Chapter 3 - Working
Children's Schedule
The children's schedules were their school schedules. Those were foremost. (That may not have been stated, but it was understood.) It was expected that we would do well in school. (Maybe it was expected after Lou and Mitch did so well.) We did well, each of us having been either school standard bearer or guardian of the flag (honors the school awarded for academic achievement) at grammar school, while Mitch was standard bearer in high school as well. In high school we all took the academic program and studied Latin and/or another foreign language.
Ethel also took a metal working class, a shop course, as an elective in high school. In that shop she made trays and utensils out of hammered copper and other metals. She may have been the only girl in the class. This was unusual, girls were not expected to take shop classes. Girls were expected to take the home economics classes, such as cooking and dressmaking. There were not many other rebellious activities.
We participated in school extra-curricular activities. There were the foreign language clubs, student government activities, school newspapers, yearbook, dramatics, and athletics. There was no participation in glee club. Lou, though, apparently did have some musical ability. He played drums in a 4-piece jazz orchestra, for which he got paid.
The boys also attended cheder, a religious school for training in the bible and in Hebrew and Yiddish, in the afternoon for two hours after public school. At this school the boys would learn to read Hebrew and to read and write in Yiddish, and they received instruction for their bar mitzvah, confirmation ceremony, at age 13. Since we were Orthodox, only the boys had a bar mitzvah or a need to go to cheder. There were some formal schools where the boys went to cheder, such as the Talmud Torah on Baden St, or boys could study in small groups with a rabbi. Shortly after bar mitzvah each of the boys stopped going to cheder.
Working while going to school was not encouraged by Mom or Pop, but it wasn't discouraged either. Some of the children worked early and often. Lou, for example, worked at the public market in the mornings before school. He and Mitch had many part time jobs while in school. It was easier for boys to get jobs than girls, but there were jobs available clerking. Boys could deliver newspapers (Bucky did). Summer jobs were available in some factories. Lou also had a job for four years at Projection Optics Co. working afternoons. He was the only office employee. The company had about six employees and made projection lenses for motion picture theaters.
We walked to grammar school (numbers 9 or 20) and to Washington Junior High School. These schools were about a mile and a half from home. East High and Franklin High (which opened in 1930) were still walking distance, but it would have been a long walk. (Franklin was two and a half miles from home.) We used public transportation to get to and from high school, and that gave us freedom with respect to how long we could stay at school after class. The buses and streetcars ran frequently. We could, if we wanted, stay in school late to attend club meetings or rehearsals or practices and catch a later bus or streetcar home.
A note about Franklin High: Pearl was in the first graduating class at the school; Mitch taught English there; Ethel graduated from there and then worked there for the guidance counselor; and Bucky graduated from there. There was a beautiful photo of the school taken just after a snow plow had cleared the sidewalk following a heavy snow storm. This photo was used in several Franklin yearbooks, and had been on school office walls. It was a very dramatic image. The photo was taken by Mitch. Among his many talents he was an excellent photographer.
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