Holidays

With Labor Day on Monday, and the Jewish New Year coming up, I thought it was a good time to write about the holidays, and primarily, the end-of-the-year holidays and how many of us celebrated them in Rochdale.

I don't remember much about how we celebrated Labor Day--we spent the Jewish New Year holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in synagogue--but Christmas and Hanukkah-or the way many of us spelled it back then, Chanukah--were another story.

It was a joyous time in Rochdale during these two holidays, because Jews and Christians alike could put out their greatest finery to celebrate these two wonderful occasions.

Christians decorated their houses with trees and other holiday ornaments, including stockings. Windows were absolutely gleaming with tinsel, and many doors had holiday wreaths on them.

If they had terraces, tinsel and holiday lights hung from them in proud display.

Jews celebrated by posting menorahs in their windows, but the world was becoming more modern, and although there were a lack of Chanukah ornaments back then, the world had come out with electric menorahs, which shone so brightly and were safer than regular menorahs.

My family had one of these, and our menorah was placed in my parents' room's window to show that we were celebrating the holiday.

And out that window was one of the most memorable sites I can ever remember from Rochdale.

I would look out that window straight across the Building 7--we were in Building 9--and the array of holiday ornaments was astounding.

It was a virtual light show as so many people put up Christmas lights and menorahs in their homes. You could look up and down that building, and seemingly every apartment had something up at that time.

I always thought that that display of holiday cheer was, every year, the defining time of Rochdale, proving that yes, even with great odds stacked against us, we could live together in the proverbial "peace and harmony."

I really, really wish I would have taken a photo of that scene, but I never did.

If I had that photo, I know I would show people what happened during the holidays there, and I would prove to them just how special it really was.

We are still several months away from the end-of-the-year holidays, but we can all bring that "holiday cheer" to the Reunion.

I guess that date for all of us will be something of a holiday, and I wish you all peace and harmony for that day and forever beyond that.

Pets

Do you remember any pets you had in Rochdale?

Yes, I know that dogs were not allowed--even though some people had them, more about that later--but what about the cats, the fish, the hamsters, the turtles, the birds and other pets that we, and our friends, had in Rochdale?

I had one friend who had a few hamsters, but I seem to remember that they died soon after he had them.

Lots of people had fish, and they kept them either in small fish bowls are larger aquariums. The same with turtles.

Birds would sing to their hearts' content in many Rochdale apartments.

I had one friend who had a cat that I swear was as long as a football field ... well, not quite, but this cat was quite long, seemingly well over a foot or two in length from head to tail.

Every time we played a board game--and I distinctly remember this happening when we played with the Ouija board--the cat would walk across the board, messing up all the pieces or moving whatever was on the board.

The cat was very territorial, but my friend loved it, as it was part of his family.

Now for dogs.

As you know, dogs were all around Rochdale. People in the vicinity of Rochdale who owned homes had them, and certainly, there were hordes of dogs that wandered just outside, as well as inside the development, strays that our parents told us to stay away from.

But some people actually had dogs in the development, dogs that they cared for that became part of their families.

My family actually had a dog for a very short period of time.

It was late 1970 or early 1971, and my parents had just put a binder down on a house.

We knew we were moving, and what better way to live the "American Dream" than to own a dog in a house with a white picket fence?

My father thought this was a great idea, and he bought a dog, a very, very young newborn pup who was a mutt. He figured if we could raise the dog literally from scratch, it would be easier for the dog not only to adapt to us, but to the new surroundings after Rochdale.

The dog, who we called Melvin, was very, very young, and when he brought the dog home, my mother nearly blew her gasket, because she was as surprised as we were about the new member of our family.

To make a long story short, my sister and I loved that dog for the few days that we had it. We walked it outside by building 9, we slept with it, we fed it.

But the dog was not house trained, and my mother was not ready for dog "kisses" all over the place as well as liquid manifestations in the house, so my father had to give away the dog, and he did, to somene who went to the same service station he did across the street from Rochdale.

My sister and I cried and cried when Melvin left us, and my father cried too.

Years later, both my sister and I became dog owners, so the memory of little Melvin lived on, and still lives on, for decades.

Many of us had pets, and I am sure the subject will come up during the Reunion. Get your checks in, because the deadline of September 15 is fast approaching.

Don't "dog" it; send your payments in today!

Substitute Teachers

We had great respect for our teachers when we went to the Rochdale schools, but that did not extend to substitute teachers.

Substitute teachers, or subs, have generally acquired the same academic level as their faculty peers, and sometimes, they even have more education under their belt than those on their respective school's faculty.

