Reminiscences
I talked to Ed about recording
these memoirs. I
told him, “You know, there are certain
things you said in yours that I disagree with.”
He said, “I know.
I took
certain privileges.” In
his story, I
found some discrepancies—not a lot.
I skip around a lot.
I do this normally, actually.
My
son goes crazy: “Ma, stay on the subject!”
But that’s me.
Lou and Irving were the brothers;
the sisters were Mae
and Rose. Oldest
was my father, I
think—no Rose was the oldest, and my father I think was next, then Aunt
Mae,
and Irving was the youngest.
My parents had six children—Hy, Ed,
Sylvia, Irving, me
and Abie. I was a
twin. Irving was my
twin, and he died before he
was 12.
My father deserted my mother when
we were infants. I
think I was 3 years old at the time.
We lived on the Lower East Side—no, on E. 4th
St. near 3rd Ave.
My father
felt he was too young when he got married.
He wanted to see other women, etc.
Table
of contents
When I was a child, the farthest
back I can remember
was our living on 4th St. between 2nd
and 3rd
Ave. We may have
been somewhere else
before then. It’s a
walk-up. The toilet
was in the hall, shared with
other apartments. We
had a bathtub in
the kitchen, with a lid on it, next to the sink.
You could wash dishes and put them on the lid. Then you had to take
everything off to take
a bath. We had
running hot water, but
we had no central heat. We
had a
potbelly stove. In
winter, we’d stay in
the kitchen. When
it was time to sleep,
you’d go to bed; it was cold. When
we
moved, we lived on Eldridge St. We
had
a bathroom! Big
thing! Toilet, a
tub where my mother washed
clothes. My mother
was on welfare. She
also worked for awhile, as a sewing
operator. She
earned something. But
whenever she got sick, she would end up
going on welfare. She
got sick a lot;
she had TB. That’s
why we ended up
finally in the orphanage, because there was no place else. At times someone would
come in and stay with
us—when they knew she wouldn't get well.
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I didn’t like food.
I remember sitting in the high chair, and my mother
would say, “Fress,
fress.”
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The first sound I ever heard from
my father was
banging on the door to try to get my mother to open it so he could come
in. He was in this
drunken stupor, and
she wouldn’t let him in the house.
I
must have been very young, maybe less than 3.
I never remember my father hugging or kissing me or
taking me somewhere;
I remember my mother doing this. But
I
don’t remember my father ever living with us.
So it must have been at that point that once he came
home like that, she
was afraid to let him in, and that was the end of it.
He went away.
I don’t remember exactly.
I just
remember being frightened, and he was banging on the door trying to
come in and
she said no. Hy and
Ed were there at
the time. We were
all very young. It’s
just the thought in my mind that I
remember his banging. I
don’t even know
if my brother would remember it.
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I took a trip to Allentown,
Pennsylvania,
with my mother when I was very little.
I remember the train ride, and it was
wonderful—first time I was on the
train. I don’t know
how my mother did
it, but she took one of us at a time.
I
think Eddie writes something about this, too.
(Probably the oldest stayed home and took care of
the others.) Somehow
it worked out. I
know I was the only one who went with
her—it’s not like you went with your brothers.
My grandmother lived there. She was a little woman. She wore a shaitl, a marriage wig. She was very religious. I remember her
going out to the back yard. She
lived
over a shul. I
would sleep with her
because there was no real room.
Besides, you sleep with Bubbie because it’s
wonderful. My
grandchildren think it’s the most
wonderful thing in the world, so I figure I probably did, too. I don’t remember—I was 3
or 4 years
old. She was
affectionate.
I don’t know if my grandfather
lived
there. I never
remember him in any
way. I know some man came out and killed the chicken
for us—it had to be a
shochet. I remember watching the
rabbi kill a
chicken, cutting the head off. First
time I saw that. It
was a normal
thing. Some people
get upset.
[Ricky:
“I remember seeing my father kill chickens that way on the farm. He must have learned it
from seeing it
done.”]
Well, he learned it because
he was a
farmer and he had to. He used to hang
them up by their feet and go bang-bang-bang.
One day I was on your farm and one of the chickens had pecked another
chicken, and it was dying. He had
taught me that if that happened you had to kill the chicken, so I had
to wring
its neck, which I just did because it had to die. These
things didn’t bother me.
