Friday - October 16, 2009

PART ONE … A TRUE TALE OF TWO FAMILIES.

PART ONE

A FAMILY COINCIDENCE or WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THIS?

A TRUE TALE OF TWO FAMILIES

I have a true story to tell.  I have wanted to relate this for a very long time.  One of my problems was being lazy, which I read in today’s paper is actually an illness, so may I expect get well cards?  A problem for me was, how do I start?  This isn’t so much the story of two families as it is the really very weird coincidence of the fortunes of both, as you will see.  Notice I didn’t say I did not know where to start but how to start.  This is one of those stories that ask:
What Are The Odds Of This Actually Happening?
I guess a bit of history of my family and my wife’s family has to be the start point.  Because of the skullduggery and how things happened, it can’t be as short as I’d like it to be.  I can trace my family way back to at least 1900 with my grandparents.
No Plymouth Rock stuff in my background. 

My grandparents came to America around 1903 or 1906.  They came from Europe. My grandmother’s family first came to England where at least one of her siblings was born, in London.  And from England on to the USA.  But even before that ……

I understand my great grandfather was a blacksmith and a seriously addicted gambler.  In those far off days infant mortality was high, and his daughter of only a few weeks died.  My great grandmother gave him just enough money to buy a coffin.  You already guessed no doubt that he gambled away the money she gave him.

I’m sorry now that I have no photos to share, and there were a few.  I just never got any, and honestly I wasn’t smart enough to ask.

A great uncle and the oldest was sent on to America even before 1900.
The first to leave the old country, he was meant to be a beacon for those who would follow him.  The family scrimped and saved and pooled their money and the women weren’t exempted from these donations to send him to America, with the idea of him succeeding in his field which was architecture.
But it wasn’t to be.

He actually went on to become a successful and well connected architect and engineer.  But he ended up divorcing his own family. You might say with some justification, that he was very much ashamed of his peasant Jewish family from Eastern Europe and wanted nothing to do with that reminder of his background.  So he divorced his family.
He married into a wealthy Washington D.C. family, changed his name which I suspect he did even earlier, and never did send any money home to those waiting at home.
There was no further contact with him and so that family link has been lost. 

My wife on the other hand can trace her family in England as far back as the middle 1600’s and possibly before.  There are in existence and in the possession of a cousin, portraits in miniature of some ancestors in the 1600’s.  Not copies friends. The originals.

She has two cousins in different parts of the world who have done very serious and quite extensive research on the family, and only age and infirmity have slowed them down. 

I’m not clear on exactly what my grandfather did at the beginning of his career in the USA.  I seem to recall stories about selling hats. But I do understand that until the crash of 1929, he had become a very rich citizen indeed.  That’s very with a capital ‘V’ which was all lost with a capital ‘L’ and a capital ‘C’ as in capital gone bye-bye we are broke! 

Before the crash he and my grandmother would attend the opera at the famed Metropolitan Opera House in N.Y., and they had the clothes to go with the lifestyle.  Not only that, but they owned season tickets.  Swank stuff I’m told and he had this big fancy car which was always breaking down.  I think it was a Hudson or a Packard.  Anyway, he said he was happy when someone stole it.  He simply bought another car of another make.  My grandfather didn’t have a chauffeur.

Like most upper middle class or wealthy families of that period, they had live in help. Nothing like Upstairs/Downstairs but help nonetheless.  Except in the kitchen.  Grandma wouldn’t have anyone in her kitchen doing her job.  The kitchen help she did accept came from her children. I doubt any of em had a choice in the matter when it came to cleaning up.  Poor kids. No civil, human or children’s rights when mom said wash and dry.

Then the depression came along and put an end to that sort of lifestyle. Forever.

