the pipe—the trap, and he said not to pour grease down it anymore.”
The kitchen manager looked relieved. “We’re so lucky to have him do this, it’s really an honor, I can’t thank him enough. Will you please tell him that? The only way we can get a plumber these days is if there’s a pipe broken open and flooding Forty Fourth Street and threatening to drown somebody. ‘Use a plunger,’ is what they tell us, ‘there’s a war on.’ The sink’s been full of dirty water for two days, we’ve had to bail it out with a bucket.”
“Yes I know.” Jenny tried not to think about the sink’s previous condition; her knees were beginning to hurt from kneeling on the kitchen’s linoleum. But George Kanarakis was right: Moishe Levine, star of New York’s Lower East Side Yiddish Art Theater, also known as Martin Levin when he played Broadway, had been a godsend. He was not only an experienced, if unlicensed, handyman/plumber, he was also donating his invaluable time to the canteen.
“William Hammerstein,” he was saying from under the sink, “the son of the great Oscar Hammerstein the First, was a brilliant, conservative man, he way he dressed you couldn’t tell him from a banker. Each day he got on the Broadway streetcar to ride downtown to Longacre Square, which is now Times Square, to manage the Victoria, the largest and best vaudeville theatre in the entire country. But he had a hard time with the old man, his father. Oscar Hammerstein took the profits his sons made, Arthur and William, from the Hammerstein theaters and used it for schemes that usually lost money. Big money, like trying to put the Metropolitan Opera out of business by building a bigger opera house a few blocks away. Such nonsense. However, Mr. Oscar the First did build the Harlem Opera House where the uptown Jewish crowd was living at that time, prior to the First World War, which is now called the Apollo Theater. The old man was very flamboyant, he always wore this elegant top hat even inside, he never took it off, and sometimes he had such a temper he engaged in fist fights with people. The newspapers loved him, they were always doing caricatures of him, especially when he got into some disaster with his theater properties. It was very trying for William and Arthur, but Mr. Oscar was a first class promoter, he brought Nellie Melba to the United States very profitably, and other famous opera and stage stars. He was a giant in the theater of New York City at that time.”
Jenny took the wrench that he handed out to her. “Oscar Hammerstein was Mr. Hammerstein’s grandfather?”
Evidently he couldn’t hear her, for he went on, “What a world it was to be raised in, then! My father, just off the boat from Minsk, was playing a fiddle for nickles and dimes on a street corner in the Bowery, but these uptown Jews who were already second generation in New York City were the bourgeoisie, the Jewish middleclass, and making money. William Rodgers had a job as a customs inspector on the docks to work his way through medical school, living on his wife’s family, the Levys, until he finished. Can you imagine this, working a job on the New York City docks to support a family, living with your in-laws and going to medical school all at the same time? But that is the way they were back then. Believe me, in those days the only people who were working as hard as the Jews were the Italians. Eventually William Rodgers became a very wealthy doctor, and provided for his family not only with money but with a love for the theater, plus a beautiful, refined home with a piano. It was that piano on which Richard Rodgers learned to play as a child, and compose music.”
George, the kitchen manager, left them to open the back door for the afternoon milk delivery. Moishe Levine handed out the caulking can to Jenny, who wiped it off and put it back in the tool box.
“Of course in those days,” he continued in his deep baritone, “if you were prosperous you sent
The kitchen manager looked relieved. “We’re so lucky to have him do this, it’s really an honor, I can’t thank him enough. Will you please tell him that? The only way we can get a plumber these days is if there’s a pipe broken open and flooding Forty Fourth Street and threatening to drown somebody. ‘Use a plunger,’ is what they tell us, ‘there’s a war on.’ The sink’s been full of dirty water for two days, we’ve had to bail it out with a bucket.”
“Yes I know.” Jenny tried not to think about the sink’s previous condition; her knees were beginning to hurt from kneeling on the kitchen’s linoleum. But George Kanarakis was right: Moishe Levine, star of New York’s Lower East Side Yiddish Art Theater, also known as Martin Levin when he played Broadway, had been a godsend. He was not only an experienced, if unlicensed, handyman/plumber, he was also donating his invaluable time to the canteen.
“William Hammerstein,” he was saying from under the sink, “the son of the great Oscar Hammerstein the First, was a brilliant, conservative man, he way he dressed you couldn’t tell him from a banker. Each day he got on the Broadway streetcar to ride downtown to Longacre Square, which is now Times Square, to manage the Victoria, the largest and best vaudeville theatre in the entire country. But he had a hard time with the old man, his father. Oscar Hammerstein took the profits his sons made, Arthur and William, from the Hammerstein theaters and used it for schemes that usually lost money. Big money, like trying to put the Metropolitan Opera out of business by building a bigger opera house a few blocks away. Such nonsense. However, Mr. Oscar the First did build the Harlem Opera House where the uptown Jewish crowd was living at that time, prior to the First World War, which is now called the Apollo Theater. The old man was very flamboyant, he always wore this elegant top hat even inside, he never took it off, and sometimes he had such a temper he engaged in fist fights with people. The newspapers loved him, they were always doing caricatures of him, especially when he got into some disaster with his theater properties. It was very trying for William and Arthur, but Mr. Oscar was a first class promoter, he brought Nellie Melba to the United States very profitably, and other famous opera and stage stars. He was a giant in the theater of New York City at that time.”
Jenny took the wrench that he handed out to her. “Oscar Hammerstein was Mr. Hammerstein’s grandfather?”
Evidently he couldn’t hear her, for he went on, “What a world it was to be raised in, then! My father, just off the boat from Minsk, was playing a fiddle for nickles and dimes on a street corner in the Bowery, but these uptown Jews who were already second generation in New York City were the bourgeoisie, the Jewish middleclass, and making money. William Rodgers had a job as a customs inspector on the docks to work his way through medical school, living on his wife’s family, the Levys, until he finished. Can you imagine this, working a job on the New York City docks to support a family, living with your in-laws and going to medical school all at the same time? But that is the way they were back then. Believe me, in those days the only people who were working as hard as the Jews were the Italians. Eventually William Rodgers became a very wealthy doctor, and provided for his family not only with money but with a love for the theater, plus a beautiful, refined home with a piano. It was that piano on which Richard Rodgers learned to play as a child, and compose music.”
George, the kitchen manager, left them to open the back door for the afternoon milk delivery. Moishe Levine handed out the caulking can to Jenny, who wiped it off and put it back in the tool box.
“Of course in those days,” he continued in his deep baritone, “if you were prosperous you sent
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