I cleaned the chicken and it never bothered me; a lot of people
couldn't
stand to clean
a
chicken. Today you don’t have to; it all comes
eviscerated.
Table
of contents
I have pictures of my mother and
father—I
think one. I had a
picture of my mother
sitting down, and your father mentions it, but I don’t have that
picture. I only
have the one of her with her hair
curled on the top of her head. She
was
a very pretty woman, and my father was a very handsome man.
Whoever I love becomes gorgeous. I have pictures of Hy
where he was
good-looking. It’s
hard to believe,
because Hy was not good-looking. But
I
have pictures of him; he looks like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Or Senior.
I don’t remember which.
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It was very common for families to
split
up. Whole families. You didn’t have a job, you
ran away from
responsibilities. You
got married
because people came over from Europe, didn’t want to stay with their
spouse any
more, and left them.
My mother was Litvack, my father
was Galizianer. Their
dialects of Yiddish were
different. I think
they met here in the
US.
My mother, she came from
Latvia—but he was...I don’t know. They
met here in the United States. I’m
not
sure where. He came
over when he was
about 6 years old, my father. I
spoke
Yiddish as my first language; English was my second language. I don’t speak it any more. I can understand a lot,
but not enough to speak.
I really don’t know their story,
how they
met. My mother was
a beautiful looking
woman, and my father was a very handsome guy.
But I never heard the story of how they got together. They came here at
different times.
I don’t know any stories of what it
was
like to get here or what life was like before they came.
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I didn’t know my father the way
some people knew their
father. He wasn’t
around that
much. Years later,
when I saw him with
you and Judi and David, he was very lovable.
I don’t know how old my father
was—his birthdate is
probably on my birth certificate.
He would come to visit, and he’d
give my cousins $5
and $10—Aunt Mae’s children. And
I’d
say to him, “I need money for stockings.”
At that time you could get silk stockings for 50
cents. He said, “I
gave you money last month.”
I didn’t get the money; he would try to
show everybody he was such a big shot.
He was always very, very good to my cousins. They thought he was
wonderful.
I never liked my father.
I don’t know if my father hit us
kids. He was gone
before I could remember that
much. He probably
did hit my brothers.
Before he deserted the family, my
father
made a good living. He
was a
furrier.
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Aunt Bertha was my mother’s
youngest
sister.
Everybody used to tell me that I was Aunt Bertha’s
favorite. She was
very sweet. She
brought me an
outfit, a plaid skirt and a velvet blouse, which I loved. Until then I had very
little clothes except
the clothes from the home, and nobody worried about getting me any
clothes. It wasn’t
important. This is
what goes on when you come out of a
home and you're the orphan in the family.
I had hand-me-downs, I think from Elsie. I had an uncle who, when I
got older, would bring me fabric so I
could make myself some things. Because
he worked for [Oscar Renta?]. The Rentners that are now
called Oscar de la
Renta. He was their
cutter. Renta is a
relative of Uncle Dave’s, Aunt
Mae’s husband. At
the time it was Oscar
Renta, the father. Now
it’s Oscar de la Renta, the son or
the son of the
son, for all I know. I
don’t know how
old he is. After
all, I was a kid.
Aunt Bertha died of blood poisoning. She was sweet, but
she died. And Eddie
tells you that she
had been a very sick person. She
got
blood poisoning. She
was sewing, and she
got a needle in her finger, and they didn’t take good care of it. She lived with my mother
in New York and she
got sick, and they didn’t do anything for her, and she died after that.
Before that time she was living
with my
mother, with 6 kids at the time. My
father wasn’t there. And
she wasn’t
well enough to work most of the time.
One night, as Eddie tells you in his, one of the gas
jets turned on by
accident, and we had gas coming through the whole apartment. (In those days we didn’t
have electricity;
we had gas.) She
woke up to go to the
bathroom, and she fell down and realized something was wrong. So she woke us. The police came, and the
fire engines came. We
were in the newspapers. We
once had our picture in the
newspaper. It was
probably the Daily
News. I was eleven,
ten, nine, born in
1923, and it was after the Depression started.
