Politics on Sharon St. and Graham Ave. 1934-42

Sal and Christina were regular members of the Democratic Party and spent much of their time and efforts to raise funds for the party, help Italian immigrants become citizens, and help aspiring politicos get nominated and elected to local, city and state positions. Sal was a struggling lawyer and needed the contacts. Christine
was the practical organizer with a special talent for getting people to work together and help her with the fund raising projects...card parties, honorary dinners, and every kind of fund raiser imaginable. When there was an election coming up, Sal traveled from section to section and spoke from the back of a truck.
When on Moore St.(known as Jewtown), he spoke Yiddish. When in German neighborhood, he spoke German. When on Montrose Ave., he spoke Sicilian. (Montrose Ave was the mecca for Sicilian immigrants who were very ambitious, and whose mother's hand sewed linings at home to make enough money to educated their sons. To become a doctor was the ultimate goal for many of these young Sicilian men.) Sal
was a gifted speaker, with a natural presence and gift for grabbing an audience.

Languages came very easily to him. His first job was in a South American import business, where he learned Spanish. He lived in Sciacca for two years from about 10 to 12, learned literate Italian in school there, and of course his family spoke Sicilian. The trip to Sicily by boat was a aboard a German ship. It took about
three weeks to a month to make the journey. He became his parents' spokesperson and learned enough German to take care of their needs. When he got back to the U.S.A., his favorite place was the public library. He read and acted in plays by Shakespeare, graduated from Boys'H.S. in Brooklyn which only the top students could attend.He volunteered in the US Navy WWI, but was to young to go overseas. He became a Chief Petty Officer. Then he got his first job in the import business. He studied Law after her married Christina.
Christina worked in factory to help pay for his law education, and even though they had their first child within the first year of their marriage(me),theycontiued their plans for the future. That's how come Aunt Mary and Uncle Louis come into the story. They were my caretakers while my mother worked. My Dad worked in a bank during the day and went to Brooklyn Law School at night. I remember the big party Christina, my mother, arranged when he graduated.
No, I didn't go. Children were definitely not part of the social scene. That must have been around 1927, and that was the year my sister was born.
The story of his first law practice is in the Midnight Caller Blog.

To go back to the fund raising for the Dem's. Willy Meagher, an active member of the organization, which must have been Tammany Hall, noticed Sal and Christina and decided to sponsor them. Willy was a big hulk of a man who was a reputed millionaire with a mysterious, shadowy background, and who had friends in important places in the Party, like the Postmaster General of New York State. Willy and his pal Mr. Bassett were frequent visitors at 6 Sharon Street. They and Christina were
constantly thinking of ways to get out the votes for William O'Dwyer against the pip-squeak, upstart shrimp, Fiorello La Guardia. Well you know who became mayor of New York on a Fusion Party ticket...The Little Flower. Fiorello quashed the Tammany Hall
Bunch, locked up Lucky Luciano, and read the funnies over the radio during a newspaper strike. He was mayor from 1934-1945. LaGuardia did great things for NYC, and he helped FDR in many important ways.
However, Willy did not give up on Sal and Christina. He helped Sal get appointed as a representative to revise the State Constitution of New York. Later Willy helped him get the position as legal consultant in the Court of Appeals. Sal became chief legal consultant of the group who researched and advised the judges when deciding cases and writing opinions. Sal retired from this position. But there were many other ways that Sal helped his piasanos. He gathered the successful Sicilians together, and they formed a Federal Credit Union with their own money, The Fior Di Marsala, that gave immigrants loans to start businesses, buy houses, cars, etc. Theses immigrant who became citizens had no collateral to get loans from regular banks. So the Fior Di Marsala came to their rescue. He was like the proverbial "country doctor", but he was the "avvocato" who helped his compatriots.
Willy Meaghers helped our good friends, the Caruso's. He sponsored their son Frank.
Willy paid for Frank's tutor, so he could pass the test and got the local assemblyman to recommend Francis Caruso to West Point. Frank graduated from West Point, served in the army and is a retired Major at this time. We have lost touch with him, but I'lll bet he remembers Willy Meaghers. There's much more to the story, but it's enough for this blog.

The Soloist

Rose and I had our usual lunch meeting and just had time to go to the movies.
The Hampton Bays Cinema is old fashioned, but clean. We just made it. Niether of us had been to the movies in ages. The pitch black makes the viewing very personal and intimate.
But the movie was enough to blow your mind. It moves very fast. The reporter/writer is looking for an unusual story and finds this homeless man living under the statue of Beethoven, playing a decrepid three-stringed violin.
The story continues with the intense efforts of the reporter to help this man.
He investigates his past. The movie swings back to the past and this man, Nathaniel Ayers, was a student at Juliart HS and played the cello.Because of the sensitive article written by the reporter, someone donates a beautiful cello, and the reporter has great difficulty finding Nathaniel to give him the gift. At this juncture, the reporter is bent upon getting Nathaniel back into the real world.
Go to the movie. The ending is unexpected, and the story is true. I can't call this an entertaining movie, although the music in it was thrilling. But it is true
and it touches a nerve.
The acting, the cinematography is excellent. You get great aerial shots of Los Angeles' snake like highways, the traffic, the density, the speed, and the forgotten
homeless. It is a work of art. See it!


The cinematography
covers the snake like highways that encompass Los Angeles and the Homeless Shelter.
You become part of the homeless living outside the shelter and those inside the shelter. You see music transform and these lost souls. The music is mesmerizing, and our protaganist, this Nathanial Ayers, is a truly gifted musician. I rarely get tearful when experiencing a movie, but the tears and the tug at my heart happened in these scenes.