Father Divine's Bikes

by Steve Bassett

  Scarlatti got up, paused briefly to admire himself in the rear mirror, and walked out the side door.

  How far can I trust these three coons, he thought as he walked to the black Buick parked behind the barbershop.

  Scarlatti was still trying to sort things out when he slid behind the wheel of his car, turned on the ignition and slowly idled out the alley on his way downtown.

  Rossi’s a made man and you’ve got to take his word, he thought. Let’s just hope it isn’t bullshit. Says they were real smooth in Atlanta with a barbershop bookie operation and a big bucks policy parlor. We’ll see how they fit into a Third Ward turf battle.

  Scarlatti turned onto Broadway and parked his Buick in an alley that ran along the north side of Caffé Palermo. He entered through a side door for an early dinner of scungilli over pasta, antipasto broccolini with anchovies and garlic, a nice bottle of chianti, and grappa to tamp it all down. He was not about to let his anxiety affect his appetite.

  That evening Richie waited until they were well into dinner, and his father was cutting into his second helping of meatloaf when he broke it to them. “It’s not for sure yet, but it looks real good that I’ve got a Star Beacon route. I’ll know for sure tomorrow afternoon when I see the circulation manager.”

  “That’s great news,” Andy Maxwell said as he reached out with his right hand to clap his son’s shoulder. “How the hell did you get it? From what I hear they’re hard to come by?”

  “I got lucky, I guess. Seems the top of the list just sort of dried up and I was next in line,” Richie lied.

  “You never told us you put your name in for a paper route,” Alice Maxwell said. “I’m so proud of you. Do you know when you’ll be starting? Do you know where the route is? And how big it is? Remember, you’ll have to work in your altar boy commitments and school work.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. The route is right around here. I start next week.”

  “There’s no problem that our son can’t work out,” his father said. “From what I’ve seen, bundles are dropped off real early. I’ve spotted kids rolling their paper as early as five. How you going to get around?”

  Richie paused. “I’m going to Simon’s. He’s got used bikes there. Maybe he’ll let me pay it ‘on time’ once he knows I’ve got a route.”

  “I’m impressed,” his mother said as she reached over and lightly ruffled his hair. “Seems we have a real operator under our roof.”

  “Step aside, Rockefeller, here comes Richie Maxwell,” his dad said. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that greedy old Jew going for it.” He smiled, “Now you can pay for your own haircuts.”

  At thirty-five Alice Maxwell retained the Gaelic beauty that had captivated her husband fifteen years earlier. Her maturity was the firm-fleshed kind that came with planning well and loving wisely. After she had Richie, she had looked at the girls she knew from the neighborhood and had been appalled at their lives. A house full of kids, frumpy house dresses, Tuesday novenas, no money and husbands that spent more time in the pubs than at home – the fate of a good Catholic wife. She was determined that she would not become one of them.

  As an unflagging disciple of Margaret Sanger, she was a member of Planned Parenthood. Each Sunday, she attended Mass at St. Mark’s under the black cloud of mortal sin for not following the Church’s teaching about birth control. Richie was the Maxwells’ only child. There would be no more. Her friends were horrified, but she didn’t care. They all had loads of kids. Alice wanted more out of life than diapers. On Andy’s limited salary, they’d never get ahead with more mouths to feed. It was hard enough.

  With Richie about to enter the eighth grade, they were giving serious thought to his high school. A good high school education meant he had a shot at going to college, maybe even a scholarship. They were in the Central High School District, but the school was out of the question. With all the blacks moving into the Ward, they never felt comfortable about sending him to Central. Catholic Prep was too expensive. So they set their sights on the more affordable tuitions at St. James, St. Michael, and Good Counsel, but found that since they weren’t parishioners, tuitions at all three were too steep for their budget as well.

  Without telling Andy, she went to St. Mark’s rectory for help. Father Schneider sympathized, then passed her over to his new assistant Father Nolan. The young priest heard her out, and said he would make some phone calls.

