A few days passed...with no place to go...and no car...and not knowing the neighborhood. But in a day or two we started walking around the block and then went a little further getting used to our new home.

One day I started walking with my oldest brother, going west on 104th Street where we were living and when we got to 5th Avenue, we walked north and saw the lake on 110th Street for the first time. We sat on a bench and stayed there and took a good rest. There were boats in the lake which they rented. We started to go back home the same way we came. Well, we already had a story to tell the rest of the family.

Below the apartment where we lived was a hat store. The owner started talking to me when he saw me standing on the sidewalk, asking me if I was one of the people that just moved upstairs. I answered him the best I could; he was a Jewish man about 35 years old. From then on I visited him when he was in the store. Three days later he asked me if I would like to do him a favor when I got up in the morning. He told me he would give me a pole which had a key at the end of it. He showed me how to do it and told me there was an awning on top of the hat store window and he wanted me to roll it down so the sun wouldn’t damage the hats. I told him that I would do it for him which I did for about a week. I figured he had someone already doing it for him, but for some reason he had to go someplace and he needed someone to take his place. After that week, he gave me a beautiful felt hat, since he wanted to give me something for doing him the favor. I appreciated it very much.

Some weeks passed by and I continued visiting this hat store owner, since I was living in the same building. I can’t understand why he started to trust me so much. A month passed when he came to my apartment asking me for another favor. He asked me to go to the bank and deposit some money for him. "All you have to do is to give it to the cashier and wait for the papers." Well, I did that for him. I brought the papers back to him and he thanked me for that. I imagine he trusted me because he already knew me since I lived in his building. All I know is that he was a very good man who trusted me; knowing me for such a short time. We became good friends. As for the felt hat he gave me, I used it every time I went to Central Park with my friends.

We came to this country with the idea of starting a new life, but we came here at the wrong time because the crash was going on. It started in the year 1929 and we came to New York in the year 1930, so already things were going very badly and it was very hard trying to find a job of any kind. There were many people around the city wandering around, doing nothing, but I did find a job in a laundry store, helping a man pick up bundles of dirty clothes going from one apartment to another in a wagon pulled by two horses. Many times we had to walk up five floors. How much did I earn doing that? Don’t even ask! While we were living on Lexington Avenue my sister, Esther, was lucky enough to find a job in a five and ten cents store. She held the job for two years until she found a better one. I continued working in factories, restaurants and other places but every time I found any job it cost me 35 cents from the employment agencies. By that time there was a big racket going on. For example, I paid them 35 cents. They gave me a job that lasted three weeks, then I was out of a job and they gave it to someone else.

With all that, I considered myself very lucky to be working. When I was living in the Bronx, some fellow I knew was living in the same building I was. He had a 1929 ford coupe with a rumble seat. He offered it to me for $25.00. I didn’t know how to drive a car in those days but he taught me so I could buy it from him. The car was very good. I had it for a long time. Sometime later, I wanted to take my friend, who was blind, to the docks so he could say goodbye to someone he knew.