But if this isn't the worst job in America, I don't know what is.

To borrow a line from Rodney Dangerfield,  substitute teachers"get no respect, no respect at all."

The problem is that subs are put into a position in a classroom with a bunch of kids who are used to their regular teacher. With that teacher out of the room, the sub is in a strange class with kids he or she does not know, and that really sets forward a lot of awkward situations.

I remember that one day in I.S. 72, the sub was taking the class roll to make sure everyone was in class.

She went down the list, and she came to Russell Ruvinsky. She called his name and he said he "Here."

The sub looked up and said, "You aren't Russell Ruvinsky, you are Monte Silberger. Where is Russell Ruvinsky?"

Russell once again said that he was Russell Ruvinsky, but the sub would not listen to reason. Others in the class, including myself, went up to the teacher to say that that was, in fact, Russell Ruvinsky, but she could not, and would not, be swayed.

And no, Monte Silberger was not on the class list.

Russell Ruvinsky got written up on the section sheet (remember those?) and yes, he had to deal with it the next or two when they came to check up on the section sheet information.

You simply cannot win being a sub. Some kids listen, some kids don't, and some subs are left without lesson plans and things for the students to do.

It is a thankless job, pays little, and does not often lead to a permanent appointment.

I know, because yes, at one time, many years ago, I was a substitute teacher, and although I never had a situation where I mixed up a Russell Ruvinsky with a Monte Silberger, I did experience some situations which I can laugh at now but were far from funny then.

At the Reunion, I am sure the subject of teachers will come up, and I am sure we all have our own funny stories about a particular teacher or substitute teacher that we can tell everyone at the Reunion.

Be there--Oct 5--and if you are wondering where to send your check, the address is at the top of this Blog.

Mischievous Activities

We were kids way back when we lived in Rochdale, and let's face it, kids will be kids.

We do things that often defy logic to any adult, but make perfect sense when you are seven or eight years old.

We all participated in some mischievous activities when we were kids, and some we were willing participants in, others, well, we were just almost guilty by association.

The most common of these activities was walking on the grass.

There were signs on every patch of grass in the community that read "Keep Off the Grass," and they weren't talking about anything other than that green stuff.

But we all walked all over it.

Living in Building 9, there was that big expanse of grass at the back of the building, and that is the path that we used when we walked to I.S. 72 and when we went to the first mall.

There was also a makeshift stickball court on the far side of the rear of the building that was near the fountains, so it was a big hangout place.

Beyond the grass, we also wandered into areas that we were not allowed access to.

One day, I remember that my friend Ricky Kaden and I found that the door to the bomb shelter that each building had was slightly ajar.

We had always wondered what was in that shelter, so we walked in.

We saw tubs of everything from crackers to water to other non-perishables, flash lights, everything that anyone would need to survive a nuclear holocaust.

We were in there for about two minutes, and then from behind, a few maintenance men literally grabbed us by the seat of our pants and threw us out of the shelter, and they were very quick to close and lock that door.

When my friends and I were new to the development--we couldn't have been more than seven or eight at the time--we were playing catch with a rubber Spalding on the top of the storage boxes in the building nine playground. About four of us were sitting there--Ira Dannenberg, Howie Efran, David Perrick, and myself, and there may have been others--and Arnie Epstein was throwing the ball back and forth to us facing the storage boxes.

Everything was fine, but then Arnie uncorked a throw that got past all of us.

We all turned around to see where the ball had gone. An elderly woman was sitting in back of the playground on the benches, and the ball whizzed by her head, but maybe 50 to 100 fee away from her.

She must have seen the ball coming near her out of the corner of her eye, she flinched, and lost her balance, falling to the ground.

She hit her head, and all of a sudden, a pool of blood started to form.

When we saw this, we dispersed pretty quickly up to our apartments.

However, somebody--the person shall remain nameless--told security who we were, and the next thing we know, we all were summoned to the executive offices of the development.

I know that I was as scared as I ever had been up to that point. I thought we were going to get kicked out of the development only a few months after we had moved in.

The only thing that I remember is that I left with a lollipop, and everything was hunky dory.

By the way, we later heard that the woman survived, but she did sue Rochdale.

That is all I know about what happened.

I can laugh at that incident now, but boy, as a seven year old, I was really shaking in my boots on that one.

Anyway, did anybody go to the top of the buildings and throw water bombs down to the ground?

Did anybody speak back to the rent-a-cops and make their lives miserable?

Did anybody go into the laundry room and learn to make the machines work even without putting in money?

You can talk about all of these memories at the Rochdale Reunion.

Just send your check to the address posted above.

