My parents thought they were middle class, and maybe they were. Their ideas about home and family certainly conformed to those of Middle America. It was an understandable aspiration for a family that survived the Depression. But we were not anywhere near middle income. In the 1920s, my father was on the verge of becoming rich when the stock market crashed and changed his life forever. Sadly, like many of his generation, he never recovered from the Crash. The American dream for him and most people changed forever when the market collapsed. My father carried wounds from that event until the day he died at 96 near the end of the 20th Century.

Though my father struggled for years to make a living, I was not aware of his struggles nor how hard he worked. Growing up, I did not know what I was missing. Thankfully, as a family, we did not want for anything. I missed nothing until I went away to college and started to see the wider world beyond the streets of Brooklyn. My friends and I were in the same situation. Where we grew up, we had the same lives. Some of us, but not all, were grateful for what we had. We learned early not to complain. As long as there was food on the table, a roof over our heads and food on the table, life was not too bad. There was an unwritten fatalism about life. We could not control it or ignore it.

After World War II, we moved from a four-story apartment house on Avenue H and East 19th Street into our first real home on Argyle Road and Avenue H in Brooklyn. It had two stories, a screened-in front porch on the second floor where we lived, a high attic, gray asphalt siding, a one-car garage down a driveway in the back of the house, a huge maple tree on the sidewalk, a small grass plot in front and back and full basement. It was a neighborhood with mostly Dutch style, single-family homes each with a small yard back and front on quiet, tree-lined streets. Many houses had thick hedges instead of fences. These were green in summer and bare in winter. Every house had a porch on each of its two floors with one screened in for outdoor, bug-free living.

Living in an apartment house without air conditioning, we were lucky to live on the ground floor because the building had no elevators. Now my life changed. The new house seemed very grand and for us. Used to small apartment living, it was indeed majestic. My patents were homeowners for the first time in their lives and they reveled in it. Living on the top floor we had use of the attic. We rented the main floor to a couple who had no children. My mother and father had to be careful with money. There was nothing excessive in our lives. We had only what we needed.

My mother was a hard working, stay-at-home wife, proudly called a homemaker. She cared for my younger sister and me. Our home being always neat, my mother’s kitchen always in order, the rest of the house buttoned up tightly as if fixed in amber. Essentially shy, she was usually soft-spoken and sweet. Our clothes were neat and clean. Mother cooked and cleaned the house. She shopped carefully and there was always more than enough food on the table. My mother was a wonderful, creative cook, especially with homey Jewish food. She made great soups, such as pea soup and chicken soup. She cooked enough stuffed cabbage to last for a week. Her stews were legendary, especially lamb stew with potatoes, carrots and a delicious, tomato-based gravy. She made tomato sauce from scratch which we put on spaghetti or fresh egg noodles. She made fresh chocolate pudding and allowed us to scrape the pot clean. After roasting a chicken, she made chicken fat by cooking down the skin, taking the residue and refrigerating it until it was solid. We ate the fried chicken skin, called gribben by the spoonful. We then spread the chicken fat onto fresh rye or corn bread, added a touch a salt, and gobbled up a delicious treat. We had no idea how dangerous that was to our health. We ate as a family at a fixed time every day, usually 6 p.m. My mother rarely sat with us, preferring to serve and then stand, to nibble and nosh, rather than to sit and eat a full meal at the table. My mother made sure the family functioned as a family should in those simpler days. Many nights my father cleaned the kitchen. I helped him wash the dishes by hand, place them in a drying tray and then wipe them before putting them in a cabinet until the next night when they would come out again for another meal.

Sunday nights we sat around the kitchen table and ate grilled American cheese sandwiches on white bread. We coated the thick slices with butter and pressed the sandwich to melted perfection using a heavy clothes iron on top of a dish in a frying pan. We ate them with cold milk and listened to radio serials, and fifteen minute newscasts, staple of radio back then. We were a typical family together at mid-century.

During the week and on weekends, my mother saw her friends. They played Canasta, Ma Jong, and gossiped. Sometimes we saw relatives and had a meal together. Once a week my parent’s friends met in someone else’s home where they ate, played cards and talked.