Washington Heights Jewish kid

Washington Heights New York kid If you go to the West side of Manhattan and take the subway north, past Times Square and Harlem you come to the neighborhood where I grew up. Washington Heights is almost the opposite end of Manhattan from Wall Street. The neighborhood was mostly low rise brick apartments filled with families of Jewish immigrants who head streamed in before the First World War, as well as some Irish and German origin Both sides of the family the Greenspans and the Goldsmiths, arrived at the turn of the century, the Greenspans from Romania and the Goldsmiths from Hungary. Most of the families including ours, were lower middle class unlike the utterly poverty stricken Jews of Lower East Side. (Note the region around the now a museum Synagogue in Lower East Side has at times been the highest death rate most unhealthy place on the planet and even today continues as a challenging area of the city. Not far away there was once a lake top side bounded by Canal Street and this utterly unhealthy area has seen a succession of migrant peoples- currently China Town…) Even during the worst years of the Depression, when I was in grade school, we had enough to eat… I was an only child born in 1926 and my parents were divorced split up before I can remember …I remained with my mother Rose who raise me. though she was only twenty-six and was very attractive she never married again, took back her maiden name (Goldsmith) found a job as a saleswoman in a furniture store in the Bronx and was able to hold it through the depression, she was the one who made ends meet. She was the youngest of five brothers and sisters so we were part of a large family with my cousins and uncles and aunties always in and out of our lives which made up for not having a father around or siblings. For a time my mother and I lived with my grandparents. The Goldsmiths were a lively musical bunch. My uncle Murray was a pianist who could play just about anything from sight . Changing his name to Mario Siva he went into show business and co wrote a Broadway musical Song of Love which was made into a Hollywood movie starring Kathrine Hepburn and Paul Henried. At family gathering every few months, my uncle would play and my mother would sing… My cousin Wesley who is four years older than I, was the nearest thing I had to a brother. During the summer months of the early 30s his family would rent a house not far from the ocean in the southern reaches of the Queens and Wesley and I would scour the beaches looking for coins. We were successful at it even though it was the Great Depression, people could be relied upon to take coins to the beach and then lose them in the sand. The obvious legacy of this being walking with head down and when people ask, I tell them that I’m looking for money. But not having a dad left a big hole in my life. Every month or so I would take the subway and go and visit him in Brooklyn. He worked on Wall St as a broker, for small firms you’ve never heard of. He was slim handsome guy who looked a little like Gene Kelly and presented himself well. Yet he never made much money. He always seemed awkward talking to me and it made me fell awkward too. He was smart though and in 1935 wrote a book called ‘Recovery Ahead’ which eh dedicated to me. It predicted that Roosevelt’s New Deal was going to bring back the good times to the US economy. He presented a copy to me in which he wrote; “To my dear son Alan. May this my initial effort with constant though of you branch out into an endless chain of similar efforts so that at your maturity you may look back and endeavor to interpret the reasoning behind these logical forecasts and begin a like work of your own. Your dad. During my years as Federal Reserve Chairman I would show this to people. They all concluded that the ability to give inscrutable testimony before Congress must be inherited but as a nine year old I was totally mystified. P19-21 ‘The Age of Turbulence’ Alan Greenspan Penguin Books New York 2007 Honestly it never ever occurred to me that Alan Greenspan most powerful person in the US Banking system in the 90s and up to 2001 leading up to where we have most recently been reading- Never crossed my mind he was Jewish and it wouldn’t have mattered to me if I had known. So as I say never ever having ever met a New York Jew- and Please prove me Wrong! Having predicted they will come to New Zealand- well I haven’t seen a single New York Jew yet!- but then I suggested the best place for them for a start was Invercargill. So I’m just enjoying learning things here… Hope you are too! Shalom- Jewish word! Tov as well- means ‘good’