Da Hell Mit Da Kotchke

By Milton Schwartz

The book includes incidents from early childhood to present, in various times and places of various tempers and moods; ironic, tragic, hopefully amusing, some sexual content reflecting my youthful attractions and exuberance. I am now beautifully at peace, overlooking the tidal marsh outside my home in Cape Cod with lamp of day and orb of night adding to the magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514473122

Milton Schwartz

Milton Schwartz: Born July 1919 in Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia, Milton grew up in a family with roots in the Yiddish culture of Eastern Europe. His father made a living as a Philadelphia milkman on a horse and wagon, his mother was a housewife. His youth was illuminated by experiences with strange, foreign grandparents. He attended Penn State in Architecture, a true fit with his passion for creative pursuits. He graduated with honors and a commission as 2nd Lieutenant, Corps of Engineers. He served 4 1/2 years of active military duty WW2; Regimental Operations Officer, Battalion Commander in newly formed Aviation Engineers, finishing tour on Okinawa and Ie Shima invasion, constructing landing strips for fighter aircraft accompanying bombers to Japan. After the war, he pursued a successful career running an architectural practice and served as faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to an abiding interest in visual art and design, Milton maintained a keen lifelong interest in writing, both in his professional and personal life.

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Copyright © 2016 by Milton Schwartz.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 03/23/2016

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CONTENTS

Two Divisions In This Book

Credits

Foreword

Old World

Meals With Bubbie

Strawberry Mansion & Delancey Place

Why An Architect

TWO DIVISIONS IN THIS BOOK

Family: My responses and reflections on what I witnessed from family members, some closely related and others not. I wrote of them for one consistent reason: each created a lasting memory, usually by their idiosyncrasies or their admirable qualities, which I leave to the reader to distinguish.

Man o’War: My record, loosely recalled and related, of educational, military and professional are very personal experiences. I feel these stories, sometimes amusing, wry, tragic will be of interest to others.

CREDITS

I am indebted to my grandparents who had the courage and perhaps foresight, to desert their homes (probably hovels) in Eastern Europe to migrate, bringing nothing but hope. Unimaginable were the despicable conditions which created such determination, especially for my unworldly paternal grandparents. But for their unknown, heroic decisions, all of our extended family, present and future, could be in unimaginable places and circumstances today, if indeed alive, after the Holocaust.

In producing this book I wish to thank, the three who were actually involved in the process, one in encouraging writing, one in the design.

David Reid, my son-in-law, an erudite master of the English language, skillful editor and one whose literary opinion I most highly respect. Early in my effort, David gave encouragement, praise and some amount of advice on what constitutes good writing.

Faun Apple Schwartz & Maggie Reid, two daughters, highly gifted graphic artists, who created the form and detailed design of this book and both covers.

Significant Others:

Ann, my wife, who for these many years of marriage has been remarkably patient with my impatience and intemperance, to make our marriage work beautifully. I thank her for just being her.

Martha, Susan, Maggie, and Becca: My daughters, with their mother, Stella. These brilliant, talented girls (women) are as fine a reward in life as one could achieve and have added to my life a bounty of added quality and joy, my 9 brilliant grandchildren.

FOREWORD

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Our House from the Marsh

(Why Write?)

Since writing is one of the creative arts, why not? Since my first grasp of a pencil, I’ve been thrilled by the art of drawing. Kindergarten was the high point of my early schooling, where daily, the teacher stood me at the blackboard to draw for hours with colored chalks. Throughout my schooling my favorite activities were drawing, painting and the art museum. In high school I declined a scholarship to Temple’s Tyler School of Fine Arts (instigated by my Art Teacher without my knowledge). I would not experience Architecture, my choice, until college.

From my first introduction I knew Architecture to be my true love. It is the plastic, spatial quality, which appeals to me, contrasting with two dimensions in drawing. While sculpture is three dimensional, it does not deal with space enclosure, and is rarely monumental in scale. Architects have business clients; Painters and Sculptors must have patrons; I can live with the former (’though barely) but not the latter. After a gratifying professional lifetime practicing and teaching Architecture I am now ready for another love affair.

I studied piano for a short time and since I detest amateurism in the arts (particularly in myself) and I had too few future years and too little patience; this was not for me. Once more I crave the excitement and satisfaction of a new creative experience. I have neither pretense nor false expectation of becoming a great writer but I thoroughly enjoy language, spoken and written. As Architecture is a perfect blend of Art and Science, so language is a perfect amalgam of the sensate and the intellectual; the rhythmic musical quality (particularly Italian) and the exquisite precision in meaning and expression is the ultimate in aesthetic creativity and sensual satisfaction.

Writing is probably the last of my careers, which include artist, Army Officer, architect, teacher, developer, three-time-husband, father (of five), and grandfather (of nine). I am now content to gaze over the tideland marsh from my viewing living room at an ever-changing, tranquil beauty, my private joy.

