Since 1917

Writing about my past and reflecting on my growth and behavior, I can’t help comparing my grandson William at age 6 and how I was at his age. I cannot recall myself and my behavior, but I know that I was a shy person who did not speak easily to adults. My aunt Gussie informed me , when Shirley & I visited her in Florida, on our honeymoon “Irving’l, I never thought you would get married. When I visited your house, you would always hide under the table”. That was me in my pre-teen years. I was very reserved, a quiet presence. Perhaps it was due to being 4th in a group of 6 children. But , the theory is that shyness is a trait that is inherited from our parents. My mother was shy and quiet. I seem to have inherited her personality. And I see shyness in Mark and in Becca, which we all have been able to overcome in our adult life. William is not shy with adults, in fact he fits right in with them. How much is this due to the way children are raised, the home environment, the exposure to media, so prevalent now as compared to my environment in 1917 thru 1920’s. I think children growing up now in good homes learn more at an early age and are more advanced than we were 3 generations ago.

I signed off and went to bed, but sleep was not easily accomplished. My mind still active with the blog and how to proceed with the past and the present. When I awakened from my sleep, Shirley was sitting, reading the Times. This was 11AM, so I must have fallen into a deep sleep. However I had thought about writing the blog all night. I thought about Phillip Roth and how he used an alter ego, “Zuckerman”, to write several novels, and maybe using his technique to describe my own experiences. I told Shirley about my restless night and about my comparison between 6 yr. old William and Grandpa Irving and as usual she came up with answer. “His parents are more educated than yours were. He also has the full attention and guidance of loving parents. Your parents were busy, Pop with his long hours, six days a week and your mother busy at home full time handling 6 growing children, cooking and feeding the family. Also, the expansion of science and education from 1920 to the present has been phenomenal”. Perhaps she is correct. I do see that our young children of today are much smarter than we are. When we were growing up, we looked for answers from our parents and grandparents. Now the P’s & GP”s are asking the kids for help. The computers, IPods, cell-phones, Texting have made us dependent on them. Our kids are really smarter, they revolutionized our society with scientific gadgetry.

The period of time that we lived here was about three years. We loved the area, it was close to the Yeshiva,where I attended school and was only a few blocks walk for me. I was at the age when I could go and come alone. How things have changed. Now, when I return from the office and drive down E. 20th St. about 3:15 PM and pass P S40, the street is jammed with parked cars waiting for children to emerge and parents wait outside to walk their children home. During this period of my life, age 6-9, the street where we lived was our playground. Girls would skip rope on the sidewalk and boys would play box-ball or other ball games, such as bounce a ball on the coin, boys and girls played stoop ball and , we played Hop, skip and jump into marked street boxes. The street was where we played and our parents could check on us through the apartment windows, if they were fortunate to have windows facing the street. Bear in mind that the mothers were home, probably caring for siblings, or doing housework. This was the set-up in those days. HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED. The street also was busy with vendors and peddlers calling out their wares in courtyards and on local street corners. You could be at home and hear the shouting Alte Kleider (old clothes) “we buy alte kleider”. Or you would hear Get your hot sweet potato here, and see the man pushing a metal cart with coal burning below a cabinet drawer in which were placed sweet potatoes, being warmed up for immediate delivery to the buyer. These were really a wonderful treat, served hot off the griddle. And speaking of food sold as a snack, were the Charlotte Russe and the Jelly Apple. Really popular snacks. I have a faint memory of street gang warfare without weapons but possibly with stones. Our community was mainly Jewish, but several streets toward Union Ave. were Polish kids. Sometimes a gang, maybe four or five, would emerge and run towards us and we would run across the street in another direction and throw stones or pebbles at each other. No one was ever hurt. It seemed to be like cowboys and Indians imitating the scenes we saw in the movies. Film movies were becoming popular and the movie business was growing at this time, a new sensation. The Wild West was very popular and the introduction of serial movie film,showing each chapter over a ten week period was a device to get people to attend on a weekly basis. Tom Mix was most popular. The Green Hornet is a title I recall and I am not sure of that. Others famous cowboys were Gene Autry, Gary Cooper, Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and John Wayne. There are others but these were most popular. The films were silent, no sound at this time (1924+). Some theatres had a piano player accompanying the action and they would add excitement to the scene, especially when the horsemen were pursuing the bad guys. Dialog would be shown flashed on the screen between scenes. This was the media, we young children were exposed to during the 1920’s+, plus the introduction of radio. As kids, playing in the street, we would play cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. All in good fun, without weapons. When I was nine years of age, we moved to a newly built area in Brooklyn, to 820-46th Street. We did not wish to leave the apartment, but the landlord refused to renew our lease. The story as I learned was this. The tenant, who lived beneath us was an actress in the Jewish Theater. She performed during the evening hours and slept during the day. Our family lived above her. Our apartment had a long foyer with the rooms off the foyer. At this period, the Roth family consisted of 6 children and the foyer was a great place for toddlers to play. The actress complained that she was not getting any sleep. So, we were forced to move and to rent seemed impossible for such a large family. Pop was forced to bite the bullet. He purchased a 2 family brick house in Linden Heights, Brooklyn, a newly constructed area between 8th and 9th Ave. It turned out to be a great move.

