Joe Meets Faye

About 1940

Joe Meets Faye

I asked my father how he met my mother.

He said it was the day that he was at the Western Union office across from Hemming Park in downtown Jacksonville.  There were two important places businessmen went each day.  One was the bank and the other was Western Union.  Western Union had designated boxes similar to post offices boxes.

One of his relatives was also inside.  He told him that there was a single Jewish woman working at the perfume counter by the front door of Cohen Brothers Department Store.  My father was about thirty-nine years old and still a bachelor.  I am guessing that he looked wistfully out of the window of the Western Union building at the large department store across the park.

“She’s a blonde.” It was whispered.

My father walked across the street and could see a smiling blonde right in front.  He was looking at her so hard that he walked into the glass door and stumbl

She never stopped smiling as she told him to whom she was related.  She was a Jacobs and Lassks, he was from the Jacksonville Portnoys and Dwoskins.

A Cohen Brothers floor walker, Mr. Powell, approached and told my Mom that she could not be socializing at the front counter.

My father was beside himself.  He began to wait at the side entrance when the employees left for the day so he could talk to her.  Then he started next to her as she walked across the Riverside Viaduct to her home on Jackson Street.  Then it was spending time with her on weekends.

When it came to physical attractiveness, my father felt he was marrying-up.   My mom was not as educated as my father so there was a natural attraction.

My mother and father married and rented on Post Street.  They decided to buy a house in the suburbs on Planters Road.  It was just outside the city limits on Beach Boulevard.

Next door lived Mr. and Mrs. Powell.