After traveling across country by car, we settled down in Jersey City, to prepare for moving to Brazil. Some of us were better prepared than others. For instance, some had enough money to allow them to obtain a Visa or had a job or promise of a job which also allowed them to get a Visa. We didn’t have either of these. In the meantime mother was communicating with people she knew & schools in Brazil to try to get a promise of a job. Because she had worked as a elementary school teacher & had a degree from a school in Bellingham, Washington, she was well qualified for working in the American schools that were in the larger cities in Brazil. The ones that were all set with Visas didn’t stay long in Jersey City & went on to Brazil without us. In the meanwhile we took local jobs to help finance our stay. David took a job at a large laundry, Brunswick Laundry, Esther went to work at a Woolworths store & I took 2 jobs, 1 as a Jersey Journal newspaper delivery boy & the other at a corner grocery store as a stock clerk. The photos of these are seen below.
I don’t remember what David did at the laundry, but when he got paid (which was in cash back in those days) he always got at least one, 2 dollar bill in his pay envelope. You don’t see any of those today. Esther worked, as I remember, as a “Soda Jerk”. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it was just like a bartender but you mixed soft drinks, milkshakes & so on & people sat on stools at a long counter. As for me, I delivered the daily newspaper on foot & once a week collected money from my customers, who sometimes would give me a tip (usually a quarter). At the grocery store I kept the shelves stocked, swept the floor & anything else Al, my boss, wanted me to do. After awhile he hired an old, chubby guy, from Yugoslavia to help out. This guy spoke very little english so it was a little difficult communicating. Al had been in the US for a long time so he spoke english very well. The 2 of them used to cook various european dishes for us to eat for lunch. I don’t remember any dishes in particular, but they were always delicious.
One day Al asked me if I could put a model boat, that he had bought a kit for, together. I told him I would try. It was a fairly large boat for a model & had a motor that could be run by remote control. So here I am building this boat in the back of the store, getting paid all along, getting free lunches. What a life. I enjoyed it immensely. When I got it finished, we took it to a local pond in one of the parks nearby, & put it in the water & ran it around the pond. It didn’t sink!! We had a real nice time. In the winter we went ice skating on this same pond.
We lived in an apartment on Bergen Ave. where the store that I worked in was located. All the apartments had an outer door that was always unlocked, then a foyer where the mailboxes were located. Then there was a locked door that you could open with a key or push a button above the mailbox for the apartment you wanted to go to. I think there might have been an intercom there so you could talk to someone in the apartment. Then if they wanted to let you in, they would push a button to release the door lock so you could open the door. This type of security was needed because people, mostly kids, would hang out in the foyer, sometimes smoking, especially in the winter time. There were a lot of kids around because there was a high school right across the street. These are pictures of the school & the actual apartment building we lived in.
We had a lot of adventures in this neighborhood in those days. Jersey City was made up of separate unique neighborhoods. One was Italian, one Jewish, one African American, one Oriental, one Hispanic & so on. I think we were on the border of a couple of these, which ones I’m not sure. As a result of the different ethnic groups the students in the High School were from various backgrounds.
One day a couple of thousand students came out of school & instead of going home, filled the street. They were planning a Race Riot. Fortunately, someone tipped off the police. Along with many of them & dozens of National Guard, they prevented the students from fighting each other. They confiscated many knives, guns & other weapons that were going to be used. This was very scary since it was happening literally in front of us. Besides all the racial tension in the neighborhoods, it was said that about 90% of the students smoked & 10% were on drugs. Today this isn’t alarming but this was the middle 50s. It was a big thing back then.
One day we read about a man being picked up in Chicago for murder. We were shocked when we saw his address. He was our next door neighbor. You never knew who anyone was that you met on the street. Our only friends were a handful of people that we met at the church we were attending, which wasn’t in Jersey City but in Bayonne, which was a neighboring city. Bayonne was completely different from Jersey City. I always said that Jersey City was the dirtiest, most crowded, nastiest city I had ever lived in, but Bayonne was nice & clean & the people were completely different from where we lived. On the other side was Newark which over the years was even worse than Jersey City. To get away from all the madness we went to New York City at least once a week. I don’t think we would do that today, but then it was a nice place to visit, during the daytime of course.
In May of 1957 we signed up to sing in a 4000 voice choir that was to sing at the Billy Graham crusades in Madison Square Garden, in New York. They had 2000 of us sing each night, so we only went every other night. We missed a few nights since going every night was a lot. It was a very rewarding experience. Our mother actually went to school with Cliff Barrows, who was the MC for the crusade. The picture below was taken when we were singing there.
There were a lot of other things that we did when we visited the “Big Apple”, like watching the ice skaters at Rockerfeller Center, walking around Times Square, window shopping at all the fancy stores, going to the top of the Empire State building & many other turisty things. Those were the “good ole days” compared to today. We never left the burrow of Manhattan though. We knew better. Even the Taxi cab drivers wouldn’t go to other Burroughs.