A Cartoonist's Daughter

Jack's pictures of Rockport, MA-1942

2012-01-24T03:43:00.000-08:00

Two things I remember about Rockport was milk ice cones (the war was on, no ice cream) and all the rocks outside our cottage. I actually have home movies of this time...amazing they are still in good shape.

There was only one summer in Rockport and then the artists moved on to Provincetown, MA...my favorite. We went there for four summers.

Rockport, MA

2012-01-23T05:52:00.000-08:00

When I was 10 years old, during World War II, my parents followed their fellow artists to Rockport, MA for the summer. My mother, with her two daughters, went on ahead to find a cot†age or rooming house for the season. Here is a letter that she wrote to my father, who was still in New York.

Clear View Cottage
Bearskin Neck
Rockport, Mass
Dear Jack,
We are all beside ourselves. We just moved in and we have the best cottage in all Rockport. Yesterday we met Joe Caplin and he and Virginia walked us over here (it’s across some water from them) They urged me to take it as cottages are going very fast., but I thought I ought to be careful and I looked all day yesterday –and came to the conclusion this is the best.
It is $200 for the season, but the woman I rented it from, who is an awful nice person said that she has had so many calls for August that we can sublet if we don’t want to stay.
I looked at such awful places for as high as $150…such bad appointments, stoves etc. that this place looks too perfect, almost.
Boarding houses seem to be out because of the rationing and meals are high, but you can get a good dinner for about 55 cents or less, but they can go as high as $1.75
If you feel like getting breakfast, Janet insists she make lunches, then we can eat out four times a week or so.
There are quite a few places for $150 back in the town, over the hill. But it might as well be Manasquan with a long walk to the water. Here we are surrounded by water.
This is how it is….x is our house.
There is a cookstove in the kitchen and an oil burning cook stove in the living room for heat and warmth on foggy days.
The bed in the living room will be ours-it opens out-one of those, but has strong mattresses on both sides.
I paid down $15. deposit and she will wait till you come for the rest. $185.
Bring all the towels you can. I will need sheets and pillow cases so if the laundry man doesn’t come, call him up or make him send them when they’re done. 5 0r 6 sheets and plenty of pillow cases…also the sharp kitchen knives and the iron.
I can see thousands of miles of ocean as I sit j
here and write.
The kids are beside themselves with joy/
I caught a stinking cold but bought Kleenex and vapo rub. I fortunetly brought the aspirin. I feel better today, but it is cold here. Better bring my heavy black coat with the shiny buttons instead of the spring coat., I picked…Please!
Come as quick as you can because it is lovely. We’re right in the heart of the fishing industry and it’s full of character.
I stayed in a room for two nights $3.50 per night. Some expense/
Love, Margo

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Watercolors by Margaret

2011-12-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

The Thief and The Prostitute....Ink and Wash

Vintage Christmas Card (1940s) by Jack

2011-12-10T05:18:00.000-08:00

Middletown, NJ pictures

2011-08-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

Margaret and Susan, Margaret cooking?, Jack in the old jalopy with the rumble seat and a sketch of Margaret bathing.

Sorry about the wide spacing in the text. I don't know what happened.

The House in the Woods

2011-08-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the late thirties my father bought a one room school house and had it moved into the woods in Middletown, NJ.

There was no electricity, running water or anything else, like a bathroom. They carved a bedroom out for Susan and me and added a small screened in porch. I think we managed for a summer or two and then they put in a well and added a kitchen. We still had to use the woods for a toilet and the brook for a bathtub.

The kitched had a stove that was fed by bottled kerosene and there was a pump in the sink for water. I still have a lamp from that house...now electrified. I believe there was some kind of radio that ran on batteries or maybe just a wind up victrola.

Outside of our bedroom was a large table for eating and drawing. A closet had been built in our bedroom covered by a silk screen print of children's faces...I can still see it.

We would leave NYC in Jack"s old car and drive down some road (no Jersey turnpike then) Maybe I sat in the rumble seat. Sometimes we would stop at a road side stand for hamburgers and root beer. This was really a treat and very good food. Off we would go, again...probably stopping in Red Bank for some food...Did we have an ice box? I seem to remember Jack hauling blocks of ice. Driving on we would make a right onto a dirt road and then on to our house.

I was about eight years old and Susan about two. Jack would make me paper doll dresses and tell me stories. His idea of a paper doll dress was to cut a shape out of stacked papers and then I could paint them into different outfits. Paper dolls were my passion.

