I've recently taken a new look at the 1929 Junior High Autograph album and 1932 High School Yearbook that belonged to my Mother, Ruth Leibowitz Glickstein (photos below). Among other things, this closer look at my mother and our family origins has enriched my understanding of "where I am coming from" as well as refreshing my memories of my first exposure to racial discrimination.
Among the autographs are pages by Ruth's older sibs, my Aunt Blanche and Uncle Harry, and Ruth's Cousin Diane. (My cousins, and current Facebook friends, Fran Levine and Phillip Levine, may get a kick out of how their Mother, whom I knew as Aunt Diane, mischievously signed her page.)
Click below (or scroll down):
RUTH LEIBOWITZ - 1929 Junior High Autograph Book and 1932 High School Yearbook
BLANCHE LEIBOWITZ - Moved from New York City to Washington, DC, and changed her last name to "Lee" to disguise her Jewish origins. When I was about 8 years old, our family took a Greyhound bus to visit her, and, as we approached the Maryland State line, I experienced a feeling of horrible helplessness as non-White passengers on our bus were required to move to the back.
HARRY LEIBOWITZ - My favorite Uncle was always ready with a joke (usually dirty). The "ironing board" is our favorite.
[NOTES:
1) Let me apologize in advance for this over-long, disconnected posting, which is the second version of an unpublished post originally titled "Thoughts While Urinating". (I just thought of a better title - "Thinking While Tinkling".)
2) A running joke on the old TV sitcom Barney Miller is that Detective Fish (played by Abe Vigoda) always has to run to the toilet. He says you can estimate a guy's age by multiplying his height, in feet, by the number of times he pees every day. Well, I've been tracking my restroom visits over the past few weeks and, at my age of 81, I'd have to be 8 or 9 feet tall to get Detective Fish's formula to work. Of course, over-statement is part of much comedy, as my father told me a million times, "Ira, Don't exaggerate!"
3) So, to use the Yiddish word for inefficiently messing around, I've been pot-she-ink-ing with this posting too long, so, ready or not, it is time to publish it!)
4) My grandparents on both sides were immigrants, Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe that shared the same first names, Louis and Lena, but little else. My father's parents, Louis and Lena Glickstein, were Galitsianers from Austria and Louis and Lena Leibowitz were Litvaks from Ukraine . They differed in several ways: "The Litvak was smart, analytical, learned, worldly, skeptical, proud, stubborn, dynamic, and energetic. He was also dry, rational, and unemotional. By contrast, the Galitsianer, was warmhearted, sly, witty, sharp, stingy, crafty, and something of a trickster. He had a peculiar mix of shrewdness and heartiness."
RUTH LEIBOWITZ GLICKSTEIN - MY MOTHER
As I noted above, my recent look at the 1929 Junior High Autograph album and 1932 High School Yearbook that belonged to my Mother, Ruth Leibowitz Glickstein, has, among other things, helped me understand "where I am coming from".
Walton High School was an all-girls institution, something we don't see anymore among public schools. (From 1952 through 1956 I attended Brooklyn Technical High School, all-boys at the time. It became co-ed in 1970.)
The image above shows part of the page where my Mother's photo appears. I'm struck by the one-line description of her as "Courteous to all, intimate with few." Yes! My Mom was always civil and nice to everyone, but hardly ever revealed her inner thoughts and motivations. (Quite a contrast to Vi, my wife of 56 years!) Compare the descriptive line about Ruth with the lines about her classmates in the above image.
I habitually look for is "Jewish names". (Vi always looks for and comments on "Hungarian Jewish" names while watching the news on TV.) Three of the names above may be "Jewish".
I searched among the photos for a Black face and could find only one, Hilda K. Parker "A moral, sensible and well-bred person." (see above). There were Black fellow students in every schools I attended, but they were always a small minority.
For example, the above photo of my 1952 8th-grade class at PS209 shows three Black faces. One, Michael Borden (second from the left in the second row), is seated to my right. I remember his name only because he is listed among my four favorite classmates in my Autograph album. (The others are Frank Forentino, and two with Jewish names: Stanley Marks and Harvey Cohen. I cannot positively identify them in the photo, but Frank may be the boy sitting to Michael's right).
Around 1980, a co-worker and I went to a Brooklyn Technical High School reunion. He and I were pleased to see a substantial number of girls among the volunteer student guides. On a whim, we decided to walk up the Down Staircase, something we never dared to due as students. Sure enough, we were confronted by a guide who instructed us in no uncertain terms to use to the Up Staircase. Not only was this guide a girl, but she was Black! How reassuring strict Brooklyn Tech standards are still being enforced!
