FOLKLORE
NEW YORK Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A Circumstances of Interview {Begin handwritten}10{End handwritten}
STATE N.Y.
NAME OF WORKER Bishop Hathaway
ADDRESS 356 West 123d Street, N.Y.C.
DATE December 21, 1938
SUBJECT Folk Lore - "GREENIE"
1. Date and time of interview December 20, 1938
2. Place of interview Union Square
3. Name and address of informant "Greenie", one Green. Lower East Side
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
Same as in Jacob Stein.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
{Begin page}FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
FORM [B?] Personal History of Informant
STATE N.Y.
NAME OF WORKER B. Hathaway
ADDRESS 356 West 123d Street, N.Y.C.
DATE December 21, 1938
SUBJECT Folk Lore - "GREENIE"
1. Ancestry Russo-Jewish
2. Place and date of birth New York, nearly forty years ago.
3. Family
4. Places lived in, with dates
5. Education, with dates Not farther than grammar school grade, as a kid.
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates
7. Special skills and interests
8. Community and religious activities
9. Description of informant In the late Thirties, long-nosed, pot-bellied. Atheistic, humerous, a "kibitzer" on any subject that may arise, in a place where sooner or later everything does arise. Called also "Union Square's Kidder Number One." A home reliefer, or works reliefer, reasonably secure -- for the moment anyway -- apparently satisifed.
10. Other Points gained in interview
NEW YORK
FORM C Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER B. Hathaway
ADDRESS 356 West 123d Street, N.Y.C.
DATE December 21, 1938
SUBJECT Folk Lore
His foil, a little [high church?] English clergyman, who has some kind of work among the derelicts on the Bowery -- small, thin, with a noticable accent, slow, deliberate, very earnest, without a sense of humor. {Begin note}{Begin handwritten}1 caps{End handwritten}{End note}
Causally the minister -- gaunt-faced, perpetual pipe in mouth, well along in years -- had mentioned something about the Transfiguration of Christ.......
It was enough for "Greenie."
His long nose sticking out in front of him, with nasal twang and a straight face, on an undertone of ridicule, "Greenie" drivelled along, to the amused titter of the atheistic, scoffing audience that draped the park railing---
---------- GREENIE AND THE MINISTER
.....Christ told a man to put his hand in His side. Thomas. That was the man's name. Doubting Thomas (as if he had same doubt about it himself).....
{Begin page no. 2}When Christ said it was really Him and that He had come back from the grave and was goin' to stay a while. Thomas wouldn't believe Him. He wanted to feel Him. So Christ said; all right .. Here, put yer hand in here. And He unbuttoned His tunic, or whatever He wore. Feel Me, Christ told him. See if I ain't real.
So Thomas put his hand in an' found He was real.
Yo' got me, said Thomas. 'Y juckers, You win. Yer real all right. I gotta believe it ......
After that Christ went all around showin' people that He had come back from the grave. An' it was only Thomas that ever doubted it.
So Christ stuck around a while before goin' up. He waited till everybody had seen Him an' then He went up in the sky. 'Twas in all the afternoon papers:
Four O'clock! Grand Final Ascension! Everybody Out!
All Jerusalem turned out. It was a holiday in all the Christian shops. Saint Peter was there. With the ear he had cut off man with his sword three or four days before. He was carryin' it around with him, showin' everybody......
An' when He went up that time, He never came down any more. That was the last time anybody ever seen Christ. It was the Transfig'ration.