Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Notes Column and "The Curtain Falls" on our interview with Sol Weinstein

The response continues to be terrific from all of you who are viewing the Trenton Jewish Project online.  We are over 2750 page views during our short time in existence.  When you consider our demographics don't exactly include the highest of the high-tech, that's very impressive. 

Each week, I've been receiving more and more e-mails from people around the country and around the world and this week I want to share some of those with you.


The most heartening correspondence comes from Judee Weinstein, who lives in California and has been watching our multi-part interview with her father, Sol "Pumpy" Weinstein.  She writes,

"Thanks so much for interviewing my Dad! I am sitting here in San Jose, California, enjoying watching this video of you and my father. I have learned things that I never heard from my father! I wish it went on longer!
You have a great way of talking to people!"

Well, Judee, you're in luck.  There's one more installment of our interview.  In this segment, Sol and I talk about writing the Oy-Oy-Seven series of parodies and how that propelled him out of Trenton and into the Hollywood scene.   Make sure you watch the end of the video, where Sol serenades us with his own special version of "Bluebird of Happiness."  It's not to be missed.









Bill Schulman in Florida has been sending me some wonderful pictures of YMHA basketball teams.  In fact, here's one that he just sent.   He also sent some names that go with this picture, but why not make this interactive?   E-mail me if you can identify anyone in the shot.  Next week, I'll reveal the names that Bill sent me.





Andrew Wertz commented on this picture.






"it's really amazing to see the rt. 1 overpass there. thank you so much for sharing these."

Does anyone know what year Rte. 1 was re-aligned?  When I interviewed Edie Gordon recently she told me that Ira Keats had been doing some research on Old Trenton years ago and had talked to one of the city planners, a man by the name of Frank Elliott (who when I google his name shows up as a past President of Rider University), who said that re-aligning Route 1 and dividing the city was a mistake.






Steven Ramm, who now lives in Philadelphia must have attended the June 4th presentation about the 1955 flood and checked out the blog, providing us with these two comparison shots of his family's house on Morningside Drive.




 Steve also sent along some shots of his parents' store, Antheil's Shoes, which I'll share in a future blog entry.






 And Art Finkle shared this picture of Samuel Finkle's men's store at Spring and Willow Streets.  Love the car parked on the street. My best guess is that this picture is from 1934, because the Langhorne Speedway poster in the right hand side of the photo shows a date of Saturday, April 28th.  Doing a check of the calendars, the only other possibilities were 1928 and 1945.


Art also sent along this picture of the Class of 1933 Trenton Central High School photo in front of Mt. Vernon, Virginia.  Recognize anyone here?

Keep checking  out the photo galleries linked on the right side of the blog.  I've updated and tagged many of the photos with ID's that followers have provided.  E-mail me with a picture number and let me know if you know anyone in the photos.

Until next time.


Ed