|
Marc Curtis Little (69) personalizes “Weequahic lifestyle,” as does Wilma Bernhaut Pitman (6/57):
The Gary Prager (1/61) post was interesting on a number of fronts for me. First, I wondered to myself, "What was the Weequahic lifestyle?" Did it include some families, such as mine, that lived in the Weequahic High School feeding pattern (that is a school such as Peshine Avenue School whose students mainly attended Weequahic upon graduation from the elementary school)? Second, I wondered if this lifestyle was limited to families who resided in close proximity to Weequahic High School and were accorded some kind of privilege that families living outside the boundary were not.
I immediately thought back to a number of conversations I had with my late mother about how she and my father decided to move into the Peshine neighborhood in 1954, two years before I started kindergarten. According to her, she wanted her children (my younger brother began school in 1958, my sister in 1965) to attend Weequahic once they graduated. It rapidly became apparent to her that her desire for her children and their friends to become part of the Weequahic High School family was being circumvented by a series of boundary changes that began to move the predominantly group of Black children in her neighborhood from Weequahic to South Side High School.
While I won't go into the weeds on the aforementioned (that would take a larger, much more intensive discussion), I will say that the "Weequahic Lifestyle" conversation began to intensify as more Black families moved within stone throws of the school and brought new lifestyles to the immediate neighborhoods. People, like my mother, became aggressive with the Newark Board of Education about the treatment of their children by some educators at Weequahic as the school's culture began moving toward a more inclusive manner. While the student body for the most part accepted the changes, the parents on both sides dug in, those who wanted the "Weequahic Lifestyle" to remain in place no matter what, and those who doggedly fought to carve a place for their children.
I've heard the stories about the attitudes of the old Weequahic culture over the years and none of them were surprising. However, the coining of the term "Weequahic Lifestyle" makes me wonder about who believes such a notion prevailed during the twenty-five-year period from 1950 through 1975. Most of all, I ask myself who is taking such an attitude to their graves. Marc
I don't really know what the term “Weequahic Lifestyle” means. I probably was one who lived on the "fringe" like others who have participated in this conversation about the subject. I lived on Wolcott Terrace, which might be considered the Clinton Hill Section, even though the Annex, where all Weequahicites went for 9th grade, was almost in my backyard. My folks were, as Jac Toporek (6/63) said in his recent blog, hard-working people just getting by for the times, just plain old living life.
My mom was a teacher and my father a very struggling lawyer. My dad did not own a car; we took a bus downtown. Or, maybe, he borrowed my uncle's car to take us on an outing to Lake Hopatcong or a day trip to Bradley Beach. We lived in a two-family house where my Bubbie (grandmother) lived on the first floor and us on the second. We knew every kid in every home on the block. We played stoop ball (what's a stoop?). The boys played stickball in the street. There were fruit/vegetable vendors on the street, the iceman, the knife grinder, plus the Good Humor man. I did not know anyone that went to summer camp; our camp was the Hawthorne Avenue School Playground. And we loved every bit of it.
To me, when I met up at the high school with others, they were just other kids in my grade. Yes, some resided in, Wow, a one family house, but others lived in apartment houses and so on. I never was envious, just figured that one day, when I got married, maybe we could live on Keer Avenue. I never considered myself poor because everyone else that I knew was in the same situation as me and my family. I always felt that I came from a happy home and I have very fond memories of those days. Sounds like I'm an old timer? Guess I am. Wilma
| 
