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Memories of Graham Avenue, Paterson - 1920s-1930s - My brother Harold [later Polton] and I grew up at 110 Graham Avenue in a modest two-family house that we shared with Uncle Irving’s family. The neighborhood consisted entirely of similar houses, many so close together that one could reach across the alley and shake hands with the folks next door. Although it was rumored that several residents had petitioned the realtor not to sell to Jews, we never experienced any antagonism from out neighbors whose ethnic diversity is evidenced by their names: Carola, Murphy, Schmidlein, Brisbane, Roughgarden, Engleton, Langstaff, Lilley, Konieski, Ysaitis, Ensor, Salvador --- and a family named Brown who were actually of Syrian heritage.
Graham Avenue was a major thoroughfare. The #50 bus passed right in front of our door, but we were able to meet most of our daily needs on foot. At the end of our block there was a Great Eastern grocery store and around the corner was Suenram’s hardware store. Across the street there was a shoe repair shop and on the corner was Hamburg’s where we bought penny candy or ice cream on the way to or from school. This corner also housed a barber shop and a small dairy store. For more serious shopping, it sufficed to walk a few blocks in the other direction on Graham Avenue to the kosher butcher, the fish store, the Graham Avenue Bakery where they made wonderful rye and pumpernickel bread, and to Irving’s Dairy where sweet butter was sold in large chucks carved from a big mound and where cream cheese, pot cheese, Swiss cheese, and Emanthaler were also sold in bulk.
Vegetable peddlers came to the door and the milkman delivered daily. We used to wait for the iceman who carried large blocks of ice for the ice box (the predecessor of the electric refrigerator). We would climb on the wagon and pick up shards of ice to suck on. We also had home delivery of seltzer which came in cases of twelve siphon bottles, which, like the milk bottles, were returned for re-use.
There were itinerant photographers who would photograph a child on a real pony or in an outfit of overalls and a cap made popular by child star Jackie Coogan in the Chaplin film “The Kid.” It was also possible to ride on a miniature merry-go-round which was mounted on a small truck.
The block between our house and 142 Graham Avenue, where our grandparents lived, was filled by Wrigley Park, a green oasis in a crowded neighborhood. But we children preferred to play in our backyards or on the street. We played hopscotch, jacks, and marbles; we jumped rope and roller skated. Some of us had scooters or small bikes. The boys may have played stick-ball or kick-the-can, but there was no semblance of organized sports. Once, we had a miniature “war” with zip-guns (wooden contraptions with elastic bands), but, for the most part, the “youth culture” was low-key and peaceable.
I was, even then, relentlessly pedagogical and we “played school” a lot. I read a great deal as well: the Bobbsey Twins, Honeybunch, Ruby and Ruthie (which seems to have been available only at Macy’s) and even the lugubrious Elsie Dinsmore series. One of my male classmates lent me Tom Swift and Horatio Alger books. I went to the public library week after week. One year, my cousin Adele [Friedman] and I pooled our possessions and set up the almost-professional Pauldele Library for the children in her East 25th Street neighborhood.
We walked to School No. 10, about twelve blocks from our house, and we came home for lunch which at the time was the main meal of the day. My father also came home from work for lunch. When we started going to high school, the pattern necessarily changed and we began having our main meal in the evening.
Our meals always included a variety of fruits and vegetables. (My mother introduced such exotic foods as artichokes and broccoli long before they became universal) We also enjoyed many traditional dishes which today would be considered positively lethal: cheese blintzes with sour cream, kreplach deep-fried in chicken fat, beef brisket, calves’ liver, and the special Sabbath cholent, a concoction of beef, potatoes, beans, and carrots, which was left to simmer overnight in the coals of the furnace [in the basement].
We went to the movies practically every Saturday, after which we usually had supper, either at Grinker’s Luncheonette on Church Street (tuna salad sandwiches and ice cream soda) or at Mandiberg’s Delicatessen on Graham Avenue. On special occasions we might dine at the local kosher restaurant (which my father fondly referred to as the “quick and dirty”) or at more elaborate restaurants in Newark or New York.
In those days, the movies were often supplemented with vaudeville. Among the performers we saw were Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Duke Ellington and his orchestra, Will Rogers, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Baby Rose Marie. Along with most of Paterson’s Jewish community, our whole family attended the historic showing of the first talking picture, “The Jazz Singer,” at the sumptuous new Fabian Theater. My brother and I also went to an after-school movie program at School No. 10. Our home entertainment consisted of piano lessons, the hand-operated Victrola, and the radio. In fact, the only serious conflict I ever had with my brother centered on the choice of radio programs: Should we tune in to “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy” or “The Lady Next Door?”
Paulette (Politinsky) Lipsitz
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