I was thinking about my father: he was a laborer. That’s what my mother said. I never knew what the words meant until later in my childhood, but I understood the memory of an image at a young age. I knew, for years, that my father worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, south of where we lived, on East Broadway and Canal Street. Somewhere, down there. I knew that he worked for The Neptune Raincoat Company. I remembered that in my early teens, while I was in Junior High School 104, that my father traveled to Elizabeth, New Jersey, daily, but I don’t know how he got there. Possibly by car. At that time, the company had moved out of New York City. I recall his saying that Neptune moved above the Burry Biscuit Company. He used to bring home sacks of broken Girl Scout cookies for a few cents; cookies without their icing, or shattered, or overly dipped. The rejects that couldn’t be sold. The most delicious dregs of cookie society. I have learned that the building which housed the cookie production and likely The Neptune Raincoat Company, and, its predecessors, had been, fairly recently, destroyed in a fire. Here’s a link. Interesting history.

But, let’s rewind, even further back. To the early 1950s. I was haunted by a memory that I needed to validate and I spent a day researching, tearing through articles and Google searches to find something, anything. I tried to search the old NYC tax photo archives from 1940. I went through block and lot numbers cross-referenced with photos and names and got nowhere. I thought the address was on Canal Street and I was hitting the wall.

I was trying to find the very place that my mother took me to, one hot, early evening, on The Avenue B (Red) Bus. She was wearing her orange sun dress. We entered a loading dock. My father was packing huge cartons and tying them with heavy wire. He was sweating, wearing an undershirt, the kind nicknamed, “wife beater.” He must have been about thirty-six years old. He always looked old to me. Bald, stocky, glasses. What a child remembers.

I needed to find myself as a child, at the beginning. I needed to find my mother when she was young and vibrant. But that would never happen. So, I needed to find the place where our ghosts reside in a moment in time.

As he tied a carton for shipping, likely packed with raincoats, I stuck my hand under the wire. There it was trapped until I asked for it to be rescued. That was the memory. That, and feeling that this place of work was dark unless one looked out of the large open space, an industrial garage doorway which likely admitted trucks.

My mother wore this orange sun dress all the time

I finally verified the address of Neptune, via a legal paper that had been posted about a lawsuit. I was close: though Neptune was near Canal Street, the address was 16 East Broadway.

Back to searching the block and lot numbers, I had been looking too far north, the building was further south. And though my father likely did not work there in 1940, I found my proof, my memory validation when I returned to the tax photo archives. I was, indeed amazed.

Here is what I found the very image; it slowly came into view.

This is the tax photo from 1940. The Avenue B bus is about to enter the photo on the right. The bus would have stopped in front of my father’s place of work. The Neptune Raincoat Company appears to have been housed in 16 and 17 East Broadway: The buildings were connected. This must have been the showroom. I think the loading area may have been toward the back, left, behind the cars.

Eureka! When I cropped and enlarged the photo, I saw this.

And that is my memory from over sixty-five years ago. In time for Labor Day.

Whatever work you may do, your labor, your work, is recognized and validated.