It was due to her, my Aunt Bertha, that we’re still
alive. If she
hadn’t woken up, we’d be dead. There
was one person in the building who
died that day—Eddie’s tells about that.
I remember being in the newspaper, I remember being
rushed out of the
house. I was a
little kid—I couldn't
have been more than 6 or 7 probably.
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My mother was a very sick woman—she
had TB, though I
don’t remember how young I was when she had it.
I remember her taking me once to see her parents in
Pennsylvania,
and I remember going on the train.
You
know, there is no more train to Allentown.
Julius in Allentown was my mother’s
brother; he was
married to Aunt Sadie. They
had a
grocery store. She
had a daughter, no
other children. They
doted on her. As
far as I know, the daughter is still
alive. When Julius
died, they got in
touch with me. He
died in Allentown but
was buried in Queens somewhere. I
last
saw Sadie and her daughter when I was married to Leo.
My mother had sisters: Aunt Helen, Aunt Bertha, Aunt
Sadie—not
Julius’ wife. She
also had brothers,
but I can’t remember their names.
There
was an Uncle Joe, probably dead by now.
His son got in touch with us about five years ago
because he was
building a family tree. I
told him to
call Ed, who doesn’t remember this anymore, but they did talk. I don’t remember his first
name—he was a
Greenberg, my mother’s maiden name.
My mother’s side of the family was
estranged from my
father’s side, probably because he used to run around with other women.
Some family relations: Stevie is in
my family. From
Mae’s (Mary’s) family. Her
daughters are Ruth, Flo, Elsie, Harriet,
Sylvia.
Ruth had Bunny, Francine, Merry and
Mike. These are
people I lived with for
years. Flo had two
children. Her son
died. Elsie had no
children.
Harriet had no children—she died from an overdose.
Elsie was married to Miltie. When she died, he married
his third cousin. Harriet
died; we used to call her Terry. Sylvia’s
son, Butchie, was a very very
bright student. He
married young, and
he had 6 or 8 children. His
wife died,
too—she had phlebitis. I
don’t know his
children’s names. He
had twins,
too. One of them
became pregnant and
had children before she was married.
One of his children was born the same day as his
grandchild. It’s
like any family—they all have problems.
Table
of contents
I was 12 when my twin, Irving, died. I remember him pretty well. He was in the hospital. We were in the home, the
two of us, Abe and
I. Before that,
Eddie had taken us out
for the day, to see a movie or whatever.
My sister was with us.
My sister
pulled me aside and said, “I will tell you something, but don’t tell
Eddie. If he hears
I told you, he’ll
kill me.” So I
said, “What?” And
she said, “Irving died.” When
she told me he died. I
was in shock. I
didn’t cry out or anything.
Eddie brought us back to the home. I was 12 years
old—I had to keep my
mouth shut and not scream or cry.
I heard about my mother’s death and
Abie’s
together. And I
passed out. I think
I did that three times in my
life. I went on vacation, and when I came
back, I was looking for Abie. I
couldn’t find him. I
had gone to a camp for two weeks.
I’m looking for Abie, and nobody knows where
Abie is, and no one will tell me anything.
All of a sudden, I’m called to the office, and Hy is
there. Maybe it
wasn’t an office—it was one of the
school buildings. Hy
tells me that Abie
and Mama died. Ha! Then I fainted. What I couldn’t do for my
brother... I had to
carry it. Hy and
I were very close—Eddie was a little jealous, I think, of that.
[Do
you still feel like part of you is missing?]
No.
At the time, yeah.
I didn’t feel
differently when my twin, Irving died, from when Abie died, because
they were
very very close, a year apart. Abie
and
Irving were the best of friends, and I was the sister.
We were close.
Irving had more a special bond with Abie than with
me.
The first time I passed out was
because of
Eddie. He scared me. I thought he was going to
hit me. The second
time was when I heard about my
brother and my mother dying. My
twin
had died already. I
couldn't pass out
then; my brother
would have
beat up my sister. The
third time is in
here somewhere.
My mother’s death.
That was a real tragedy.
She had TB.
That’s why I ended up in the orphanage, because
there was no place else. At
times someone would come and stay with us
until they knew she wouldn't come home again.
