Cloakie

I am not dissatisfied with my profession as a psychologist. I believe I have helped people with emotional problems and I continue to do so now. Yet I often wonder about the road not taken.

My father, Sam, manufactured women's coats and suits in the grament district of New York City. They were called "cloakies." His business was housed in a ninth floor loft on West 38th Street.

Sam made a high priced garment and sold to the better department stores in the city. Summers I helped out, assisting the packing and delivery man. I pushed the carts loaded with fur trimmed broadclothes to middle men or stores within walking distance, took packages to the post office, swept up around the operators and Louie the pressor.

Sam made a good living, especially during the war years, but he never wanted me to take over his business. My parents' plans for me were to become a doctor--an aspiration which represented high status and was worry free in their eyes and which I never completely fulfilled. Yet it might have worked out differently.

Our neighborhood in the West Bronx was one of the nicer sections of the city. We overlooked the public school and were within walking distance of parks, shopping areas, playgrounds and public transportation. Most of us were second or third generation children of immigrants who had succeeeded economically. My father was unemployed during the Great Depresion but bounced back and was able to start his own business. The children of our neigborhood became physicians, dentists, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and successful businessmen. A block from our apartment house teens gathered alomng Mosholu Parkway and socialized on warm summer evenings. Among the group were two boys who later made it big. Calvin Klein and Ralph Lipshitz, now known as Ralph Lauren. I didn't know either of them but would have recognized them at thew time along the park fence. I've read that Lipschitz returns to the neighborwood frequently to visit his old apartment.

When I need to get a rise out of friends who know me well I point out that I, too, might have gone into the garment business and become a "cloakie." I, too, might have become a Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren. "You can't properly match a shirt and a tie," I am reminded "and if you dress well today it's because your wife picks out your clothes."

My mother, let her rest in peace, would say, "It was nicht bershert." It was not destined. So be it.