Pg. 1…………. Memoirs, Blanche Roth, Drillick Blanche was the baby sister, ,the sixth child of Israel and Hinda (Anne ). She was six years my junior but played a large part in my life. Prior to my entry into the Army Air Force, we would go to the Loews Boro Park for movie viewing after our Friday night dinners. Also, she often acted as our disc jockey during dances that we ran in the basement of our two-family house. During the depression, in the 1930’s, the teen-age kids could not go on expensive dates. So a trend developed, whereby private home owners would permit their teen-age children to socialize in their re-furbished basement . . Blanche wanted to be part of the action, but she was too young to associate with us grownups, so she conned us into serving as the disc jockey. She loved playing the 78’s records and watching us dance. This period was prior to World War II, our age of innocence. This all changed when Europe was at war and Hitler was increasing his domination over neighboring countries. Pres. FDR initiated the draft in preparation of our entry. When Japan destroyed our Navy battleships in Hawaii with a sneak attack, he declared war on Japan and the German Axis. During the war, Blanche was the only child remaining at home. And it fell upon her to be the stalwart member of our family, to help at home. Bill was in the Pacific, Nat was in England and I was in the Mediterranean area. Reggie was nearby busy with her children and Jack lived in upper Manhattan with his family. Pop was busy with the store, which he gave up during the war and worked in Saratoga, where he became ill. and died. During my years overseas and at basic training camp, 3 years altogether, Blanche was my main contact. I sent her many photos, which she put into albums and also used her as an emissary to buy gifts and especially a birthday ring using my entire savings bank holdings. This became a challenge because my holding were meager. This is Shirley’s pet anecdote. Fortunately, Blanche and Shirley bonded and did many wartime activities together, such as bond drives, USO shows and dances, etc. This bonding kept Shirley within the family structure and helped in bridging my absence of three years separation, during the war period. ..I’ve been struggling in my attempt to describe Blanche’s postwar history . As described in her obituary, she worked for the American Red Cross, doing social work and also worked for the Pioneer Women of Israel, speaking at fund-raiser meetings. Unfortunately, mother became ill with cancer and the only child, living in the house with her, it fell upon her to do the nursing. In retrospect, we,the siblings were neglectful. We were too busy and occupied with our own problems of re-building our lives. ………………………In 1948, Jack Drillick swept Blanche off her feet with flowers and unending demand of her time. He was an ordained rabbi forced to go th Hebrew College, much against his will. He was more interested in engineering and had an inventive mind. When he broke away from his father’s influence, he got involved in designing and inventing commercial equipment. He worked on a free-lance basis.. He would work ona project, and then seek out a company that would need the item. Jack would work out a deal, set up models and production. I was never aware of his accomplishments, but the one successful project, was his invention of a plastic card printing machine that eliminated the process then prevalent, the heavy , noisy typewriters used to emboss the plastic. He sold this invention to the Datacard Corporation in…….. Minneapolis., and is today an International company.. ………………..Mom died soon after their marriage and the family house on 46^th Street was sold. Due to Jack’s endeavors, which were never secure economically, Blanche and Jack moved often. While Blanche remained at home raising a family, Jack was busy creating and selling his new ideas and forcing the family to uproot itself often/. The obituary lists the places where the family lived

. .We had visited them in California, in England and other areas. Looking back, I believe that the constant uprooting and anxiety about family economics caused Blanche to suffer mental anguish..

Our connection with Cy Coleman stems from our summers spent at his parents’ Bungalow Colony in the Catskills.

Our first tenancy in Kaufman’s Bungalow Colony in Monticello was in 1954. Andy was 2 years old, running around the rustic area in diapers. Mark was 4 years old parading in shorts and playing with his cousins and friends.

The colony was located about two miles north of the town. Kaufman’s property bordered on the premises of the Kutscher’s Hotel, a grade A vacation resort wih golf courses, swimmipools, basketball courts, etc. Our colony looked like Skid Row . If you wandered off their grounds into ours you would feel lost, in a different world. Our compound was rustic, housed about 15-20 families. The bungalows were multi-tenanted, designed and constructed by Mr. Kaufman. Maintenance was the job of sons or in -laws or family members who also vacationed in Monticello.

The facilities were adequate, consisting of a handball court that was always in use, a lake for swimming, no boating,that was a short distance off the bungalow area and a recreation house for children to play in, run parties or shows.

My sister , Reggie (Regina) and her husband Mike, the handball enthusiast, has spent summers here and when we visited them one year during our first summer in Wurtsboro where we had a miserable time, we decided to book at Kaufman’s for the following year, We were very happy here and re-booked 3 or 4 times.The primary activity for the summer in most bungalow colonies, was the annual show. And here at Kaufman’s it was exceptional. Once the families settled in , the development of the musical was in progress. My sister Blanche’ who joined us with her son Ira, and sister Reggie plus many other talented inhabitants, created shows, wrote lyrics to popular songs, made costumes for our chorus girls, songs for our singers, book based on life amd incidences at Kaufmans Colony.. We had great times and lots of laughs.

As you can see is the photos below, Cy Coleman joined in the fun. During the years 1954-57, he was performing on his piano at night clubs and possibly with trios. I’m not sure when he wrote his first musical comedy.. He created a sensation here one week-end when he drove up with a male friend and Veronica Lake, screen actress who was sensation at the time. They holed up in private bungalow and never appeared outside. We, the summer residents were curious to see Veronica and her over- the- eye hairdo, but never got the opportunity. They slipped in and out without a peep or murmur. C y Coleman appeared with us in our musical comedies without top billing.