There was no real treatment for tuberculosis. They kept putting her in
the hospital and they sent her to the
sanitarium. It was
care, but I don’t
know if they gave her anything. I
don’t
know if they had anything in those days, like they have for asthma. (Nobody dies of asthma
today if it’s caught.
Because Iris
has asthma, and Sammy had,
and Rebecca had. She
has bronchial;
hers isn’t bad. Iris
is the worst. They
live normal lives.)
I was in the home.
I didn’t know too much about it, except what
my sister told me. I
had gone to visit
her, and Irving was there at the time, and Abie.
I think it was at the beginning when she was in the
hospital. After
that, they wouldn't let
us in. We had all
visited her in this
great big room with a lot of other beds and people.
It was very sad.
She was
very sick.
She would stay with us, period. And then, when they knew
she wouldn't get
well, they put us in the home.
Table
of contents
When I was little, my friends and I
would play jacks,
or we’d jump rope. We
didn’t wander
very far. You were
scared to go further
than your corner unless you were with some adult.
I went to school after my twin brother, because I
was in the
hospital when he started school. I
had
St. Vitus’ Dance. I
would twitch. I’ve
known people who had it all their
lives; I outgrew it—I was very lucky.
My hand might suddenly jerk; if that happened, I
would jerk on the other
side, too. I think
my father yelled at
me and said, “Try not to do it!” I
had
it for many years. I
lost it after my
mother died.
I had friends, very close friends
at one point. One
was Beatrice. Her
mother was alone, no husband. She
had a brother named Murray who finally became a doctor.
Another friend, Lily, was very pretty. She had a mother and
father at home. That
was unusual compared to what I’d seen
around. I didn’t
know many people with
fathers. It
happened. I knew
them until I grew up. Lily
moved to Brooklyn, near the beach.
We were kids. We
played dolls, and we played jacks, and we
played whatever little girls did.
Jump
rope. No imaginary
friends. We’d walk
down the block. You
never walked very far. You
walked from one corner to the
other. Lily lived
on Second Ave., but
very close to 4th St., so we’d go there and come
back again. We
lived on 4th St.
My mother always wanted to do
something
for me, but she never really had money.
At that time Shirley Temple became very popular, and
all I wanted was a
Shirley Temple dress. She
took her
dress that she had worn once, twice—a white dress.
She got some piping. Shirley Temple used to wear
this little white
dress with piping around it, red or blue.
Very fancy. And
she made me
one. I didn’t see
the movie; I saw it
in pictures. You
would see pictures all
over the place about Shirley Temple—very important.
I remember I was cold one day, and
my mother still had
a fur coat, seal skin. My
father was a
furrier, so she probably had one from then.
And she had these big cuffs on it, and I would put
my hands in them to
keep warm. She
never minded it. I
don’t remember her too well. I
only remember that she was a sweet person,
a very gentle person. I
don’t remember
her ever hitting me. My
kids’ll tell
you I hit them, but I don’t remember her ever laying a hand on me.
My mother was very poor. Even when she worked she
didn’t make much
money. We were six
kids. Six
kids—whatever you make, it’s never going
to be enough. She
would buy a quarter
pound of chicken and this chicken she made soup out of, and then we’d
each have
a piece. You know
what a quarter of a
chicken is? Like
the white meat with a
wing? She’d share
it among us.
We’d have a pail to go down to get
our
milk or our cream. These
were the days
you didn’t have deliveries, in glass bottles even.
Everything had to be siphoned out from a big
container. These
were quart buckets. They
were made so you had a cover on them
and you could walk with them. Or
you'd
get some sour cream. None
of the stores
would give you a container. You
had to
bring your own. Then
you had an ice box
that you had to put it into. The
iceman
came. For ten cents
you could get
ice. He came very
often because an ice
box doesn’t hold ice that long. I
don’t
know if it was every day or every other day.
But I remember that we once forgot to change the pan
under the icebox,
and we had a flood. You
had to take the
pan out and spill it out.
My mother kept kosher. My aunt kept kosher
somewhat.
You couldn’t bring tref
in the
house, but she did mix dishes except on Passover.
She would kosher pots for Passover.
You put them in the oven til it gets very, very hot. Then you have to put a
hot, hot stone in
it. You get a stone
in the yard, wash
it, and put one in each pot. I’m
not
sure if you heat them separately.
It
could be that you just heat the stone.
