Manny Diaz recalls his childhood...

The following story was taken from the StoryCorps website (click HERE to listen to it!):

"We lived at 37 West 114^th Street in a five-story tenement house each story had two apartments. So there was like 10 families in that building. And that building had Italian families, had one black family, had Jewish families, had Puerto Rican families. This was during the Depression time.

There was no surplus food program in those days but somehow the army used to send in trucks now and then and dump food on the street or on the sidewalk under (?) the culvert¹. And people would come, you know, pick up apples or corn or whatever. And then the day that we all looked forward to was the day when the trucks came in and dumped grapes. Oye! Oye! The grapes are here! The grapes are here! Everybody used to run with baby carriages, with pushcarts, with pillow cases to pick up the grapes that were dumped by the US Army trucks. And then we would bring those grapes home. And this was during prohibition, mind you, and we would put the grapes in the bathtub, crush them, and then go to Woolworth’s on 116^th street where you could pick up the burlap² bag to cover the grapes, the yeast, the sugar. So we would cover this bathtub and let it sit for about a month, which is what it takes to ferment, you know? And then… Oh, you wonder what happens to people that wanna take a bath? Well, in this building there’s a kind of a mutual assistance society. Everybody helped everybody else so you just, if your bathtub is incapacitated for whatever reason, you just go to your neighbor and say: “Can I use your bathtub?” and: “Sure!”

This was, uh, I mean we produced wine in the middle of the depression and we would sell a quart of wine for 25 cents and we would give wine to our neighbors. In exchange we would get other things from them. For instance, there was an Italian seaman I think on the 3^rd floor who used to be gone for a month or so and he’d come back with a wad³ of money. Instead of just buying pork chops for his family he would buy a whole pig. And then we’d go up to the rooftop and roast that pig. And everybody ate from that building with that pig so everybody ate the pig from the Italian guy and everybody drank the wine from the Diaz family. In a sense that’s how you survive through a depression, you know, when, when everybody’s poor but nobody feels poor."

¹ A culvert is a structure that allows water to flow under a road, railroad, trail, or similar obstruction from one side to the other side. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material.

² A strong, rough fabric that is used mostly for making bags.

³ A thick roll or folded pile of paper money or papers (a large amount of money).

Questions/to do:

1) Using Google maps, find 37 West 114th Street in New York City. What is the neighbourhood called? What Borough is it in?

2) What was the Great Depression?

3) What was it like, according to Manny Diaz, living in the area?

4) Research facts and figures about the area during the Great Depression.

5) What is it like living in the neighbourhood today? You may use these links to help you:

>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/nyregion/historic-randolph-houses-in-harlem-finally-set-for-renovation.html

>http://www.nydailynews.com/news/harlem-block-crime-article-1.992813

6) Describe and comment this photo:

Harlem tenement¹ kitchen, 1930s

¹A tenement is a substandard multi-family dwelling in the urban core, usually old and occupied by the poor.

7) Describe and comment this photo:

1937 photo by Margaret Bourke-White