Stand Up and Fight Like a Man!

Stand Up and Fight Like a Man!

According to family legend, Samuel “Porky” Levine invented the technique of falling on the ice in front of the goal. Fact or fiction?

Border Cities Star (Windsor, Ontario); 11 January 1929

We ended the last post with Porky being loaned by Detroit to Seattle. He was only 20 when he arrived there in January 1929, and the West Coast press immediately dubbed him the “new infant goalie”. But that tune changed as he recorded opening back-to-back shutouts in sensational style, and he quickly became the new star that the Eskimo franchise badly needed.

Detroit Free Press, 25 January 1929

However, as beloved as he was in Seattle’s rink, he incurred the wrath of every hometown crowd when playing on the road. Unlike other goaltenders, he would grab the puck and throw it out of the way when danger threatened. He also had the habit of diving for the puck and keeping it under his body in mixups at the net. In the result, he suffered more than his fair share of scars, concussive blows and other bodily injuries. But he kept the puck out and, in the process, infuriated and frustrated opposing players and their fans.

Porky Levine tending goal in a hockey game; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1929

Porky was soon notorious for this new technique of falling on the ice to save a goal. The league was taking a dim view of it, as described in this local newspaper article: 

“Victoria fans will get their first glimpse of Porky Levine, the new Seattle net minder, in action. Whoever gave Levine his nom-de-plume surely knew his stuff. Levine is porky enough - so much so, in fact, as to fill about half the cage…

But Mr. Levine will have to watch himself tonight. Porky drew the ire of the fans for his sprawling antics, and President Frank Patrick has issued Referee Ion an ultimatum, decreeing that Porky must stay on his skates. Any more than two sliding movements will find Levine sliding into the penalty box for a chance to recover his equilibrium…

Porky is a bit of a ham and knows how to grandstand in a sensational manner. He robbed Victoria at least five times in the previous game by his horizontal movements. No fighter ever lived who can hit the floor like Levine.”  [Victoria Daily Colonist, 5 February 1929]

Porky Levine tending goal; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1929

Porky’s play was spectacular once again, and Victoria lost. There was no report of any penalty for his “sliding” in that game, but Porky didn’t hesitate to lie across the goal mouth as often as the need arose. The same columnist (as above) wrote, in the game’s aftermath:

“Porky filled the goal and the rubber bounced off his horizontal form many times. Victoria riddled shot after shot on Levine. He was peppered from every corner. At one time, the puck bounced off Porky’s head and he had to take a “short count”. Levine had many horseshoes strung around his cage as he was kicking out shots left and right.”

From that point on there does not appear to have been any further public controversy about Porky’s technique of falling on the ice in front of the goal. By the time he had returned back east at season’s end, it had proved to be a highly effective goal tending method. Today it is  universally practiced, albeit with conditions.

So even if Porky didn’t actually invent the technique, it was certainly part of the legacy he created on the West Coast in 1929. And legacies, after all, are the real stuff of family legends.

__________

Of course Porky’s story doesn’t end here. Stay tuned for more, in due course.

Oh! The Stories You’ll Hear…

Oh! The Stories You’ll Hear…

 “Porky” Levine generated a lot of ink in his 62 years. Most of it was by sports writers  and color commentators covering, or just reminiscing about, his antics during fifteen years as a professional goalie. However, before we get into those stories, many of which are now being passed down to a fourth generation, we’ll need to set the stage... 

Perhaps not everyone knows how he fits into the pantheon of Rosses and Solomons and Genenders (oh my!).

1. Introducing Samuel Levine (1908 - 1970)

Samuel Levine was born in 1908 in the town of Bobr, in the province of Mogilev, which was then part of the Russian Empire. (Today, Bobr is in Belarus.) At the age of six, he emigrated with his 39 year old mother “Minnie” (Minia Fromkin) and three other siblings: Rose, Sara and Alex.

Cover pages of the 1914 Passport/Visa Issued to Minia Levin

They boarded a Russian Northwest steamship in Lubava, Latvia and headed for Canada where the head of the family, Herschel “Harry” Levine, waited. Their passport/visa had been stamped in Mogilev on June 28, 1914. World War I began one month later, and the Russian Empire collapsed not long after. (Timing is everything.)

Upon arrival in Canada, the family settled in the mining towns of Northern Ontario: South Porcupine, Kapuskasing, Timmins, and Kirkland Lake in turn. Sophie was born in 1916 and, with that, the eight member Levine family was complete: parents Harry and Minnie, and six children - Max, Rose, Alex, Sara, Samuel and Sophie. Sara, of course, later married Saul Ross which meant that Samuel Levine became “Uncle Porky” to (among others) the families of Noreen Solomon, Mervyn Ross and Joan Genender. 

