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Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE NEW YORK
NAME OF WORKER. ARNOLD MANOFF
ADDRESS 27 Hamilton Terrace
DATE October 23, 1938
SUBJECT THE GINSBERGS
1. Date and time of interview Oct. 20, 1938 morning and afternoon
2. Place of interview
1357 Teller Ave.
3. Name and address of informant Abe Ginsberg
1357 Teller Ave.
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc. Five -roam ground floor
apartment in four -family two-story brick house. Except for the dining room
and kitchen, the other rooms are bedrooms. Four children, 3 daughters and
1 son, live in the apartment. Teller Ave. is a rather quiet street since
there are less apartment houses on the block. Trees line the sidewak.
The effect is that of a small town street recently invaded by a few large
houses. This block is a good distance from the subway and conseq4ently
is not so thickly populated. 1he Ginsberg apartment is large and airy.
Sparsely furnished but there is a lived in air about the place. Books,
magazines, papers, clothes are strewn all over; a sort of pleasant disorder
exists. A brown dog, part chow and part spitz, roans around from one room
to another. Mr. Ginsberg occupies the parlor wilich is converted into a
bedroom.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the nmOber to which the material refers.)
FORM
Personal History of Informant
STATE NEW YORK
NAME OF WORKER ARNOLD MANOFF
ADDRESS 27 Hamilton Terrace
DATE October 25, 1938
SUBJECT THE GINSBERGS
1. Ancestry
Russo -Jewish
2. Place and date of birth
Brest -Litovsk some 50 years ago.
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
3. Family A son, Sol about 22; Irene a daughter about 19, Matha a daughter
about 18, Leah a daughter about 10.
4. Places lived in, with dates
5. Education, with dates
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates Mr. Ginsberg was a candy
store owner for many years. Recently he became ill and is now invalided.
7. Special skills and interests Special skill is his pinochle playing; no social
or other interest outside his family. Reads many newspapers and magazines.
8. Community and religious activities
No religious interest. Community activity
limited to an Association of storekeeper of 169th Street when in the candy
store business. Was one president of a Candy Store Men's Association which
9. Descript aollansadi.on of informant
Mr. Ginsberg is a medium sized man with a round,
crinkling face. He is forever smiling with closed eyes. He is bald-headed.
Mrs. Ginsberg has a very sad face in direct contrast to her husband's. She
to. APR IVIViteMPre w Her face is lined, but her manner is extremely
soft and gentle.
STATE
NAME OF WORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
NEW YORK
ARNOLD MANOFF
27 Hamilton Terrace
Oct. 23, 1938
THE GINSB1JGS
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
You see me here? This is how I am lying now for months. Just this week I
can t up and walk around, take some air. Well, anyway. What's the use to
talk. 'i;e're behind the eight pall. hey sold the store under my f eet when I
was sick in New Jersey. I had another heart attack. I suppose they got panicky
like. Solly called up the creditors they should come and take it away. That's how
smart he is. I .s,ppose the' figured the old man is sick. Anyway, my wife sold
the store and we paid off the creditors. lOw she wants to buy it back again.
She can't stand this sitting around and not working. It's driving her crazy. She
ain't used to it. he sits by the window all day and worries. She watches the
money from the store roinp. 11, anyway, hat's the use of talking. I ain't
supposed to worry about those thins. I'm out of it. ,ihat the hell, they
don't let you starve these days. We'll go on relief. But she can't stand it.
It's driving her crazy. Solly was away in the mountains. He just got back this
week. Put on some weight. Ate like a horse. He needed it. You can't blame
the kids they don't want to work in the store anymore. The girls say they
suffered enough there. And anyway we got rid of the Hatchet Face. You rememer
her, the woman that worked here for us. She didn't talk to me for months before
she left. One day she comes in and says to my -wife, "Solly drank up all the
milk. There's no more milk. That's no way to bring up children," she says to
That old Hatchet -face. He drank up all the milk, she says. I don't
my
Continued
know haw to bring up children. I am glad when Solly drinks milk. Never spare
the children food. Well, anyway. She's gone. 'suppose where she was brought
up, they brought her up like in a straight jacket. Nobody is making a living except
the number runners. There are five of them now. I remember when there were only
two. The people who bought our store aint making out so good. They want to sell
it back to us. They threw out all the men who used to han around. And so nobody
comes around. what did I care. I used to talk to the boys. They gave me business,
cigarettes and drinks. The woman threw them out. That's haw people are.
