Andy Zahn Remembers the War Years (Part 2)

"The Perils of Pauline" was Saturday matinee movie fare.

“The Perils of Pauline” was Saturday matinee movie fare.

By ANDY ZAHN

September 15, 2014

A couple hundred area kids went to the Liberty Theater on Springfield Avenue Saturday afternoons to see a war movie, a serial to see if Pauline could undo the ropes and get up before the train got to her and a crime or spy movie. Three or more times each Saturday there was a flash of light as another kid came through the exit door to see the movie, which cost about 12 cents, for free.

The spies were always a German couple and the man wore a white suit with a straw Panama hat. He also drove a Lincoln Zypher car. In my friend’s house in the attic apartment there was exactly such a couple. We all knew they were spies.

One day the FBI was picking up radio signals and put direction finders on the signals. The waves crossed at my friend’s house and the FBI tore up the apartment, finding a trasmitter. The two were arrested and never seen again! In a real war agents are not tried in civil court and the penalty is death. Our agents know this as the enemy used to also know.

Springfield Avenue is the main street through Irvington, NJ, and had trolleys going from Springfield through Millburn, Maplewood, Irvington, and downtown Newark. People came from miles to go to Olympic Park with rides, a huge swimming pool, and a merry-go-round now at Disney World in Orlando. There could be a story about the park, now gone, there was so much. There were stores all along the Avenue and we saw the town install parking meters. Bamberger’s had a clock on the sidewalk and everyone used to say “Meet me at Bamberger’s clock.” After the trolleys they had buses with trolly poles that ran on electricity or their regular motor. Six days a week the Avenue was a mass of activity and on Sunday it was deserted as in the song “A Sunday Morning Sidewalk.”

CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE

In the neighborhoods the adults watched out for the kids. The older boys were especially watchful. Now the big kids were in service. Artie and Willie who were brothers. Quinn, Cliff Sacks who was a paratrooper. Hilmer in the Air Corps. I picked up the local paper and on page one Bobby McDonough had been killed in a training accident at Pensacola learning to be Navy pilot. I felt pins go through my whole body. His parents now displayed a gold star in their window. We had a silver star for my dad. My cousin’s husband’s family had 4 silver stars.

I don’t know why but there were very few girls in the neighborhood — or maybe the parents just kept them locked away!

At school we were boys, all boys, and we were devils. Our desks had inkwells and we wrote with black wooden pens that you put a pen point into. Dip it in the well and get the right amount of ink on the point and be good for a few words. Too much ink and you had a glob on your paper. I’m a lefty and I had to keep my wrist up and to the left so it wouldn’t go through the wet ink. We had blotters and we southpaws had to use them often.

Now, what would you so if the girl sitting in front of you had pigtails and you had an ink well handy? You would do what we did and don’t say you wouldn’t — you dipped her hair in the ink.

White mice were the rage and often a boy, myself included, would have a mouse in his shirt pocket. With boys anything is possible. Perhaps a garden snake. The girls of course didn’t like any of this.

This was the Great Depression and we had few toys. Christmas meant hats, gloves, shirts, knickers, shoes, or better yet boots with a pen knife in a side pocket. Parents would not let boys stay in the house unless it was raining. You went out and you stayed out until meal time. There were no fat kids. We made our fun. No one was “bored.” We hiked and might wall climb. We climbed trees and some fell and got hurt. We wrestled. We played “king of the mountain” and just plain rough house. Tag. Hide and seek. Cops and robbers with our finger as our gun. Cowboys and Indians with homemade bows and arrows. Baseball and football out in the street. We walked to school, home for lunch and back to school. Lots of fresh air and exercise.

There was a foundry in town where they made the casings for hand grenades. It had a chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire at the top. Signs said “U.S. Government No Trespassing.” You can’t keep boys out. We picked up rejected grenades and went to school with them. No fuse and no explosive charge. Entirely safe but can you imagine today? Just point your empty finger at a classmate and you are history!

TO BE CONTINUED

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5 Responses to “Andy Zahn Remembers the War Years (Part 2)”

  1. Tony Sacco on September 15th, 2014 12:44 am

    Another great bit of gone-by history Mr. Zahn, thanks.

