Monday Apr 14

by

Home attended to some
correspondence, listened
in on the radio. The opening of
the congress of Daughters
of the American Revolution,
Adresses by Pres. Coolidge
French ambassador Jusserand,
British Amb. Howard,
Gen. Pershing.

——————–

Matt’s Notes

When Papa sat down at 8:00 PM and tuned in to WEAF, he listened to President Coolidge urge the Daughters of the American Revolution to get out and vote in the next election. It seems like an offhand moment by today’s standards, but Papa found it novel enough, as he did with many radio broadcasts, to record it in his diary.

As with its February 6 coverage of President Wilson’s funeral, AT&T distributed Coolidge’s speech by telephone line to three of its East coast radio stations: WCAP in Washington, WJAR in Providence, R.I., and WEAF in New York. The previous day’s New York Times saw fit to devote a column to the complexities and expense involved — the “remote control” technology it described had only been commercially practical for a year, and even so “the actual work necessary to prepare long-distance telephone lines for use in connection with radio broadcasting sometimes requires as many as sixty-five engineers.”

(A related article also excitedly reported on how “Hertzian waves” helped farmers research prices in multiple markets and figure out where to sell their goods. Said one Ohio farmer: “It is not difficult to make a radio pay dividends when rightly handled, and scarcely a week passes without my outfit yielding me something of value.”)

Coolidge had only been on the radio a few times since he took the reigns after President Harding’s death in 1923, but his voice resonated particularly well and helped make him an early broadcast celebrity. Coolidge quickly caught on to the medium’s potential as a campaign tool and broadcast a number of speeches, including the one mentioned above, in the run-up to the 1924 Republican Convention.

Since the audience consisted of women descended from America’s founders, the speech was appropriately full of patriotic rhetoric and historical references. Its central theme, though, concerned a more recent historical development, the effects of which had not, it seems, entirely permeated American life: the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in federal elections. As Coolidge noted:

We have not yet been able to frame a very definite judgment of the changes that will be wrought in our public life, or our private life, because of this remarkable development. It has come so suddenly upon the world, chiefly within this first quarter of the twentieth century, that we have not had time to appraise its full meaning.

And:

I suppose that even among the Daughters of the America Revolution there are some women who sincerely feel that it is unbecoming of their sex to take an active part in politics. It is a little difficult to comprehend how such an attitude could be maintained by any women eligible to such a society as this…

Nevertheless, there are such, and to them I want especially to direct an appeal for a different attitude toward the obligations of the voter…

What must Papa have thought of such a speech? It’s hard to imagine a group more removed from his world of Zionist fundraisers and immigrant support societies than the Daughters of the American Revolution, and it’s hard to imagine an issue more baffling to him than the need to convince well-established, entirely assimilated Americans to accept their enfranchisement (still a baffling problem today, of course). Perhaps the mere thrill of listening to the President through his headphones distracted Papa from contemplating such things.

Tuesday Apr 15

by

[No entry today]

————-

Matt’s Notes

Here’s what might have intrigued Papa in the papers on this day:

Wednesday Apr 16

by

[no entry]

Matt’s Notes

Since there’s no entry today, I figured I’d share this picture of me and Papa from around 1968. This must be in my family’s Manhattan apartment, where we lived until I was around three.

Note how he keeps a tight grip on that length of string, lest my plastic lamb attain an unsafe rate of speed.

If you’re just getting started with Papa’s Diary Project, here are a few good topics to jump into:

And please don’t ignore my Cry For Help.

Thursday Apr 17

by

[no entry]

—————-

Matt’s Notes

This is the third day in a row without an entry from Papa. I’m worried that I haven’t heard from him, as if he were alive.

I don’t think he was too busy to write in his diary, since he usually reported a full day’s events even if he got home late. Maybe he just went to work and spent the evening listening to the radio and reading the paper.

Some New York Times headlines that might have caught his eye that day included:

Friday Apr 18

by

This the first Seder night
I celebrated with Sister Nettie

——————

Matt’s Notes

A “Seder,” for those who aren’t familiar with the term, refers to the traditional dinner served on the Jewish holiday of Passover (I point out that I’m Jewish because someone I met yesterday thought for sure my last name made me a Mennonite). The Seder combines special foods, prayers, and ritualized storytelling to commemorate the Exodus of Jews from Egypt (including all the good stuff from The Ten Commandments like the Ten Plagues and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army).

Like many less religious Jews, I grew up skipping a number of the more drawn-out passages in the Passover Haggadah (the Seder instruction book) to shorten Seder’s length. I remember my mother telling me, though, that Papa used to go into another room after our short Seders and finish the ritual himself, in Hebrew, while we went about our business. I always thought this was because he was older, religious, and stuck in his ways, but reading his diary makes me realize it was much more emotionally important to him than I originally believed.

