.10 Influences on David as a teen--other kids he played sports with
1.30 Traveling with basketball team as an adult; members of the team, including Louis Mosconi (who later formed a famous vaudeville dance team with his brother Charles).
David describes playing basketball in a cage--from the turn of the century until the 1930s, basketball was played in a cage to protect the players from aggressive fans and to keep the ball with the players when it went out of bounds. Hence, the old-fashioned slang term "cagers" to refer to basketball players.
Image: a basketball game being played in a cage, ca.1910 Found in: https://www.blackfives.org/vintage-basketball-cage-game-re-enactment/
Dave also talks about encountering antisemitism from the fans. He states that about half of the members of the team were Jewish. During the first decades of the 20th century, basketball was extremely popular among recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Jewish players dominated professional/semi-professional basketball at this time.
Dave describes two memorable games, a basketball game with a particularly antisemitic fan section in Tyrone, PA, in which he was injured; a baseball game (Dave played both semi-pro basketball and semi-pro baseball) played for a Jewish agricultural colony in northern New Jersey (most of the agricultural colonies were in southern NJ) .
In the latter part of the 19th century, Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms escaped to the United States; many lived in slums in New York. Several charities promoted training immigrants in agricultural skills and supporting Jewish Agricultural Societies in various places around the US to offer a better life to these immigrants. The earliest and most successful of these were located in southern New Jersey. The Alliance colony was the first Jewish agricultural society formed in the US, in 1882.
Image: Farmer Jacob Greenblatt delivering a load of white Leghorn chickens to be transported to Philadelphia; Alliance, 1918. Found in: https://stockton.edu/alliance-heritage/
8.00 Fighting antisemitic bullies
10.30 Other jobs--hat store delivery boy
11.50 Meeting future wife, Alice Green, in Atlantic City, NJ (ca. 1924?). Dave was around 26 at the time and she was around 18 years old. Dave was working for Publicker's managing an alcohol denaturing plant in Buffalo, NY and Alice was working as a bookkeeper for a real estate group in Philadephia; both were taking a brief holiday in Atlantic City. (For more information about Publicker's, see: http://www.ellenjaye.com/pub_publicker.htm)
Image: The Green family, ca. 1924 (based on hair and clothing styles and the apparent ages of the family members), at around the time that Alice and Dave would have met . They married in Philadelphia in 1926.
Hershl (Tsvi Hersh)/Harry Green (father); b.Ukraine, 1879, d. Philadelphia, PA, 1935
Pietl/Yetta Greece Green (mother); b. Ukraine, 1882; d. New Jersey, 1962
Itzik/Ed Green (brother); b.Ukraine, 1904; d. 2000
Alice Green Udren (self); b. New York, NY, 1906; d. New York, 1967
Anna Green Davidson (sister); b. 1908; d. 1997
Lillian (Lil) Green Snyder (sister); b. 1910; d. 1994
Jules Green (brother); b. 1912; d. 2002
Marsha Green Schneps (sister); b. 1921; d. 2003
15.00 Took train from Buffalo to Philadelphia to visit Alice on weekends
20.00 Any risks taken as a young person? "Can't speak of it".
21.20 "First date"
22.20 Clothing remembered: the overcoat he designed and made.
24.00 Dave left home at 18-19 years old. Visited brother Ben in the fall of 1919 in Parkersburg , West Virginia--Ben had married Catherine Neale in Parkersburg. Catherine's brother was the athlete Greasy Neale--an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds team that won the 1919 World Series--the series that was marred by the "Black Sox" scandal. The Chicago White Sox had been favored to win the series, but several key players were paid off by New York mobster Arnold Rothstein and his gambling syndicate to throw the series. Dave describes this scandal.
For more information about the "Black Sox" scandal, see: https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Black_Sox_Scandal
29.00 Dave and Alice marry, 1926, Delphi Hotel in Philadelphia. Family and friends had no rice, so they threw raisins at them--a messy business!
31.23 Memories of Alice's parents. Harry had been in restaurant business, then had a shoe repair business. He died at the age of 56. Yetta was literate in Yiddish and spoke both English and Yiddish. Dave remembers letters she wrote to Alice in Yiddish, with English words written in Yiddish.
33.30 Memories of Alice's siblings. Dave states that she had three sisters and one brother, but there were two brothers (Ed and Jules)--possibly by the time that Dave met Alice, Ed was no longer living at home and Dave did not include him for that reason. Please refer to the photograph and listing of the Green family above.
Dave speaks of the Green family and Alice's siblings with warmth and affection, saying that they were "good people with good hearts".
36.30 Describing Alice. Dave states that Alice was "a lovely person..very active...". He explains that her energies were devoted to helping others and addressing "broad social problems". He says, "Nothing was too hard for her". He expresses admiration for her ability to speak before crowds and advocate for progressive causes.
Alice was active in the United Parents Association (UPA) in New York from 1938-1941. The UPA was a voice for progress in the public schools in NYC, with concerns that included racial integration of both students and teachers, as well as "academic freedom, peace education (including opposition to military training in the public schools), juvenile delinquency, textbook selection... and teacher salaries."
https://a860-collectionguides.nyc.gov/repositories/2/archival_objects/638355
The file about Alice that was released to me from the NYC archives refers to her work with the UPA ; specifically, the efforts of the UPA to disavow Alice in 1941, when anti-communist efforts became more fervent. In 1953, Alice was listed as a person of interest in the Investigation of Communist Activity in New York, under the auspices of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)
https://books.google.com/books?id=gotAzgEACAAJ&q=Alice+Udren#v=snippet&q=Alice%20Udren&f=false
Alice's political activities are further discussed in Side #3
Dave states that the Loew's Theater organization tried to recruit Alice as a spokesperson for their more conservative agenda, but she turned them down.
41.00 Dave describes Alice's support of various worker's strikes and the peace strike; he tells of Alice wheeling baby Shary in a carriage fill with leaflets.
43.00 Living in "the cockroach house" in the Bronx; Dave expresses gratitude that he had work through the Depression when so many neighbors were on relief. Dave talks about a drugstore that was located under their apartment . The drugstore was owned by two brothers; Dave tells a humorous story about "Louis the dope".
Image: Interior, Whelan's Drugstore, New York City, 1930s (Berenice Abbott, photographer)
https://flashbak.com/berenice-abbotts-new-york-stores-1930s-365069/
No comments:
Post a Comment