At the age of only
three (in 1926) my parents moved into a one-family house on Vassar Avenue sited
between Elizabeth Avenue and Bergen Street. This was among the most desirable
neighborhoods in Newark. From Chancellor Ave to Lyons Avenue the houses in
comparable locations were all one-family and generally well kept. Above Bergen
Street, up to Parkview Terrace the houses were largely two-family and beyond
that the single family houses again appeared.
As kids, we walked across Bergen
Street to Lifson's candy store and bought our colorful sugar candy "buttons"
that peeled off a strip of waxed paper. Also there were "Tastyeast" candy bars
which were advertised with the jingle:
"Tastyeast is tempting
to your appetite,
Pep, Vim and Vigor
Try a bar tonight"
I went to Maple Avenue grammar school
and in 1936 went on to Weequahic High School where rumors had it that a swimming
pool was located under the floor of the lower (girls') gym. Athletically, our
football teams were weak, but basketball was something else again and we even
beat the "big" kids from Barringer and West Side H. S. The annual Thanksgiving
Day football game with Hillside was almost always a loser.
Vassar Avenue had a landscaped center
divider in the block from Bergen Street to Elizabeth Avenue. It was about 8 feet
wide and when I last saw the street it had been narrowed to a strip of only
about 3-4 feet in width.
On our block there was a one family
large brick home at Bergen Street. Across Vassar Avenue lived the Joseph
Reinfeld (Seagram) family in a similar large brick house and curiously, next to
the reputed bootlegger in a frame house lived the City's Fire Chief who had an
official Department sedan pick him up each morning and return him to Vassar
Avenue each evening.
There was a plumber who had what I
think may have been the very first underground lawn-watering system (with valves
in his basement to turn off the water in the wintertime), a racketeer, a dentist
and several independent businessmen. Virtually all had children and we had a
happy group of about a dozen kids,
We kids used play games and just sit
outside on our front "stoop" (the front steps) in the warm spring and fall
evenings and enjoy studying the stars. They were like a big bright blanket over
the area. No smog bothered us then.
By 1925 the Weequahic section had
already begun to change. Formerly largely gentile, it became an, essentially
all-Jewish community. When I attended Maple Avenue school, most of my classmates
were Jewish and at Weequahic High in 1940 they graduated no blacks.
Incidentally, the June 1940 graduation ceremonies were held in the infield of
the Weequahic Park racetrack, and the grandstand seemed full with parents
enjoying (?) the ceremony.
I have been reading Nat Bodian's
wonderful Memories and trust that you all have also enjoyed. He spoke of the
Trolley cars of Newark and it reminded me that there was one that ran up Lyons
Avenue from Elizabeth Avenue, turned right on Bergen Street before continuing
on. Fare was a small token (about the size of your little finger nail) and often
lost in your father's pockets. The enclosed trolleys were replaced with
"open-sided trolleys" in the hot summer months.
More later
Email this memory to a friend.
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