Dad – part 2, Jet

My older sister Shayne, of blessed memory, was born in 1946, and I was born in ‘48, early Boomers. Our parents, Shayne and I shared the single bedroom of my mother’s parents’ one bedroom apartment, and my grandparents slept in the living room. That was the arrangement from the end of the war, when Mom and Dad returned from their idyll in Canada until my grandparents left for Israel around 1950, just two years after the State was declared. We remained in that suddenly spacious apartment until we too left for Israel. When we returned to the US after less than a year away, we moved into a large two bedroom apartment on the same floor of the same building – five of us now, with Tamar having been born while we were in Israel. Not two years later, the fourth and last child, Aviva, was born.  Someone asked Dad if he hadn’t wanted a son.  He barely understood the question.  Girls were a good deal – especially in those pre-feminist days.  They were cute, they waited on you, and you didn’t have to play ball with them.  Dad adored all four of us and wanted us to become independent and assertive women, he was, after all, something of a feminist for his time.  He taught us to think and argue, and expected us to defend our positions vigorously.  He taught us to have firm handshakes and to tip generously.

Whatever my dad’s shortcomings were as a person, while I was growing up he was simply a fabulous dad, and we girls all felt lucky to have such great parents.  Dad was quick to praise and slow to anger.  He told us regularly how terrific he thought we each were in our own unique ways.  Although my parents were pretty typical for the time, with Mom having almost the whole responsibility for managing our lives at home and in school, Dad paid attention to us and spent time with us.  For a while he would take Shayne or me for Saturday outings, and that time alone with him was so special.  One of our favorite destinations was the magnificent Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.  I wore patent leather shoes and white cotton gloves for these occasions.  Dad loved museums, but he didn’t love to linger.  We couldn’t have gone through the galleries much faster if we had been on roller skates.  It’s a habit I’ve worked to break myself of, learning to stop, to look carefully, and to think.

But the most special annual outing with Dad for me was the grand Toy Fair held in some wonderful Midtown hotel. I think I went to the Toy Fair with Dad from about age 8 to 12.  We went to the Toy Fair to display the wares of Jet Party Favors, and of course, to take orders.  Shortly after we returned from Israel Dad started Jet – the name being a nod to Bubble Puss with its jet of air.  Jet was a wonderful business.  Dad made cheerful products for fun events.  Birthday party supplies for kids were the bread and butter, but he also developed a wonderful line of Halloween hats and masks, and a great line of shiny New Year’s hats for adults.  As with Bubble Puss, Dad had a brilliant marketing idea for birthday party supplies.  He packaged all the items for one child in a clear plastic bag, so that a mom could just buy as many bags as she needed for the party.  It was a huge hit with Woolworth and Kresge, his biggest two customers by far, the companies that put my sisters and me through college.

I would sometimes go to the Toy Fair with Dad on the first day to help him and Cousin Jerry set up their room, one of hundreds at the fair.  One time Jerry was up on a ladder stapling Happy Birthday banners to the wall when an inspector came in and told him angrily that stapling into the walls was strictly forbidden.  Jerry told him this was not a problem, as he was only using rubber staples.  According to Dad, the inspector said, oh, well, that was fine, and left them alone.  I don’t know if the story is true (although it’s certainly believable for Jerry to be so quick-witted and brazen) but Dad loved to tell it.  

We got amazing swag from the Toy Fair.  Dad would take us around on the last day as vendors were packing up their wares and we would come home loaded down with dolls and once, a fabulous Annie Oakly outfit complete with cap guns.  I felt like the luckiest kid in the world to have a father in such a business – and we always had the best stuff for our birthday parties. I learned how to be a manager tagging around the factory in Dad’s wake.  He knew every employee and every product.  He treated everyone with both respect and warmth.  He asked questions about their work and listened to their ideas for improvements.  He remembered who had a sick kid or a husband out of work.  He often handed out the pay envelopes himself (cash in those days, which I sometimes got to help count), thanking each person for their work.  His employees weren’t unionized for many years because he treated them well and paid them fairly, so attempts by outsiders to organize them failed. Dad took his responsibility to his workers seriously.  He knew that families depended on those pay envelopes, and his one great dread was the threat of not being able to make payroll which was a near thing in a few lean times.

I remember three locations for Jet, two in The Bronx, and the last and largest in Stamford, Connecticut. Walking through those factories, as I did many times, and working there, as I did one summer, was a wonderful sensory experience.  The place was full of color and light.  Most of the hats were made of foil-covered cardboard, in bright blues, greens, reds, and a rainbow of other colors.  There were stacks of this coated cardboard on pallets that the workers took their supplies from, and each stack was topped by a mirror smooth piece that reflected the light. There were stacks of the shiny finished hats, many with gay crepe paper ruffles. The scraps from the cutout cardboard littered the floor, shards of bright color, often coated with sparkles. Each incarnation of the factory had lots of natural light, and nearly every surface gleamed with glitter and bits of shiny cardboard.  

Puerto Rican women did most of the factory work and they dressed as gaily as the materials they used, with bright colored smocks over their dresses – often wearing samples of the hats they were working on. I can still hear their transistor radios pumping out music over the noise of the machines, and their laughing calls to each other across the factory floor. The work was tedious and repetitive, but it didn’t look like drudgery. Dad created a wonderland – I thought so even after I worked there.  It was a cheerful place, overseen by a cheerful guy.  You could hear him laughing over the clanking of the machines the women used to cut and staple the hats.