2. Wherefore Art Thou “Porky”?

In a 1929 interview, Sammy related how he came to be known as “Porky”. It seems he was quite a baseball player and made the Timmins (Ontario) Junior team while at school. The team was sent to a neighboring town to play and there the boys were served a big meal, with roast pork as the featured dish. Sammy apologetically explained that he couldn’t eat this forbidden fruit, and the hosts graciously prepared an alternative. From that day on, he was known as “Porky” to his team mates and, eventually, to everyone else. 

It was all in jest, of course, and in those years (from 1920-1940 especially) colorful, fun nicknames were almost a requirement for all hockey players. Porky played with the likes of Moose, Bullet, Shrimp, Flash, Pickles, Fido, Lulu, Spud, Bomber, Mousie, Butch, Bouncer, and so on. The list is endless. 

It didn’t take long, however, before Sammy Levine actually assumed the characteristics of his sobriquet. Sports writers began to describe him as “the little fat man”, “pudgy”, and “roly-poly”. When explaining why “Porky” was unlikely to make it in the major leagues, one journalist quipped: “…there is not enough difference between his height and his diameter.” 

Rather than taking offense at this kind of press, Porky seemed to thrive on the attention. He was always considered “popular”, “good natured”, and a “master showman”. One newspaper from a rival city (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1936) put it this way: “Porky Levine is one of the most colorful goalies in hockey. The fans ride him but they laugh at his antics… He knows just how to make a stop look spectacular and he also knows how to make stops -  which, after all, usually gives Porky the last laugh.”

Porky must’ve had many “last laughs” over the course of his impressive goal-tending career. He started as backup goalie in 1927 with the Detroit Olympics, a minor league team of the Canadian Professional Hockey League. The following year, Detroit reluctantly “loaned” him to the Windsor Bulldogs and then to the Seattle Eskimos (photo above) where he quickly helped turn their season around. By age 20, he was already touted as “one of the most brilliant goal keepers in professional hockey today”. 

Although Porky was released by Detroit in 1930, Jack Adams soon regretted his decision. (Adams was then manager of the Cougars, Detroit’s fledgling NHL franchise, and his team was  struggling to get established.) Porky may have left the city, but his ghost continued to haunt Hockeytown:

“Distraught during one of his team's many slumps, Adams concluded that it was because the Cougars had loaned backup goalie Porky Levine to Seattle of the Pacific Coast League, thus leaving his club with only one goalie to shoot at during practice. Team officials would not allow him to sign another netminder, so Adams had a wooden effigy of Porky constructed and outfitted in goalie equipment, including skates. The Detroit players pushed their pine Porky into place in front of the net during practice and sometimes took it out for pregame warmups.” 

[Bob Duff, from the book Total Hockey (The Official Encyclopedia of the NHL), as found at http://goo.gl/lTw5BU]

That would certainly not be Porky’s final “last laugh”. Stay tuned for more, in subsequent posts.

                                                                                                

46 Crispin Street - The Noted House for Paper Bags

46 Crispin Street - The Noted House for Paper Bags

Joshua Saul Ross - may he rest in peace - was my wife’s maternal grandfather. He was born on January 26, 1903 in London, England which, at that time, was the acme of imperial power and international finance. It's an understatement to say that “Joshua Saul Ross” is not the most famous name of all Londoners, but his birthplace - 46 Crispin Street - is today considered one of the ten most unusual, recognizable and photographed storefronts in the city. The place even has its own tag line: The Noted House for Paper Bags.

Wait -- my ancestor was born in a paper bag factory? Yes. Sort of.

46 Crispin Street, Spitalfields, London

Founded in the 1830s at this site, “Donovan Brothers” was an authentic family business. The O’Donovans came to Spitalfields from Dublin to escape the potato famine and soon began to make and sell paper products for the Spitalfields Market. (In the photo, below, the Market is the structure being renovated at the far right, with 46 Crispin on the left of the picture. The two locations have always been literally a stone’s thrown apart.)  Although 46 Crispin Street is no longer a working shop, and hasn’t been for some time, Donovan Bros is still a very active London company serving the city’s many thriving markets. (See http://goo.gl/iOB5yy.) 

The brick building itself remains in relatively good condition, being under the protective jurisdiction of The Spitalfields Historic Trust. Its original hand-painted signs still capture the spirit of London shops of the Victorian era. In fact, the signage is one of the very few, preserved pieces of evidence of the Irish wave of immigration that preceded the arrival of the Jews in Spitalfields later in the 1800s.

According to the 1891 census, the building was home to at least two families:  the Katz family from Holland (the father, Meyer, being a paper box maker); and a larger Russian/Polish family of which the father, Jacob, was a master tailor. Ten years later (1901), the census notes three different families living there, all described as being of Russian descent and all employed in the tailoring or boot making trades. 

