Surviving (The) Depression
Thank you Eric Weinstock who was the transcriber and son of the narrator of this story. Enjoy!
“I was born in 1925 in Middle Village, in Queens, New York. I was the youngest son of five children, but the youngest by almost 12 years. It was almost as if I had six parents I could go to; my father, my mother, my two sisters and two brothers. I was spoiled.
My siblings had to bear much more of the brunt of the Great Depression. But, even though I was a kid, I still had to help. One of my sisters married a man whose family had a dairy business. When I was still a boy I sometimes had to help with the 5AM milk runs. In the winter when it snowed or was just freezing cold it was a miserable experience. Talk about motivation to go to college! I was the only one in my family to do so, although my oldest sister Dorothy should certainly have gone.
Dorothy was incredibly smart. She worked for a laundry service. In a week she knew every account. She was irreplaceable. She kept her job throughout the Depression and helped out the family’s finances. She was “encouraged” to marry a neighborhood guy with a good job. It’s a shame. If she was born today she would probably would have become a professor like I did. She deserved better.
My father was a tailor, but not just a regular tailor, a cutter. That meant that he would make the cuts into a stack of fabrics for multiple suits to be produced in the same size. Just before the Depression he started his own business making finely tailored suits for wealthy clients. That ended pretty quickly.
My oldest brother Irving was an athlete. He kept his job during the Depression because he was a runner. He ran in the Wannamaker Games and the store would keep athletes on the payroll. Like athletes today he was a ladies’ man. I remember finding these funny balloons in the back seat of his first car.
I saw Babe Ruth play, although it was near the end of his career. He was injured and overweight, but the Babe wasn’t ready to retire yet. It got so bad the Yankees traded him to the Boston Braves. They were a National League team. Boston used to have two teams, so did Philadelphia, one in each league, the Phillies and the Athletics.
I also saw Satchell Paige pitch with a barnstorming team of Negro League Players (that was the proper name for it) playing against a team of all-star players including Joe DiMaggio. Paige struck out a bunch of them, including DiMaggio. It took place at the old Bushwick stadium in Brooklyn. I forget when they tore it down.
But mostly I remember going to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers. When someone from the neighborhood got a job as a ticket taker, it seemed like the entire neighborhood would show up to get in for free. The Dodgers weren’t very good when I was a kid. They only had one really good player, a right-handed pitcher by the name of Van Lingle Mungo and then he hurt his arm the year after he won the strikeout title. Casey Stengel was the manager and I don’t think they ever had a winning season for him.
I saw the Hindenburg on the day of its last flight. I remember seeing it float right over the house and then I heard later on the radio what happened to it.
I did very well in school and was ready to graduate at 15. I was able to go to City College then because it was free. I took mathematics and physics with a bunch of insanely bright guys including future Nobel prize winners. Zero Mostel was going to City College at the same time. He used to practice his routines in the cafeteria.
We had entered World War II and after I graduated I was drafted into the army. I did my basic training and then because of my college degree I worked on missile projects. Then, during the Battle of the Bulge, everyone with rifleman’s training was sent to Europe. By the time I landed, the “Bulge” had been contained. I then worked in Counter Intelligence, helping to catch former Nazis as the war ended. I was part of the team that captured Axis Sally and brought her to trial.
I could barely wait to get home. Although I had my college degree in math and physics, I wasn’t exactly excited about what the physicists had accomplished during the war. So, thanks to the G.I. Bill I was able to go back to school for a year to become a psychology major. It was there I met my future wife. I went to Indiana University to become an experimental psychologist, and she was accepted there a year later in clinical psychology.
This was at the time that Alfred Kinsey was at Indiana University doing his research into human sexuality. I met Kinsey. He used to play classical records at his house and would invite other faculty and graduate students to attend. I didn’t like his selections, so I only went once or twice.
At the time lunch counters in Indiana were still segregated. I was involved in some of the organizing and sit-ins at local restaurants which refused to serve African-Americans.
After my wife and I got our doctorates, I did some post-doctoral work at Harvard and she worked in the Boston Veteran’s Administration psych ward. I then went back to Indiana for a brief stint and that’s where our first child, a daughter, was born. Then I taught at Lehigh University where my son was born, and then I taught at Brooklyn College where my second daughter was born. I taught at Brooklyn College for many years until it was time to retire.
I regard myself as very lucky. I had a career that I enjoyed. Growing up during the Depression, I didn’t think that would happen.”
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