government gave Morris’s bakery a contract to augment overburdened facilities. The output of the bakery tripled and quadrupled but in doing so it lost most of its Jewish identity. The bread and cakes had come from old family recipes and now they had to conform to government specifications. After the war Morris got some of the old flavor back. He was so popular all over Norfolk that he began to ship out to grocery stores, some in all gentile neighborhoods.
Abraham Cady was born in 1920. Although it was a prosperous family it was difficult to tear away from the little row house with the white porch on Holt Street in which all the children were born.
The Jewish section started in the one hundred block of Church Street at St. Mary’s Church and ran for seven blocks to where the Booker T. Pharmacy started the Negro ghetto. The streets were lined with little shops out of the old country and the children were to remember the smells and sounds of it all their lives. Heated discussion in Yiddish where the two newspapers, the Freiheit and New York Vorwärts vied for opinion. There was the marvelous odor of leather from Cousin Herschel’s shoe repair shop and the pungent aroma of the cellar of the “pickle” man, where you could have a choice of sixty different kinds of pickles and pickled onions from briny old vats. They cost a penny each, two cents for an extra.
In the back yard behind Finkelstein’s Prime and Fancy Kosher meats the kids liked to watch the shochet kill chickens for a nickel each to conform to religious requirements.
There was endless barter at the vegetable stalls and at Max Lipshitz’s Super Stupendous Clothing Mart; Max himself, measuring tape around his neck, pulled potential customers off the street and just a little ways down Sol’s Pawn Shop held a junk yard of tragedy, mostly from colored customers.
Much of what Morris Cady earned went either to the families in the old country or to Palestine. Aside from the black Essex parked before the house there was little to testify to their nominal wealth. Morris did not play the stock market so when the crash came he had enough cash to buy out a couple of sinking bakeries at thirty cents on the dollar.
Despite their simplicity, their affluence caught up with them and after a year of discussion they bought a big shingled ten room house on an acre of land at Gosnold and New Hampshire Streets with a view to the estuary. A few Jewish families, upper-middle class merchants and doctors, had penetrated Colonial Place but further down the line around Colley Street and Thirty-first. The Cadys had moved into an all gentile neighborhood.
Not that the Cadys were black, but they weren’t exactly white. Ben and Abe were “the Jew boys.” The Hebes, Yids, Sheenies, Kikes. Much of this was changed at the big circle at Pennsylvania and Delaware, where they played ball near the pumping station. Ben Cady was handy with his dukes and a definite risk to provoke or attack. After Ben established an understanding to live by with the neighborhood kids they all discovered the never ending delights that came from the oven of Molly’s kitchen.
Abe had to go through it all again in J. E. B. Stuart Grammar School, filled with youngsters from the nearby Turney Boys’ Home, consisting mainly of problem children from broken families. All they seemed to want to do was fight. Abe had to defend some unknown honor until his brother Ben taught him “all the dirty Jew tricks” to acquit himself.
Fists gave way to a different kind of anti-Semitism at Blair Junior High but by the time Abe was a teen-ager he had a running commentary with the unpleasant aspects of his birth.
It was Ben who brought them honor by becoming a three letter athlete at Maury High by bombing baseballs out of sight in the spring, sharpshooting baskets and plunging for hard yardage in the fall and winter.
After a time the neighbors pointed with certain curious pride to the Jewish family. They were good Jews. They
Abraham Cady was born in 1920. Although it was a prosperous family it was difficult to tear away from the little row house with the white porch on Holt Street in which all the children were born.
The Jewish section started in the one hundred block of Church Street at St. Mary’s Church and ran for seven blocks to where the Booker T. Pharmacy started the Negro ghetto. The streets were lined with little shops out of the old country and the children were to remember the smells and sounds of it all their lives. Heated discussion in Yiddish where the two newspapers, the Freiheit and New York Vorwärts vied for opinion. There was the marvelous odor of leather from Cousin Herschel’s shoe repair shop and the pungent aroma of the cellar of the “pickle” man, where you could have a choice of sixty different kinds of pickles and pickled onions from briny old vats. They cost a penny each, two cents for an extra.
In the back yard behind Finkelstein’s Prime and Fancy Kosher meats the kids liked to watch the shochet kill chickens for a nickel each to conform to religious requirements.
There was endless barter at the vegetable stalls and at Max Lipshitz’s Super Stupendous Clothing Mart; Max himself, measuring tape around his neck, pulled potential customers off the street and just a little ways down Sol’s Pawn Shop held a junk yard of tragedy, mostly from colored customers.
Much of what Morris Cady earned went either to the families in the old country or to Palestine. Aside from the black Essex parked before the house there was little to testify to their nominal wealth. Morris did not play the stock market so when the crash came he had enough cash to buy out a couple of sinking bakeries at thirty cents on the dollar.
Despite their simplicity, their affluence caught up with them and after a year of discussion they bought a big shingled ten room house on an acre of land at Gosnold and New Hampshire Streets with a view to the estuary. A few Jewish families, upper-middle class merchants and doctors, had penetrated Colonial Place but further down the line around Colley Street and Thirty-first. The Cadys had moved into an all gentile neighborhood.
Not that the Cadys were black, but they weren’t exactly white. Ben and Abe were “the Jew boys.” The Hebes, Yids, Sheenies, Kikes. Much of this was changed at the big circle at Pennsylvania and Delaware, where they played ball near the pumping station. Ben Cady was handy with his dukes and a definite risk to provoke or attack. After Ben established an understanding to live by with the neighborhood kids they all discovered the never ending delights that came from the oven of Molly’s kitchen.
Abe had to go through it all again in J. E. B. Stuart Grammar School, filled with youngsters from the nearby Turney Boys’ Home, consisting mainly of problem children from broken families. All they seemed to want to do was fight. Abe had to defend some unknown honor until his brother Ben taught him “all the dirty Jew tricks” to acquit himself.
Fists gave way to a different kind of anti-Semitism at Blair Junior High but by the time Abe was a teen-ager he had a running commentary with the unpleasant aspects of his birth.
It was Ben who brought them honor by becoming a three letter athlete at Maury High by bombing baseballs out of sight in the spring, sharpshooting baskets and plunging for hard yardage in the fall and winter.
After a time the neighbors pointed with certain curious pride to the Jewish family. They were good Jews. They
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