  From the start, she doubted this would go anywhere. The young priest was new in town. He probably didn’t yet understand the problem. That the city’s parish high schools were feeling the enrollment crunch as white Catholic families fled the public schools. The following week after mass, Father Nolan stopped her as she was leaving church.

  “I talked to the principals at all three schools, even put in a call across the river to St. Cecilia’s in Kearny,” he said. “I got the same story from each of them. Their classrooms are bursting and money is tight. Father McDonough at St. Cecilia’s said they could squeeze in your son, but at double the parish tuition.”

  Alice Maxwell studied the priest’s face, and was convinced that he had done his best. He had not brushed her off, and she was thankful for that. Maybe there was some fresh blood pumping at St. Mark’s.

  “Thanks for your effort, Father. I couldn’t ask for more than you’ve done.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Father Nolan said, then turned to acknowledge other exiting parishioners.

  That past August salvation came in the person of Ruth Zellman. As volunteers at the clinic, Alice and Ruth had developed a kinship of sorts. Both had a secular outlook toward their religion that they openly shared during coffee breaks. Both also agreed that there was only one public high school in Newark still worthwhile, Weequahic, out in the south part of the city. The city’s student population was exploding, and it was almost impossible to transfer from one district to another without a valid reason. Ruth supplied Alice with a real beauty.

  “From what you’ve been telling me about your son Richie,” Ruth locked eyes with Alice over the lip of her coffee cup, took a sip, leaned back and said, “learning Hebrew has always been one of his driving passions, and Weequahic will make his dream come true.”

  “Hebrew?” Alice stammered.

  “I don’t care if you and your family know only a few words of Yiddish,” Ruth said. “They’ve got to be persuaded that for your son, a world without Hebrew is no world at all.”

  “Just exactly how do I do that?” a perplexed but hopeful Alice responded, as she tingled with anticipation.

  Over three cups of clinic coffee, Alice learned that Weequahic offered four years of Hebrew with class size limited to twenty students. Four of the desks were for non-district kids, and it was Alice’s job to make sure Richie was in one of them.

  “I have a few strong contacts at the school. I’ll make some calls. Lay the groundwork and see if I can get a date for you to meet with Seth Greenberg, the department head. That’ll probably take two or three weeks. Prepare yourself—Seth is convinced he has a mandate from God.”

  Alice found that Ruth was right; Seth was a tough nut to crack, but she was confident she opened the door wide enough for Richie to jump district boundaries next fall to the best high school in Newark. But my God, Hebrew, Alice thought. She could just see the explosion that would rock the Maxwell apartment when she broke the news to the men at home.

  Two weeks later her fears were justified.

  “Richie, how much Yiddish or Hebrew do you know?” she asked in her breezy best as she set down plates of spaghetti and meatballs in front of her son and husband.

  “Hardly anything,” Richie said. “Just mentsh, putz and shnuk. Milt throws them around all the time. Why do you ask?”

  “Because it looks like you’re going to be learning a lot more.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Andy asked.

  “It looks like we found a high school for Richie, and learning Hebrew is his ticket. Weequahic High, the c
ity’s best, offers a course. I think I’ve convinced them to give Richie one of the four spots open for non-district students.”

  “Convinced them, who the hell have you been talking to?” Andy demanded. “And why the hell am I just now learning about all this?”

  “The teacher’s name is Seth Greenberg. I met with him two times, and yesterday I got a note in the mail from him saying he would recommend Richie for a spot in his class.”

  “How about me, don’t I have any say?” Richie said. “That school is loaded with kikes, and how the hell am I gonna fit in? Have you figured that out?”

  “How long have you been a Jew lover?” Andy said, his face a deep red and the veins in his temples clearly visible. “With everything now going on, you’re saying we’ve got to kiss a Jew’s ass in order to get our son into a good school. Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “Yes, you’re damn right. That’s what I’m saying. I’m not ashamed of it. You, more than anyone, know what a good education can mean. And you Richie, you’re only going to get one shot at it, and this is probably it. We’ve got a lot more to talk about, so everyone calm down. Let’s eat.”

