Christine stopped by and left a bag on my kitchen door. It consisted of the New York Times yearly Sunday “The New Season” which is in 3 sections with the first dealing with theatre, the second with film and the third with TV, Art and pop. I will read each section slowly devouring each word, especially about the theatre. As I was looking at the front pages of each section my mind went back to the Bronx in the 1940s.

As a Jewish boy in the Bronx our Sundays consisted of bagels, lox and cream cheese along with the New York Times. (One of the few times we ate together as a family!) My brother and I would fight about who would go to the bakery to get the bagels and a freshly baked rye bread with seeds, sliced and still warm. We would eat the ’heels’ of the bread as we walked back home. 

Then later in the day we would go down to the lower east side of Manhattan where my grandmother made dinner for her 8 children and all their spouses and children. Afterwards grandfather would take the kids for a walk along Orchid street where we would dip our fingers (no plastic gloves!) to fish out the biggest pickle we could get. We knew we were all grown up when he would take the older kids to Katz's Deli for a corned beef sandwich while an aunt would collect all the young kids and take them back to grandmother who would give them each a penny!

For two immigrants, with one from Russia and another from England, in the very early 1900s, they made money by selling vegetables from pushcarts on the streets until later years when the government, to help people recover from the depression, opened a huge covered market where they rented space. To this day it amazes me that making pennies they raised 8 children who never went hungry, always had clothes on their backs, lived in a 6 floor walk up and showered their grandchildren (I really don’t remember how many cousins I had and that were there every Sunday) with pennies and attention.

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