I used to think it was so funny.
She knew her kids ate bacon, but they had to eat it
outside.
When I lived with my mother, I was
very young and
didn’t do anything. Hy
and Eddie did
the koshering of the house. We
had to
cover everything with white paper from the butcher, and we had separate
dishes
for milk and meat. I
never kept kosher
for Passover. Once
I ate tref, I didn’t feel I needed
to be
kosher any more. The
first time was
when my father took us to a Chinese restaurant.
I was living with Aunt Mae, after my mother died. I was maybe 14. Oh—I did eat shrimps. I
used to go with Sylvia’s sister-in-law.
We used to go to a Chinese restaurant.
You know what it cost to have shrimps?
25 cents, for a whole meal!
It’s
so hard to believe. When
I was 16 I was
making $4 a week, so that was a lot of money.
Everything is relative.
At one
time you got around New York for a nickel.
I never sneaked under turnstiles. I was a very honest person. Maybe it was common for
the boys to sneak
under. Today girls
are more brazen in
what they’ll do and how they’ll carry on.
I didn’t do naughty things. When I went to work, I
would take off a day and go see plays—when
I was 16 or so. When
I was younger, I
was too well-behaved, a goody-good.
Eddie scared me so once.
I don’t
remember what it was, but I passed out.
Hy went to work.
Eddie was still
in school. Hy would
get paid and pay my
mother money. He
would give me a
dime—that was a lot of money. You
could
buy so much candy for it.
I adored Hy.
Ed was a lot of fun.
He used to
play games with us. My
sister, Sylvia,
was a very selfish person. She’d
scream
until she got whatever she wanted.
If
my mother couldn’t give it to her, she’d have to find a way. My brothers and I, the
little ones—Irving
and Abie—were closer.
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I remember going out with my mother
on 2nd
Ave, because we lived between 2nd and 3rd. All of a sudden there was
a woman there, and
my mother and she started screaming at each other.
I found out later that this was my father’s sister,
my Aunt Mae. When
my mother died, she took me in. I
never hated her. I
resented her at times, because people when they came to the
house used to think I was the maid.
Anyway, on 2nd
Avenue, when I was very
young, my mother and Aunt Mae saw each other, and they yelled at each
other. My mother
was already not with
my father. My aunt
thought my father
was the most wonderful person in the world.
You know—it depends on what side you want to believe. This was the first time I
had ever seen my
aunt. I had never
encountered anybody
in the Yanowitz family at that point (the Glicks—that’s Aunt Mae). She had children, too. I never saw her again
until after my mother
died. At that time,
I didn’t remember
that she was the one my mother yelled at.
I don’t know how I remembered that.
It just came about for some reason.
My cousins, Aunt Mae’s children, had been talking
about how they used to
live on 2nd Ave.
That’s how
it came to pass, talking about what I went through with them.
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When you’re behind everybody in
school... I’m
behind my twin brother in school—he’s
bright, I’m stupid. I
never felt I had
the brains until I finally realized when I went to work, learning all
the
things I had to learn compared to what the other workers would do, that
I had
more brains than them to try—to go ahead and learn different things so
that
when I lost one job, I could go on to another one.
I wasn’t afraid of using different sewing machines. Some people are. They stay on one single
machine the rest of their lives.
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My mother once heard somebody say,
“nigger,” and she got very angry.
She
didn’t believe in people talking against other people.
She was a socialist.
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Did I say much about the Hebrew
Orphan
Asylum? I went in
there. My mother
had gotten sick, and we went to
the asylum—sounds awful that word.
The
home. We were put
in quarantine for the
first couple of weeks, I think, to see if everything was all right. Mostly for tuberculosis,
because my mother
had TB. We were
there for awhile, and
we met other kids. That
was my first
boyfriend I met there. I
was a whole 10
or 11 years old. He
liked me. It’s very
good for the ego—a young girl who
doesn’t think she’s pretty. Nothing
happened. It’s just
that he paid
attention. And then
we went on to the
home, which was in the next building.
While I was in quarantine, somebody said to me, “Do
you like
niggers?” And I
said, “Why? I never
tasted them?” I
never knew what that was supposed to
be.
I have to put that in because I can
never
forget when I found out what it was.
I
was playing with some black kids.
