Street Singer's HeyDay

During the summer months we would be playing on Delhi Street having all kinds of kid fun when a solitary figure of a man would appear walking up the street with a guitar slung over his shoulder. As he walked he would start playing his guitar and sing the popular songs of the day including, "Martha, Rambling Rose of the Wildwood."
As he approached, windows and doors would open and people would sit on their doorsteps or just lean out on their window sills to listen. As he finished a song, they would toss coins to the street and he would sing another, then another popular song of the day.
The kids would scramble to pick up the coins and, with a smile, hand them to the Street Singer.
This would go on for 15 to 30 minutes before the street singer would wave to everyone with a smile, thanking them for the coins, and continue his walk to another side street in the neighborhood to repeat his performance.
This was a great way to bring cheer and happiness to those who heard him in those Depression years of the 1930s.
This was such a popular event that their was a popular song written about the Street Singer which led to a popular radio program of the day: "Arthur Tracy, The Street Singer."

I Chose Art Over Tabloid Journalism

When I was 12 and attending Ferguson grade school in Philadelphia, I read about a man being bitten by a dog. Well, as a novice in the newspaper industry I was bitten by this story, so I decided to write my own one-page newspaper and use the dog biting incident as my feature headline story.
I laid out the page and revised the story by headlining, "Man Bites Dog." I hand-lettered the page along with some sidebars, and admired my handiwork. A real publication masterpiece.
I presented the page to my English teacher for approval and support. My English teacher admired my work and praised my writing accomplishment.
However, without a press to print and reproduce my newspaper, I set it aside and decided on pursuing my artistic talents instead, leaving newspaper writing and publishing to an established source. In those days the Philadelphia Bulletin was one of the leading papers in our area, as their catch phrase implied, In Philadelphia nearly everybody reads the Evening Bulletin."
While in high school I reexamined the newspaper industry, as a paper carrier for the Bulletin, and later became a branch captain and finally a branch manager with the circulation department. But that, unfortunately, was the end of my short career as a newspaper man, in lieu of beginning my art studies at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, which today is the University of the Arts.

Window Ice Box a Money-Saver

You may not remember the days before the refrigerator and the ice box, when we used a window ice box. This was a time most households used a window icebox to store foods.

The window ice box was an ingenious device to preserve perishables in a galvanized tin box, fixed in or near the kitchen window. It was fixed outside the window, soyou could open the window and then the door of the box, to put food items in or out as needed. It  cost nothing to operate.

We had one at our house in Philly, and it was standard equipment in most houses. The cold weather, maintained by Mother Nature, preserved meats and other perishables, leftover foods, milk and butter and anything that might spoil at room temperature.

Of course, it was only usable during winter months and collected snow and ice around it, provided by the winter weather at no additional expense to the family.

In those days, I was delegated the job of paying our three or four dollar a month electric bills, by walking to the local Philadelphia Electric Company office several blocks from where we lived. This was a far cry from the bills we get from PECO today.

As the weather got warmer, the box was cleaned out and made ready for next year, until the refrigerator was invented and became the popular preserver of perishables.

Musical Interlude, Part 1

Have you watched those big live orchestras in concert or on television? Have you wondered where all those musicians came from, especially violin players? Well, as they say, from little acorns grow giant oaks. . .
When I was about 8 years old, a man rang the doorbell of our house on 10th Street in Philadelphia. He was looking for young boys or girls to take music lessons and I was a prime candidate.
All questions resolved, I started taking lessons with Professor Barrington on the second floor room of his house somewhere around 9th Street and Lehigh Avenue. He rehabilitated my father's old violin that he brought with him from Germany and restrung the bow with a full mane of horsehair.
Every week on Tuesdays I would walk from my house to the professor's house, paying my $2 lesson fee and wait for my class to begin. There were usually two or three other student violinists waiting and we would go upstairs to his studio and take lessons as a group.
Professor would play the lesson first, then students played, and the professor played, and the students played. The professor pasted a fingering diagram on the neck of our violins to guide us with fingering positions to play the notes in our lesson book and, with practice, we learned to play scales.
When we conquered the scales, we played tunes like "Pop Goes the Weasel," and if we took enough lessons and practiced regularly we played more difficult music.
I joined the school orchestra at Ferguson grade school and played from sixth through eighth grade. By ninth grade, I gave up the idea of playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra to concentrate on my art and drawing skills. But some of the other students continued playing in high school and may still be playing, perhaps in the Philadelphia Orchestra violin section, as "giant oaks."