She wanted to be more respectable than me. Yes Old Moishe is still around. N o he
ain't working anymore. Old Bernstein, just the same. Still selling SweepstFires
tickets and his wife sells dresses in the apartment. Listen, remember Old Man
Silver from the beauty parlor. Well, he died. He always had a weak heart. And
with his .son Sheldon and the pinochle games with the Peanut. Politician Lembeck, he
died just like that. Remember Frank who used to hang around the store and he wgs
out of work for so long. Well he's better off than any of us now. He got a job
in the Post Office. He must make about forty dollars a week. But he lost a lot
of weight. He still wants to start a chicken farm. That's all he talks about. And
Leff he's around just like always. Still on Yin.
I admire that Leff. All the
years he raised his family and kept his mouth shut and honest like a clock.
Remember how he used to stand around the store for hours and never say anything?
I want Solly to learn how to drive a car. It's useful.
license. How time flies. Just two years ago, Solly was
Illinois and I used to get letters from him how they were
He might get a job with a
away in College in
teaching him how to ride
a horse there. And. remember he used to write how he wanted to join a fraternity and
I told you to write him a letter to talk him out of it because I didn't have any money.
It did him a lot of good that two years he was in Illinois. But I think the
mountains this year was even better for him than the College. He had to work hard.
-3- Continued
And he ate like a horse. One good thing. I don't want him to get a job now for
twelve dollars a week and they should work him to death. He's still a boy. He
can't do a man's job. They'll take a kid like him, put him on a man's job and
they'll work the life out of him.
My wife worries.
And she drives the kids crazy
with her worrying. The worst that'll happen is that we got to go on relief.
She can't stand the quiet here. I like it here. It's almost like in the country.
When she was in the store she used to complain that she couldn't stand all the
noise, the men and the numbers and the machine and -Elie kids. Now she wants to be
back in it again. Take it easy, I tell her, but she just sits there and waits
for night to come and then she can't sleep. There's a little fruit store around
the corner I want to buy. Maybe I'll buy it. Sarah comes to us and she won't
take any money for cleaning. She is one in a million. She's the only one my wife
will talk to. Worked for us for sixteen years, a colored woman with a family of her
own. Now she sees we are broke and I am flat on my back and mywife is sick with
worrying so she comes and gives us a hand and she don't take any money for it. She's
like the Rock of Gibraltar to us. She brought up the kids. She's a wonderful
woman. Somebody ought to write a story about her, I mean it. I tell my wife she
ought to see how they live in Pennsylvania. When I passed through Pennsylvania, I
saw how the miners lived there, in shacks, like the soldiers used to live in barracks
in the old country. She don't want to hear about that. It's hard on the girls, too.
They got to go to school and they don't ow what they're going to do when they get
out. Irene will be finished next year. I take it easy, no more worry for me. I
can't afford to worry the doctor said if I want to live a while. I read the papers.
When it's a nice day I go outside. I can't climb hills or stairs. Well anyway,
what's the use. One way or the other, everybody's behind the eight ball. I'm
tired of worrying. I'm a sick man.