The Seder commemorates the historical oppression of Jews, urges awareness of ongoing bigotry, and offers prayers for better times. For someone like Papa, who was forced out of his childhood home by anti-Semitism, lost much of his family to the Holocaust, and devoted so much of his life to the Zionist cause, the Passover message must have struck him with particular urgency. Also, we’ve seen before how milestones and holidays put Papa in reflective, often wistful moods; I wonder if his diary silence over the previous three days indicates a contemplative phase — intensified by his ongoing worry of his far-off father’s illness — triggered by the onset of a holiday as family-oriented and personally resonant as Passover.

Saturday Apr 19

by

2nd night with Sister Clara

Saw a ball game today
Giants defeated Braves

Received a letter from
Henriette informing me
that she accepts my invitation
for next Sunday. I’m glad

————-

The “second night” Papa refers to is a Passover Seder, the first of which he attended at his sister Nettie’s house the night before. Passover traditionally involves two Seders, and in some families it also involves political squabbles over who goes to whose house on which night. Nettie and Clara supposedly didn’t get along, so I expect some such scandal arose; they may not have seen each other at all for the holiday even though they lived in the same neighborhood.

I’m sure Papa wasn’t bothered by any familial tension — or much of anything — since Henriette, the storied “20th Century Girl” who had put his heart through a ringer a few weeks earlier, finally agreed to see him again. (He had written her a declaration of affection on March 30th after they’d gone to the opera together. Could this be the first time he’d heard from her since then?)

Papa further enjoyed himself at the Polo Grounds that day, which answers my question about whether Jewish law permits baseball game attendance during Passover. And much as Moses smote Pharaoh’s army, the Giants defeated the Boston Braves on a game-winning Henry Groh double in the bottom of the ninth. (The New York Times account is a great specimen of the humorous, ironic baseball writing they practiced in that era.)

On the field for the Giants was Irish Meusel (pictured below with his brother, Yankee slugger Bob Meusel, who Papa had seen in an exhibition game a few days earlier) while the Boston Braves fielded the legendary Casey Stengal and a four-time MVP with the fantastic name of Stuffy McInnis.

Here are the full lineups:

New York

Billy Southworth, cf
Heinie Groh, 3b
Frankie Frisch, 2b
Irish Meusel, lf
George Kelly, 1b
Travis Jackson, ss
Hank Gowdy, c
Bill Terry
Virgil Barnes, p
Jimmy O’Connell
Rosy Ryan, p

Boston

Dave Bancroft, ss
Johnny Cooney, rf
Bill Cunningham, lf
Cotton Tierny, 2b
Stuffy McInnis, 1b
Casey Stengel, cf
Ernie Padgett, 3b
Mickey O’Neil, c
Joe Genewich, p

—————–

Additional References:

—————-

Image sources:

  • Meusel, Emil F. “Irish” (Giants) & Bob Meusel (Yankees), 10/10/1923. Library of Congress #LC-B2- 6077-13
  • Polo Grounds, 1923. Library of Congress #LC-B2- 5982-2

Sunday Apr 20

by


Both days of Pesach
with my sisters. —

Met little Sadie at Sister
Claras house and took her
home to Evas, where I sat
a little while.

—————

Matt’s Notes

Papa had spent the previous two evening at his sisters’ Pesach (Passover) seders, but I’m not sure why he starts this passage off by pointing it out again. Was this a happy recap? Was he flushed with affection because he felt fortunate to have his sisters close by? Or did he just not realize he’d written about Pesach over the last couple of days? A holiday like this with its family-oriented, sit-down dinners must have made Papa especially anxious about his ailing father back in the old country, so maybe this entry’s little Passover wrap-up is an unconscious sigh of relief.

I do wonder if his family in Sniatyn ever got the 20-pound shipment of matzoh Papa sent them back on March 5th. I’m still not sure how he would have sent the matzoh (those who have memorized this site will recall my speculation about the logistics of international matzoh transport in my comments about that entry) but a friend of this site named Ari, an academic who knows about such things, told me recently that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee had an infrastructure in place to get food over to Eastern Europe back in the 20’s. Perhaps Papa read their ads in the Yiddish papers and trusted them with his precious cargo.

Alas, no one can tell me who “little Sadie” was, why Papa brought her from his sister Clara’s place to Eva’s, or even what it means when he says he “met” her. Did Clara and Eva collude to set Papa up with Sadie and drum up some reason for him to walk her from one place to the other? Was she a young cousin who he just hadn’t seen in a while? Perhaps it was typical for Lower East Siders like Papa to mill around the neighborhood on a Sunday night, dropping in on friends and family, picking up conversations on the street, and sitting “a little while” with someone here and there. It sounds kind of relaxing.

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