I had friends from school here...I can't imagine what they thought when we told them that they had to go to the bathroom under a tree. I hardly think that my grandmother would have enjoyed this...so I think visits with relatives were in Manasquan.

This was a great place and we all had a wonderful time. Though I do remember one year when we were leaving, and my parents were hammering some boards on the windows that they disturbed a hornet's nest. They were jumping around and yelling for us to stay inside.

Eventually my father sold the place to a friend and they followed the other artists to Rockport and Provincetown.

Sketch for a New Yorker Cover

2011-08-02T06:11:00.000-07:00

They actually did this years ago....Margaret trying to sell yet another cover to the New Yorker.

Photos of Manasquan.

2011-06-07T04:21:00.000-07:00

Jack painting on Main Street and two of me in front of 45 Parker St. with Grandpa and painting on the porch.

Summer Vacations-Manasquan, NJ

2011-06-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

Since my parents were free lancers and worked at home, they could take long summers away from the city. This depended on the school year, but we usually went away for at least three months.

A lot of the vacations were spent in Manasquan, NJ at my grandparent's house at 45 Parker Avenue. Sometimes a month or just weekends. My grandfather was a printer and a notary public, also an elder of The Friends Meeting. He would get up early Sunday mornings to stoke the furnace at the meeting house. My aunt Nanny later became the secretary there and my aunt Gillette played the piano.

My grandmother Trafford was something of a prima donna. She would sit at the piano in the parlor singing areas. The downstairs at 45 Parker Avenue had a parlor, dining room, kitchen, and the old kitchen that my grandfather used for his printing press. The upstairs had three bedrooms and a bathroom. There was an attic with shelves of colored paper that my grandfather used in printing pamphlets. Nice, ready to use colored paper...and I did, reducing his supply quite a bit.

Below is a watercolor of my grandfather reading in his bedroom, painted by Jack. Ther was a floor to ceiling bookcase in his room that held books on Abraham Lincoln, his hero.

The attic was a large space with skylights and a wood stove, where my parents slept, and a small room that held the childhood of my mother and her siblings. Toys and sport's gear, small tables and chairs and boxes of wonderful books, that my cousin Mary and I gobbled up.

Susan and i slept in the blue bedroom, that had twin beds. You could lie there at night and hear the bump, bump of the cars passing by and see the headlights reflected on the wall.

There was a wrap around porch on the house with an entrance to the dining room on the side.

The beach was about two miles away, My parents liked the more secluded, empty beach, while we wanted to go to the main beach that had the penny arcade.

These were great summers. I had my cousind to play with, and there was swimming, picnics and the movie house was at the end of the block, where you would meet all your neighbors on Saturday night.You could walk to Main Street and buy everything you wanted, without a car. My grandfather rode a bicycle all his life. I don't think he could even drive.

All this ended when my grandfather died when I was eight years old and the house was sold. It's amazing how much I remember of this house. Happy childhood, I guess.

Grandpa Trafford in his Bedroom

2011-06-07T03:03:00.001-07:00

Watercolors by Margaret

2011-04-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

These tw are a little beat up, but I love the colors.

New Yorker Cover

2011-03-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

My mother was always trying to sell a painting to the New Yorker, for their cover. Never had any success....I think this one would have been great.

Thanksgiving

2011-02-12T06:24:00.000-08:00

When my father was a boy they celebrated Thanksgiving as well as Halloween by dressing up and parading up and down the streets.

Here is a lithograph of Thanksgiving on the Lower East Side. The children are my cousins, Mary Elizabeth and Chickie Trafford and I'm pushing the baby carraige.

This is one of my favorite lithographs.

From Little Red School House to PS41

2011-02-12T06:09:00.000-08:00

From running around and singing rabble rousing songs to dusty rooms, frustrated teachers, and discipline.

This school was so old and dilapidated that when they had a fire in an adjacent building a lot of the parents kept their children out of school fearing that the building would collapse on top of the school. The teachers were an odd group, some old battleaxes, a few enlightened ones ( Mrs Gutowski) and one teacher that used to nip at a hip flask all day. We made fun of her, but later found out that her husband was a prisoner of war (WWII had started).

I met all the people that I knew for years after…Greta, Priscilla Perry, Marcia Langsford,.
Nancy Chandler, Emily Lapowski (later Jay Lyle), Neil Snider, Arthur Halpern and our big crush Romer Schwartz. There were many others. A small town in the middle of a big city.