FORK D
Extra Comment
STATE NEW YORK
NAME OF WORKER ARNOLD MANOFF
ADDRESS 27 Hamilton Terrace
DATE October 23, 1938
SUBJECT THE GINSBERGS
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
The Ginsbergs used to own a candy store at 169th St. and Grant Avenue which
is two blocks east and downhill from the Grand Concourse. 169th Street is a
sort of secondary business section to such main shopping streets as 170th and
167th Streets, where the subway stations are. The street had only the
essential stores, such as grocery, fruit, meat, two hardware stores, two
delicatessens, two bakeries and on this corner there were two candy stores,
one of which was "Ginsyls". Ginsyts was the hangout for the unemployed,
the number runners and for the gambling men who used to come around after work
to pick up a game. Late at night when business was slow Ginsy himself would sit
down for a game of pinochle with some of his customers and one of the boys -would
stand behind the counter to take care of any legitimate trade. The neighborhood
was once a respectable middle class section leaning on the prestige of the Con-
course for its high rentals. Now even the prestige of the Concourse has no
effect on the rents, the talk and the gloomy ddsperate atmosphere that pervades
whatever community life there is. For a long time the Tauckamuck Democratic
Club was able to j_ve this neighborhood some patronage mostly through its
connection with Eddie Flynn, Bronx Political Boss, who had an tin' with the
Post Office. Then the talk about jobs was optimistic. All you had to do was
to get one of the Block Captains to introduce you to somebody who would introduce
you or get you an interview with a certain notorious politician in the Bronx,
-2- Form D.
whose name I don't care to mention. Each introduction cost you five dollars a hand-
shake. All negotiations were carried on in or around Ginsy's corner candy store, where
the block captains, or peanut politicians as they were called, hung around to keep in
touch with the people and get up a game of cards now and then. Two of the number
runners had their posts in Ginsy's and many times if they thought the cop on the beat
had orders to pick them up or if they spied the precinct detectives headed their way,
you could see them duck into the phone booth and gulp down the paper slips. Ginsy's
also kept a pin ball machine which drew the nickels and attention of everybody at one
time or another. Small betting was carried on at the side. Ginsy's was the gossip
exchange. You could find out the 001_1- of your neighbor's underwear in Ginsy's.
Also the characters of the neighborhood used Ginsy's store for their performances.
Impromptu performances were given usually after eleven o'clock. Ginsy's phone booth
was the private number of perhaps a hundred people. There was one youngster who did
nothing else but wait in Ginsy's store for the calls and then he would run up to the
various apartments and bring back whoever was requested. For this service he usually
got a nickel. Now the neighborhood has taken on a sharper and more desperate coloration.
Many people are on relief. The basements are filled with business apartments. Card
games are mostly small time stuff but cut-throat affairs just the same. The talk is
all numbers, sweepstakes, football scores. The people are passive in that very
seldom is there any kind of explosion. Although not so quietly as on the Concourse,
but still q.:_ietly enough, the bunch around this street are taking
and their standards of living are being pushed lower and lower.
has practically ended for 169th Street. Yiddish and English are
a terrific beating
Political patronage
spoken and freely
mixed and interchanged. The cultural influences are predominantly the Luxor movie
house and Loew's 167th Street. The people here generally regard themselves on a
social level superior to the people in the East Bronx, although some of them are
beginning to suspect that this superiority is more or less abstract and is based on
geography alone.
-3- Form D.
The youngsters who grew up in the long gorge of a street that is Grant Ave. are a
tough, uncompromising lot, many of them taking hold of their problems in a realistic
way. They talk a clipped, wise -cracking language just about as soft as the pavement
under their feet and energy and emotion goes into dancing, jitterbug stuff, although
they will tell you that over in the i.ast Bronx, the sharpies have it all over them
when it comes to dancing. The kids play ball in the street, skip rope, but such games
as Johnny on the Pony or Ringo Leavio which was the sport of East Bronx kids are
unknown. Generally the kids adhere pretty much to the stuff they get in school and
in the recreation playgrounds, some three blocks away in Claremont Park. The neighbor7
hodd is all buildings, red, tan, gray, all five to six storyst height and rising
sheer and flat off the street. Rents run from 428 for two rooms to about )45 for
five rooms. This community, despite its proximity to the Concourse and the Concourse
tradition of middle-class refinement, somehow, maybe because it runs downhill from
the Concourse, has gotten a little frayed around the edges and battered in the middle
as if the muddy waters that run down from the Concourse when it rains have seeped into
the cellars and plumbing of the houses so that the people drink muddy water, and maybe
that Makes them so gray and gloomy.