Document text
ts.
Forms to be Filled out for EAcn Interview
FORMA
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER. Herman Spector
ADDRESS 701 Crotona Park North
DATE 7).?.. -6,e 121 I3y'
SUBJECT WASHINGTON MARKET BLUES (DANNY CON)
1. Date and time o_7 interview
2. Place of interview
15 Amsterdam Avenue
3. Name and address of informant
Denny Cohen (Keep Anonymous)
1259 Clay Avenue
Bronx, N. Y.
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
None
5. Name and address of person, if any, accowpanying you
None
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
This is an artist's studio; small, adequately lighted by northern lighting,
on second floor of old college dispensary building. Several canvases about the walls
one on the easel near the window, tubes of paint and rags on the workbench. Lower
half of window coated with dust through which someone's fingers, presumably the
artist's has tracked tentative outlines of a torso and a face or two. General
impression of fitful work going on. Informant seems to have left stamp of his
personality on his paintings.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FOR? 1
Persona' Riatory of Informant
STATE NEW YORK
NAME OF WORKER HERMAN SPECTOR
ADDRESS 701 Crotona kark Norhh, Bronx.
DATE
suBjEcT (WASHINGTON MARKET BLUES) (DANNY CCHEN)
1. Ancestry Russian Jewish
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
2. Place and date of birtki About 1913, New York City
3. Family Has father, now separated from family, mother, at least one brother living.
4. Places lived in, with dates East Side chiefly.
Also the Bronx.
5. Education, with dates Public School
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates
Was peddler,Etock-clerk, packer in butter house (wholesale), actor, artist.
7. Special skills and interests
Excellent mimd, has performed professionally. Likes to attend prizefights
and smoke little cigars.
8. Community and religious activities
None that I know of.
9. Description of informant
Medium height, slim, dark, small features, impish in appearances.
Heavy eyebrows and comical twist of lips. Eiyes redrimmed.
l/
10. Other Points gained in interview
Retains some of the actor's characteristics; rather touchy at times but
essentially good-humored, likes to clown, anxious to make good impressions.
FORM C
Text of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF WOaKER Herman Spector
ADDRESS 701 Crotona Park North, Bronx.
DATE
(Vnedized)
SUBJECT (WASHINGTON MARKET BLUES) (DANNY COHEN)
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
The old man is a ty0 like this: nice chubby face, always smiling,
trying to get on the good side of everybody, he talks about cleaning up millions
while he's trading on a shoestring; but when he gets home he beats up his wife
and steals nickels from the kids. He takes me into the Produce Exchange I'm
a kid then, peddling ice-cream around the market and he nudges me: order a
sandwich, he says, law, then he hollers out: Sammy, order anything you likeI
Vaiterl So I ask for a cheese sandwich, and he turns around to everybody
smiling, see, de best in de house for mine Sammy! But I'm not so dumb: once
he tries that stunt too often, so I order a regular dinner with desert and all
the trimmings. Boy, there was murder in his eyes* But he carries it off, keeps
smiling around, takes out a few nickels from one pocket and puts it in another,
chews on the cigar he sniped like it was straight Havana, but when we get outsidd
do I get itl clop, right on the headl The old man packed a terrific wallop.
Every day it was something different with the old man, every day he had
a "nyah plahn" (new plan) as my mother would say. He used to work on the basis
of picking up "bargains" in the market any kind of junk, he didn't care how
lousy the stuff was, so long as he could make a penny or two profit. By trade
he was a housepainter and handyman, but he always complained he was too sick to
work at it. For a sick man he had a healthy appetite.- At supper he would eat
-2
like a horse, then in the middle of the night we could hear him groaning: "Oy
de craitz tit meer vayl" (the back hurts me,) and he'd stop the rest of us from
sleeping. Already when I was seven years old I was helping out the old man. Money
that I made peddling ice-cream or baigles he used to take away from me, so don't
worry, I got most of it back from his pickets at night, and I gave it to my mother:
I knew she needed it. She was the one who really supported the family: we were
janitors for fifteen years, so who do you think did the work? The old man once
started in to paint an apartment and right in the middle he quit; my mother and
me had to finish it up the landlord shouldn't notice. That's the kind of a guy he
was.
I grew up around the Washington Market; I went around everywhere, I got to
know all the types. Everything was violent: the noises, the work, the horseplay
trucks and wagons came rolling in and out, and the loading and unloading was
done by gangs of burly Negroes. The real market opens around eleven at night
and goes on into the morning: it's a real night life. The dealers, you know,
are fellows who put in 16, 17, hours a day; they have no time to go home to their
wives, many of them don't even eat supper home. So when it isn't busy the smoke
and kibitz in the coffeepots, play the slot -machines or fool around on the loading
platforms. On Friday and Saturday the whores came around; at the same time the
razor salesmen, you know those seedy -looking guys, would pass by and sell rubber
goods and picture postcards on the side.
If it was fresh baigles I was peddling that day, I would shout "Frisha
Baiglesl" over one end of the market to the other, and I made out pretty good.
I always made out better than the old man they didn't like him and I guess
that made him sore, but he never admitted it. Mhen the dealers were feeling good,
they bought a stack of baigles from me and distributed it to the help. I remember
one boss, so fat he could hardly walk, he was always sitting out on the platform
with sleepy eyes while the laborers staggered past him with heavy crates and
barrels. The way these Negroes worked, when they were slinging these things,
-3
there would be maybe six or seven in line, and as the stuff passed from hand to hand
they would count out the numbers in rhythm, grunting. The heavy potato barrels were
carried on their backs; it was straining work. All the time this fat guy would sit
there and tell them what to do. When they were resting, he would sometimes get
them to wrestle together. "Pin 'im downl" he used to yell, sitting with legs
crossed like a sultan. Many a time I had to do a jig or sing a song for him before
he would buy anything from me. Sometimes he made me wait for my money maybe three
or four days. That was one type.
The Negroes had this big booming laugh: one of them would say something,
it didn't have to be funny, then they would start off like Chinese firecrackers.
Someone would say, "Gee, dat wuz a bitch of a dayl", meaning it was tough, and they
would all laugh like hell as if it was a great joke. That's when they were hanging
around for lunch-hour. There was one Negro they called Ham. The dealers were always
fooling with him, but it wasn't funny. Once they made him eat twelve bricks of
ice-cream. Then other times they would call him you black bastard, or play some
other tricks with him. When you saw his face on the side afterwards you could see
it wasn't so funny. Everybody around the market cursed something terrific. One
of the whores especially. She was about forty years old I think, not loud -looking,
with her it was just a business like butter -and -eggs. She would just go in the back,
lean against one of the crates, and get it over with. She would always ask Ham to
tell her jokes; he knew a lot of them. One of his jokes was to take a stick and tap with
it, making believe he was a blind man, then he'd explain that he was a blind man
passing through the fish market and turn his head from side to side, smiling, with
his eyes closed, and say: "Hello, girls; nice day, girls."
When I was a little older I gat a job in one of the butter -and -egg houses;
I worked on the butter, and I could tell you plenty about haw they pack some of that
stuff. Of course it must be different now, but in those days the workers had no union:
conditions were terrible. They used girls for packing; they would have no time to
wash their hands, you know, or they would get lipstick on their fingers everything