I must say that I hated school…and tried to feign sickness whenever I could. Don’t know why. I was fairly popular but not an a-one student. I never got math, much to my father’s surprise. He was so good at it.

The class I remember the most was Mrs. Gutowski’s. She taught Geography and the last term, we took over a spare classroom and each month did a different country in Europe. We made history maps, food maps, painted pictures and the children brought things from home to display. It was such a success that we didn’t have to take a Geography test that year. Hurrah!

PS41 ran from K to 6th grade and still exists, except in a beautiful new building around the corner on 11th Street. Our site on Greenwich Avenue is now their playground. I couldn’t find pictures of the old school on Google. Gone forever.

Across the street from the school was a candy shop that had all the usual stuff: wax lips, candy dots on a long strip of paper, wax bottles with some sort of drink inside and my favorite, tiny candy bars. I guess I took my lunch to school most days, and went home to lunch when we moved to Perry Street. It was so close by. My parents also made a deal with a small shop down the street where I sat in the back room and had a grilled cheese sandwich and a malted milk for lunch.

When the war started we had to wear a disc around our necks with a number so we could be identified in case we were hit with a bomb. The thought didn’t seem to bother us. We had enemy plane cards. We never spotted any, and lost interest in that. Each week we bought war stamps (about a dime each) and pasted them in a book. When it was full we could buy a bond. ($25 at maturity) Years later I cashed a bond in so I could go to Ballet Theater performances every night and every matinee for a season. Great!

Of course there was a super bad boy in our class….he used to take us down the street and into an apartment entrance and tell us ‘dirty’ jokes at lunch time. These jokes were very vintage, and not very dirty. But we thought he was wonderful. There was also Romer Schwartz. We all had a crush on him. I thought he looked like Danny Kaye. We flirted, giggled and screamed and he paid no attention to us. Ah well!

Most of us went on from PS41 to PS3 (7th through 9th grades) and most of us knew each other up into adulthood.

Caricatures

2011-01-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

My Dad as a rooster, in a gag trance, and as a painter. I don't remember having this much fun as the daughter of a supposed funny guy. Most cartoonists were dour souls and cartoon editors were even worse.

Joseph Torch Logo

2010-12-30T05:36:00.000-08:00

The logo of the art store around the corner from where we lived on 7th Avenue. Torch on 14th street was a tiny place loaded from floor to ceiling with art supplies. Torch, an independant owner loved artists and talking to them about what they were doing and knew all about art supplies and how to get rare items.

He is probably long forgotten....but I'm saluting him here in behalf of all the artists of that period who were his customers.

7th Avenue Apartment

2010-12-30T05:05:00.000-08:00

My version and Jack's of 7th avenue and 14th street.

My next school move was PS41, the old one, on Greenwich Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets and the next apartment move was from Waverly Place to 7th Avenue, between 14th and 15th Streets. This is the one apartment that no longer exists. It is now one of those huge apartment complexes, taking up the whole block, probably condos by now.

Across the Street was a hotel. Around the corner on 14th Street was the art store my parents used for years, Joseph Torch and a restaurant where you could take out dinner on a paper plate, with another plate on top.

My girl friend Greta lived upstairs and we would walk to school together going through the underpass on 14th Street, the biggest Street we had to cross. Greta’s parents also bought the Sunday Journal American that had all the comic strips. Of course my parents wouldn’t have that ‘rag’ in the house…only The New York Times for them. No strips, and my dad was a cartoonist? Uncle Don used to read the comics on Sunday mornings, so I’d go up to Greta’s to listen and follow along. One year they had a newspaper strike and Mayor LaGuardia read the strips to us with passion.

Greta’s father had a woodshop on 15th Street and I think that shop started my love of wood and wood chips…I can still smell the sawdust. We also had a deli on 15th Street. Barneys near 17th Street and Street and Smith publishing where my mother inked comic books freelance for a while.

Now for the apartment. I don’t remember it at all, or Greta’s. How can that be? I remember everything surrounding it. I think my father had a studio in the apartment, he usually did. My mother was unhappy about her art arrangements. As usual she was shunted off, this time to the bathroom. The bathroom was pretty large and had North light, but still.

Another Christmas Card by Jack

2010-12-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Christmas Cards by Jack

2010-12-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

I have a box of sold and unsold greeting cards by Jack. This is one of my favorites I call "Christmas Shopping" Though it was done years ago, it could be Christmas 2010 without the cell phones.

