Jim Huffman

August 7, 2018

Dear
Mr Pinkwater

Chicken
Man & Others Part 2

08/05/2018

Thank
you for the nice accolades, now with this encouragement, I shall add
to my last overly long post.

Part
2: This neighborhood was the epitome of racial & religious
harmony. I never knew what bigotry was until I went or visited or
read about other neighborhoods & places. I never heard any slurs
directed to or about others, I had no idea that there were any
“others”.

Nettlehorst
grade school students were mostly Jewish 80%, 20% others. Nearly all
the teachers were Jewish. On Jewish holidays, non-Jewish sub teachers
were there with aprox 10-kids in each class. Our classes had aprox
50-kids each with one-teacher. Of everyone I knew in class afterwards
to this day, they were all successful. Lawyers, doctors, accountants,
professors, business, etc. One became the Concert Master of the Lyric
Opera’s Orchestra. Smaller classrooms?

Mt
Carmel was 90% Catholic & 10% others. Smaller than Nettlehorst,
about 50% the size.

There
were a few Blacks in Nettlehorst, we refered to them as Colored or
Negro, so as not to offend them. Never ever heard the word “nigger”
used. And Oriental people also lived in the neighborhood, as well as
Spanish speakers. Never heard kike, yid, dirty jew, spic, slant eyes
etc. Did sometimes hear goyim (or chicsa) used in a whisper, but
never in a bad way.

The
neighborhood was very cosmopolitan, mixed Jewish & Christian, and
was also considered a Swedish Lutheran neighborhood, but only aprox
10%, some of the Swede names I knew were Nelson, Larson, Swanson,
Hanson, Lindson. There were many churches as well as many Synagogs. A
Jewish yeshiva type school, where my jewish fiends went after school
to prepare for their Bar Mitzva, I was often invited inside &
sat with them while they studied, the Rabbi was very nice to me &
showed me what & why they were learning & answer my
questions.

Was
also often invited to attend services in other churches which I did
as a social cause, my family never attended religeous services. I had
no idea that I was not Jewish or other. I just thought that people
just wandered into these places because they looked better than the
others? I tried to figure out if they all had differing looks, did
catholics have a different look than a protestant or a jew?

There
were other stores that I forgot to mention in my last rant. Duke The
Florist on the NW & then NE corner of Belmont & Broadway then
out of business. Walgreens SE corner, Sams barber shop on Belmont
various locations. Scotts Dime store Broadway. A small school &
notions store on south side of Aldine just west of the school. The
Library on Belmont next to the Nuns home. A Lutherine church across.

Enough
for now, write if you have questions & don’t hang by your thumbs.

Jim
Huffman, ex-goyim.

Sounds familiar and about right to me, although I never thought the Nettelhorst elementary school was mostly Jewish...I remember being fascinated by the Christian traditions I encountered there.  But I completely agree about the tolerance in the neighborhood.  Never heard an expression of hate, and I can add that when I went to Lake View high school in the 50s, the first openly gay person I ever met ran for student council, and I never heard a single remark at his expense.  And for those reading this, we should make clear that this was a working/middle class neighborhood, we weren't the children of professors, or college graduates for the most part.  I think the natural untampered-with tendency of people is to live in that kind of harmony.