Hank Williams Jr. isn’t the only one who has carried on a “Family Tradition.”
My grandfather made and lost two fortunes in his lifetime.
I followed right along in his footsteps losing as many as well.  His second fortune was literally stolen from him.  I can’t say my first was stolen exactly, but we (wife and I) were cheated out of the first.  Actually, I may have lost three but don’t remember too well.  I had the knack to make it but not to hold it.  And I must add here, I’m NOT a gambler. 

At some point in time grandfather opened a fabric and drapery store which eventually became quite well known And it grew after WW2. Oh boy, did it grow.

Meanwhile, over in England my wife’s family on her dad’s side were quite successful also.  Her granddad started out as a floor walker in a major drapery store and eventually ended up owning his own fabric and drapery business.  And it grew. And it grew again.
Her grandfather did have a chauffeur.

Even that isn’t the coincidence I’m writing about. Although lets face it, what are the odds of two strangers from different countries and cultures getting together and suddenly finding fabrics in common?  But as you know, I am quite fond of saying “$tay £Tuned.” There’s always more.

During the late 30’s and throughout WW2, my mother worked with my grandfather in their store, building the business.  But it wasn’t till the end of the war when her brother, my uncle, returned and joined the business. Then it started to grow.
My uncle trained as an accountant and before the war graduated from college near the top of his class.  During the war, he became a navigator on a Liberator bomber, getting the Purple Heart and a Distinguished Flying Cross with three Oak Leaf Clusters.  I never asked what those clusters meant.

His plane was hit and crash landed in an English farm field.  He was wounded and very lucky not to lose a hand.  They were hit by flak and shrapnel cut right through a fur lined gloved hand. Inside that glove was wiring which at the altitudes they flew, was the heating that kept the hands from freezing. He still carries the scar on his hand and I guess he was lucky.  Many never made it back.  Or came back minus body parts.

So back to civilian life he came and with him ideas to help grow and expand the business.  That’s when we got seriously into things like custom made drapes and slipcovers and the installation of same.

Our original store was a small one, wood floors and old wooden counters. We were in between two other stores.
On one side there was a men’s hat store, on the other a ladies shop of some kind. I can’t recall.  When those stores went out of business, or maybe he bought em out, I don’t really know.  He got the lease on them and proceeded to knock thru the walls on both sides to enlarge our store. And gosh was it large after that.

I can’t remember the year my grandfather died, but when he did, 51% of the business went to my uncle. 49% to my mom.  In a way, it may be better that it worked out that way.  My mom was a very hard worker, she knew her subject well, which was cloth of almost every type.  But she was quite satisfied to remain as they were and not expand anymore. Not so my uncle and so a second but very upscale store was opened .
Right on the pricey main street called, Main St.  Woo-woo folks. Nice fixtures and thick carpet on the floor. 

Gas was fifty cents or less a gal. Of course, I wasn’t even making a dollar an hour.  And I HATED our business. I was sooooooooo booooored you have no idea.  I always hated working in stores being stuck in one place doing the same boring thing and doing inventory.

The only thing I enjoyed about my employment was learning displays and how to present merchandise. I even started making curtains out of some of our better line of towels, using nothing but café rings and wash cloths as tie backs. NO SEWING involved. And ppl started buying towels for small windows in bathrooms and kitchens, cause they could see what they’d look like as curtains.  Eventually all our discount outlets also sold rugs and carpets.
Unfortunately …..stores have inventory.

Oh God how I hated inventory especially when I had to count the patterns.
Woman who still sew their clothes because they actually enjoy the pastime, will recognize names like McCalls, Vogue and Simplicity. We carried all three brands.  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds! And they always HAD to be counted.

Worse then patterns were the endless numbers of plastic doilies of different styles and size.

Do you know what a pain it is to inventory material that’s sold off the bolts by the yard?  Or count carpets of different size and price?
Then we started carrying a line of ready made curtains. Which of course required different fixtures and sales counters.  And then … at the very beginning of the discount department store movement, my uncle took us into a place that opened at the scruffy end of the city, a huge warehouse like place with no fancy anything and light fixtures that hung from the ceiling with chains.  A place called Topps.  We leased space in that store whose motto was spelled out in HUGE red letters painted all the way across the back wall of the store.  It read as follows.