Half Ball -- A Lost Sport?

One of my favorite games played and watched in many neighborhoods in Philly when I was youngster was Half Ball.
We would buy a "pimple ball," that is a hollow rubber ball, at a local general store, and cut it in half with a pen knife. Most all of us carried a small pen knife for various reasons, like playing Territories or whittling or carving scrap wood or tree branches.
The game was played on a side street, like Colona Street, or where there was a factory, like French's mustard factory, on one side of the street, which became our virtual ball field. Hitting the ball to the first floor level was a run to first base, a hit to the second floor got you to second base and so on. The roof was a home run, which was great, but our half ball would then be lost.
We used the sawed-off handle of a broom as a bat. We chose up sides, then the pitcher, standing on the opposite curb of the street, would toss the ball to the batter. Three strikes was an out, or if the ball was hit and bounced off the second story of the factory, it would be a two-bagger, unless a fielder caught it before it hit the ground which would be an out. Get the idea? It was ideal for the cityscape because you didn't need a big field in which to run -- it was all about the hitting.
We would play half-ball for hours until dinnertime, or until we ran out of half balls because they'd landed on the mustard factory roof. No, we didn't break factory windows with the half ball.  But it was just as exciting a game to hit one on the roof, or scramble to catch a triple that the wind sometimes caused to have an erratic drift on its way down. For us, it was almost as good as the real thing in a real ballpark.

The Umbrella Man

The 1930s was the era of one-man entrepreneurs like the umbrella man. Every family had two or three umbrellas in the house for use on rainy and sunny days.
These umbrellas lasted for years of service, except for some minor repairs, and were hardly ever thrown away. However, there wasn't an umbrella repair shop anywhere in the city that I recall.
The "fixer" was usually a man who walked the streets throughout the neighborhoods during the spring and summer months and he would periodically walk down our street in Philadelphia, calling out from under his open umbrella, "fix your umbrella, fix your umbrella all kinds, big or small, fix your umbrella."
Most people would recognize his sing-song voice and would come to their door with a broken umbrella as he approached.
A bundle of umbrellas and parts as well as his special tools were strapped to his back and a happy smile would cross his face. He would greet his customers, unstrap his knapsack-workshop, sit on the doorstep and fix the umbrella for 25 cents or more, depending on how much work was involved. Then he would show the customer the repaired umbrella, opening and closing it, then accept his money, repack his knapsack and be on his way with a melodic voice singing, "fix your umbrellas, big or small, fix your umbrellas."
This merchant of umbrella repairs inspired a song, "The Umbrella Man," which became a popular tune of the day.

My Future Was Sketchy From the Beginning

My fame as a Philadelphia artist came when I was about 10 years old.
At that time I was a regular attendee at the Viola Theater located on Germantown Avenue every Saturday during the summer. It cost 10 cents for a ticket to the show, which lasted about three hours and included the main feature, a serial episode, like "Flash Gordon in the 25th Century," a comedy short like "Laurel and Hardy," and three or four cartoons -- plus coming attractions.
At some point in the middle of these films, the house lights would come up and a guest artist (cartoonist) would come on stage and talk about a famous cartoon character while he did a sketch of the character on a large flip chart pad.
The artist then gave the kids in the audience an assignment to bring a drawing with them the following Saturday. He would judge the drawings and would award a prize for the best drawing. He would hold up several drawings for audience approval and award a prize of a pound-box of Whitman's Assorted Chocolates to the winner. This went on for a whole month of Saturdays and as luck and fortune prevailed, Herb Mandel was the winner every Saturday.
On the final Saturday award ceremony, the artist complimented me on my drawing skills and allowed me to speak to the audience on his microphone about my ambitions to be an artist when I became an adult. Of course, all my friends and schoolmates congratulated me and I would share my winnings with them.