Monday Sept 1

by


Labor Day

After a motor trip
around the country with friend
Shapiro, we met C. at the
R.R., station, from where we
went home together.

Home from the brief
vacation I found myself
still tired, but glad to be
home.

Called up Miss S.S.
and dated her up for
Friday night.

——————–

As we’ve mentioned before, a motor trip around the country in 1924 probably looked something like this:

And if Papa had been behind the wheel of the car, he looked like he did in this studio photo (if, that is, he considered it appropriate to wear a white straw boater on Labor Day):

Since Papa’s recent discussions of “C.”, a.k.a. Clara II, have led me to think the worst of her, I can only assume she cajoled Papa into tending to her equipage at the train station as she did in the city a few days earlier when she first left for Spring Valley.

Papa says he was tired when he got home, and it’s no wonder in light of how unrelaxed he felt around Clara, and not just because she did not return his romantic affection; if my speculation from yesterday was correct, she served as a manifestation of his deepest and most difficult internal struggles. His efforts to quash his attraction to Clara II continued in full force on this day, too, as evidenced by the rather unusual, slangy way he concludes this passage. To mention “S.S.” and how he “dated her up” on the heels of spending the day with Clara II seems like a deliberate, purposeful way to assert Clara II’s unimportance and point out how many other women he had to choose from.

—————

Additional Note:

As noted on August 30, Papa probably got to Spring Valley by getting on the H&M from the Hudson Tubes at Chambers Street, taking that to Jersey City, and then jumping on the Erie Railroad to Spring Valley. His return trip presumably traced this path in reverse.

Tuesday Sept 2

by


That dreamy girl from
the factory 12 floor across
the 12th floor of the factory
I am working, looked at
me again as usual, as I’ve
noticed for some time during
the noon hour when I am
on the balcony.

I’ve tried to arrange for a
private meeting, but no success
so far. On account of the noise
from around, I have been
able to hear her voice but faintly
Will see what can be done
to date her up.

Am glad to have paid
up today a debt of $25
to Cousin H.B.

——————

This is the second day in a row that Papa’s used the expression “date her up,” so I guess he must have picked it up recently, maybe from his friend Shapiro over Labor Day weekend. Could they have spent their time at the “girls camp” conspiratorially whispering to each other about which women they’d like to “date up,” among other things? Maybe that’s what passed for lewd and crude in Papa’s circle.

Meanwhile, this entry gives us our first real picture of what Papa’s workplace was like — a noisy factory where workers took their breaks on the “balcony” (could this mean a fire escape?) and occasionally cast meaningful glances at each other across the rows of machinery. The light tone of this entry makes me think Papa might be emerging a bit more from the depression he felt all summer in the wake of his father’s death. Perhaps the change of season helped, though his repayment of his debt to Herman Breindel — incurred, I’m sure, back in May when Papa needed to raise $100 for his father’s funeral expenses — must have been a load off his mind as well.

It looks like my family will always owe a debt of gratitude to Herman, who gave Papa a place to stay when he first came to America and, apparently, was always ready to help him out in times of trouble.

Wednesday Sep 3

by


Went to movies this
eve after a long absence,
as I could not stay home
all eve.

Today’s cool weather was
certainly relieving after yester-
days terrible heat, which tired
me so,

I see daily countless
beautiful girls, and I am
longing, getting older
and longing, and no
relief in sight.

—————

Matt’s Comments

Yishane, a regular reader, noted in a comment on August 10th that she had “been wondering these past few weeks whether Papa [will] ever finally be overjoyed in the diary…The year is more than half over!” And while I happen to know he won’t, I do find myself looking each day for signs of his emergence from the sadness he’s felt all year, some sign that he’s turning a corner. So, when he writes about how today’s “cool weather was certainly relieving,” the amateur psychologist in me wonders if he mentions it not just because temperatures dropped from the low 90’s to the low 70’s overnight but because he was feeling some sense of emotional relief.

Similarly, I’d like to believe his first movie outing in months signals a lightening mood, small step back into the world at large. Unfortunately, the rest of this entry points to an opposite conclusion: he still longs for romance, still longs for marriage, still longs for the next step in his own evolution. He goes to the movies not because he wants to be entertained, but because the emptiness of his apartment, the prospect of spending another night there by himself, is intolerable.

