From Beyond the Pale to Park Avenue

Here is my mother's family. From left to right, Milton, Lottie, Freda,(the youngest) my mother Molly and Belle. They lived in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. You can  see a facsimile of their apartment  at the tenement museum in Chinatown New York. Both Parents worked, he as a  shoemaker and she as a seamstress. From  work she brought material home and made the family's clothes.
They had no bathroom in the building and went down the street to the public baths. 5 cents for a shower if you brought your own soap. 10 cents if you had to buy some.  My grandfather died at 47 of  a heart attack, and the children left school to find jobs. My mother's first job  was in a drugstore  demonstrating a toothpaste called "opalescent pearlescent". She sat in the window brushing her teeth, but was fired because all her friends came by and spit on the window. Eventually she got a job as a model on 7th Avenue which is where she met my father.