Just a Kid from Hell's Kitchen - In Remembrance of TC Murray

Chapter 1 - DELIA’S SECRET
1933
1933 ushered in the “year of the cock” in the Chinese calendar. I’m sure that Mott Street
was alive with festivities as firecrackers greeted the dragon as it made its way down Mott
Street. However, for most people, there was little to celebrate as we were in the middle of
the Great Depression. “Hoovervilles” and soup kitchens abounded in the financial capital
of the world. Wall Street tycoons were jobless and, in some cases, panhandling: Brother
Could You Spare a Dime?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in his first year as President of the United States. Here in
America, we were trying to combat the worst depression in our country’s history and the
president’s antidote was his homemade “alphabet soup” of relief, recovery and reform.
John Nance Garner was the Vice President, but who cares about the number two man
anyway? Was it Garner who said that the vice presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm
spit?
The submarine races had started in earnest in 1933 when the first drive-in opened in
Camden, New Jersey. The two popular cola drinks were only five cents and a hair cut
twenty cents. Shaves at the local barber, replete with a hot towel finale, were very
popular back then, and for only twenty-five cents, the man of the house got a close shave.
One could go to the cinema and, for a dime or so and could wipe away those depression
blues – at least for a couple of hours. Ruby Keeler was hoofing her way through 42 nd
Street, considered to be the first of the great movie musicals. Claude Rains, nearly a
decade before Casablanca, was starring in The Invisible Man, while Fay Wray was doing
her thing with King Kong high atop the “Empire State Building.”
Art deco had quickly taken hold in the greatest city in the world after its introduction a
few years earlier in a Paris exposition. The Empire State Building was now the tallest
building in the world and second only to the Chrysler Building in terms of deco elegance.
Interiors of buildings from lobbies to elevator doors heralded this distinctive architecture.
Deco numbers, deco letters, deco jewelry, deco furniture – it was to be found everywhere.
In December of 1933, New Yorkers and people across the nation were looking forward to
Christmas, even though for many, there were few reasons to celebrate. Indeed, it was the
birthday of the Christ-child, the prime reason for this most festive Christian holiday. Like
the couple in O. Henry’s, The Gift of the Magi, families had each other. What more could
one ask for?