Read Online A Book of Great Worth by Dave Margoshes - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dave Margoshes
Tags: Fiction, Family, USA, Jewish, new york city, Short Fiction, Journalism, Fathers, Community, Socialism, Yiddish, Inter-War Years, Hindenberg, Unions
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fool, will see through the facade I’ve erected.
So, I implore and beseech you, tell me, dear, wise Yenta Schmegge, what am I to do?
My father had not really written the letter, but the situation and the question were real enough.
He considered the question, and the one contained in a letter which had come that day, a real question, in a real letter, from a real reader: “My husband beats me and the children. What should I do?”
He had been sitting at his desk in The World newsroom for an hour or more thinking of how to answer this question. It was late, and the newsroom was deserted. There was a bottle of whisky in the bottom drawer of his desk. He opened the drawer, took out the bottle and a small glass and poured himself a drink.
The only answer my father could think of for either dilemma – his own and that of his distressed correspondent – was the one he had written so often in the newspaper: “Follow your heart.” In the dim light of the empty newsroom, the inadequacy of the answer – and its falsity – loomed enormous.
• • •
A False Moustache
In 1924, when my father came back to New York from Cleveland, he moved uptown to Harlem, where he hoped to find independence.
For several years after dropping out of school at thirteen, my father had knocked around, working at a variety of jobs, usually taking a night class of some sort at the same time from the Arbeiter Ring, the Workman’s Circle, an organization that sought to bring education and culture to the Jewish immigrants, and travelling some. A problem with his feet allowed him to avoid service in the Great War that raged all over Europe, in cluding the area where he’d been born. This had prevented him from having to put his beliefs in pacifism to the test. Instead of taking up arms, he’d served his country by working on a farm, something he already had some experience with.
Afterwards, he went west, and he had just spent almost four years on a small Yiddish newspaper in Cleveland learning the craft he would earn his living by for the next forty. He liked to tell me, years later, that he would often dream, in the cold rooming-house attic he’d shared with a mouse he called Maleka, of re turning to the city he’d once thought didn’t have room for him, the city of his father’s and brother’s friends and influence, their reputation, like a bright morning star, burning on the horizon, forcing men to lift their heads and see.
In those days, with the Great War still seeming to reverberate in the air above the city like a subway train that has rumbled out of sight but not hearing, Harlem was already beginning to make the change that was to plunge it into the new world. The handsome brownstones that lined 125th Street and its dissecting avenues were starting the painful process of transforming themselves into neat, genteel boarding houses, like capped teeth in a once proud mouth – the smile still warm, but no longer glittering. My father took a room on the second floor of a Lexington Avenue house, just south of 124th Street, that had once belonged to a lawyer with Tammany connections. The lawyer had died in debt and now his solemn parlor was the domain of an aunt who had only her wits and boarders to keep her together. The room was clean, with a scrubbed window behind starched white curtains looking out on the avenue and one slim slice of Mount Morris Park, two blocks west, that wasn’t cut off by the buildings across the way. North of 125th, where the roots were deeper or the money of better quality, my father didn’t know which, there were still families with servants living in the pillared, imposing brownstones, and from his window, on warm afternoons, he could watch the black nursemaids, who lived far south of the pleasant street, strolling with their charges to the park, where they would sit on benches and watch the children play in the sun. He paid twelve dollars a week, and that included coffee and rolls in the morning, dinner
So, I implore and beseech you, tell me, dear, wise Yenta Schmegge, what am I to do?
My father had not really written the letter, but the situation and the question were real enough.
He considered the question, and the one contained in a letter which had come that day, a real question, in a real letter, from a real reader: “My husband beats me and the children. What should I do?”
He had been sitting at his desk in The World newsroom for an hour or more thinking of how to answer this question. It was late, and the newsroom was deserted. There was a bottle of whisky in the bottom drawer of his desk. He opened the drawer, took out the bottle and a small glass and poured himself a drink.
The only answer my father could think of for either dilemma – his own and that of his distressed correspondent – was the one he had written so often in the newspaper: “Follow your heart.” In the dim light of the empty newsroom, the inadequacy of the answer – and its falsity – loomed enormous.
• • •
A False Moustache
In 1924, when my father came back to New York from Cleveland, he moved uptown to Harlem, where he hoped to find independence.
For several years after dropping out of school at thirteen, my father had knocked around, working at a variety of jobs, usually taking a night class of some sort at the same time from the Arbeiter Ring, the Workman’s Circle, an organization that sought to bring education and culture to the Jewish immigrants, and travelling some. A problem with his feet allowed him to avoid service in the Great War that raged all over Europe, in cluding the area where he’d been born. This had prevented him from having to put his beliefs in pacifism to the test. Instead of taking up arms, he’d served his country by working on a farm, something he already had some experience with.
Afterwards, he went west, and he had just spent almost four years on a small Yiddish newspaper in Cleveland learning the craft he would earn his living by for the next forty. He liked to tell me, years later, that he would often dream, in the cold rooming-house attic he’d shared with a mouse he called Maleka, of re turning to the city he’d once thought didn’t have room for him, the city of his father’s and brother’s friends and influence, their reputation, like a bright morning star, burning on the horizon, forcing men to lift their heads and see.
In those days, with the Great War still seeming to reverberate in the air above the city like a subway train that has rumbled out of sight but not hearing, Harlem was already beginning to make the change that was to plunge it into the new world. The handsome brownstones that lined 125th Street and its dissecting avenues were starting the painful process of transforming themselves into neat, genteel boarding houses, like capped teeth in a once proud mouth – the smile still warm, but no longer glittering. My father took a room on the second floor of a Lexington Avenue house, just south of 124th Street, that had once belonged to a lawyer with Tammany connections. The lawyer had died in debt and now his solemn parlor was the domain of an aunt who had only her wits and boarders to keep her together. The room was clean, with a scrubbed window behind starched white curtains looking out on the avenue and one slim slice of Mount Morris Park, two blocks west, that wasn’t cut off by the buildings across the way. North of 125th, where the roots were deeper or the money of better quality, my father didn’t know which, there were still families with servants living in the pillared, imposing brownstones, and from his window, on warm afternoons, he could watch the black nursemaids, who lived far south of the pleasant street, strolling with their charges to the park, where they would sit on benches and watch the children play in the sun. He paid twelve dollars a week, and that included coffee and rolls in the morning, dinner
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