Philadelphia Trolley Car
ANOTHER MOVE When I was a little past sixteen we moved again; this time to an area known as Wynnefield. Slowly, but not so surely, we were moving up the economic ladder. My Aunt Pearl who already lived in Wynnefield told my mother that we should reconsider moving there too because the people dress very nicely in that community. Nothing like an encouraging word. Because I wanted to graduate from Simon Gratz High School and attend the prom there with my friends, I was allowed to commute for the year and a half I had left in high school. Not a good idea. Here was my daily commute: I would take the trolley car to the Market Street Elevated train, take the El to the subway then take the subway to Broad Street where I transferred to a bus for the remainder of the trip. It is amazing that I had any strength left to study by the time I got to school. I guess my parents were letting me find out that some decisions need wiser, older heads. Between my Junior and Senior year, during the last weeks of summer vacation, my Aunt Lil asked my brother Marvin and me if we would like a job at Fox Weiss Furriers – where she worked. Every day we would work in the back office of the furrier addressing postcards to be sent to potential customers. We made $11.00 a week and they took out twenty cents for Social Security and trolley fare. By the way Social Security was a fairly new social program at the time. I was four days late going back to school because of the job but I was able to buy a skirt, a blouse and a pair of sneakers with my earnings.
HORSING AROUND Another lesson I learned the hard way had to do with horseback riding. My sister, Pearl, really enjoyed riding, she went nearly every Sunday, but although I was now twenty years old, I had never tried it. So when a boy named Jack Lits suggested that we go riding I agreed. I liked the idea but saw it more as a fashion challenge than one involving skill riding a horse. I bought jodhpurs and riding boots at Gimbel’s department store and I really looked the part. Unfortunately actual riding is different than posing as a rider. All the horses were out with other riders when we arrived at the stables. While we were waiting my nose began running and I started to have all the symptoms of a bad aller- gy attack. It must have been the hay or the horses or the combination. That wasn’t bad enough. I decided I needed a trainer to teach me to ride. With my nose running and trying to sit in the saddle without mussing my new outfit, which I was sure would never be used by me again, the trainer could hardly wait to get rid of me and I could hardly wait to go home. In the car on the way home I was lying down on the seat and really suffering. That was the end of my riding career. The jodhpurs and boots went back to Gimbel’s the next day. Another time I was listening to the radio at home and heard a story about a girl being injured falling from her horse when her scarf got in the horse’s eyes. It was my sister, Pearl! Luckily her injuries were not as serious as they seemed on the radio.
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