AUNT MARTHA AND UNCLE NAT
(Link to Nat’s World War II Story To see details, scroll down to below the line of asterisks (*********).
Every youngster seems to have had at least one rather special relative. Sometimes these individuals are related by DNA, sometimes by marriage and, yes, at other times by parental designation such as “aunt” or “uncle”. In story after story we read about an older cousin, an aunt or an uncle, possibly a grandparent who captured the younger person’s imagination with stories of travels, conquests, the “I was there when” historical or special sporting events occurred, whether real or imaginary.
Memories of these very special people are seared into our minds forever. Perhaps we knew an uncle Patrick who, while sitting at the kitchen table, flicked his cigarette ashes into the kitchen fireplace while recalling how he knocked out Johnny Carter in the fifth round of their brawl at the local gym some fifty years ago. Or there was Joey Perlucci’s father who presided over the wine as well as the dinner table while telling stories about trips to world ports while serving as a deck hand just because he loved the sea. Or Aunt Bella who ruined dozens of potato lakes by mistaking plaster of Paris for flour (true). Some of these stories rang true, some didn’t. They mattered because they had the ability to capture their listeners’ imaginations and transport them to unknown worlds whether by land, sea or air or just by the whim of the spoken word.
Nat Knaster, my biological Aunt Martha’s husband, was my special relative. Although they lived in New York City, they came periodically to our West Philadelphia home to visit our family. One such occasion was my fifth birthday in 1938. Although they liked to take the train, on this occasion Aunt Martha and Uncle Nat drove from New York to Philly to celebrate with our family. At the time, I thought their gift was super special: a cowboy outfit which included a bandana, two pistols, two leather arm cuffs and a leather holster waistband; “the best gift ever”!
After helping me get into the cowboy outfit, Uncle Nat took out his camera; I immediately protested saying “don’t take my picture”. Nat, in his calm and seducing manner, simply responded saying, “I’m not going to take pictures – there’s no film in the camera – just checking to see if it’s working okay”.
I don’t have a photographic memory but, to this day, I remember Nat showing me how to looked down at the viewing screen of his Rolliflex to see images that were being projected through the camera’s lens. He also let me click the shutter and turn the handle which winds the film. By doing so, he quickly put me at ease and, as he kept depressing the shutter lever and winding the film, I was getting a kick out of the sounds and responded accordingly with big smiles which he captured for posterity. As a result, uncle Nat was getting unpretentious reactions – to his playful encouragement – on film. One of the images, the one above, included our living room furniture with my father sitting in his favorite chair. No doubt I was captivated by the visit and have always remember it vividly, especially because Nat’s pictures documented the visit. On the same trip, Aunt Martha had my brother Paul and me dress warmly and go out into cool April air so that uncle Nat could take pictures of us sitting on the front bumper of his car and others of Aunt Martha standing with us on the front steps of our home.
In the car photograph, Nat incorporated the background which included the houses on Allison street as well as the front end of his car, a 1930’s roadster. Although not shown in this photograph, the car had to be started with a hand crank which was directly behind where I was sitting. What fun! A recent (2018) Google Earth image shows the same houses. Ours had an open porch; others were enclosed.
Time, memories and photographs reveal that Nat was not just an amateur shutterbug but someone who was attuned to both his subjects as well as his surroundings. And, with the softness of his voice, endearing smile and patience, he could elicit the reactions he wanted for his lens to see and film to record. He was a very special person and, as time would tell, a consummate professional. These verbal snapshots of a few moments in 1938 introduce my first memories of Martha and Nat Knaster.
The next meeting that I can recall occurred about a year later when, because of circumstances, our family had to move to Brooklyn, NY (spring of 1939) to live with my grandparents at 1063 E. 15th street. For me, that was a fun time; not so for my parents. It was fun getting to know my Aunt Kay and Uncle Donald who live on Sheepshead Bay; fun seeing Aunt Martha and Uncle Nat again; fun flushing the overhead toilet tank with a long pull chain; fun poking at an old, out-of tune upright piano that sat in a corner of the living room; fun watching the BMT elevated train through the kitchen window and hearing the brakes screech as it approach the Avenue J station just a block away; fun being in the house and smelling the aroma of Grandma Morris’s challah and chicken soup coming from the kitchen and it was fun when my parents took us to the New York World Fair in Flushing Meadow. While Paul and I were having all of this “fun”, my parents were wondering what the future held for them, and for us: where we would live; where might Dad find a job; where would Paul and I would go to school; would we remain in Brooklyn, return to Philly or go elsewhere? In spite of these concerns, I remember that my parents, along with Aunt Kay and Uncle Donald, went to the World’s Fair the evening before they took Paul and me. That Friday night is still clearly etched in my mind because I didn’t want my parents to go. As the tears flowed, Grandma tired her best to comfort me by telling me that I would be going to the fair “tomorrow”. I think that I must have been a “cling-on” and simply didn’t want my parents to leave; I had never been watched by a “baby-sitter” and I didn’t like this change at all. The next day, however, I had one of those “never-forget memories” when I saw that iconic image of the Trylon and Sphere at the fair grounds. It’s seems ironic that my parents were concerned about their circumstances while attending a world’s fair subtitled “Building The World of Tomorrow”. Or, perhaps, they were just dreaming of the future.
After returning to the City of Brotherly Love within the year, we moved from southwest to northeast Philly; somehow my father obtained a bank loan (thanks probably to FDR) and opened his own small business, a grocery store featuring meats and delicatessen. The apartment above the store became our home for the next seventeen years; the alley and garage area behind the building my playground.
From time to time Aunt Martha and Uncle Nat would visit 6146 Torresdale Avenue; she would remark how terrible the water tasted and he would be clicking away with his Rolli. Because Nat always had a camera in his hands, there are hundreds of black and white photos in albums and boxes collected over the years. And, with Nat’s personal collection now in hand, a fine record of those early years.
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Uncle Nat: World War II
Story
The following are companion PowerPoint Presentations:
(Note: to create a split-screen for viewing the following Slides as well as Presenter’s Notes, read this.)
Spain MS PowerPoint Presentation
Egypt MS PowerPoint Presentation
Italy MS PowerPoint Presentation
Personal Documents: (click on images to enlarge)