Deb Cooperman

NoNoWriMo – Day 10

Today is the third day in a row where the temperature in NJ has been in the 60s. What a wild month or so we’ve had here on the east coast.

First, there was the earthquake.  Then came Hurricane Irene (which was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it hit NJ, but no matter the “title,” it was still a major force …). Then we had the late October snow storm, and now we’ve got 60 degree days in November. Bizarro.

On Tuesday night I tried out a new exercise class and as I and a few other folks from the class were leaving the building, a guy from the class commented on the balmy night and said that maybe something bigger than climate change was afoot. Was the earth protesting something, he wondered?

Could it be that? If so, what would it be protesting? A while back Michele Bachmann said these natural disasters were God’s way of getting the US Government to wake up (no kidding, she did. and i quote: I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’)  And in post-Katrina days televangelist Pat Robertson said it was God’s way of protesting abortion rights. (or was that the new orleans’ planned gay pride parade? no, i think another “man of god” said that …) (but i digress …)

NoNoWriMo – Day 3

After a mega-event that had me working crazy-long hours at the day-gig, I took two days off this week.

Today I made a plan to spend the day with my dad.  I usually get to see him a couple of times a month, but it’s often at my brother’s place when we’re all hanging out with the Beaners. Today, the plan was just Dad and me – and he let me decide what we would do with the time. Since I love hearing stories about his life, and I want to know as much as I can about his history, I asked him to take me on a tour of some of the significant places in his past: a trip down his memory lane.

The first memories were here

The day started in Newark, NJ on the street where his folks lived when he was a little guy; until he was about 5. It was on this street he says he had his “first consciousness of being a person.”

He pointed out a scar on his thumb – barely visible now – that he got when he was 4 or 5 after sticking his hand inside a tin can (to get something out; he can’t remember what it was now). He wiggled it around inside and couldn’t get the thing out, and quickly pulled his hand out and … rip. Wailing, his mom immediately ran outside, grabbed a towel and wrapped his hand in it and scooped him up in her arms to run down the hill to the doctor who lived in their neighborhood.  The hill, once thought to be really big, he says, turned out to be more of a long incline, but for a moment I could see my dad as a little boy, scared and crying in his mom’s arms as she ran down what looked like a very big hill.

Standing at the corner across the street from where Cooperman's Deli used to be

Then we drove to the building in Newark where his grandfather (the namesake of beaner boy) had Cooperman’s Deli (which he bought after owning a pushcart for the first few years after he immigrated to the US from russia). The family lived upstairs from the Deli, and we stood in the sunlight trying to imagine Dad’s father, uncle, grandfather and grandmother all crowded in this little apartment above what is now a bodega-like store on a busy cross street in Newark.

We drove around the city, checked out the Weequahic section – an area that was almost exclusively populated with Jewish immigrants – the park where he used to go; we hunted for the old hot dog joint where he used to go as a kid. We drove to the street where his great uncle lived as he shared the story of going to a “fancy” restaurant with tablecloths with this uncle for the first time (again, up a “big hill” that turned out not to be all that big).

Off to East Orange to see the home on Eppirt Street where my grandmother’s family – the “Eppirt Street Aristocracy” once lived.  Far from wealthy, the nickname was given by my grandfather because unlike the (blue collar-ish) deli-owning Cooperman’s, the Schwartzmans and Beckmann’s of Eppirt Street worked in (white collar-ish) manufacturing. Immigrants from Germany, Dad says they looked down on his father’s Russian family because they were (they thought) less cultured. (amazing how, even then, after being tossed out of their respective countries because of their religions, these folks had an us/them mentality when it came to others in their “tribe.”) Living in this house? The grandparents, an unmarried aunt, my grandmother, her sister, her brother and her brother’s wife. Aristocratic? Not by today’s standards, that’s for sure.

Home of the Eppirt Street Aristocracy

While we were standing outside of the Eppirt Street house and Dad was telling me about the time he and his sister begged their parents to adopt a stray dog that was in the neighborhood (they “won” – this was how we got brownie, he told me), a man came to the front door – obviously checking out the two strangers who seemed to be casing his home. We reassured him that we were not there with nefarious intent, and told him why we were there.  Hearing that, he asked us if we wanted to come inside and look around. Dad broke out in a huge smile and started up the stairs; once inside, he began pointing all over the place: The steps look exactly the same; that’s where we all sat at the dining table; that’s where Uncle Bill used to have his desk … his face was lit up, and the owner of the house seemed to get a kick out of it too.

And if we thought that was going to be the highlight of the day, we were wrong; on our last stop, we got an even bigger treat.

On Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, we went to look at the house where the Cooperman family moved when Dad was 6, and where he lived until he went into the Navy after college. Not too long after that, his parent’s downsized and sold the house.

As we walked along the street, Dad named the families who lived there, and when we got to his house, like we did on Eppirt Street, we stood in front as Dad pointed out the windows: Living room, dining room, kitchen in the back … Mom and Dad’s room, Norma’s room, my room.

At the old homestead

Riding high after the Eppirt Street tour, we’d already decided that when we got there we’d knock on the door and if someone answered, we would see if we could convince the current owners to let us take a look around.

Dad walked up the door and rang the bell; I hung back on the sidewalk. No response. He waited and rang one more time. He turned: It was worth a try. and just as he started down off the steps, the door opened a crack. Standing behind a storm door, an older woman spoke behind the glass, suspicious.  Dad offered his pitch: I’m showing my daughter the neighborhood where I grew up; I lived here with my family and … the woman’s face softened and she said:  I bought the house from your parents; I’ve lived here for 50 years.

She opened the door, welcomed us in and gave us the run of the house. In every room my Dad had another story or detail to share: You know the chairs that are in my living room? They were my mom and dad’s; dad’s was here – he pointed to the left of the fireplace and on the other side: and mom’s was there. In the dining room: When I was a little guy I loved Sousa’s marches; my parents used to put on records to watch me march around the table … In the kitchen he stood staring at the little nook that housed a small table.  Dad sat there, Norma here, me there and Mom over there. After coming up from the basement he told the story of how he once tried to save a praying mantis he found outside in the autumn. He put her behind the furnace in the basement, only to discover a few days later that she’d laid some eggs … which later hatched. The basement was teaming with insects he laughed; his mother flipped out and when his father got home he searched the basement, captured them and put them outside in the cold, my father’s attempt to save lives thwarted, but the natural order of things restored.

Dad, outside his old bedroom

At the bottom of the stairs, he quietly said Thirteen, and as he walked up, there were indeed, 13 steps. The heater in the bathroom behind the door, he said, was where he would crouch in the mornings until the the house warmed up. He pointed to where a large hook used to hang on the wall of his old room where he’d toss his clothes at the end of the day in a game of clothing-basketball. When we went back outside he pointed to several trees and told me how he planted them with his dad. The stories continued long after we left.

What a fabulous day – seeing the places that mattered to him and hearing all the stories bubble up. What a treat. What a gift. Lucky me.

The next time, I think I’ll want to go see the places he lived in the early days of his relationship/marriage to my mom …

Today’s springboard: Write about your childhood home.