Over the years, the number of families living at this address, and the rate of turnover, are probably typical for such houses in the neighborhood, given that this is a 3-4 storey building in a community of immigrants whose general aim was to make enough money to move on to their ultimate destination: usually, North America.

As for the Ross family, we don’t know exactly when they began living at 46 Crispin Street, how long they were there, or who else shared the building with them. However, it was clearly identified as their residential address in January 1903 when “Solomon” (being the name given on the Entry of Birth, seen below) came into this world.  Then, by the summer of 1907, the Ross family had left the area, crossed the Atlantic and began their new life in Toronto. 

For all Rosses and, in particular, for those who are direct descendants of Joshua Saul Ross, there may be some comfort in knowing that the Donovan Brothers’ Noted House for Paper Bags survives in much the same condition as it was when serving as the Ross family home in January 1903.  It’s even a bit amusing (or flattering) that this birthplace is still a well-known London shopfront among connoisseurs of Victorian signage. It’s like having a special, family heritage plaque - “Grampa Saul slept here” - or, on a grander scale, a reminder of all the Spitalfields immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries who lived in and passed through this neighborhood, on their way to a better life. 

Spitalfields: A Family History Lesson in Jewish Geography

It was sooty, overcrowded and impoverished; a most appropriate setting for Oliver Twist; and, not surprisingly, the haunt of Jack the Ripper. It was home to struggling artisans with large young families, to the destitute, the prostitute, and to shady criminal elements. That was the Spitalfields area of East London, as the Victorian era gave way to the 20th century.

It was cheap to live in Spitalfields and, accordingly, it became a magnet to waves of immigrants who were fleeing persecution, discrimination and poverty. By the 1880s it had become the major destination for East European Jews escaping the Polish pogroms and harsh conditions in Russia, as well as for Dutch entrepreneurial Jews. In fact, at the turn of the century, Spitalfields was so overwhelmingly Jewish it was probably one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, with over 40 Synagogues. (Note: as the 20th century progressed, the Jewish presence diminished, to be replaced by an influx of Bangladeshi immigrants.)

Ezras Chaim Synagogue, 2 Heneage Street

Spitalfields plays an uncanny, important role in the histories of the SOLOMON and ROSS families. Barney’s father Hyman Solomon was born there, at 30 Heneage Street, in 1895; while Noreen’s father, Joshua Saul Ross, was born there, at 46 Crispin Street*, in 1903. These two children were born, and their families lived, only a few blocks apart! (While visiting this area, it took less than ten minutes for Carin, Dylan and I to walk between those two addresses.) In spite of this proximity within the tightly knit Spitalfields community, there is nothing to suggest that any members of the Solomon or Ross families ever mingled with one another - in school, on the streets or at Synagogue; or that anyone in either family even knew of the other’s existence. Such awareness would take another fifty years to develop.

In Crispin Street, looking towards Spitalfields Market: 1912

The closely paralleled family paths continued. After both families had arrived from Eastern Europe at the end of the 1800s; and, after both had settled and raised their children in the rather tough environment of Spitalfields; then both families decided to depart - the Rosses in 1907 and the Solomons in 1913 - for a transatlantic journey which ended in Toronto, Ontario. Eventually, in twists and turns, that journey continued onward to its denouement in Detroit, Michigan. It was in that unlikely American city that the children of Hyman finally crossed paths and united with the children of Saul. And, as they say, “the rest is history”. 

*The next blog: 46 Crispin Street - The Noted House for Paper Bags

Saul Ross, Swastika Station Agent

Saul Ross,
Swastika Station Agent

Saul Ross 1925

Interview of Eddie Duke

"You know, I don't know if I mentioned this before but Mr. Saul Ross, who has appeared in some of these pictures, and I told you who was at one time the station agent at the station in Swastika, well we once had a visit from quite a famous Rabbi by the name of Rabbi Zacks. And Zacks uh, was the Rabbi at one of the largest synagogues in Toronto and had also been a Rabbi in New York and a Rabbi in, over the world more or less. When he came to speak to us one time, he was the main speaker for a, a fund drive or something, but I forget what the occasion was, but this is what he opened with, I can remember it like it is verbatim, he says, 



'I've been to stations all over the world. I've been in stations in England. I've been in stations in Europe and in Russia and in France and in the United States,' he says, 'and in all the stations I have been in, the only station I was ever in that had a Jewish station agent was in a town called Swastika.'" (Marlene laughed, "That's really something, isn't it?") "Yeah, the tie in, you know, the fact that very few Jews worked as station agents and also in a town called Swastika." (Marlene commented, "That is quite something.") "I can still remember that so vividly."

 

Source: Kirkland Lake: A Jewish History 
http://goo.gl/SbcVjF