A Step Up From New York’s Tenements

Nathan (Nat) D. Lobell’s Of Things That Used To Be  A Childhood On Fox Street In The Bronx In The Early Twentieth Century is a memoir concentrating on a striving South Bronx neighborhood full of  immigrants, primarily Jewish, Irish and Italian between World War I and the 1920s.

This self-published work (JXJ Publications; 2014) was released by Nathan Lobell’s son John, as a testament to a father he adored.

Marred by an unfortunate front cover that resembles a mug shot, belies the fact that this book is full of unique recollections by a cultured man, not a hoodlum.

How and when exactly this manuscript was written by Nat Lobell (1911-1995)  is not provided. But before Nat’s narrative begins, a preface by son John gives a brief overview of Nat’s life as a Columbia Law student, an F.D.R. “New Dealer,” adviser to the Securities and Exchange Commission and private attorney. Along the way, Nat also set up a paintbrush company and was himself an accomplished artist, composer and violinist.

Fox Street

Fox Street in the 1910s was just being developed. Many tenements and small homes were being built surrounded by open fields and building lots.

Nat Lobell’s father Aaron was an expert kosher butcher who had a proclivity for arguing with customers. With higher prices than his competitors and “treating his customers abominably”, Aaron Lobell’s shops would continually fail.

If the name Lobell and “butcher” sounds familiar, it is because Aaron’s brother, Noosin, and his children founded one of the priciest and most famous butcher shops on the Upper East Side that is still flourishing today.

In short chapters like “Fox Street in My Day” Nat tells of growing up in the southeast Bronx. His recollections of the now vanished four-story tenement at 744 Fox Street at the corner of 156th Street are filled with brief remembrances of people, amusements and sights.

Nat tells of his hustling to earn money, taking a variety of jobs as a youth. These short stints working in a laundry, a florist shop, selling jelly apples, jelly doughnut deliveries, and hawking sachet powder are all told in synopsis style.

Nat’s memories of neighborhood families, sights and sounds frequently strike the cord of nostalgia.

The Bronx Was A Step Up

Though Nat does not mention it, the tenements of the Bronx were generally of a much better class than the tenements in Manhattan.

The majority of the Bronx was still inhabited by people trying to make ends meet.

While the poor and struggling continue to populate New York today, the people Nat describes and their challenges are very different.

There are no drugs or drug dealers to contend with in the Bronx of the nineteen teens and twenties. And what violence there was is placid compared to today.

Unlike autobiographies of noted personalities, I usually prefer the story of ordinary persons and their recollections of childhood.

My own grandfather, slightly older than Nat, grew up close by on Kelly Street. The stories my grandfather told me were similar in nature. Earthy, unpretentious people, tight friendships and peppered with “heroes” as Nat calls the people he looked up to.

Nat tells of one day being assaulted by an Irish gang.  He was held down and his pants removed and his genitals and skin rubbed with excelsior (stuffing for furniture usually made of curled wood shavings). During the painful assault, they threatened to kick his teeth out if Nat did not get up and kneel and say, “I’m a fuckin’ sheeny and Jesus Christ is my master!”

Nat complied.

He says, “I did this and was let go. I am missing an essential ingredient of human nature. Neither then nor since did this experience generate in me any prejudice. Those kids were hateful and I still think so. But what they did produced no reverberation of anti-Catholic or anti-Irish in me.”

This incident reminded me of my grandfather’s tale of being stabbed with a pencil perforating his ear drum, in an unprovoked attack by another student while in grade school.

People And Places

The neighborhood janitors (building superintendents), milkman, ice man, coal man, back-yard musicians and their tasks are described. All have completely disappeared from the modern scene.

The foods vendors who roamed the streets, from knish, pretzel, sweet potato and flavored ices man are covered. Also profiled are the more unusual food dealers like the horseradish lady or nehit (boiled chickpeas) dealers.

There is no linear tale here.  The chapters jump around in time serving as capsules of the general period. The flavor of the time is portrayed vividly enough to overcome that criticism.

It would have helped to have some photographs or illustrations accompany the text. Besides that, maybe elaborating about his other family members and details would have made Lobell’s narrative a bit better. Both his brothers were successful and a sister is briefly mentioned. But readers who simply want to know what the Bronx was like in the early twentieth century should be satisfied with the 164 pages within.