The following story was taken from the StoryCorps website (click HERE to listen to it!):
"We lived at 37 West 114th 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 116th
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 3rd 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:
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:
