Pete Sabato remembers the long evenings spent at a tailor shop in Scranton, patiently learning the trade that would eventually lead him into business for himself, that would help him buy a home, put food on the table and raise a family.
He was 15 then, still in high school.
His mentor considered himself strictly a coatmaker, a tailor who fabricated men’s suits from scratch. Pete said the man wanted no part of what he labeled “women’s work” — that was for seamstresses, not tailors. His disdain was such that when the boss’s daughter needed a hem repaired on a dress or coat, Pete did it.
“I found out there was just as much money in women’s work as there was in men’s, and there was more women’s work than there was men’s,” the 84year-old said. “So in order to survive, I had to learn both. I taught myself.”
He sat behind a sewing machine at Sack’s Tailor Shop, the business at 127 S. Blakely St. in Dunmore that he purchased 63 years ago and is now operated by his son, Rick, with help from his grandson, Rick Jr.
“Now we do men’s work, women’s work,” Pete said. He then deadpanned: “Everything except the baby. We don’t do diapers.”
In the Sabato family, the pursuit of the American Dream has come one stitch at a time.
Post-war genesis
From Austin Burke’s perspective, the modern concept of the American Dream was a product of World War II, and specifically the opportunities soldiers, sailors and airmen found arrayed before them when they came home.
There were expectations of an education, of home ownership and of a comfortable retirement after a long career in a family-sustaining job, said Mr. Burke, president of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce.
And those expectations were not unrealistic.
“You had returning veterans who were able, many for the first time, to get a college education by virtue of the GI Bill,” Mr. Burke said. “They had the ability to buy homes using Veterans ( Affairs) mortgages and other government-subsidized mortgages.
And you had great opportunities for quality employment.”
Immediately after the war, the United States had the only functioning economy in the world, he said. On top of the domestic demand for “homes and automobiles and other consumer goods,” the nation was exporting manufactured products to help Europe and Japan rebuild.
“Both of them were really exploding,” Mr. Burke said. “There was great opportunity and with that came great optimism.”
In Northeast Pennsylvania, that optimism was tempered by the realities of an economy reeling from the decline of the coal industry.
Unable to find work, many returning veterans were forced to look elsewhere, Mr. Burke said. They went places like New Jersey, where they got jobs in manufacturing or construction, and Connecticut, where the aircraft industry was hiring.
“Those were difficult times,” Mr. Burke said. “It was a period of great outmigration for Scranton and Lackawanna County.”
Carrying on tradition
That’s the world Pete Sabato came back to after his stint in the Navy.
He had honed his tailoring skills in the service, landing a job “shortening pants and sewing on stripes” after his superiors learned he was adept with a needle and thread, he said. “That is when I really decided I wanted to be a tailor,” he said.
At that point, there were more tailors than work in the Scranton area. Taking advantage of the GI Bill, Pete landed what was essentially a paid apprenticeship, training with a tailor in Scranton for a year before moving on to a job at Sack’s in 1948.
Two years later, with the owners of Sack’s looking to sell the business, Pete purchased the shop. He operated it until his retirement at age 65 in 1993, when his son, Rick, bought him out.
Rick Sabato, 58, said he didn’t think college was for him when he graduated from Dunmore High School in 1972. He had no idea what he was going to do until his father asked if he wanted to learn tailoring. Once his dad extended the invitation, there was little hesitation.
“I saw that he was doing very well,” Rick said of his father. “He raised four kids; he had a house — the whole nine yards. I figured that it was a good business to get into.”
Rick did not train with his father but with a tailor in Scranton.
“My father sent me there because you are more likely to listen someone else than to your own father,” Rick said.
More difficult path
Teri Ooms, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development, a Wilkes - Barre-based research and analysis organization, said she does not believe the essential elements of the American Dream have changed much in the years since World War II.
The big difference, she said, is it is harder to attain now.
“Whenyou talk to most people, they want to own a home. They want to have a job that they feel good about doing and they get paid a competitive wage and where they feel safe and secure,” Ms. Ooms said. “They want to live in a safe neighborhood, send their kids to good schools and have a strong health care infrastructure around them. Quality of life is a huge part of the American Dream, and it’s having the money to be able to access those kinds of things.”
She said many experts have suggested the generation coming of age now will be the first that fares worse than their parents economically, though that doesn’t mean the American Dream is now out of reach for those individuals.
“What it does do is make the American Dream longer to happen for some people,” she said.
‘Work, work, work’
At Sack’s, Rick Sabato Jr., 26, came aboard three years ago.
It wasn’t his original plan. When he graduated from Bishop O’Hara High School in 2004, he said, “All I heard was college, college, college. Nowadays, that is just what you’re supposed to do after high school.”
So off he went to Marywood University, where he earned a degree in criminal justice.
“And I still didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said. “My father said, ‘Why don’t you come down here and learn the trade?’ That’s what I did and it stuck. I don’t know — I guess it’s in my blood.”
Rick Jr. said he doesn’t think his expectations differ much from those his grandfather had when he came home from the Navy in the 1940s or those of his father when he decided to join the business in the 1970s.
His pathway may be a little more difficult, but the destination is familiar.
“It’s the same thing: Work, work, work. Buy that house — nothing fancy. Not have millions of dollars but have enough to survive and raise a family,” Rick Jr. said.
Nodding toward his father and grandfather, he added, “That’s what they taught me.”
No jobs for life
In recent decades, business- and employment-related trends have chipped away at what were once considered two bedrocks of the American Dream, particularly in the private sector.
The first, Mr. Burke said, is the simple notion of employment longevity.
“When you worked for a company, if you stayed productive and kept your nose clean, you were with that company for life. You had a job for life,” he said.
These days, there is no assurance a company will stay in business for the life of an employee’s career, or that an employee will choose to remain with the same company for the duration, he said.
“When I keep preaching the need for lifelong learning, part of the reason for that is to build your personal skills,” Mr. Burke said. “You have to have transportable skills that you can take from one company to the next.”
The other trend is the movement away from defined benefit retirement plans that ensured a worker a pension and other benefits, such as paid health care for life, after a set number of years of service. In most cases, those have been supplanted by defined contribution plans, such as a 401(k).
“You have to build up your own retirement resources,” Mr. Burke said.
Ms. Ooms said many private companies recognized years ago that most defined benefit plans were unsustainable, a lesson government has been much slower to learn.
“They have been able to reinvent themselves and create benefits packages that are attractive while still maintaining some balance of cost moving forward,” she said.
Filling a niche
Pete Sabato still drops in regularly at Sack’s to lend a hand to his son and grandson — “putzing around,” he calls it.
“It gives me something to do,” Pete said. “I come down here and putz around and when I want to leave, I leave.”
Rick doubts he will ever retire. “I just love what I’m doing,” he said. “I will probably just work. I’m not one to sit around, I have got to be doing things.”
And then there’s Rick Jr., who sees a bright future in what is becoming an increasingly becoming a specialty profession.
“There are not that many tailors around now, l et alone in 10 to 15 years, when there are going to be even less,” he said. “We have an established reputation, and all I have to do is keep putting out quality work and I should be OK.”
However, it was his father who offered the ultimate reason the family expects Sack’s to endure.
“Everybody is still going to have to wear clothes,” he said.