Remember, the due date is Oct. 5, and don't walk on the grass getting to mailbox to send your letter out!

Super Response

The recent response to the Reunion has been amazing, to say the least!

Several dozen of our fellow Rochdale family members sent in their checks during the past few weeks, and more will certainly be coming as we wind down to the due date of September 15.

At first, the response was tepid, because the date was so far off.

Now, with the date coming up so quickly, people have finally taken notice--

And that is a good thing!

Remember, if you are sitting on the fence about this, October 5, the date of the event, is right around the corner.

There might never be such a big gathering of the Rochdale family again, so NOW is the time to decide whether you can attend or not.

Please send your checks to the above address only, and please check in at this site regularly to see updates, reminiscences from the past, and really, anything to do with Rochdale the way it used to be.

And don't forget the Rochdale Reconnection Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/groups/264933322680/ (just paste this address in your browser).

The committee welcomes all of you and will see you on Oct. 5!

Senior Citizens

We were the youngest people to live in Rochdale, the kids, but there was a large, vibrant, older generation of people who also lived in the development.

They had many things to do in the development, groups set up for them, and each section had their "older" group, many of whom sat on the benches and held court with one another.

I generally remember the group that lived in Section 3, Building 9, 10, 11, and 12. (Thanks to Arnie Epstein for the photo.)

They were my grandparents' age, probably even older, and they were from an earlier generation, many of whom were born in the previous century, and part of a generation that went through World Wars I and II, Korea and the Depression.

They were honed on a different lifestyle, and many of them did not understand us kids.

It was a real generation gap between many older and many younger people there; they didn't understand us, and we didn't understand them.

To some of them, we were just juvenile troublemakers who were seemingly living off the spoils of their labor.

They yelled at us for going on the grass, for playing our transistor radios too loud, and for generally running amuck in this new development.

We kind of knew that they didn't like us, and we called them "Old Fogies."

Heaven knows what they called us, but I don't think it was anything very nice.

And then there was a group that was the same age as the others, but much more progressive.

They saw us for what we were--young kids--and treated us with the utmost of respect, and we gave it back to them.

Even though there were many years of age difference, we kind of saw eye-to-eye with each other.

Many of them had grandchildren living in the same development, and I think that closeness with their grandkids allowed them to think a little differently than those who didn't have grandchildren or at least, didn't have grandchildren living in Rochdale at the time.

One of my friends had his grandparents living in Rochdale very close to his family at the time, and they were very, very nice people.

His grandfather always had a smile for us, and it really was from ear to ear.

Seeing his grandparents reminded me of my grandparents, one set of whom lived in Brooklyn and the other living in another part of Queens.

Today, many of us Rochdale kids are grandparents ourselves (not me, not yet anyway), and I wonder how our relationship with the older citizens of Rochdale shapes our relationship with young kids today?

That is something to talk about at the upcoming Reunion on Oct. 5, and yes, there will be several grandparents there to share your stories with.

And "Old Fogies" they are not!

The Supermarket(s)

We were pretty lucky when we lived in Rochdale.

We had two malls, one indoor and one outdoor, and we could pick and choose which supermarket we would go to to do our family's food shopping.

My mother liked the first mall's Co-Op Supermarket better than the second mall's supermarket. She found it larger and much more convenient to shop.

Occasionally, she would send me to pickup some items she may have forgotten, and maybe once or twice, we used the home delivery service that they had in the first mall's store (I don't remember if they had this in the second mall).

At that point in time, we only ate Kosher meat at home. My father was a butcher early on in our time in Rochdale, and he brought home everything we needed.

When he became a cab driver, that was all over, so my mother bought from the Kosher butcher. She never bought meat in the supermarket, because if my memory is right, they either didn't carry Kosher meat or the selection wasn't too good. I honestly don't remember.

But she was very, very picky.

As a young child, I just remember the first supermarket, that ramshackle shack that we actually lined up at to get into, before the first mall opened its doors.

I remember waiting with my mother for seemingly hours before we could get in.

The selection was very limited--a lot of White Rose off-brand stuff, as I remember--and I absolutely remember my mom buying Happy's Ice Cream, with the stick figure of a "happy" guy on the box.

Now, just about every time I go food shopping with my family, I think of those old Rochdale days, the first supermarket we had, and the other two supermarkets that we came to depend on.

We can all reminisce about the supermarkets, the malls, and just about everything else at the Reunion on October 5. Don't forget, the due date for payments is September 15, and that date cannot be extended.

So get your checks in if you haven't already done so.

And here's to the Co-Op Supermarkets of those days.

They provided us plenty of food for thought, didn't they?