Margaret-Unfinished Self Portrait

2010-11-30T04:55:00.000-08:00

Margarets Sketch Book-World War II

2010-11-27T02:49:00.000-08:00

Sort of grim, but I liked the drawings. She sketched all the time.

Margaret's sketch book-Kisses

2010-11-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

The Little Red Schoolhouse and Waverly Place

2010-11-20T04:49:00.000-08:00

I read on another’s blog that the tuition a year in 1938 was $125.00 a year, and now it is around $24,000. WOW!

Well, my parents scrapped up the $125. and I went to this progressive private school for two years…what they called the sixes and sevens (1st and 2nd grade) The funny thing is that I remember so much about it.

We sang a lot of folk songs every day, complete with a teacher playing the guitar.. Our lunch was served in a basement a few blocks away and we had to walk hand and hand. My partner was often Spike, who had one fingernail, grown long, that he used to grind into the palm of my hand.

We did a wonderful program on the Dutch in Old New York. We pretended to live there and even made candles and soap.

I met Mickey and Lauren Tucker there and knew them for years after. Once Mickey hit me in the hand with a belt, and I still have the scar amid the wrinkles. Boys were already giving me a hard time. Mickey made up for it years later when he came to see me after my sister died and had a long comforting talk with me..

I was still going over to Greenwich House afternoons and doing pottery, art and participating in their theatrical productions at Christmas.

While we were living in our second apartment in Waverly Place my mother’s cousin Traff came to visit and brought me a pretty silk dress. Traff was the scandel of the family. He was in the Navy, and had left a wife and son in New Jersey. While in China he had met a nurse, Jane (I remember her name because I thought it was so romantic) divorced his wife and married her. After that his name was only mentioned with scorn, except for his sister, Emily and my mother. He was her favorite cousin. Oh, yes. He was really good looking in a rugged way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_School_House

The Dreaded Arrival of My Little Sister

2010-10-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

Susan Emily Markow 1938-1951

When I was Six years old I was told a little bundle of joy was soon to be added to the family. I, the spoiled, talented princess, sole owner of my parents, was to be replaced.

In the olden days, mommys were shipped off to the hospital for 10 days...a nice rest after giving birth. While my mother was gone, it was decided I would spend one week with Jack's family and one week with Margaret's family. I was totally miserable.

At Jack's family, my Aunt Sylvia, thought I looked too much like a waif and had my hair permed. I hated it. The only highlight of that was week was seeing Shirley Temple in "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm"

The week with the Traffords went no better. I drew pictures all over my Aunt Gillete's living room wall. She yelled at me "I don't know what they do in the big city, but we do not deface walls here". Obviously I was not meant to be outside the art community.

I finally went home. We lived in an awful place on Waverly Place, next to a Catholic girls school, and across the street, which was later to become a favorite watering hole, Julius' Tavern.
.....and there she was, my little sister.

Later we moved nearby to a much larger apartment, and she was still with us. I remember walking into the place one day and all I saw was Susan in her play pen, with a little blue knitted sweater on. During this time I put on my snow suit over my pajamas and ran away to the corner and begged passer bys for a nickel for an ice cream cone. Somebody did give me a nickel after I told him that I was a poor neglected child. (He must have been amused by that) As I was licking my icecream cone, my father came storming out of the house, none too pleased with me. By this time I didn't want the cone and was in tears. My parents very coldly said that I should eat the whole thing...since I had gone to so much trouble to get it. Boo-Hoo!

Of course I learned to love my sister (even though I used to scare her, once in a while) She was a very calm, even tempered person, and she adored her older sister (that always helps) She died when she was only thirteen years old, and I've missed her ever since.

Janet Drawing

2010-09-19T03:56:00.001-07:00

Greenwich House

2010-09-19T03:51:00.001-07:00

Settlement House:
Neighborhood institution generally in an urban slum area, where trained workers endeavor to improve social conditions, particularly by providing community services and neighborly cooperation.

