Month: January 2018

Inspiration for “Orphan Camp,” a story-in-progress (see STORIES): In 1946, a “summer camp” opened in an abandoned YMCA building in the Bronx (not far from where I grew up) for European World War Two orphans. While other displaced persons needed individual sponsors to enter the U.S., a December 1945 directive from President Truman allowed charitable organizations to sponsor children, provided they paid for their visas and tickets, and guaranteed the children would not depend on public welfare. Obtaining visas was difficult since most children lacked birth certificates. Some were too young to know their identities, so the staff gave them names. Because the children spoke many different languages, communication depended on gesture, facial expression, action, and posture. Playing the universal string game, Jacob’s Ladder, was the initial means of building trust among the children and their caregivers. Over a two-and-a-half-year period, nearly 1,400 children, ages one to 18 years, were brought to the U.S.

 

In many of New York City’s Lower East Side tenement buildings, electricity was not installed until mid-1924, and that was only after pressure and legal threats from City Council. Gas lighting was added abut twenty years earlier to comply with the Tenement House Act of 1901, which required a light source on every floor from sunset to sunrise. Tenants paid for gas through a coin-operated meter in the kitchen of each apartment. Before electricity, they navigated the building’s dark hallways and back rooms using kerosene or oil lamps. Read more about the hard lives of immigrants on the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century in On the Shore (see NOVELS).

Proofing pages for my upcoming historical novel Tazia and Gemma (Vine Leaves Press, May 2018), I double-checked to make sure I wasn’t anachronistically using the word “nerd.” The relevant scene is set in 1956. To my relief, I confirmed that the word was in common use at the beginning of that decade. Nerd first appeared in the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo (1950) when narrator Gerald McGrew says he will put “a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too” in his imaginary menagerie. Within a year, nerd was a popular term for a drip or square in Detroit and then spread to the rest of the country, and beyond. Read more about the evolution of “nerd” in BEHIND THE STORY and about Tazia and Gemma in NOVELS.

 

In the early 1900s, garment sweatshops on New York’s Lower East Side had no ventilation and poor lighting. Immigrant laborers worked 12-16 hours a day, 6 days a week. Weekly sweatshop wages were $6-10 for men; $4-5 for women, and less than $1 for children. Minimum age for workers was 14 years old, but this law was routinely violated. Read more about the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century in On the Shore (NOVELS).

New York City’s Central Park was the first landscaped city park in America. It opened to the public in 1858. The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883. The Statue of Liberty, across the East River, was dedicated in 1886. Not until twelve years later (1898) were the five boroughs — Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Kings (Brooklyn), and Richmond (Staten Island) — consolidated into one municipality. Read more about New York City history and the immigrants who were welcomed by the Statue of Liberty in On the Shore. To learn why NYC is called “Gotham” see BEHIND THE STORY.

 

Researching my novel-in-progress, One Person’s Loss, set during World War Two in New York City, I learned that the first penicillin factory in the world was opened by Charles Pfizer and Company in Brooklyn in 1943. The factory made 90 percent of the antibiotics carried by Allied forces on D-Day. Are you curious about what else was manufactured in New York City to support the war effort? See BEHIND THE STORY.