Before I Met Sandy

Farmingdale - Age 9 and 10

1939	1939	1939. Libby at Belmont Park	In 1939, we moved to Farmingdale. I don't know what happened with the stores. I think that Irving Glickstein wound up with the one in Port Washington and that the others were closed. I don't know if dad received any money or if he was just happy to walk away. I know that they had trouble paying for merchandise. They kept opening stores because wholesalers would give them extended terms every time a new store opened. With the terms, they were able to put merchandise into the old stores as well. For a time, they had 8 stores. I suspect that keeping the operation going was more trouble than it was worth. In November, 1939, dad opened the Stanley Store.
1940 Lee and dad in front of the Stanley Store, men's and boy's clothing, at 211 Main St., Farmingdale. We lived in the apartment upstairs.		The telephone number was Farmingdale 240. Just 3 digits. You pick up the phone and after the operator says, 'Number, please.', you say, '240, please'. Later, as the system was modernized, you had to say 'Farmingdale 240'. That was further improved to 'Farmingdale 2-0240' and the final upgrade was to 'Chapel 9-0240' and dial it yourself instead of having someone doing it for you. Was this really an improvement? We lived above the store in a 4-room, 1 bath apartment. The front room was large and half was our parents' bedroom and the other half was our living room. Then came the kitchen, Libby's room, the back bedroom which Lee and I shared, and the bathroom. You had to walk through Libby's room to get to the back bedroom and bath. There was a window between Libby's bedroom and ours. Probably some building code required every room to have a window or an outside door, even if the window just opened to another room. The second floor was not as deep as the ground floor, so Lee and I were able to get onto the store's roof and from there into the second floor of the building next door. That apartment remained vacant all the time we lived on Main Street, so we were able to hide our comic books there. We were not allowed to have, or read comic books, except True Comics and Classic Comics, which were okay, but not as exciting as Superman, Batman, Flash and the other superheroes. However, we managed to acquire the comics we wanted and hide them.
Every Saturday morning, we three kids cleaned the apartment before we were allowed to go the the movies in the afternoon. We'd listen to the radio as we worked, because, for one reason, it kept us from fighting. The radio (we had only one) was a big floor console in the living room, and while cleaning we'd listen to Nila Mack's "Let's Pretend" and "Grand Central Station". At home, the radio was our source of entertainment. We generally listened to only 4 stations, WEAF on NBC's red network, WJZ on NBC's blue network, WOR on Mutual, and WABC on the CBS network. After 4pm during the week there were a series of 15 minute continuing adventure stories for teens and pre-teens. Mornings and early afternoon there were variety shows and the soaps. Evenings at 7:30 was "The Lone Ranger", brought to you through the facilities of WXYZ, Detroit. The theme music, "The William Tell Overture", had been recorded for the program by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The best evening for listening was Sunday, with 'The Shadow", Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and Fred Allen. The war in Europe had started on Sept. 1, 1939. It meant absolutely nothing to me. I was aware of it in a general way, but it faded into the background when Russia invaded Finland on Nov. 30, 1939. I guess I was intrigued because little Finland was attacked by huge Russia and did not collapse as Poland did in the face of the German onslaught. Newspapers had stories about the Winter War, and newsreels showed the heroic Finns skiing against the dastardly Russians.		1940 Baba - Tillie Berger	I was in the fifth grade in the Farmingdale Public School. At the time, it was one big building on Main Street. Kindergarten and elementary school were on the south end and the high school was on the north end, with junior high and the public library in between. It was only a 3 block walk to school, and I came home for lunch everyday. I did well, except for gym, which I hated. I could never climb a rope or traverse the horizontal ladder. When teams were picked, I was one of the last to be chosen. I understood all the rules of all the games, but, somehow, I was never able to put that knowledge into practice. I liked school and did well, or maybe I did well and therefore I liked school.