I don’t know if you would consider Greenwich Village an urban slum area, even then. But it was a lot cheaper to live there than it is now.
The first school I ever went to was Greenwich House (a settlement house) at Barrow Street and 7th Avenue. I attended Nursery and Kindergarten there

You went through the double doors and up some steps, I think. There was a gated area on the right with desks for the staff and some benches. Opposite the front door was the entrance to the theater. I think a teacher came down and collected her charges.
This was the depression, around 1936, so on arrival every day we got a dose of cod liver oil, orange juice and a piece of French bread with a smear of peanut butter.
I don’t remember what we did all day, or half a day. But I do remember naptime on pads with a blanket and the roof playground. I also remember improvisation where we all danced around in little green tunics, led by a teacher with wild black hair tied back with a scarf. Remember it was the days of Isadora.
Since I was very thin, it was decided that I have “Sun baths” now and then. All this was done right there at Greenwich House. I think my mother did a wall border for one of the rooms. I remember a parade of animals near the ceiling.

The worst day I ever had there was my brave day. I must have been around four or five. I told my mother that she could leave me at the door and I’d walk in alone. I panicked just inside the door and ran out, just in time to see my mother’s bus going up 7th avenue.
I was in tears when I got into the building, but the worst was yet to come. They mixed me up with a child that had a doctors appointment that morning and by the time my mother got back I was hysterical. It’s amazing that young as you are, you remember things like that.

Every Christmas we had a pageant in the theater directed by Mrs. Murphy. She would yell and push us around, but I guess we were pretty good. I remember one play we did for a number of years “A Star Has Fallen” I started out as a little angel polishing the stars and graduated to one of the crowd.

The theater was also used by Equity players and I was the daughter Mary in a production of O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon” I was given a teddy bear by the cast and I died by the second act. I found the script for my part a while ago and it was all “Yes, daddy” and “No, mommy.”

All this was looked over by Mrs. Simkovitch, who would walk around saying hello to all of us. http://greenwichhouse.org/about-us/history
A wonderful place that launched us all.

Jack's WPA card

2010-09-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

Jack claims this was the only time he got a steady paycheck for his art work. Because of the artist's section of the WPA, murals were painted in public places and all sorts of prints were distributed to museums and libraries. Enriching America/

Abandoned Carousel

2010-08-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

One of Jack's lithographs done for the WPA (1930's):

Margaret and Piano

2010-08-07T04:05:00.000-07:00

This piano went with us from apartment to apartment. I still have the lamp...I'm looking at it right now.

This lithograph doesn't look like Jack or Margaret's work. I would guess it's an early Jack?

Margaret's Stove

2010-07-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

I think this painting was done at my grandparent's house, where we spent most of our summers. There was a stove like this in the attic....or it could be from the many rented vacation houses. Wish they had put more information on their sketches and paintings.

Well, where ever it was, its a pretty neat picture.

Walking through Greenwich Village

2010-07-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

I have been having such fun walking through my old neighborhood thanks to Google Map. Trying to find old haunts and came across 202 West 14th Street. It looks the same. The Mexican store was on street level and there was some sort of place above it...maybe a perfume distributor? I'm not sure which floor we lived on. Later we moved to a smaller apartment in Waverly Place, but Jack kept the front room of 202 for a studio and rented out the back.

202 West 14th Street

2010-07-20T04:52:00.000-07:00

The first apartment I remember was on 14th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, in New York City. I had started out life in Sunnyside, Queens, where my parents thought it would be a better place to bring up a child. The day they moved in a child was hit by a car in front of the building, so then it was off to Red Bank, NJ for a while. I don’t remember either place. We moved a lot. In those days you would get a free month’s rent and a paint job when you moved in. I think my mother got restless and liked a change of scenery. Whereever we lived the piano went with us. Was it a baby grand? I’m not sure, but it wasn’t an upright.

I remember bits of 14th Street. The kitchen and bath were between two big rooms. There may have been a couple of side rooms(?) My father worked in the front. I don’t know where my mother did her art. I never remember her sitting down in any specific place and drawing anything, just like I can’t remember where in all the apartments and summer places my parents slept. Hmm, that’s interesting. I once asked my father years later why my mother never seemed to have an outside studio or a special place to do her work, while he always did. His answer was that he made more money than she did. What kind of chauvinistic statement is that?

Down on the ground floor of the building was a Mexican shop that sold my summer shoes, small espidrilles, canvas with lace up fronts and down the street was a cafeteria, where we ate a lot. My mother hated cooking, I think., she did as little of it as possible, though she did go to nutrition lectures.. You would go into the cafeteria and pull out a ticket from a machine and when you got your food the ticket would be punched and you would pay as you went out.

The apartment on 14th Street is where the tickle dream started. I’d be sitting on the couch and some ghost person would come in and tickle me in the ribs…I was terrified. Ha-Ha!

