Playing for Pennies

By Helen Thau

When I was a child I lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This was in the 30’s when our country was in bad shape. Unemployment was very high, there were food lines in the street and the people were desperate.

In order to make some sort of living, there would be groups of 3 (elderly) men dressed in funeral suits wearing caps and carrying musical instruments, mainly horns. They would walk through the back alleys of the apartment houses playing Yiddish songs. There would always be a bunch of kids following them. The housewives would wrap up 3 or 4 pennies in a piece of newspaper and throw it down to these musicians. The kids would run around picking up the pennies (if you were lucky there would be a nickel) for the men who would go from block to block making pennies, trying to earn a living of sorts.