Papa wrote earlier this year of the escapism the movies afforded him, how they transported him to a “land of enchantment” where dreams ruled and reality had no place. Since then, though, the death of his father has triggered in him a struggle to leave his childhood and his childish daydreams behind and become more acquainted with reality. (He knows, for example, he must stop imagining the perfect life he might enjoy with each woman he meets only to be disappointed when he discovers their imperfections, yet he cannot keep himself from doing it.) Today’s return to the movies therefore has the bitter edge of a fall off the wagon, a reluctant return to the dreamworld that no longer serves him well.

Then again, sometimes a movie is just a movie, and here are a few that he might have seen that night.

  • Lily of the Dust with Pola Negri
  • The Roman spectacle Messalina
  • Little Robinson Crusoe with Jackie Coogan (I hope Papa didn’t see this at his first movie outing in months; it was panned by the New York Times)
  • The Iron Horse, John Ford’s depiction of the transcontinental railroad’s construction (Let’s hope Papa got to see this one — it’s described as “one of the finest of Western epics” in American Silent Film by William Everson, which I’m reading now.)
  • Youth For Sale
  • The Female, with Betty Compson as Dalla, an unconventional South African woman who marries into British society
  • The Man Who Came Back, geared, according to the Times, toward “ardent enthusiasts of lurid melodrama saturated with tears, sighs, drink and drugs.” Sounds good to me, even if the production did need “a lot of trimming.”
  • Flirting with Love
  • Empty Hands, a story of the Canadian wilderness directed by Victor Flemming
  • Fools in the Dark, a minstrel comedy centering on the misadventures of what the Times calls “a burnt cork negro.”
  • The Covered Wagon (this one’s been hanging around for months)
  • The Sea Hawk
  • Janice Meredith
  • The Thief of Bagdad (also enjoying a long run)
  • Monsieur Beaucaire
  • Secrets
  • Love and Glory
  • The Fire Patrol
  • Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall
  • Fools in the Dark
  • Love and Glory

Thursday Sept 4

by


[no entry]

—————

No entry from Papa usually means he’s unhappy with his life and feels like nothing is worth reporting. I think this is the case today; yesterday’s entry signaled a darkening mood even though he’d been on a mild upswing before the Labor Day holiday.

I would assume he stayed home and listened to the radio and read the newspaper. Here are some New York Times headlines that might have caught his eye:

Friday Sept 5

by


When Papa says nothing it is because he thinks his day was worth nothing. He goes to work, he comes home to his radio, he thinks about his father, he feels no closer to whatever should happen next than he did ten years before. He is flooded by the past, he can barely stay afloat, he is so tired from the effort he cannot lift his eyes and make for what’s ahead. He becomes a ghost in his own body, a guest so courteous he remains unseen, too polite to even mark a page. Some days I wish I understood him better; some days I wish I didn’t understand him so well.

Yet:

 

Saturday Sept 6

by


Zionist meeting at 3rd dist

Sent to Mother $5.00

—————

Matt’s Notes

The “3rd dist” is likely the the same Third District, or local chapter, of the Zionist Organization of America that threw a dance at the Parkway Restaurant back on February 21st.

This leads me to wonder once again what’s become of the Z.O.A’s troubled First District. Papa worked hard earlier in the year to resuscitate it, but he hasn’t mentioned it since he gave a membership pitch to a Zionist youth organization on February 10th. He did go to a meeting of the “three downtown districts” a little over a week ago, and he characterized the discussion as “stormy.” Had the Z.O.A. debated at that meeting whether to fold its other downtown districts into the Third?

Meanwhile, this is the first time in a while Papa has mentioned sending money to his mother. This could be because he just hasn’t written about it, but it might be because he’s been in debt for a while (he recently paid back $25 his cousin loaned him) and has only just found some spare cash to send home.

Sunday Sept 7

by


Empty

——————-

Matt’s Notes

Papa feels his lowest when he’s alone or unoccupied. I suppose he sat home on this strangely cool Sunday evening and surrounded himself with dreamy images of a life not his own: a wife near at hand, a child standing by his chair, asking him questions and trusting his answers, the room bright and warm and filled with the trappings of a life well-lived, ever changing, evolving, surprising. In this daydream he is very much like his departed father, a gentle, steady presence who has survived his days of loneliness and boredom and doubt and now wonders: Did that really happen? I cannot be so happy now when once, not long ago, I sat alone with my radio headphones and newspapers and plate and cup, surrounded by ghosts of what might never be, ghosts who seemed more alive than I, bragging ghosts who flaunted what I did not have, noisy, distracting, so brilliant in their spite I was unable to mark my diary with anything but a single word: Empty.

It really happened, but still, Papa, this was you:

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