In the early 1900’s, my grandfather, Shepsel Reuben, opened a little general store at 656 Maxwell Street in Chicago. Maxwell Street was an island of pushcarts. To compete with them, the Reuben Department Store had a small stand out front, the purpose of which was to waylay pedestrians and haul them inside. The neighborhood itself was referred to as the Bloody 20th Ward, and everyone who lived there was a registered Democrat.

Not to be was to risk your life.

Since my grandmother could neither read nor write in English, obliging politicians were always eager to get into the voting booth with Eshke and tell her how to vote. The precinct captain knew exactly how many votes a candidate would get before an election, not excluding Teddy Roosevelt Reuben, my father’s dog, who was a registered Democrat.

After Uncle Jack was born, Shepsel bought a complete set of architectural books, studied them, and began to construct buildings – by hand.

During the 1929 depression, he lost the building he had bought at 3346 West Grenshaw Street, where he and his family lived. The bank foreclosed on the property and it was put up for sale. So Shepsel borrowed money from everyone in the family who had any, and bought his own building back at that sale.