Portrait of a Very Young Janet

2010-07-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

I was about three or four when Margaret painted my portrait. This is just a segment of it.

Flying Jack

2010-05-11T03:26:00.000-07:00

Found this picture the other day, but I don't know too much about it. My father did mention once that he had flown somewhere in an airplane, where they had to stop for fuel several times. The time must be the late twenties or early thirties. My father is the guy with the Hitler moustache, holding hat in front of plane door.

Jack and Margaret on 14th St. 1930's

2010-04-19T05:27:00.000-07:00

Margaret's Sketch Book

2010-04-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

Back Yard-New York City

Margaret-Spot Drawing

2010-03-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

Both my parents would occasionally sell a spot drawing to a magazine. The New Yorker used to buy a lot of them from outside artists and though they still are used at the end of articles, they are mainly by the inner circle of artists there.

My mother tried for years to sell them a cover painting with no success...so I have some wonderful paintings with rather blank tops, where the logo would have been.

Tree Study-Margaret (1930's)

2010-03-21T08:57:00.001-07:00

Jack's lithographs 1930's-WPA

2010-02-15T03:49:00.000-08:00

Margaret's Sketch Book 1930's/1940's

2010-02-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

Margaret's Sketch Books-1930's/1940's

2010-02-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

More me from Jack's sketchbook

2010-01-26T03:49:00.000-08:00

More Me

2010-01-24T08:56:00.001-08:00

Young Me

2010-01-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

I was born at The Women's Infirmary in New York City. My mother liked that hospital because it had women doctors and a women's medical school. I didn't know much about the place until recently when I looked it up. I guess women doctors were still not excepted at most hospitals in the 1930's. The hospital started on the Lower East Side, moved to Styvesant Square (around East 15th St.)where I was born, and then went through a lot of changes to wind up as Downtown Hospital serving in lower Manhattan, where it is today. Here is a link on the founder http://www.winningthevote.org/EBlackwell.html and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Downtown_Hospital

Some sketches of me by my father

Here I am in 1934

2009-12-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

Yes...I'm very old. Drawing by Jack.

Sketches of Margaret and Jack 1930's

2009-12-21T18:03:00.000-08:00

Drawings of my mother and father by the artist Abe Birnbaum

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2009-12-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

An original card by Jack

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

2009-12-14T02:54:00.001-08:00

Manasquan Street and her brother Winsor.

2009-12-14T02:50:00.000-08:00

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

2009-12-14T02:38:00.000-08:00

Woman seated

Town Crier

2009-12-02T04:07:00.000-08:00

Cover of 1930's magazine illustrated by Jack

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

2009-11-30T04:43:00.001-08:00

I'm so happy to post my mothers art work here, rather than have it sit in a box in a closet.

Ballyhoo Gag Ad 1930's

2009-11-28T16:57:00.001-08:00

Ballyhoo did a lot of gag ads. Here is one my father illustrated.

Ballyhoo

2009-11-18T04:48:00.000-08:00

Jack had cartoons in this gag magazine in the 1930's

The Abandoned Carousel

2009-11-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite lithographs by my father.

Mom and Dad

2009-11-07T06:50:00.001-08:00

Margaret's sketch book-France 1926 or 1927

2009-11-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

The Trafford Children

2009-11-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

Top row: Charles Jr. and cousin Nanny-Bottom row: Margaret, Winsor and Babs

Trafford Family

2009-11-05T04:46:00.001-08:00

Mabel and Charles..My Quaker grandparents

Attic at 45 Parker Ave

Tillie

2009-11-05T04:22:00.000-08:00

Margaret Emily Trafford-born Manasquan, New Jersey 1899-died New York City 1950. My mother.

My mother was born 60 miles from New York City, but it could have been a million miles away.

My grandfather was a staunch Republican...believed in passing the hat when sickness came to friends and co-workers. Hated the New Deal. He was also a Quaker, complete with thees and thous. He always wore black suits, flowing ties and high buttoned shoes. Rode a bicycle everywhere. The bookshelf in his bedroom had many books about Abraham Lincoln, his hero. He worked for the railroad and then became a printer of pamphlets etc and a notary public.

He died when I was 8 Years old, but I remembered him very well. He gave me printing paper to draw on, played games with me and I remember him traveling to New York one Christmas to deliver a box of gifts from the relatives. I adored him.

