Another installment from Michael Nolan’s Brooklyn memoir.

Proximity certainly contributed to how Harold Francis Nolan and Lena Zelda Porgoman (nee Pergament) met. Mom was a graduate of the Columbia College of Pharmacy and Dad had taken courses in chemistry at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In the late 20s, they both found themselves working at Schieffelin & Company on the Bowery in lower Manhattan, just south of Cooper Union. Lena worked in the laboratory; Harold operated tablet machines.

As a young boy, when we would drive by the place in our 1936 Plymouth, my parents would point out the place to me. The sign out front read: "Schieffelin & Company, the oldest drug house in America. Founded 1794." Today, they are a major liquor distributor – so still in the same line of business of alleviating pain.

Lena and Harold were married in a quiet civil ceremony at Brooklyn Borough Hall on September 5, 1931. My Aunt Etta, my mom’s younger sister, was a witness. After the ceremony, Lena went home to live with her father Beryl, a baker, in Jersey City, and Harold with his parents, James and Rosanna, in Brooklyn, pending two additional ceremonies by a rabbi and a priest.

I have my parents’ correspondence from this period. Here’s an excerpt from a letter from my Dad to my Mom on Sept. 17, 1931. They’re married but still not living together.

"My Dear Mrs. Nolan, I admire the way you stay home in anticipation of my phone call. It just cost me 15 cents to have your Dad tell me you were not at home…. All joking aside for the present darling. What I really want to to find out is, how soon can we be married by the Rabbi. This week? I’d like to get the ceremonies over with before I start school.

"You see kid, the technicality of my ceremony depends on the performance of yours first. Let’s get it over with. My mother will loan us the money. I’m afraid we’re going to need it. The dispensation costs $10, the Priest gets $5 besides and the Rabbi $10. It’s worth every bit of it. I’ll be ever so much more happy as I’m sure you’ll be. Get busy on the matter kid and give me a ring (at home) Thursday evening. Yours lovingly, Hubby"

Happily the ceremonies took place and my parents moved in with my paternal grandparents on East 2nd Street in Brooklyn. It was the depths of the Depression and it would be several years before they could afford their own apartment.