No William, but oh those streets, they’re good for no one at night. The bodies all around, not dead, but some of them seemed barely alive. Passed out, skin and bones beneath their filthy clothes. I gave them all I had in my pockets and kept digging to see if I could find more.
Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1930
I found him tonight, in an alley off the Bowery, bleeding from his lip, a torn shirt, bleeding from there too. Some vomit down the front of him. He said he’d had work on a train and then he’d spent every cent he made, and what he didn’t spend a buddy of his had stolen from him the night before. And now here he was, bleeding in an alley. I waited with him till the ambulance came, and then I had a drink at Finny’s and then another, and then another, and I let a man walk me home and kiss me good night and touch my behind but I’d seen too much blood tonight to do any more than that.
Mazie’s Diary, May 4, 1930
Went to Tee’s church early this morning because I missed her. I sat through mass, and thought about her believing in those words. I confessed, and I did it with sincerity, and it felt good to speak some truth. Then I crossed myself in front of the shrine to see what the air felt like under my fingertips, if it changed, but it did not. The air is always the same. And I remembered I was still me.
Mazie’s Diary, July 8, 1930
Rosie’s back at her old tricks. It’s been months of it. I can’t move again. I can’t I can’t I can’t.
Oh, this block is dangerous now. Oh, that mission around the corner is bringing all the riffraff here. Oh, we should leave the city, move to Boston, move back to Coney Island, move uptown, move to Brooklyn, move where it’s safe and nobody’s hungry.
I said: Rosie, people are hungry all over this country.
She said: I know, I know! But that doesn’t mean I have to live among them.
I said: We used to live in a house with dirt on the floor. We ain’t no better than them.
She said: I don’t feel safe on this here block.
I said: You crazy old broad, you’re tougher than I am. Nothing scares you.
She said: If you were home more I’d feel safer. Especially at night.
I said: I can’t be home any more than I already am.
She said: I know where you go at night. I know where you go!
But how do I say to her that I need a drink at the end of the day? That a little hooch warms me, like I’m velvet on the inside and out. And that I need the company of men, that flirting feeds me better than her beef stew. Jesus, I need to remember what it’s like to be a woman and not just a bird in a cage. Tee’s gone now. Can I have this one thing? This one part of the day to be mine.
Mazie’s Diary, August 1, 1930
No one’s asking for change for a flop, it’s too hot. In the winter it’s all they dream of, getting warm. In the summer I’m noticing they don’t mind sleeping on the streets. It’s cooler outside than in one of those airless flops. They’ll take the dirt, they’ll take the sweat, over choking on the bad air. They’d rather pass out in the night breeze. Change for a meal, change for a drink, but no change for a home, not tonight anyway.
Mazie’s Diary, September 2, 1930
Jeanie called, said she’s been sick, hasn’t been able to dance, and crowds have been dying down. She’s in Chicago again, and that leg of hers is aching from the chill that rises off the big lake. I said I’d send her some money.
She said: That’s not why I called. I’m not begging for money.
I said: No one said you’re a beggar. I’m just offering. I have it. There doesn’t need to be a fuss about it.
She said: I don’t want you to think I can’t take care of myself.
I said: You’ve been away long enough that’s not even a question.
She said: I worry what you think of me.
I said: That’s a first.
I got sharp with her. I knew she was just playing a game with me. She’d called for money, plain and simple. I told her not to kid a kidder and she asked for a hundred and I sent it her way.
George Flicker
What happened was my father died very suddenly — this was in the summer of 1930—and it was devastating for everyone because he was such a good man, though he was not a young man, so at least we could all say, “Oh, he led a good life,” that sort of thing. Still, it was just awful, because he was so beloved. And then my mother died soon after that because she couldn’t live without him, and this was another devastation, because say what you will about my mother — and people had said plenty — she was a real force in the universe. Although no one was walking around saying, “Oh, she lived a good life,” because she never seemed particularly happy.
So then it was just me and Uncle Al in that tiny apartment. Even with less people in it, it still felt full. One day I asked Al if he thought it was haunted by my parents. I was just kidding around with him. And he said, “Of course. Where else would they go?” I don’t think I had fully recognized what was going on with Al, how bad he had gotten, because my mother was the one monitoring the situation; it was her full-time job. I’d been sent out more than a few times to pick him up if he was sleeping in a park somewhere, and I know that it made my mother feel more secure with me being back home, but I wasn’t home enough to know the complete reality. So when they passed, I found my whole life turned on its head. I had to watch my uncle Al. Now, he was lucid most days, very smart with his head in the books, always the intellectual, but also he was sleeping on the streets half the time. He was too skinny and he had awful bruises. And I just didn’t feel comfortable letting the man wither, especially after my parents had just passed. I’m a human being. We’re all human beings. We look after each other.
It was either I had to watch him, or I had to check him into a mental institution of some sort, and I wasn’t in the financial position to do that, not yet anyway. It would have had to be somewhere sort of high class, not some awful state institution. I knew Al would never survive in a place like that; I’d heard those operations were miserable, real torture chambers. No way, not for my uncle Al.
What I was doing was, I was working all day for Frederick French, who was a very famous and successful developer at the time, but of course someone you have never heard of before because you are a child. This was just before he started on Knickerbocker Village, but he had numerous other properties in development. I was at the bottom of the totem pole but that was fine, I just wanted to get my foot in the door. I didn’t want to work in ties for the rest of my life. How far can you really go with ties? So I’d work from very early in the morning till early evening, and then I’d go home, and if all was well in the world, Al’d be sitting there waiting for me. And we’d have dinner, and maybe we’d go for a stroll through the neighborhood, us bachelors, and maybe we’d have a drink. Also on nice nights we’d go to Washington Square Park so Al could play chess, and I’d smoke a cigar and watch him destroy those poor schmoes who dared to take him on. These were the best nights, and I had sort of resigned myself to this kind of life, at least as long as Al was alive.
But if all was not well with the world, I would come home, and there’d be no Al. And I’d have to hunt the streets looking for him. If I got lucky, he was down the block, or he was playing chess, or he was at the library. If I wasn’t lucky, it could take hours and hours, or I wouldn’t find him at all, and then I’d just be sleepless. It wasn’t that the cops were beating him up anymore, they’d sort of forgotten why they were even mad at him in the first place; they’d found someone new to pick on I guess. It was just that he was damaged goods. He was an easy target. Someone else could beat him up or rob him and he wouldn’t fight them off. And the streets were getting rougher. People were desperate. I lived in fear for Al.