REALLY: Early Life cont’d.

Dad was a physically powerful man, very intelligent and as handsome as any movie star, I have yet to see. One day I saw him strap a large refrigerator to his back and carry it up several flights of stairs to an elderly woman’s apartment. In those days, appliances were much heavier; no plastics. Another time, I was told, he had picked up two full size men, grasping them in each hand by their collar. In addition, at another time, he knocked out the trainer of prizefighter Max Schmelling to protect mom’s honor. No, dad was not a brawler, but believed in self-defense. When the neighborhood bully kept picking on me, dad held his arms and told me to hit him. I think that when I refused to do so, I showed up as a coward in dad’s eyes.
Nor was he ever intoxicated. Only once did I ever see him drunk. This was during the time of depression. I remember the day when dad took me with him. Together we made the rounds of employment agencies, but to no avail. Every place we went had men sitting around, waiting in hope for a job.
It was major depression, when the stock market caused investors to jump out of windows and when many businesses went bankrupt. Not many were working. Money was very scarce. Dad was always a good provider for our family. When mom took a job at a local diner, cooking, and waitressing It did not help dad’s manliness.(I believe that is what we consider pride.) When jobs were not available, he kept looking until he got a job
It was a while before he succeeded in finding employment. It was that long a period of unsuccessful job hunting when my dad was depressed and lost it. I do not remember ever seeing liquor or beer bottles at home, so I do not know what he drank to get drunk. We did have wine on the dinner table when entertaining. It was during this stupor he reprimanded me for using too much toilet paper; “it cost money,” he yelled. This was somewhere during the long waiting between jobs. This never happened before, or since. This hit me hard. He had always been gentle with me. It hit me so hard, that it raised its furious face later in my married life. . My dad took me with him to one of his temporary jobs. We had to climb down a vertical iron ladder attached to the wall. It was the boiler room for a commercial laundry. It was his job to keep his eyes on the many gages. I was very glad when it was time to go home. Not only did the size of the boilers scare me, they also gave off an enormous amount of heat.
I wondered where dad learned his different trades, among them, driving semi-tractor trailers loaded with timber, dynamite, and nitro; marine engineer, and chief electrician at the Lenox Hill Hospital when my tonsils were removed. He was on call for all major surgeries in the event of electrical problems. He was raised on a farm and only attended, to my knowledge, the school in his hometown; the same I was later to attend.