The
home was not sectarian (even though it was a Hebrew asylum).
Then I went into the main building. You stayed in a room with
like 20 other
girls. You had your
own bed, and you
had to change the sheets. We’d
have to
take the top sheet and put it on the bottom.
Every week we would change.
You
kept your top sheet for your bottom, and you'd get a clean top sheet. It left a real memory on
me. Certain things
do.
They gave you clothes. Eddie used to come and
visit us very
often. One day he
came in and he kept
looking for me, and he couldn't find me.
He finally asked somebody, “Where’s my sister?” And she said, “There she
is. She’s been
there all along.” I
was standing at a window, looking out,
looking for him. But
my body had
changed so much that he hadn’t recognized me.
It isn’t how long he hadn’t seen me.
He never realized from the back of me.
I was a skinny kid, and all of a sudden I had
matured. I had
breasts, I had a behind. Didn’t
look like the same person. It
happens almost overnight. I
was 12.
This is before my mother died, just before.
After quarantine, Irving, Abie and
I went
to the main home, but not Eddie. He
was
left in quarantine and sent somewhere else.
I was 12 and he was 16, something like that. 17, I think. They put him
someplace where he could go out and look for a job.
When my mother died, my father took
me out of the
home. Hy got in
touch with him after my
mother died, and my father took me out and put me in with Aunt Mae. I went there when I wasn’t
13 yet. I know I
was there when I was 13, because
one of my other aunts brought me a gift, which I remember very well: I
didn’t
receive many gifts.
There was a time when they would
shush and hush. I
once shouted at my aunt for doing
that. They were
talking about my
mother, and I started to yell and scream at Aunt Mae.
I was a very docile child until something hit me. I let them get away and
get away, and then
all of a sudden they’d just hit the wrong spot, and I’d sit up and
scream at
them, and they’d have to hear me.
Aunt Mae had daughters. Harriet (they called her
Terry) and Elsie were home. The
others were married and out of the
house. Mike, her
son, was home. On
Friday you had to clean. She
had this great big old-fashioned wood
table in the dining room, and you had to polish it.
You had to wash all the wood walls.
The others were supposed to help, but they always
found something
else to do, especially Elsie. Harriet
helped, but she was younger, so she got away with things. I was called Mickie at
that point. My
cousin, Mike, called me Mickie, which I
hated. I didn’t
cook—my aunt did the
cooking. She used
to brag: she was
going out one day, and she was in her gown, and she didn’t like the way
the
floor looked. And
she washed the floor
and didn’t get a bit of dirt on her...so how come I couldn’t do this?? [Chuckle]
Cousin Flo, one of Aunt Mae’s
daughters—the oldest one—would wait for me to come home from school,
and she’d
leave right away and I’d have to watch the kids.
I wasn’t even a reader then.
When I got used to it, I realized it wasn’t my life I was living.
One day she had company, and I
understand it was
cousins of mine. I
was 13, I
think. I’d been
living with Aunt Mae
for 6, 7 months. This
child said to her
mother, “Does Aunt Mary...”—Aunt Mae is Aunt Mary, too—“does Aunt Mae
have a
maid? Is she the
maid?” That made me
sit up and think what the hell
is going on here? Even
at that age, I
didn’t want to be a maid.
I wrote to my father who was in the
South, and said I
don’t want to stay there. People
think
I’m a maid, and I’m not a maid. This
was when I was 14 or 15. So
he came
back and took me down South for awhile.
I lived with him and Jean and Ed for a time. They had a little place
where they sold knick-knacks, all these
pretty little things that people buy.
In Memphis. I
really had a good
time with Ed. It
was just the two of
us. He didn’t have
a job. He went to
shool.
According to my father, when I was
still
with my Aunt Mae, we were up in the country.
We took a coupling, a country place where you can
cook, but they have
many stoves in the kitchen, 2-burner stoves for families. We stayed up there, and we
had the whole
kitchen. My Aunt
Mae made one of the
Jewish holidays up there then. I
was
fourteen, fifteen—something like that.
I had gone up with my aunt.
It
was in the summer. I
had a very bad
asthma attack, so I had to sit up all night long.
My father would come up with Jean, and I would have
to sleep in
the living room, because my uncle came, my aunt.