BLANCH LEIBOWITZ - MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION NOW
Racial discrimination is quite real now, and, given the "tribal" Nature we inherited from over 100,000 years of Evolution and Natural Selection of our species Homo Sapiens, will always be with us.
However, the idea that racial discrimination is worse now than ever in American history is an unsupported hyperbole. Yes, hateful Confederate flags are seen at public events, and even one is too many, but NASCAR has banned them from any official use on racecars. Yes George Floyd was murdered by a White policeman, and police are much tougher on young Black males than any other demographic. Racist cops still turn off their body cameras and lie to cover their brutal treatment. However, with nearly everyone now carrying a smartphone, more and more police departments are using body cameras and The list of
HARRY LEIBOWITZ - THE "IRONING BOARD" JOKE
Harry was my mother's brother. Always good for a joke, usually with a bit of a sexual slant.] A young immigrant couple lived in a tenement in Brooklyn. They noticed some of their neighbors were having babies but were too shy to inquire how to get one. A visit from a man with a black satchel seemed to be associated with the arrival of babies. (Those were the days when doctors still made house calls.) So, they got up their courage and followed him to his office. After a short discussion, the doctor realized they knew nothing about sex or reproduction, so he decided to take matters into his own hands, so to speak.
He took the young couple into his examining room, told her to pull her dress up and panties down, and lay on her back on his examining table. The doctor took off his own trousers and underpants. As he climbed atop the woman, he told her husband to stand close by and watch carefully. Indeed, to assure an unobstructed view, the doctor told the young man to grab his balls and hold them up.
I don't have to tell you the doctor had a good time. When he was done, he instructed the young couple to go home and do exactly what they had observed and, God willing, in about a year they would get a baby.
That evening, as he was home reading the newspaper, and chuckling about his good deed that day, the doctor received a phone call from the hospital. One of his patients, a young immigrant man, was in critical condition, and his wife was saying it was all the doctor's fault.
Of course, the doctor rushed to he hospital where he was greeted by the young woman.
"What happened?" asked the doctor.
"Well," replied the woman, "When we got home I told my husband we had to do exactly what you showed us. He replied we couldn't because we don't have no examining table like the one you have in your office.
"So, I thought about it for a while and remembered we had an ironing board, which is kind of like an examining table. My husband got it out of the closet and set it up in the middle of the living room. I pulled my dress up and panties down and laid on my back, exactly like you told us.
"My husband took off his trousers and underpants and was about to climb up on me when I remembered you made him hold up your balls. You said we had to do exactly what you showed us. But, my husband said he was too embarrassed to ask a neighbor to come to our apartment and hold up his balls.
"What could we do? Lying there on the ironing board, I looked up and saw the chain coming down from the light fixture in the center of the living room. (In those days they didn't have switches on the wall.) I told him to tie the chain around his balls to hold them up. As soon as he did that, the ironing board collapsed!"
"Ah ha!" said the doctor, "That explains what they ambulance crew told me - your husband was found hanging by his balls in the middle of your living room!"
 |
| Ruth Leibowitz, 1932 Walton High School Yearbook "Courteous to all, intimate with few". |
Among the autographs are pages by Ruth's older sibs, my Aunt Blanche and Uncle Harry, and Ruth's Cousin Diane. (My cousins, and current Facebook friends, Fran Levine and Phillip Levine, may get a kick out of how their Mother, whom I knew as Aunt Diane, mischievously signed her page.)
Click below (or scroll down):
RUTH LEIBOWITZ - 1929 Junior High Autograph Book and 1932 High School Yearbook
BLANCHE LEIBOWITZ - Moved from New York City to Washington, DC, and changed her last name to "Lee" to disguise her Jewish origins. When I was about 8 years old, our family took a Greyhound bus to visit her, and, as we approached the Maryland State line, I experienced a feeling of horrible helplessness as non-White passengers on our bus were required to move to the back.
HARRY LEIBOWITZ - My favorite Uncle was always ready with a joke (usually dirty). The "ironing board" is our favorite.
[NOTES:
1) Let me apologize in advance for this over-long, disconnected posting, which is the second version of an unpublished post originally titled "Thoughts While Urinating". (I just thought of a better title - "Thinking While Tinkling".)
2) A running joke on the old TV sitcom Barney Miller is that Detective Fish (played by Abe Vigoda) always has to run to the toilet. He says you can estimate a guy's age by multiplying his height, in feet, by the number of times he pees every day. Well, I've been tracking my restroom visits over the past few weeks and, at my age of 81, I'd have to be 8 or 9 feet tall to get Detective Fish's formula to work. Of course, over-statement is part of much comedy, as my father told me a million times, "Ira, Don't exaggerate!"
