Down Memory Lane - Part 2

New York - Manhattan, Brooklyn, Coney Island - these were the three areas where my summer of 1947 played itself out.

You may not have been around on this merry old planet in those days, so I'll give you a quick tour of the times - as it was for us teenagers.

World War II had just ended two years before. Most everyone behaved like a starved consumer, just now getting started on a long range, buying binge. Money was almost like water flowing in the streets.

Youngsters like myself had been exposed to all the war propaganda - mostly from sitting in movie houses. The war films were calculated to stir up one's patriotic blood. Kids like me went around dressed in some variation of a uniform. I wore surplus navy dungarees [what are now called blue jeans]. These were bell-bottoms. I also wore a surplus navy long sleeved blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I even wore a white navy cap. No one ever believed I was a sailor gone AWOL - I looked too young to give that impression. It was simply a matter of stating a preference had I been old enough to join the war effort.

Just a few years later, the Korean War presented itself, and it just so happened I ended up in the Army. But that is another story.

That summer, I stayed with my cousin in Brooklyn. It would be more polite to say I stayed with my aunt and uncle. But they hardly figured in my life. They had a business in Manhattan with their noses to the grindstone. My cousin, two years older than me, worked in his parent's business.

I needed to find a job. Not knowing which way to turn, I asked another of my uncles for advise. He owned a clothing manufacturing business in Manhattan. Being the oldest son, he inherited this business from his dad, my grandfather. It was a typical post-war small-time sweat factory employing mostly middle-aged black ladies who worked the dozen or so old fashioned Singer sewing machines. My uncle's sister was the clothing designer. The business had contracts with Sears and J.C. Penney. In other words, they made cheap schmatas for the working class.

My uncle was a kindly family man who loved his daughters dearly. He was short of stature with a balding head of hair that always needed trimming around the sides. He talked fast, like a racetrack gambler. He always wore a worried look on his face, having come out of the depression. He never seemed to catch on to the fact that these post war years were the beginning of boom times.

My uncle told me he had a job for me. In those days [I don't know how this works now] the clothing industry was like the book industry. Remainders were sent back to the factory. And my uncle had a lot of remainders. He showed me his storage space that was full of remainders dating back several decades. What he had on his hands were out-of-style dresses, shirts, blouses, slacks, summer wear, winter wear - you name it. Boxes of merchandise stacked to the ceiling.

"This is your job for the summer," he told me.

I gave him a questioning look. So he went on to explain his strategy. He would rent a cheap storefront on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. This avenue went for miles, a commercial street full of small shops selling everything imaginable under the sun. I would run the store.

"We'll get some plumbing pipes and you can construct racks with them to hang the schmatas on. I've got boxes full of hangers. In the morning you roll out the racks onto the sidewalk. We'll make a few shelves inside for more display. I'll get you a cheap cash register to stash the money in. I'll drive you in every morning, and pick you up at six in the afternoon. Each day, I'll collect the money you take in, and once a week I'll pay you a salary and a commission on sales."

"How much do I sell the schmatas for?"

"Sell them for whatever you like. This is all what I call fire sale merchandise. Hanging around here in this space all these years, these boxes of schmatas are a fire hazard anyway. Get rid of them all. That's your job for the summer."

Next thing I knew, my uncle borrowed one of my other uncle's trucks, and I loaded it up with boxes of schmatas. It took me several days to move the merchandise from the Manhattan warehouse to the store on Flatbush. My uncle drove the truck to the store, left me there to unload. I have no idea where he went on foot, nor what he did while he was gone. I guessed he took the subway, or a taxi back to the sweatshop in Manhattan. Later, I found out he never went back to the shop. There were places on Flatbush Avenue where businessmen hung out. To this day, I haven't a clue about what went on in these hangouts, but I can guess.

Well, it took me two weeks to get the store ready for opening day. I supplied myself with white cardboard to make signs with using garish crayon colors. I had a lot of fun playing around with the pricing. It wasn't long before I discovered that the ladies and men who came to the store weren't very concerned over price. They had money falling out of their pockets, and they assumed they were getting bargains.

I would load up one rack with a sign that read "Everything on this Rack $5.00." And the next rack standing beside it read "$3.00." I had five prices: $5.00, $4.00, $3.00, $2.00, $1.00, and 50cents. I'd stand by the cash register and watch the buyers rummage through the racks, picking out something, holding it up to the light, looking for moth holes maybe, showing the item to a friend. These people worked like beavers to find what they wanted. The cash register rang all day. I was having a ball. I really didn't know what I was doing, whether I was selling too high or too low. It didn't matter. My uncle was pleased as punch to get rid of the schmatas.

Halfway through the summer, his storeroom of old styles was half empty.

"Lower your prices," he said to me. "Slash everything to half-price!"

I felt emboldened. Next day, I put out a sign as big as I could make it with the marketing equipment I had on hand: GOING OUT OF BUSINESS - EVERY ITEM IN STORE HALF PRICE!!!

Mayhem broke loose. In two weeks, we were out of merchandise. My job was over. I dismantled the racks, and my uncle sold the pipes to a plumber friend. He had all kinds of connections. Maybe knew this guy from the place where he hung out on Flatbush.

Well, this was how I spent my days that summer of 1947. Next time, I'll tell you how I spent my nights and Sundays with my cousins and friends over in Coney Island. I was quite a hero among the crowd there, distributing schmatas to me friends - old groovy outfits. This was before the 60's when old-fashioned clothing was the thing.

Cheers for now,
Vitae