Albany Park by Myles (Mickey) Golde Page A

listened at the door before knocking. “Shirley, you okay?”
    “Yeah, just a little tired and wanted to lie down before dinner.”
    “Did you hear the news? A million boys are coming home from Europe.”
    “Yeah, I heard, that’s terrific.”
    Molly waited for more. Not hearing anything through the door, she shrugged, “Daddy will be home soon, so don’t go to sleep. I’ve got a nice dinner, vegetable soup with boiled beef. ”
    “Okay,” Shirley murmured, “let me know when you’re ready.”
    Molly Pearlman Siegal had grown up at 16 th and Hamlin on the west side . Her family occupied the second floor of a dark brown brick six-flat that housed almost a dozen Jewish families. Occupants of the flats were mostly two and three generations, not always related. Male and female boarders, many recent arrivals from the old country were also were part of the mix. Yiddish was spoken throughout the building, along with smatterings of Russian and Polish. On warm nights, men with beards and ever-present black hats would venture out to sit on the stone stoop. In shirts without collars and sleeves rolled up revealing long underwear they would smoke and tell stories or discuss the news of the day Their wives, many wearing the traditional heavy wigs and long dark dresses covered with aprons, occasionally joined them. Children ranging from toddlers to early teens lounged on the low metal pipe fences bordering straggly parkway lawns or played on the sidewalks and streets under the watchful eyes of the adults. Loud conversations and laughter, mixed with baby squawks, filled the air.
    Everyone moved inside in the winter. The same residents huddled in kitchens, dining rooms or parlors. Others would gather around an upright piano to sing the latest ragtime tunes or often, Yiddish songs of their youth. Doors mostly stayed open and people young and old, standing or sitting on stairs and landings, were always laughing and conversing in the familiar sing-song Yiddish .
    In any direction from the Pearlman’s apartment building for as far as the eye could see were thousands of Jews milling around similar buildings on what had become the “The Great West Side” of Chicago following the influx of millions of Immigrant Russian and Polish Jews to America that began in 1890.
    Molly’s first job after she graduated high school in June of 1922 was as a secretary for the l aw firm Altshuler and Mann on LaSalle Street in the Loop. Reporting for work the first day, she observed that the office, while not large, appeared elegant. The matching desks and chairs were all highly polished and the smart leather secretary’s chairs were richer looking than any furniture she had ever seen up close. The same applied to her typewriter and all the other office equipment, which was modern and far more efficient than anything she’d used in her business courses at Marshall High. The partners and associates, all German Jews, had private offices with large windows overlooking La Salle Street. Each had a huge ornate desk and a large, dark red leather swivel chair. Adorning the walls were diplomas and law licenses, along with scenic photos or framed works of art. Against the wall, behind each desk, was a low cabinet with pictures of the lawyer’s wife and children.
    To Molly, it was quite a contrast to the Pearlman’s apartment, where she shared a cramped bedroom with her two sisters and her brother slept on the lumpy couch in the dining room. She wondered what her bosses or the other women in the office would think if they saw the apartment or her family’s hand-me-down dining room table with its assortment of wooden chairs collected over the years Nor could she imagine what they would say if they had to climb the sagging stairs in the hallway filled with the highly seasoned aroma of food cooking day and night while the neighbors, with their door always open, jabbered in Yiddish , and scolded the rag-tag children playing on the stairs.
    Molly had the smallest