    In 1937 I was playing punch ball in Floyd Street Brooklyn N.Y.
    Something blocked the sun I looked up and there was this gigantic
    zeppelin passing overhead. It took forever to pass from beginning to end before the sun shined again.
    That evening a news barker outside on Tompkins Ave shouted “the Hindenburg German Zeppelin explodes in New Jersey. My father said”here’s two cents go down and buy the paper.”

    The war was on and stepmother told me to get a job. There was a factory near Nostrand Ave. All the windows were covered with steel and the one door had no handle. I knocked, bruising my knuckles but no one answered, so I left. A few weeks later on top of that same building were twin 40 caliber anti aircraft guns being trained by the Army. I later found out it was the factory making the “northern Bomb Sights” for our bombers.

    We were given ration stamps, stepmother came home and said “we’re having meat tonight.” She opened the neatly wrapped meat from the butcher, and said in her native Porto Rican language “that SOB sold me Horse meat.” The next day she came home with the real stuff.

    I was lucky I was not yet seventeen and had most of the girls to myself, spin the bottle with three girls. On Coney Island I had a different girl every time riding through the ‘Tunnel Of Love’ — I was now the Casanova of the neighborhood.

    more to follow

  2. Andy Zahn on September 15th, 2014 8:42 am

    Thanks Mr. Sacco for another great story and by the way thank you for your service! I well remember the Hindenberg and from time to time see the disaster on TV. We lived in the area of Lakehurst Naval Air Station and as recently as in the early 1960’s saw BLIMPS flying over our house, but rarely. My family has ties to the air station with one grand daughter attending the NJ School for the Performing Arts in the huge air ship hanger and one son plowing snow on the base in winter. During the war the BLIMPS were constantly on patrol up and down the coast looking for submerged subs. Navy fighters also flew along the coast and the pilots were enjoying all the beautiful girls on the beach. Many sport fishing boats were now painted battleship grey and were while fishing also looking for U-Boats and spies in rubber boats. My father was in the North Atlantic Theater during the war and while he was in the navy the Theater Commander was a Coast Guard admiral. Dad was in the admiral’s office and the admiral had his intercom turned on when dad remarked that he was going to see the Holligan Navy admiral. The admiral had dad repeat it and then had a good natured laugh.

  3. Kearn Schemm on September 15th, 2014 9:02 am

    Andy, thanks for the Irvington memories. Here are a few of mine.
    Montgomery Hall in Irvington was a great German-American center, before and after the war. The Bayrische Volksbuehne had their plays there and most of the soccer clubs met there too. Great open sandwiches.
    I had my first law office at the corner of Springfield Ave and Clinton Ave. One of my clients was Max Schmeling’s aunt, Irma Fuchs. I still have a clothes tree she gave me when she went into the Fritz Reuter Altenheim in Union City. Max hung his coat and hat on it while visiting his aunt in Irvington the night after he won the Heavyweight Championship.
    The Turnverein had a big hall in Irvington too.
    Irvington is now in sad shape, my son (who still lives in Jersey) tells me that it is more dangerous than Newark now.

  4. Tony Sacco on September 15th, 2014 9:18 am

    A few months later that world of paradise came to an end:

    I joined the Navy
    To see the sea,
    And what did I see
    I saw the sea.

  5. Andy Zahn on September 15th, 2014 10:46 am

    Yes, it is so sad about what was a wonderful town and now it is extremely dangerous. Every time I returned to Irvington in the 50’s & 60’s it seemed seedier but still was a good place. Olympic Park was magnificant with the food stands, the picnic tables, the games of chance, the great free band (as a kid I thought it was Sousa’s band), the free circus, all the rides & fun house & the huge swimming pool with rafts and diving boards. Springfield & Clinton, the heart of Irvington Center. Lots of great German things before and after the war. The Bund was involved in such as the Swabishier Alb and I went to a Swabisher Singer Bund in the 50’s with fantastic music. Heller’s for the BEST cold cuts like bockwurst and Freidrich’s was very good. I was a butcher boy for Paul Grimm at age 12 and he sold Freidrich’s cold cuts. At noon I could have whatever I wanted for lunch but always chose Freidrich’s liverwurst. When it came to sauerbratten and kartoffelglace my Irish mother could do better than any German restaurant. Dad made the sauerbratten.
    My wife is a French Canadian and she joined the RCAF to see the world. They stationed her two blocks from her home in Montreal! She did serve in Ontario but when her enlistment was up she joined the USAF and wound up at McCord AFB where we met and married.