PROFITS IN PENNIES

In the very beginning, businesses like ours would lease space in those discount stores.  Eventually we owned the domestic departments in Zayre’s,Zody’s, some but not all K-Mart stores and hundreds of others whose names I cannot recall. All major outlets however. In the 60’s and all thru the 70’s almost all the departments in those discount stores weren’t actually owned by the store whose name appeared on the front of the building.  I think but can’t be certain now, that except for Alaska and Hawaii, we had an outlet and usually more then one, in every state in the USA. We had outlets in most major cities. Reading this, you’d think we were rolling in high cotton.  Nope. You’d be wrong. Almost every dime went right back into the business to build either free standing units (totally owned by us and specializing in domestics) or else leasing more space in an ever growing discount dept. store field. Well, that was the plan but like all good plans that go astray ….

Let us call this, fortune number one. Okay, not mine of course. Not yet anyway. That was in the future. And to be lost there as well.  But while it was spendable, how sweet it was.

In England the folks in that proud country still had very severe rationing long after the war was over. Even clothes were rationed.  As Americans and just as proud, we had some rationing as well. But if you had to compare it to what the Brits had to go thru, you wouldn’t really call it rationing at all.  In fact, to do so might be embarrassing. 

England had rationing of almost everything all thru the 40’s and I don’t think it ended till 1951 or maybe two.  You can check. In any event, it didn’t matter too much cause hardly anybody had any money anyway.  But things were turning around and some got lucky. My wife’s father should have been one of them.

The wife’s dad didn’t much like the family business I guess, and had an argument with his father and they didn’t speak for ten years.
There were 8 kids in her dads family. Four boys and four girls. her dad was the oldest boy.  He married her mother in 1943, during the war.  It was her mom who finally brought about a reconciliation of sorts.

My wife’s fortune in the making part one.

FOUND and LOST

The wife’s story also starts with her grandfather who was a draper who started as a floor walker as already mentioned.  A floor walker in those days long gone, was an important person.  He represented the company to the public coming through the door and there is NO comparison to today’s Wal-Mart greeters.  They hired the better looking young and “charming” men in those days.

The wife’s granddad was born in 1870, and was a true Victorian who aspired to become a gentleman. ( He married a lady whose name was Farmer and, believe it or not, her family was in farming as far back as the late 1500’s and remained farmers into modern times.)

He became a very successful entrepreneur branching out into far more businesses then did my own grandfather.  For example, he owned a warehouse on the docks in Southampton, which he leased out to shipping interests in a day when that city was a major industrial shipping port.

Most merchants were not wealthy enough to own their own ships. Instead, they sold wool and cloth to the visiting ships of the Italians, French and Spaniards, whose countrymen paid a high price for good quality English wool. The wool was weighed in the Weigh House and then stored in The Wool House. A huge warehouse with a massive timber roof.

Originally called The Wool House and built around 1450, the building survives to this day as a museum.

Southampton docks today are still at work but host mostly cruise ships.
During WW2 the Germans heavily bombed Southampton docks and the city suffered much damage as well.

My wife’s grandfather was a part owner in a major store which was one of several that were in the chain.  The city of Southampton was ordered to be totally destroyed by Hitler.  It would take me another page to write out all the bomb tonnage and destruction that visited this city.  One thing I can tell you.
The fireball on one occasion could be clearly seen in France.

Stay Tuned … There’s more as soon as I can finish it. And I’m in a hurry to do so.
This is being done in Word 2000. Cause I can’t figure out publisher.
JayD

THIS WILL CONCLUDE TOMORROW ....  If you’ve read this far, much thanks for your patience.
I’m gone for the night.  Been a very long day that started at 3:30am.  Yeah. Insomnia.
Cheers ...

Posted by peiper     on 10/16/2009 at 01:55 PM   
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