Seabury Place: A Bronx Profile in the 1940s
From the accumulation of snow, sidewalks could not be distinguished from the streets. It was Saturday in the winter of 1948. Mr. Sikora, the janitor of 1426 Seabury Place who accompanied Admiral Byrd on one of his arctic explorations (or so he said) quickly got out of bed. He tucked his toes into his flannel slippers buttoned his short-sleeved cotton shirt then plowed to the storefront synagogue directly across the street from his cellar. He was the Shabbos Goy (Sabbath Gentile) who flipped the light switch in the synagogue on Saturday morning. According to Orthodox Jewish law, it is forbidden to light a fire on the Sabbath. Since the electricity running through the wires in the incandescent lamp creates a resistance, thereby igniting the wire in the lamp bulb, this is analogous to burning a fire and is forbidden. So Mr. Sikora, a friendly man, was paid a pittance to be the Shabbos Goy.
The dreary synagogue was composed of two contiguous storefronts with sky-blue painted windows. A desk with two wooden planked bleachers left one with the impression that it was a shtetl schoolroom. A handful of destitute, elderly Jews composed its congregants. Two of its members, we deridingly called Coaltown and Citation (Kentucky Derby winners) wobbled arm in arm to the synagogue.
In order to have a prayer service, it is deemed that a minion; that is, ten men must be in attendance. Prayers were held in the morning and in the evening. Where could they round up a group to fulfill this sacred obligation? The two elderly gents formed an arthritic posse to corral the boys playing ball on the street.
“Chickee! Here they come!” was the alarm sounded when one of our boys spotted them. We ran into the corner building and hid under a flight of stairs leading to the first floor. If we were captured, we endured a fifteen-minute ordeal, and then returned to the boys.
Glenn, whom we only knew by his last name, was the janitor of 1462 Seabury Pl. He was a Black man about fifty years old. Frequently he joined us in our intellectual discussions concerning the Yankee shortstop, Phil Rizzuto versus the Dodger shortstop, Pee Wee Reese. He was always there to cheer us on when we played a stickball game against another neighborhood team. When we were losing, he would shout encouragement,
“Don’t worry The Bambino (Moish) will even the score,” or, “Hit the ball in the center of the field. They can’t catch it. Fire escapes on the buildings are out!”
He would give one of the boys fifty cents to buy a small bottle of Thunderbird (liquor) for “the condition he received when he was fighting the Japs in the Pacific.”
Schmidt was a human horror. He was the janitor of “The New House”, 1555 Seabury Place. He had a German shepherd that was as angry as his master. He never took the dog for a walk; the dog took him for a walk. Schmidt, who weighed at least 250 pounds could be seen restraining his dog by clutching his leash and leaning backwards at a 45-degree angle to the sidewalk. The animal was tracking his prey; any Jew in the neighborhood.
Schmidt tried to trap me in the elevator when I went to visit Milty, but I outsmarted the Nazi. As he drew the elevator down towards the cellar, I opened the gate at the second floor stopping the elevator, then I opened the door and ran down the steps to my building across the street.
When WWII began, he was missing from Seabury Place. Everyone agreed he had returned to Germany to be a commandant at a Nazi concentration camp.
We didn’t know her name, but from her appearance she resembled Gravel Gertie in the Dick Tracy comics. Jerry tried to sophisticate her by calling her Gravell Gertrude. It was no use, her toothless face, red and wrinkled could not plead for any other name. She and her husband were the janitors of 1520 Seabury Pl. When she carried her wizened torso from the bowels of her cellar, a limp cigarette resting on her paper-thin lips bisected a hirsute chin. Overwhelmed by the effects of alcohol, she made a staggering trip to the candy store.
“One up on the dope!” scratched out of her throat. Peanzy, behind the counter, knew that her antidote was two tablets of Alka-Seltzer dissolved in a glass of water. She gripped the counter and gulped it down. Sometimes there was a need for another glass. Then with a burp, she zigzagged out and back to her den.