  College was a touchy subject in the Maxwell home. Her husband had attended St. Peter’s College, a Jesuit school, for a year and half. That’s where they’d met. She was Alice Doyle then, a nineteen year old secretary in the administrative office. He’d wooed her for the first year and they got serious. He had a part time job and worked hard to finish his studies. He planned to be a teacher. Then tragedy changed everything.

  Andy’s father, Kenneth Maxwell, was shocked to death while troubleshooting faulty electrical cable in the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad tunnel under the river. It hit Andy hard. Alice went to the funeral tried to comfort his mother, Valerie. She was devastated.

  At least they didn’t have to worry about money. It had taken decades for his father to reach senior supervisor status with the railroad, and this lofty position carried with it a tidy life insurance compensation package. It was enough to pay their expenses and Andy’s college tuition. But several months after his father’s death, Andy’s mother started to go downhill. Crying all the time. Drinking. Then she got really sick. She descended into a world of delusional gloom that squeezed out reality. All she did all day was sit and stare out the window. Andy didn’t know how to help her. He called a doctor, but he didn’t help much. When Valerie had reached the point where constant care was necessary, Andy realized he couldn’t cope.

  Valerie’s sister, Agnes, and her husband, Hugo Sandifer, stepped forward. Andy had never been close to them, but they were all the family his mother had. His dad was an orphan. They offered to take her in to live with them outside the city in Monmouth County, but at a price. Andy agreed that all of his mother’s compensation package, still considered substantial in the midst of the Depression, would be signed over to the Sandifers. The furniture from the Maxwell apartment would be sold, with Andy’s aunt and uncle getting the bulk of the money. The Sandifers had given Andy $100 to find a place to live. St. Peter’s tuition was not discussed, and the school did not offer a scholarship. Andy had to drop out, his dream shattered. But Alice stuck by him and they continued dating. He found a cheap boarding house on York Street, not far from the college. She visited him there.

  He worked part time at the neighborhood market to make ends meet and tried to visit his mother as much as he could. Every time he saw her, she seemed to get worse. His aunt and uncle said she was getting the best of care, but he didn’t believe them. Later that year, the Sandifers sent word to Andy of his mother’s death, due to natural causes. They buried her in All Hallows Cemetery deep in the Pine Barrens of Ocean County, not far from Tuckerton. Alice had gone with him to her grave where he collapsed in grief. They cried in each other arms. He never spoke to his aunt and uncle again.

  Andy took a succession of day laborer jobs to pay the rent. There was a twelve-month deckhand job on a Hudson River cruise ship. The job came to an end when the company became yet another Depression casualty. Would-be river cruisers would rather spend their money putting a meal on the table than ogling the New Jersey Palisades, and the cannon at West Point.

  In January, Alice matter-of-factly told him he was about to become a father. Two months later, they were married at Jersey City’s City Hall. She wore her mother’s white lace wedding dress, simple and a bit yellowed with age. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Doyle, two married aunts, another aunt who was a nun, two unmarried uncles, and a hard-drinking stevedore cousin who couldn’t stop hiccupping and burping witnessed the ceremony. A wedding reception followed at her parents’ small frame home in Weehawken.

  It was decided that the happy couple would live with the Doyles, temporarily, of course, until he got a steady job. Alice would continue at St. Peter’s until the baby was born, then return afterwards if Andy didn’t find a job. Andy tried desperately to keep a modicum of self-respect as his confidence dwindled. Times were hard and he couldn’t find a job. He did a few turns on the docks, thanks to her cousin, but that was about all. Richie was born at the Hudson County Medical Center on August 20, 1931. Alice went back to St. Peter’s and her mother minded little Richie.

  In April 1935, the Works Progress Administration became their salvation. The WPA’s purse strings in New Jersey were controlled by Jersey City mayor Frank Hague, and he liked to make sure his local boys were first in line. The WPA didn’t pay much, but the paychecks were steady and carried with them a veneer of pride that Andy and thousands like him badly needed.