3) So, to use the Yiddish word for inefficiently messing around, I've been pot-she-ink-ing with this posting too long, so, ready or not, it is time to publish it!)
4) My grandparents on both sides were immigrants, Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe that shared the same first names, Louis and Lena, but little else. My father's parents, Louis and Lena Glickstein, were Galitsianers from Austria and Louis and Lena Leibowitz were Litvaks from Ukraine . They differed in several ways: "The Litvak was smart, analytical, learned, worldly, skeptical, proud, stubborn, dynamic, and energetic. He was also dry, rational, and unemotional. By contrast, the Galitsianer, was warmhearted, sly, witty, sharp, stingy, crafty, and something of a trickster. He had a peculiar mix of shrewdness and heartiness."
RUTH LEIBOWITZ GLICKSTEIN - MY MOTHER
As I noted above, my recent look at the 1929 Junior High Autograph album and 1932 High School Yearbook that belonged to my Mother, Ruth Leibowitz Glickstein, has, among other things, helped me understand "where I am coming from".
Walton High School was an all-girls institution, something we don't see anymore among public schools. (From 1952 through 1956 I attended Brooklyn Technical High School, all-boys at the time. It became co-ed in 1970.)
The image above shows part of the page where my Mother's photo appears. I'm struck by the one-line description of her as "Courteous to all, intimate with few." Yes! My Mom was always civil and nice to everyone, but hardly ever revealed her inner thoughts and motivations. (Quite a contrast to Vi, my wife of 56 years!) Compare the descriptive line about Ruth with the lines about her classmates in the above image.
I habitually look for is "Jewish names". (Vi always looks for and comments on "Hungarian Jewish" names while watching the news on TV.) Three of the names above may be "Jewish".
For example, the above photo of my 1952 8th-grade class at PS209 shows three Black faces. One, Michael Borden (second from the left in the second row), is seated to my right. I remember his name only because he is listed among my four favorite classmates in my Autograph album. (The others are Frank Forentino, and two with Jewish names: Stanley Marks and Harvey Cohen. I cannot positively identify them in the photo, but Frank may be the boy sitting to Michael's right).
Around 1980, a co-worker and I went to a Brooklyn Technical High School reunion. He and I were pleased to see a substantial number of girls among the volunteer student guides. On a whim, we decided to walk up the Down Staircase, something we never dared to due as students. Sure enough, we were confronted by a guide who instructed us in no uncertain terms to use to the Up Staircase. Not only was this guide a girl, but she was Black! How reassuring strict Brooklyn Tech standards are still being enforced!
BLANCH LEIBOWITZ - MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Racial discrimination is real, and remains a stain on our American Republic, our great experiment in representative democracy.
I WITNESSED GENUINE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN THE LATE 1940'S
As our Greyhound bus approached the Maryland State line, the driver pulled over and calmly told the non-White* passengers they had to move to seats in the back of the bus lest state Troopers pull us over, and delay our trip by an hour or more. I felt horribly helpless as they silently complied.
This was in the late 1940's and I was just a young kid from Brooklyn. My parents and I were headed to Washington, DC to visit my mother's older sister, my maiden Aunt, Blanch Lee (she had changed her last name from Leibowitz to hide her Jewish origins.)
Aunt Blanche lived in a tiny apartment in a lower-class White neighborhood off Quackenbos Street in the Northwest quadrant. It was in the "third alphabet" **, far from the White House. I was amazed that her toilet was an outhouse in the tiny backyard ***.
Aunt Blanch worked in the office at B and B Caterers, where all the other employees I met were Black.
She took us for a meal at the lunch counter at a Peoples Drug Store. Although the employees were Black, my Aunt explained that Blacks were not permitted to sit at the counter, but they could stand at one end and order take-out.
*"Negroes" is what the bus driver called them. They were not called "Blacks" at the time. The Black man who was the janitor at our Brooklyn synagogue was called a schvartze which, in Yiddish (and German) means "Black", so, perhaps, we were ahead of our time.
I was brought up in a Jewish neighborhood in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, near Coney Island. Blacks were present, as a small minority, in every school I've attended, from Elementary through High School and College. For example, I'm seated next to Michael Borden in the PS209 8th grade class photo, and he is listed as one of only four friends in my 1952 autograph book.
