That's Life: When Times Were Tough
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I was not born when the stock market crashed in 1929 and distraught investors committed suicide, jumping to their death from skyscrapers. But when I came into this world, our country had not yet fully recovered from that catastrophic blow to our economy.
The last of three children born to a couple who were among the millions of Americans who worried about paying the rent and food bills, I ate cheese sandwiches for dinner and stuffed cardboard into my shoes, covering the holes in worn-out soles.
Father was a roofer, which is seasonal work, when I was a toddler, and Mother took any job she could find in factories and stores. Before going to work, Mother would drop me off at the house of a friend, the mother of four children, who baby-sat me. One frigid February morning when I was bundled in a snowsuit stands out in my memory. I soiled my diaper and cried, because we had a ways to go before we would reach the sitter's house.
When I grew old enough to sit at the kitchen table, with the rest of the family, I ate the spaghetti or potato pancakes Mother often cooked for our evening meal. On the day before Father was to be paid, it was not unusual to find only a bowl of tomato soup set at our places at the dinner table.
 A woman tries to sell her belongings in New York during the Great Depression |
Sometimes, the radio or the antique clock my father had inherited from his mother disappeared, and I would ask Mother what happened to them. "Be a good girl," Mother would say, "and don't be bothering me with questions." Eventually, the radio and clock would reappear, but I was none the wiser as to why Mother or Father would have hidden them — or so I thought.
I did not notice when Mother's wedding ring went missing from her finger, but I would know what had happened to the ring when she took me along to visit Sam at his shop, where three golden balls hung above the entrance. There Mother would reclaim her ring, handing Sam a pawn ticket and a few dollars.
We were not as hard up as some of our neighbors; we wore warm clothing in the winters. Our coats and the comforters and linens on our beds were purchased "on time" from an establishment in lower New York City. Over the years, we grew to know Mr. Buxbaum, who came to our house to collect the payments, as a kindly gentleman.
"How is Claire doing?" he asked when my sister had been hospitalized because of complications from a sinus infection.
When Mother was unable to scrape up money to pay an installment, she would moan, "Poor Mr. Buxbaum, he's going to climb up those five flights of stairs only to hear me say, 'I can't pay you today.'" Under those conditions, when Mr. Buxbaum knocked on our front door, calling out, "It's Abe, Mrs. Daffee," she did not answer. Fearing one of us children would utter a sound, Mother would shoo us to the back bedroom.
But we children had fun when Mother and my Aunt Irene shopped on Saturdays in the open-air market on the avenue, where vendors hawked everything from apples to zippers.
As our mothers searched for bargains, my cousin Barbara, who is my age, and I gathered pink, yellow and blue wrappers that had fallen off oranges and pears. After shaping those wrappers into bows, we decorated our shoes with them. Skipping to our mothers, we would ask, "Don't our shoes look pretty?"
And we children liked to watch the butcher make sausages. When we entered that store, we were greeted by the mouth-watering aroma of salamis and smoked sausages hanging from the ceiling, and sauerkraut and pickles floating in barrels.
Mother usually bought apples at the market, and we would munch on them that night as we lay in bed, reading the Sunday funnies — the Sunday edition of the Daily News was available at the corner candy store on Saturday after 7 p.m.
Occasionally, we would walk to the discount bakery about a half mile from our home, and Mother would let us children select a cake from the baked goods that were further reduced because they were a day or two old. That evening, after dinner, we would enjoy a slice of either raisin cake, spice cake topped with white frosting, or marble cake. I never even imagined then that someday, for better or worse, I would not consider lunch or dinner complete without dessert.
In time, my parents' financial circumstances improved, Father gaining employment with the Public School System as a swimming instructor and working as a dock hand in the summer. And after 30-plus years of marriage, my father's dream of owning a house came true. My sisters and I came back home to celebrate the occasion with our parents, and we cheered as Father took a match to the mortgage.
It was a memorable moment. I consider all the days of my youth worth remembering; It was a time when I believed no harm could befall me, because I was surrounded by those who loved me.
I was naive, of course, and had no conception of what it was like to be in my parents' place, struggling to support a family.
Top photo, President Bush meets with congressional leaders last Thursday at the White House, courtesy whitehouse.gov