My grandmother was nice and made great desserts. She was a bit of a prima donna, and reminded people often that her family in Philadelphia had two horses and marble steps. There were children and grandchildren around. 45 Parker Avenue, home.

My mother was a modern woman. She drove a taxi and played the piano for silent movies and she got to Europe and finally New York City. She wasn't that good an artist in her teens, but got better and better. She also would go back and study anatomy from time to time and French.

When my father met my mother

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In his words...

[When I first met her, we were both attending the illustration class at the Art Student’s League. I scarcely paid much attention to her then. She was frowsely dressed, clothes outmoded, too large for her slim figure. Long and disheveled hair. I had a full- time job in an art department and had been taking evening classes at art school. Progressing, for several years, from several years of life classes to illustration and composition. She, I later learned, came from a small town on the Jersey shore. Her parents had planned for her to go to “Normal School” and become a teacher, which were wishes not abnormal for parents at that time. In those times for women, it was either teaching, nursing or shorthand and typing. She, however rebelled and wanted to be an artist. She enrolled in a Philadelphia art school and one of her paintings grabbed a prize in a contest given by a women’s magazine. The reward was a reproduction of her painting as a cover of this magazine plus some cash. With this money and additional sums squirreled away, she was able to come to New York City, where the real art was. Her parents were poor; she was poor. She worked at any art job she could get-anything to be able to stay in New York. She worked at successive women’s magazines and department store art departments, drawing fashions which she hated and knew she wasn’t very good at. But it was enough to sustain her in the city for periods of time and not have to go back to the drabness of her small home town.

Classes ended in May and I did not see her until the following October…And what a change! Her hair was cut in a boyish bob, framing large blue eyes, regular features and highly pink cheeks. I realized she was an extremely handsome woman. Why the transformation? Partly the result of a long summer spent in Europe. It seems that in her hometown she had a close friend, Sara, whose parents were rich. Sara wanted to travel. Rather than having their daughter go off alone, the father paid the way for Margaret to go as a companion.

Margaret and Sara covered most of France that summer, climaxed by a lengthy stay in Paris. Here Margaret met a woman who had started an art school. She studied at this school and also did hundreds of sketches-a fine record of her trip abroad. She also became enamored of the French life style. She studied French, tried reading it and picked up some conversational French. In a way she was becoming a real Francophile.

I got to know her quite well that fall. The process of getting acquainted was full of surprises. She had a good ear for music being brought up in a musical household. Her mother, originally from Philadelphia, had studied opera there and had never quite gotten over the experience. The house in New Jersey resounded with soprano trills arpeggio piano. Margaret, herself, had a sure but small voice, always on key. She played the piano “by ear” in a masterful way. She was one of those people who could pick up a tune at once, and immediately embellish it with chords. I envied her that talent. I had seriously studied the piano for some years, played the classics and was a good sight reader, but alas, my ear had been sadly neglected. I discovered she had a swell sense of humor and also was an excellent mimic. Her theatrical flair turned up in later years in small theater groups, in acting and set design. Wonder of wonders! She could also manipulate the ukelele, the favorite instrument of that generation, complete with voice and true chords]

The Markovici papers

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The Markovici Family

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Standing: Mike, Aaron, Rebecca and Louis

Seated: Al, Sally and Jack (he had the same expression when he was old)

Union Square in the 30's

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I Love New York

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Though my father was poor growing up, he always told me that NYC was a great place to be, even without money. He learned to play piano at an early age. (I don't know how my grandparents managed that) His parents were all for education and he and his brothers were all for being as American as possible. Coney Island, baseball, Central Park and movies were the big deal.

Sometimes after school he would deliver flowers and get a few pennies. The movie admittance fee was a nickel...so if you had two cents, you waited around to see if some kid would come along with three cents. If you had three cents you were king.

His family consisted of mother and father, sister Sally, Louis, Mike, my father and Al (the youngest..born in America) The boys did well and ended up as a psychiatrist, business man and musician and Sally married a guy with some dough. Only my father chose a lowly profession, ART. For years, he told me, his brothers tried to persuade him to go into some business.

By the time he went to high school he decided that he would be an accountant. The school was Commerce High, whose big claim to fame was that Lou Gherig had gone there. The art teacher taught a little bit of cartooning and Jack was hooked.