  On one of the projects, he’d overheard that Cracroft Pump & Steel out in Harrison had just gotten a government contract and was hiring. Andy got the job, and they’d moved out of her parents’ home and into an apartment across the Passaic River from Cracroft in Newark’s East Ward. Alice quit her job and stayed home with the baby. Cracroft supplied the military with badly needed turbines enabling Andy to get a 2B draft deferment for the duration.

  When the war effort dwindled down after VE Day, Cracroft began cutting back and Andy was among the skeleton crew keeping the company alive. A pink slip in his pay envelope was inevitable. With all the vets returning from the war, good jobs would be hard to come by.

  Alice and Andy Maxwell were survivors. They wanted more than that for their son. Alice was convinced that Weequahic High would be the first step in shaping a better future for him.

  After that spaghetti and meatball dinner, Richie was more confused than ever. Weequahic was a crosstown commute by bus. Where would he get the time? All around him money was scarce, and the only people he knew that had more than a buck or two in their pockets were shady characters at best. He had made three commitments that he hoped would put him on easy street. He couldn’t go back on any of them without going back on all of them, the numbers, Marsucci, and the three black bookies. He had to figure it out, and he had some time. His first Hebrew class wasn’t until next September.

  Clear, chilly autumn mornings in Newark have a sort of transcendental beauty that lifts the city out of its blighted self. The expectant warmth of the first rays of the sun cut the drabness of the city in which most of its 430,000 souls lived. The smell of autumn in the air and the rich amber color of the fallen leaves gave people a kind of renewed hope for the future. These delicate, but forlorn traces of beauty, no less magnificent for their setting, enthralled Eli Simon on his daily walk from his apartment to his business.

  This Friday morning the sparkle of weak sunlight reflected from a tenement window, glistened on a dewy branch of oak leaves. Simon paused for a moment to enjoy the sight, and then went on. Another sight along the way was less pleasant. The sunlight that caressed the oak tree also bathed a bent old man rummaging through garbage cans. His filthy fingers retrieved a rotten scrap of meat, wiped coffee grinds from it and threw it on the ground for his mangy dog to eat. The dog worked the meat to its back teeth. It moaned in pain as it chewed. All the time, the man patted the dog on the head. “Timmy, Timmy. There, Timmy, Timmy.”

 
Simon paused briefly. He’d seen horrible sights during the war in his native Germany. Poverty, hunger, dehumanization. He wanted to reach out to the man, to help somehow. The old bum spotted Simon. “What you looking at, you Kike cocksucker. Fuck off!” Words formed on his lips, shaping thoughts that in Simon’s world were better left unsaid.

  Shaking his head, Simon moved on. The walk from his four-room third-floor Lido apartment took him past block after block of the Ward’s “Black Belt.” He arrived at the store and looked up at the sign as he did each morning.

  SIMON’S

  WE BUY, SELL AND TRADE FOR JUST ABOUT ANYTHING

  His shop, a low, brown-painted wood building that had taken on an L-shape with two recent additions stood in the center of a large lot on Quitman and Waverly. The remainder of the lot was enclosed in rusty chain-link fencing. Three parallel strands of barbed wire four inches apart spanned the entire length of the fence. The yard was filled with the rotting but still usable debris of a neighborhood that itself was becoming the swollen flotsam of a city cast adrift.

  As he unlocked the metal gate and entered, he looked around at the mountains of junk he’d accumulated over his years in business in America. It was a far cry from the small, elegant art gallery he once owned on Berlin’s Pariser Platz, a short walk from the Academy of the Arts, and even closer to the Adlon Hotel, the city’s finest. His late father, David Simon, had been a professor of art history at Berlin University. His mother, Anne Loepke Simon, was an operatic voice teacher whose students were among the most gifted in all of Germany. Their music filled the family’s fourteen-room home in the fashionable Bayerisches Viertel area. He remembered the sophisticated lifestyle they lived before Hitler took control.

  His family was among the Ashkenazim who saw no need to flee Germany during the early years of the Nazi takeover. They were used to the political upheavals in Germany since the