Julius

Friday Mar 28

by

Sister Clara gave birth to a
baby boy at 10:05 P.M.

This was a complete surprise
as I did not expect her to
give birth now.

I cabled immediately
the news to my parents.

————

Matt’s Notes

When I first transcribed this entry and the words “this was a complete surprise…” I thought Papa meant he was surprised that Clara gave birth in the first place, not that he was surprised by how early she gave birth. I wondered, with a jolt, how Clara could have been pregnant for so long without Papa knowing about it, whether the baby was unusually tiny, or if Clara was somehow ashamed and hiding her pregnancy like the high school girls you sometimes hear about who give birth at the prom. This misunderstanding cleared up milliseconds later as I transcribed the words “I did not expect her to give birth now,” but for some reason the first words of this entry still have a trace of the same effect on me when I reread them.

Maybe I secretly want Papa to have not realized Clara was pregnant until her baby suddenly appeared because it would be a funnier story, or maybe his own surprise and excitement made its way to the page in the form of a surprisingly-worded sentence (then again, I may be the only one who’s thrown by this passage; if any of my legions of readers experienced the same thing, please let me know). Perhaps Papa penned this entry, still breathless, after dashing home from the Western Union office (an overseas telegraph message must have been quite a splurge) though his handwriting doesn’t seem hurried or shaky. Anyhow, the baby in question is my cousin Julius (a.k.a. Julie) with whom I recently been in touch. Stay tuned for anecdotes.

Thursday Sept 11

by


Visited Julius Zichlinsky

————-

Julius Zichlinsky was the brother of Brooklyn’s own Jack Zichlinsky, and both were, I am told, members of Papa’s Zionist fraternal organization, Order Sons of Zion (a.k.a. B’nai Zion).

As we’ve discussed before, such groups provided essential services to immigrants like Papa; B’nai Zion sold affordable life insurance, guaranteed its members a proper Jewish burial, and ran a credit union that Papa and Jack helped organize. I’m not sure if fraternal orders guaranteed friendship among its members as well, but Julius and Jack were two of Papa’s closest companions in 1924 and, in fact, remained so for the rest of their lives.

Friday Oct 10

by


Spend the evening with friends
at Nathan Zichlinsky’s house
until after 2 a.m.

————–

Papa’s diary features supporting appearances from three men named Zichlinsky: Jack, one of Papa’s closest, lifelong friends; Julius, whose full name appears only once but may be the same Julius with whom Papa enjoyed many an outing but only referred to by first name; and Nathan, whose home on Brooklyn’s Willoughby Avenue was previously host to a meeting of B’nai Zion, Papa’s fraternal order.

Your Papa’s Diary Project scorecard is surely too covered in scribbles and arrows by now to be of much use, but yes, I’ll confirm that you did, in fact, make a little notation about yet another Zichlinsky, this one named Jacob, and you made it in reference to my September 19th post in which I questioned whether Jacob, who is listed in the 1925 New York City directory as a leatherworker residing at 24 Hart Street in Brooklyn, was actually Papa’s friend Jack. At the time I assumed he wasn’t.

Ah, but how different I am from the headstrong, impetuous incarnation of myself who occupied this chair three weeks ago! Younger, yes, unbowed by experience, to be sure, but so presumptuous, so careless! Since then, I’ve done a bit of research on ancestry.com and learned that: three men named Nathan, Julius and Jacob Zichlinsky all hailed from the same town in Russia; they were all around Papa’s age; they all lived together for a time on Broome Street; Julius and Jacob worked in the same leather goods store together when they were younger; and, finally, Jacob eventually resided in the very Sheepshead Bay neighborhood where my grandmother could be relied upon to shout “Jack Zichlinsky lived there” when passing through. The evidence isn’t bullet-proof, but it certainly implies that these Zichlinskys were the brothers Papa palled around with and that Jacob of Hart Street was Papa’s friend and went by the nickname “Jack.”

Long live the Internets.

Monday Oct 13

by


[no October 13 entry; Papa accidentally wrote his October 20 entry on this page]

————–

It was long ago when I joined Jack and Julius and Nathan on Broome street, we dipped black bread in salt and sipped tea and talked late into the night of girls and our plans and of days to come. They kept leather everywhere, strips on chairs, bolts on their bed and the floor, it was a factory of their own. Jack and Julius always at work at the table, they passed each other tools and dropped rivets into cans and tea cups. Nathan joked would they give us a job when we got back from the war, he said the men at the registration office meant to send us right back to the old country to our old homes.

So much has happened since those endless days can it be I am still the same? What are these days then? They do not seem to me like memories to come.

—————-

For those of you just joining us, the above passage was not written by my grandfather; on days when he hasn’t written in his diary, I often write fictionalized interpretations of what I think might have been on his mind. Try the links below to see what he has to say about some of the major subjects he’s covered:

– “The 20th Century Girl”

– The New York Academy of Music

– B’nai zion, a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion, the fraternal order my grandfather belonged to

– Baseball

– The Capitol Theatre, one of New York’s great movie palaces

– Cars of the 1920’s

– Coney Island

– Calvin Coolidge

– The 1924 Democratic Convention, the longest and most contentious in history and the first to be broadcast live on the radio

– The Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field

– Fraternal organizations and mutual support societies, a.k.a. landsmanshaftn

– The New York Giants, 1924 pennant winners

– Keren Hayesod

– Silent Movies (1924 was a great year for movie lovers like my grandfather; several monumental films including The Thief of Badgad, The Ten Commandments, Sherlock, Jr., and D.W. Griffith’s America were out that year. I’m not sure if he saw any of those, but I do know he saw at least The Song of Love, The Unknown Purple, The White Sister with Lillian Gish, and A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin’s first serious directorial effort.)

– The Metropolitan Opera

– Papa’s Father’s Injury and Death

– Prohibition

– Prospect Park

– Early radio (Papa was an early radio adopter and frequently wrote about what he heard on New York stations like WEAF and WNYC)

– Sniatyn, Papa’s Ukrainian home town (part of Austro-Hungary when he left in 1913)

– The New York Subway

– Telephones in 1924

– Tenement life

– Woodrow Wilson

– The New York Yankees

– Yom Kippur

– Zionist Organization of America