Coming to America

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[At the beginning of this century, my father, a cooper by trade, in search of a better job opportunities left Romania for England. With him were his wife, son and daughter. Two more sons were born in London; I was the youngest. Soon after, the family decided that America was much more “golden” than England and embarked on an old tub for Ellis Island. It was an agonizing trip according to my sister who is nine years older than I am. She remembers crowding, sleeping on open decks, heavy storms and seasickness. I was only two and spared the memory. As we immigrated from port to port, inventive immigration officials tacked on new endings to our name. Originally Marcovici in Romania, it became Markovitch in England and finally Markowitz at Ellis Island.

Ours was a typical entrance into the New World. For example the immigrant “greenhorn” has a fellow countryman living in the city as a real established New Yorker (perhaps for two months) who knew the ropes. The friend finds the greenhorn an apartment and helps him move in. Ours was on Allen Street, a narrow thoroughfare, always noisy and eternally dark, dominated by the elevated railroad (the el) Fortunately our tenement was six stories high. To escape the gloom we mounted the stairs to the light and sun on the roof. Typically tenement dweller adopted al fresco living where fire escape and roof became naturally air-conditioned sleeping quarters.

Luckily there was a glut of empty apartments in the city and one could move at will. Leases were no problem, there were none. We moved every year hoping to better ourselves, thus we progressed from a toilet in the backyard, to one on each floor, to one in the apartment. Bathing facilities were makeshift, the most luxurious being the kitchen washtub.

Our next move was to a gloomy bunch of rooms on Norfolk Street, again on the East Side. My few recollections of the place were a story about a grocery boy, who rather than go up and down stairs would jump from one window to a window in an adjoining building. Finally toppling, he was saved by the many clothes lines hung across the alley.

East Sixth Street was a move uptown but still in the slums. We now lived in a three-story brick house with a shared toilet on each floor, and wonders of wonders, the toilet had a window. These were the usual cramped quarters for a family of seven, which we’d now become. I addition we occasionally put up a cousin who had just come from the old country.]

This is what my father (Jack) wrote about his early memories of New York City.

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Rebecca and Aaron

My father's name was Jack Markow. He was born in London in 1905 and died in Manasquan , New Jersey in 1986. He was a cartoonist, painter, lithographer, writer and teacher. He was also a mean billiard and poker player.
The sketches are of his parents, my Romanian grandparents.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

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This is a blog about growing up with artist parents in New York City. It will start in the 1930's and go up to the time I was about twenty years old.

I want to mainly show my parent's art work...my father, who is pretty well known and my mother who isn't known at all. Since I was around, it also includes me.

Here is a lithograph of my fathers to get me started.

A Cartoonist's Daughter

Jack's pictures of Rockport, MA-1942

Rockport, MA

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About Me

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Watercolors by Margaret

Vintage Christmas Card (1940s) by Jack

Middletown, NJ pictures

The House in the Woods

Sketch for a New Yorker Cover

Photos of Manasquan.

Summer Vacations-Manasquan, NJ

Grandpa Trafford in his Bedroom

Watercolors by Margaret

New Yorker Cover

Thanksgiving

From Little Red School House to PS41

Caricatures

Joseph Torch Logo

7th Avenue Apartment

Another Christmas Card by Jack

Christmas Cards by Jack

Margaret-Unfinished Self Portrait

Margarets Sketch Book-World War II

Margaret's sketch book-Kisses

The Little Red Schoolhouse and Waverly Place

The Dreaded Arrival of My Little Sister

Janet Drawing

Greenwich House

Jack's WPA card

Abandoned Carousel

Margaret and Piano

Margaret's Stove

Walking through Greenwich Village

202 West 14th Street

Portrait of a Very Young Janet

Flying Jack

Jack and Margaret on 14th St. 1930's

Margaret's Sketch Book

Margaret-Spot Drawing

Tree Study-Margaret (1930's)

Jack's lithographs 1930's-WPA

Margaret's Sketch Book 1930's/1940's

Margaret's Sketch Books-1930's/1940's

More me from Jack's sketchbook

More Me

Young Me

Here I am in 1934

Sketches of Margaret and Jack 1930's

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

Town Crier

Margaret's Sketch Books 1930's

Ballyhoo Gag Ad 1930's

Ballyhoo

The Abandoned Carousel

Mom and Dad

Margaret's sketch book-France 1926 or 1927

The Trafford Children

Trafford Family

Tillie

When my father met my mother

The Markovici papers

The Markovici Family

Union Square in the 30's

I Love New York

Coming to America

ABOUT THIS BLOG