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Michael Borden is the second student from the left in the third row down. I'm to his immediate right in this 1952 photo of our 8th-grade class at PS209, Brooklyn, NY
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I spent most of my professional career at IBM Federal Systems, Owego, NY, and remember only a few fellow employees who were Black. I was closest to Lou Adams, a Human Factors expert who was also a fellow member of the Toastmasters Club. He was a very good speaker and, in the early 70's, he defeated me in an election for President of that club (but I did win that office in a subsequent year). I also remember Elliot Lee (a radar and electronic countermeasures engineer) and John Sims, (a very smart software engineer who was promoted to a second-level management slot).
**"Third Alphabet". Washington DC is arranged with streets in concentric circles. Those closest to the Capitol are A Street through Z Street, next come single-syllable names with initial letters A through Z, then two-syllable names, and so on. My Aunt Blanche lived in the NW quadrant, near Quackenbos Street, in the "Third Alphabet"!
***At the time, my parents and I lived in a one-bedroom walkup apartment. We shared a single bathroom, but at least it was inside! When my brother, Lee, came along, he and I shared the single bedroom and my parents slept on a convertible sofa in the living room.
We later moved to a three-bedroom bungalow that measured 30' x 30'. Lee and I slept on bunk beds in our narrow bedroom. My parents shared a double bed jammed against the wall in a second bedroom. Our grandparents shared a double bed in the third bedroom. The six of us shared the single bathroom, but at least it was inside!
We later moved to a three-bedroom bungalow that measured 30' x 30'. Lee and I slept on bunk beds in our narrow bedroom. My parents shared a double bed jammed against the wall in a second bedroom. Our grandparents shared a double bed in the third bedroom. The six of us shared the single bathroom, but at least it was inside!
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION NOW
Racial discrimination is quite real now, and, given the "tribal" Nature we inherited from over 100,000 years of Evolution and Natural Selection of our species Homo Sapiens, will always be with us.
However, the idea that racial discrimination is worse now than ever in American history is an unsupported hyperbole. Yes, hateful Confederate flags are seen at public events, and even one is too many, but NASCAR has banned them from any official use on racecars. Yes George Floyd was murdered by a White policeman, and police are much tougher on young Black males than any other demographic. Racist cops still turn off their body cameras and lie to cover their brutal treatment. However, with nearly everyone now carrying a smartphone, more and more police departments are using body cameras and The list of
HARRY LEIBOWITZ - THE "IRONING BOARD" JOKE
Harry was my mother's brother. Always good for a joke, usually with a bit of a sexual slant.] A young immigrant couple lived in a tenement in Brooklyn. They noticed some of their neighbors were having babies but were too shy to inquire how to get one. A visit from a man with a black satchel seemed to be associated with the arrival of babies. (Those were the days when doctors still made house calls.) So, they got up their courage and followed him to his office. After a short discussion, the doctor realized they knew nothing about sex or reproduction, so he decided to take matters into his own hands, so to speak.
He took the young couple into his examining room, told her to pull her dress up and panties down, and lay on her back on his examining table. The doctor took off his own trousers and underpants. As he climbed atop the woman, he told her husband to stand close by and watch carefully. Indeed, to assure an unobstructed view, the doctor told the young man to grab his balls and hold them up.
I don't have to tell you the doctor had a good time. When he was done, he instructed the young couple to go home and do exactly what they had observed and, God willing, in about a year they would get a baby.
That evening, as he was home reading the newspaper, and chuckling about his good deed that day, the doctor received a phone call from the hospital. One of his patients, a young immigrant man, was in critical condition, and his wife was saying it was all the doctor's fault.
Of course, the doctor rushed to he hospital where he was greeted by the young woman.
"What happened?" asked the doctor.
"Well," replied the woman, "When we got home I told my husband we had to do exactly what you showed us. He replied we couldn't because we don't have no examining table like the one you have in your office.
"So, I thought about it for a while and remembered we had an ironing board, which is kind of like an examining table. My husband got it out of the closet and set it up in the middle of the living room. I pulled my dress up and panties down and laid on my back, exactly like you told us.
"My husband took off his trousers and underpants and was about to climb up on me when I remembered you made him hold up your balls. You said we had to do exactly what you showed us. But, my husband said he was too embarrassed to ask a neighbor to come to our apartment and hold up his balls.
"What could we do? Lying there on the ironing board, I looked up and saw the chain coming down from the light fixture in the center of the living room. (In those days they didn't have switches on the wall.) I told him to tie the chain around his balls to hold them up. As soon as he did that, the ironing board collapsed!"
"Ah ha!" said the doctor, "That explains what they ambulance crew told me - your husband was found hanging by his balls in the middle of your living room!"