A Laborious Labor Day--1952

I finally got my MA from Columbia's Teachers' College in June of '52, and so now with a family with two babes, it was time to go to work. I applied to many schools before graduating, and I finally settled on Cranford H.S. in New Jersey where I was hired to teach 9th grade English at a salary of $3000 a year. Not even close to my lifelong goal of making at least $100 a week. I always thought $100 a week would be the "ultimate". I'd be rich. I was wrong. Actually, I'd be poor...very poor. Well, poor may not be the right word for 2007. Destitute or homeless would be more accurate. It shows that you should be careful of what you wish for. It might turn out to be a very bad genie.

I was due to start teaching right after Labor Day, so the wife and I got the babes into the car during the summer and drove to New Jersey in order to find a place to live. We did find something we could afford in South Orange. It was an attic apartment that was at the top of a very long flight of crooked and rickety stairs. When we finally arrived up there without the benefit of oxygen, we found that the floor in the living room was somewhat tilted toward the kitchen, and that if you weren't careful, you could slip and slide all across the room into the kitchen stove. It would help if you wore golf shoes with spikes. But this was the best place we could find on our limited budget.

When the time came in September we had to hire a van to ship our furniture and other belongings from the Bronx to our new home in Jersey. And so it was on Labor Day that we left the Bronx forever. The bad news on that day was that there was a driving rainstorm for most of the day, and driving was quite hazardous. But we arrived safely and we each carried a kid up the stairs after we said a "barucha". And while I was climbing this long flight with Robin, age 2, in my arms, I kept thinking of the myth of Sisyphus, a character in Greek mythology who, because of his wicked deeds, was sentenced to perpetually roll a large boulder up a mountain peak, only to have it inevitably roll back down into a valley. And that's how long and terrifying this climb into our apartment seemed to be; and how my life seemed to be up until that moment. I vowed never to let Robin roll back down those stairs. Y'all have a Happy Labor Day.