Later on I learned that this man had a printing shop in the old days before the crash of 1929. He owned three buildings in Manhattan and lost them. He was only able to save three floors of one of the buildings. When I first started to work for him he had 125 men working for him. That was in 1955.

Every year for Christmas he gave every working man a bonus of $300.00 plus a basket of oranges and three weeks vacation. But times began to change and the advertising business was declining. It was getting very slow at work and they were forced to let go of a few people. I worked for him until he passed away in Florida. After that I returned to work in my old job until it was time for me to retire.

Many years before this I was working in a fur factory in lower Manhattan, New York city. I was earning about $100.00 a week. I liked the work very much. It was very interesting. I worked there about two years until the factory began to decline, and a few days later when it was payday, we were advised that they weren't able to pay us until the following week, so we all waited and kept working on the job trusting them and hoping that we would be paid. One day when we went to work there was a sign on the door saying that the place went bankrupt so we weren’t getting paid. So we worked two weeks for no pay. This happened after the crash of 1929. Mostly everyone lost their jobs at that time.

Elliot Chelsea house—Some time ago I lived with my family in New York city, on Tenth Avenue and 25th street. My wife Bertha had a gold chain with a broken link so I decided to take it to the closest jewelry store. The attendant took it and while he was working on the chain I was browsing around and saw some watches. The attendant came back to me with the chain already fixed and saw me by the watches. He asked me if I saw something that I liked but first I asked him how much it would be to repair the chain and he told me that there would be no charge since it took nothing to repair it.

He then talked to me about the watch I was looking at. He fixed the wrist band to my size but I told him that I couldn't take it yet since I didn’t have enough money at the time. He told me not to worry and to keep it on and pay me when I could. He gave me the price of $15.00. Well, I went back home and in a few hours I retumed to the store with the money. He asked me, "What happened? Were you afraid you wouldn't be able to sleep tonight?" He took his money and thanked me for it. This is a true story but would never happen these days! This man didn’t even ask me for my name or address. I guess he trusted me for some reason.

PECONIC, LONG ISLAND

When I was about 40 years old my brother-in-law bought a small piece of property in the town of Peconic. It was walking distance to the beach. They decided to build a bungalow so they could spend the summers there.

Since my oldest brother was a mechanic-engineer as well as a good carpenter we all pitched in and helped with building the house. Every weekend we left early on Fridays and traveled 90 miles to Peconic and returned early on Sunday afternoon. It took us about 18 months to finish it. Then we finished the inside of the house. It was a very good, strong house. After the house was totally finished we went to Peconic to fish. The family all gathered around preparing the fish and frying them. Also we all told stories and joked around.

Since the Long Island sound was so close we went swimming then returned to the bungalow for a nice cool shower. We bought a l2 foot boat with a motor. We went for a long ride when the weather was good.

One day I decided to go fishing with my wife, Bertha, but we couldn't use our own boat, so we went to a place where they rented them. We took a 16-foot. boat. Since we weren't going too far out we didn’t take the motor. The attendant took us to where there was an abundance of fish.

We got ready with all the things we needed for fishing. At first I caught a blue fish. Bertha caught a porgy but the weather began to change. It started to rain with very strong winds. The water was very rough and our boat started moving. The wind became so strong that the anchor didn't hold anymore.