My father Arthur was born in 1912 in the Catskill town of Liberty, NY some years after his folks, my grandparents Esther and Sam, had emigrated to the States from Ukraine. At first they settled among other Eastern European Jews in New York’s lower eastside where my grandfather worked as a cutter in a garment district sweatshop. But Sam developed emphysema and was advised to leave the city for the cleaner air in the country. And so they resettled in the Catskills in a small town that...
For years I’ve shopped in two neighborhood supermarkets – Gristedes and Key Food – both a few blocks from my apartment and across the street from each other. Although New York is often thought of as an unfriendly place where people live in isolation and anonymity, we New Yorkers know that’s simply not true. For most of us our neighborhoods are like small towns, and we know our neighbors, our postmen, our local merchants – and certainly the managers of our...
I’ve written before about my grandmother Esther who ran a small hotel in the Catskills. (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel and Hotel Kittens. Esther was a wonderful cook and baker turning out meals for hundreds of guests at the hotel from Memorial to Labor Day. She had a staff of course, but she was always in the kitchen herself instructing, supervising, and tasting everything before it was served to the guests. Then after the season when we were all back in the...
When the lights went out in New York during the great northeast blackout of 1965, I was browsing with a friend at Georg Jensen, the upscale Madison Avenue silver shop. Then all us shoppers held hands, and in single file we groped our way out to the dark street. And some years later I was in a movie theater when suddenly I smelled smoke. We were told to evacuate and hurried out post-haste. And more than once at Jane Addams High School in the Bronx where I worked for...
When I was young my grandmother ran a small hotel on a lake in the Catskills, and I’ve written about the idyllic summers I spent there with my family. (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel, Hotel Kittens, My Game Mother, and Our Special Guests.) One happy memory of those childhood summers is rowing on the lake with my father, and when I was old enough, taking a rowboat out on my own. Since then I’ve certainly been on larger and more impressive crafts – but...
Welcome to my blog World Thru Brown Eyes! Enjoy the read and please leave a comment and tell me how this old world looks thru YOUR eyes!
