Bernie Shankman is born
Shankman is born in the roaring 20s, right before the crash of the stock market and the Great Depression. Therefore, he spends his early years growing up in the Great Depression. Fortunately, he is sheltered from the effects of the depression because of his family grocery business. Near the end of the 1930's, the decade long depression comes to an end as does Shankman's childhood, for World War II breaks out in Europe.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/dustbowl-great-depression/
TM: Where and when were you born?
BS: Washington, DC on June 7th, 1923.
TM: Is that where you grew up too?
BS: Yes.
TM: What was the community like in that time?
BS: What was the community like?
TM: Mhm.
BS: It was… very nice there. I enjoyed my life growing up. I was able to do many different things- school, sports, and whatnot. So, it was nice.
TM: Was it more of a rural or urban area?
BS: Urban area.
TM: What were the economics like there?
BS: Well, my family was in the grocery business. My dad had a grocery store. It was good there, livings. Of course, we had many things other people didn’t have, especially during the war, and things were rationed, and of course, we had things available to us that some people did not yet. But it was good, it was good.
TM: What were some religions like in that community?
BS: Some what?
TM: Religions.
BS: Religions?
TM: Mhm
BS: Oh there was Italian and Jewish and, uh, Baptist, mostly.
TM: Talk to me about your parents and grandparents. What were their names?
BS: Well my grandparents name was Isaac and my grandmother’s name was Ala, and my mother’s name was Lena and my father’s name was Joseph.
TM: Where were they from?
BS: From Poland. It was on the border of Russia and Poland at the time.
TM: What contributed to them coming to America?
BS: Well, to get away from the life they were leading in Poland at the time. It was right after World War 1, I think, that they came here. And, uh, for a better life.
TM: What did they do for work?
BS: Well my dad, at first, he drove a delivery wagon, for a bread company.
TM: What was that like?
BS: A horse and buggy wagon, I remember. Of course, my mother stayed at home. She was a housewife.
TM: You said earlier that your parents owned a grocery business?
BS: Grocery Business, yes. After being a delivery man, he purchased a little grocery store from an uncle of mine who owned it in Washington, and that was the start of being in the grocery business?
TM: Did you spend a lot of time around the grocery store?
BS: Oh, yea. I was always around. It was interesting at the time. Of course, in those days they didn’t have packaged meats, and my dad used to get slides of beef and cut it down, sell it, and we had fresh chickens that we kept in the backyard in the coop. If someone wanted a chicken my mother would go get it, kill it, and pluck the feathers. It was interesting.