

When I took the job there, I realized I wasn’t stupid.  I became a shop steward.  I knew a little more than somebody else.  I realized my memory wasn’t that bad.  There were times I fought, not just for my workers all the time, but I fought for people who came in for claims.  I had memory about what was right and what was wrong.

Do you know what Jobst hose is?  They’re a stocking that people with phlebitis wear.  Their leg is measured, every inch, so it only fits them.  When I first came in, I was taught by somebody who was working on this all the time, and she had told me that the insurance paid for this.  Months later, or maybe a couple of years later, somebody came in and they were being rejected for Jobst hose, and I said, “You can’t reject the claim.”  Nobody remembered that it’s payable.  It’s a medical service, like a cane.  Hose at $100, or $55, or whatever it was.  They’re expensive because they’re made for just one person.  I finally won out.  We finally found it.  There are books and books and books and books in these places.  One of my friends finally found it for me.  She was a correspondent and sort of remembered.  But I felt so sure of myself about certain things, which gave me a lot more to be proud of.  I wasn’t the way I had been.

When I worked at GHI, I was very proud of myself.  I realized that I had a better memory than I ever gave myself credit for.  I had a temper that when I sat down at a negotiations table, they listened.  There was a time that I fought for certain things.  We had a 4-day week.  We didn’t have to fight for it.  The union and the boss decided the city needs to have a 4-day week, with 35 hours over that time.  Even management wanted it, but the workers, both men and women, didn’t want it.  They said, “We’re going to have to work so many hours!”  It came out to 8 ¾ hours a day.  “I have a baby at home.”  “I have a sitter, and she’s going to be angry.”  Eight and three-quarter hours on the phone is a long day, after all.  And you got less of a lunch to make those hours and get out at a decent hour.  You only took a half-hour lunch.  With the 7-hour day, you had an hour lunch.  When you looked at it, it didn’t sound right.

But I got up, and I spoke so eloquently; I didn’t know I had it in me.  I wasn’t in on negotiations of that nature at that point.  Only a handful of people were allowed to sit in towards the end when you negotiated.

I said, “Listen, a 4-day week is a very great step.”  People were booing me.  I looked around, and I said, “You know, I didn’t boo anybody.  I didn’t agree with people, but I didn’t boo them.  I think I should have a right to speak.”  And I spoke.  I couldn’t believe what came out of my mouth, because I convinced everybody we should have a 4-day week.  I told them the history of how people in labor used to have to work a 20-hour day, or a 10-hour day, and then they came down, and they finally got the 8-hour day.  “Now look at us: we have only a 7-hour day.  This is progress.  We don’t want to go back.  Think about what you could do with an extra day at home.  You can go away for a long weekend.”  I did a terrific job, because by the time I had spoken, we had 100%.

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It becomes part of our family: we’re not afraid to open up when we have to.  When we had the 4-day week, management realized it wasn’t good for them, but I wouldn’t let them take it away.  I again had to stand up.  This was not that big a meeting, but I was in it.  I was one of the speakers, and when they kept saying we have to do it, I got up and yelled, “We’re not doing it!  We’ll strike before we do it.”  This happened at the end of a 2-year contract during which we had the 4-hour day.

We used to have shop stewards all over the place, and they said they didn’t want so many.  To sit at the table, you had to be chosen.  After that, I was always chosen.  Once you sit at the table, you’re still not allowed to open your mouth.  They tell you that only the union representative and the chief shop steward could speak.  But I had learned already that management and the union are in cahoots to a great extent.  They’ve made decisions before you even know it.  You’re fighting it, and they’ve already decided.  So you have to open your mouth.  I learned this over years.

Now, I’m not there any more, but they don’t try it any more—to take away the 4-day week from those people who have it (which are the old-timers).  If you’re there a certain amount of years, you’re allowed to go on the 4-day week, but the new people come in on 5.  When I was there, everybody came in on 4.  They took that away; they always get something.  Some would get Monday off, some would get Friday off.  I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish.  It’s impressive.

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The last union I had—it worked for office workers: When I went to one of my first meetings, someone told me that GHI, whom I worked for, was buying a hospital and a building, and we were kept in the dark about this.  Now the union knew this, but they didn’t do anything.  And when we came to negotiations, they gave us like a 10 cents increase.  10 cents or 10%--I know it’s a big difference.  I went to them and said, “I hear they’re doing this and that.”  And they said, “Yeah, we know.”  And I said, “How can we go with such a little increase?  We can’t do that.”  I wasn’t on the board.  I was just sitting in.

There’s many times you fight your union more than you fight your boss.  I’ve done this a number of times.  My bosses understand what I want; my union doesn’t want to fight.  Anyhow, we got our increase properly.  I think we got 10%—the union representative wanted us to have $10.  After that, we had a couple of incidences...  I’m very pro-union, but I won’t let the union screw me, either.  I’m not blind.

The head of the union, who died just recently, he and I got along.  This union gave me a gold watch.  I had retired already, and they had my girlfriend take me to Atlantic City to one of their big meetings.  I felt that was very nice.  My girlfriend was sick, and she took me to Atlantic City.  She knew I was getting an honor; I didn’t know why.  Normally, they don’t ask retirees unless they’re active, and I wasn’t active.  Not any more, because I hadn’t been well.

The head of the union got up on the stage and said, “I have to honor one of our members who is no longer working”—I had no idea who he was talking about; I was talking on the side—“I have to honor her, although we didn’t always see eye to eye.  We fought on certain issues.”  He’s right.  We did.  I didn’t let him get away with it.  If I knew I was right, I insisted I was right.  Then they called me up to give me my watch.  Which they didn’t have with them, because it’s being engraved.  I have it now.  I think that was very nice, to acknowledge...  That was at least 5 years ago.

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A lot of industries have disappeared.  Progress. 

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