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Our House in Sandwich

OLD WORLD

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Most of the Family

My Litvish Family

My paternal family was Litvish, migrating from a European country that I assume was Latvia or Lithuania (my maternal family migrating from Romania). Father’s family of three boys and two girls could have been born in Europe, except for my father who was born here. I say could have been born in Europe because they did not seem at all Americanized, all living in Kensington, in East Philadelphia, being much as I imagined the old country.

In early childhood I visited my Bubbie and Zadie (Yiddish grandmother and grandfather) at their house on Ann Street in Kensington, a Ghetto, understandably called Jewtown. Gentile workmen were stoned on scaffolds when painting a house on Saturday (Shabbas). Their two-story house was at the right end of a brick row, next to a small grocery store near a dusty hill and a bridge abutment for an industrial railroad along the Delaware River.

The poor neighborhood was uniformly residential, with a few wider, tree lined streets like Clearfield where the houses were larger and had front porches. Ann Street was a narrow, unrelieved block of two-story brick facades. The typical row house in old Philadelphia, was 14 to 16 feet wide. The layout from front to rear was living room, dining room and kitchen, with an exit to a small rear yard. The kitchen narrowed to permit a side alley for a pinched window in the far corner of the dining room (airlight style). One entered, climbing a few brownstone steps, into a small vestibule, a narrow entrance hall, and past a living room to the left (my grandfather’s tailor shop). Next came the heart of the house. The small, crowded dining room, contained a massive, round oak table and chairs with a matching curved-glass-front china closet, all on claw-and-ball feet. Along the left party wall, against the center table, sprawled a large brown leather chaise longue, the end curving up to the narrow window in the corner, the sole source of daylight. This huge leather sofa, crowded by the table, was the only lounge seating in the house, the others being straight-backed, brown-leather-seat, oak dining room chairs. The ponderous set filled the meager sized room, leaving scarcely room enough to walk. It was the huge leather lounge that was the inviting target for children to land upon, or to line up on, against the table at mealtime. This soft, inviting, brown expanse of leather was my grandfather’s favorite place to recline and nap, and my favorite place to play.

The kitchen contained a large, black, nickel-trimmed, cast-iron, wood-coal stove, with removable, concentric, circular, iron rings, lifted by iron-wire metal handles, exposing various sized pots directly to the fire. On the rear of the stove hung metal shelves, with room on the stovetop to allow a number of pots and pans to slowly simmer, with an ever-steaming teakettle.

From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday (Shabbes), my grandmother placed a deep black, iron pot on the back corner of the stovetop, to simmer for 24 hours. The pot contained a stew-like concoction called Chulen, of vegetables, mainly carrots, onions and sweet potatoes, with large chunks of fatty beef bones, the fat forming a delicious brown, crunchy crust over the stew. At sundown Saturday, the post-Shabbes dinner was to celebrate Habdala, the separation of the Sabbath from the weekdays. The Chulen slowly simmered all day, my grandmother never touching it, thus not violating the Sabbath.

Not only was cooking forbidden on Shabbes, but all work and physical activity; only prayer being permitted. Carrying money or any object upon the person was forbidden. The pious (frum) pinned handkerchiefs to their clothing in advance, to avoid carrying them in their pockets. Riding in a conveyance, all forms of work, including housework; in fact, almost anything except walking to the Synagogue and home for prayer and meditation, was a violation of the Sabbath—a day solely dedicated to religion. The Sabbath was unrelenting in its demands. A local Shabbes Goy (Sabbath Gentile) was employed to turn on the lights in the Synagogue prior to prayer. I am not sure why this could not have been done in advance of sundown by a Jew; it probably had to do with the exact start of the Sabbath, should the sun not be shining that evening.

Ritual was absolute, demanding, slavish fanaticism. Jewish orthodoxy typified and permeated the life and household of my grandparents. This intense focus upon religious habit, reinforced by ritual, contributed to the stubborn survival of Judaism, despite continuous persecution and decimation throughout the ages. From such an orthodox background, my father would have been considered a liberal. Although he did relax some of the strictures, his basic faith and superstitions never waned. I remember my mother telling me of her unhappiness when she and Dad lived briefly with my grandparents (their first home after marriage), of the rigors, surprises and frustrations she endured as a result of their monastic religious life and rituals, coupled with my grandmother’s little idiosyncrasies (Shticklech), mystified by her Litvish gibberish, which was hard to understand, though Mom spoke fluent, but Romanian, Yiddish.

My grandfather, was a particularly handsome man, with silver-white hair and shaped beard, a regal presence, closely resembling Prince Albert. His royal image was a monumental incongruity for this simple, devout, Jewish soul. My grandmother, in marked contrast, was a very short, bulky, rather ugly woman, with exaggerated lower lip and nose, wire glasses over squinting, myopic eyes. Her ritual wig (shaytl) and constantly