Category Archives: Chapter Podcasts

On the Sidewalks of New York is a memoir by Richard Paul Poethig, who was born in 1925 into a working-class, German-American family in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan. It tells the story of Richard’s journey from an “old law” tenement on 80th Street, to Good Will Sunday School (Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church’s mission on the East Side), to the College of Wooster in Ohio in 1945 before the end of World War II, to Union Theological Seminary in New York where he met his wife and graduated with an Masters of Divinity. Richard Paul Poethig reads his memoir in 26 chapters.

Chapter 7 – Getting Religion on the East Side

Richard’s grandfather, Richard Poethig, emigrated from Saxony, Germany, during the anti-Socialist campaign of Otto von Bismarck. He sees organized religion as antagonistic to the cause of working people. For Richard’s mother, a religious upbringing was essential to life. Her tenement neighbor, Emily Masek, encourages Henny to enroll Richard in Good Will Sunday School, an East Side mission of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. At Good Will, Richard learns about more than the Bible. He discovers the wider world on field trips to the countryside and the lower East Side casbah, and through participation in a model League of Nations, where the invasion of Abyssinia by Italy is up for discussion. In loyalty to his street friend Tulio, Richard plays the part of Italy.

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Chapter 5 – Making a Day of It

Plagued by her tuberculosis, Richard’s mother yearns to raise her children outside the city. On special days, she takes Richard down to Penn Station in the early morning to board a train for Newark, New Jersey, where her Rehling cousins live. In downtown Newark they take the trolley ride to the outer suburbs. Then a short walk to the Rehling house. The warmth of the Rehling family lifts his mother’s spirit and opens Richard’s view to life outside of New York. On the return trip, Richard reflects on what life would be like for his mother to have a place like the Rehlings.

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Chapter 4 – The Games We Played

Friendships on New York City streets are made and solidified by the games young Richard plays after school and on Saturdays. Games are played on the numbered side streets where traffic is less intense. The games are mostly street versions of baseball and are played with a “spaldeen”–the street name for Spalding, whose trademark is on a hollow rubber ball. Which game is played depends on how many people show up on the block. The games begin when two are on the street to play handball. When four are present the game is point ball off a tenement stoop or a low building ledge. If eight, the game becomes box ball with a rectangular “diamond” chalked in the street. If ten or more show up, stickball becomes the game of choice. Stickball is not appreciated by the tenants in the apartments along the street nor by the local police officers who are ever on patrol.

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Chapter 3 – Life Leaves Grooves on Windowsills

Richard’s family lives in a front apartment on the top floor of a five-story “old law” tenement. Shared toilets are in the hall, the kitchen is heated by a coal stove, and clothing is washed in the kitchen tub and dried on the roof. The front apartment windows look out onto First Avenue. The windowsill is the instrument of social interaction between neighbors and the social control of children on the street. On one occasion, Richard sees a delivery truck accident that exposes the presence of an illegal booze still in the neighborhood. A front window also opens onto a fire escape. One night, Richard’s mother wakes him in a panic. Richard is carried by a fireman through the window and over the fire escape to safety.

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Chapter 2 – The Sidewalks as Playground

Richard’s first ten years on First Avenue lay the foundation for life ahead. Within a three block radius of his tenement is a whole world. Eightieth Street and the sidewalk are his playground—where he makes “hot mickeys” with a lump of coal and a purloined potato. The shops on the block provide everything his family needs: a bakery, a grocer, a fruit and vegetable market, an ice cream parlor, and his own optometrist. On 82^nd Street there is an elementary school, on 80^th Street and Second Avenue a Sunday School for religious education, on 79^th Street a public library for exploring the world. For Richard, these were the essential building blocks for integrating life and preparing for the future.

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Chapter 1 – The Making of a Political Consciousness

Born in 1925 in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan’s East Side, Richard grows up in a working class German-American family surrounded by immigrants from the now defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. Scenes of the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler in Germany, and anti-Semitic sentiment become etched in his memory. Richard receives an early political education from his Socialist cigar maker grandfather who emigrated from 1880s Germany, by hearing over-the-counter conversations about European politics at the butcher shop where Richard worked on Saturdays, from the Franciscan priest at the Hungarian parish where Richard made meat deliveries, and through his aunt Augusta Wagner, who in 1937 returned to Yorkville while on furlough from occupied China, where she was a professor of economics at Yenching College for Women in Peking.

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We will be posting podcasts of Richard Poethig reading his autobiography, punctuated by music that emphasizes the humor and drama in the stories.