A vicious looking man whom we called Frankenstein cellared in the apartment house adjacent to mine. We dared not go into this building. With a pipe projecting from his scowl, chilling grunts passed through his teeth. When he stepped outside, the smell of his pipe tobacco sent shudders through me. For a while he disappeared. We were happy to hear that he was hired as a construction worker at the 1939 World’s Fair. His son Alex certainly didn’t inherit his father’s DNA. He was a very pleasant young man.
Across the street from my building was Luboff the butcher. He arrived late to open the store and left early to close it. Very few women marketed there. Most went to Brodsky the Butcher around the corner on East 172nd St. If Luboff was a connoisseur on beef he could have priced his unsold steaks as aged prime and doubled their price. Unfortunately, the lack of patrons forced him to close the business.
Charlie, the baker baked the best rolls in the world. If his recipe could now be duplicated, all of the air inflated, tasteless rolls passing over the counters today would collapse and be candidates as bland croutons.
Charley was very popular with the women in the neighborhood. In November, they brought their Thanksgiving turkey to his oven for baking and who knows what reward he got in exchange for the service.
Then there was Gums, a Black janitor whose building entrance was on East 172nd St, and then wound around to Seabury Place.
He appeared as if he could lift a garbage truck over his head with one arm. There wasn’t a trace of a tooth in his mouth; gums and only gums. Through no fault of their own, his wife and Gravel Gertie could easily have been co-winners in a Homliest Woman contest. We called Gums wife The Mask, shortened for The Mask of Demetrius. I don’t know where Lenny Blum got the name, but he was our official christener.
Gums was a pleasant man. He would greet us at the candy store, but we never made an attempt to recover a pink Spalding in spite of it’s cost (15 cents) that bounced into his cellar. A German shepherd whose growl could stimulate every muscle fiber in our body was waiting in his lair. Let him chew the Spalding, we’ll chip in for another one tomorrow.
Adoff, the druggist was held in high esteem by the boys. He wore a starched, cotton gray lab jacket and had a very serious aspect. Whenever we had a cinder in our eye, he would step out from behind his counter, flip the lid, and with a cue tip remove the nuisance. This was Dr. Adoff at his best.
Alex, a victim of Downe’s Syndrome established his site near a lamppost at the corner of Charlotte St. and Seabury Pl. Endlessly, he could be seen flipping a club into the air, and then catching it.
In the fall of 1944, President Roosevelt was campaigning for his third term. Crowds filled the streets of Boston Road, a major thoroughfare in the Bronx. It was a dark and drizzly Sunday afternoon. Led by a squad of policemen on motorcycles, cheering exploded as the president’s car approached. Directly behind the police escort and in front of the president’s convertible was Alex marching along while flipping his club. How he wove his way to the front of the car is a mystery to this day. I don’t know whether the crowd was cheering for Alex or for the president.
The snow in the winter of 1948 blanketed the streets and sidewalks to a height of 19.6 inches. Roads were impassable. Mayor William O’Dwyer ordered the Department of Sanitation to recruit volunteers to shovel the streets for $25.00 a day. A shovel and a photo ID were required. I asked my janitor’s wife to loan me a shovel. She brought me a coal shovel that weighed as much as I did. I dragged the shovel to the office of The Department of Sanitation around the corner from Seabury Pl to apply as a shoveler. Artie Koeningsberg, who was in front of me brought his Bar-Mtzvah picture as an ID in which he was wrapped in a tallis (prayer shawl) and topped with a yarmulkah (beanie).
“What is this?” asked the supervisor.
“It’s me, who else?” responded Artie.
“Get the hell out of here, we don’t accept religious pictures.”
We shoveled some of the time but found respite in Kreb’s apartment most of the time.
Seabury Place with its cast of characters, were the blossoms in our Garden of Eden as we matured during the Great Depression.
To get Daniel Wolfe’s complete story read:Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoirdanielwolfebooks@aol.com