Up to then I’d sleep with my aunt.
It turned out my aunt made this big
dinner
for the holidays, and my father and I got to talking.
He said to me, “You know, don’t think so badly of me. I was very young when your
mother and I got
married. I was too
young.
So why did he have six kids if he
was that
young? [Brief chuckle]
And your
father’s story tells that every time he had a child, he would dare to
make the
child, but then he would leave. There
was one time that she gave birth, and he was sitting at the table. You know, all these
neighbors bring food? And
one of the women told me later, and my
aunt told me later, he sat there eating like a pig while she was
screaming in
the bedroom giving birth. I
think it
was to me, because it was twins.
So it was his explanation that he
couldn't
take it because he was too young.
I
think he was pretty
young—in his early twenties.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Before Hy and Eddie went into the
CCC,
they had no money. They'd
come to
visit, and every once in awhile my aunt would let them eat. But then she got tired of
it. Hy, it seems,
used to go to Ruthie’s, and
Ruthie would help him. But
Ed would
come to see me. One
day he came and he
hadn’t eaten. He
wanted to take me out
for a walk. So I
sneaked back in the
house and I made him a sandwich. I
felt
terrible. It’s my
brother, he’s
starving. He was
thankful; he was
hungry.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
[Did
the Jewish kids have gangs?]
Not that I recall.
But individual kids would come running
back. It was a
tough area, like it
always is in such places. I
wouldn't
call it a slum. We
had our own
bathroom. How could
you call that a
slum? We had
lights, we had
electricity, we didn’t have gas any more.
So this is a big thing.
I don’t
know what kind of stove we had. Eddie
and Hy did the cooking when my mother...
Especially Eddie did most of the cooking, because Hy
got to work and
Eddie was still in school. I
was 12
years old when my mother died, and it was before that when we moved to
Eldridge
St. Your father was
a teen-ager. A
young teen-ager. He’s
5 years older than I am.
I remember seeing a fight there on
the
street, a gang of kids. I
don’t
remember too much about it. These
were
my young years.
Table
of contents
I wasn’t a reader in those days. I was a poor reader. I didn’t like movies; they
scared me. There
were no talkies at the time, so I didn’t
enjoy it. Even when
I got older and
lived with Aunt Mae, and she went to the movies every day, she said,
“Why don’t
you come?” but I said no.
Movies were
a dime then. If I
babysat, I’d get a
dime for babysitting all night. Or
they’d give me money and say to go to the movies.
My friends weren’t scared of the movies. (I don’t remember having
many friends when I
was living with Aunt Mae.)
People around me loved the movies. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to get so
involved in other people’ lives. I
didn’t even read so much at that point, so
it was a lot to deal with.
I remember Harriet even would go to
the movies and I
wouldn’t go. I
don’t remember how that
fear started. I was
probably afraid
something on the screen was going to come out and get me; I don’t know.
It started with piano in the movie. You went in and they had a
piano playing and
subtitles. This was
before the
talkies. I’m 72
years old, you
know! So they had a
piano going, and
you never knew what they were really saying.
And I couldn't read well enough to see what was on
the screen. I
couldn't read. That
was probably it.
I didn’t see movies until my mother
died. When I moved
to Aunt Mae, this
was the thing. The
house was on Simpson
St., and the movie theater was on Southern Boulevard, just a block away. And she went all the time. She went practically every
day. I wouldn't go. She wanted to take me a
lot of times. Her
daughters would go.
Movies were like a nickel in the afternoon. It was no big deal. On a
Saturday or something. But
I didn’t
like movies. It
took me a long time
before I really enjoyed it. I
liked
plays. I did go
with Aunt Mae a couple
of times because she kept insisting that I have to go so she could get
the
dishes. They gave
dishes out.
They were talkies now. I kept thinking it would
be the same
way. I just
remembered that I didn’t
like them, and why should I bother?
People used to tease me, but I didn’t like it. My brothers were enamored
with movies. They
went crazy over movies.
But I liked it better. I understood.
With my mother, when we lived on 4th
Street, she would take all us kids to Wanamaker’s on a Saturday. Saturday or Sunday,
Wanamaker’s always had a
theater, and they sometimes had ballets, sometimes other things, like
plays. That’s when
we started to see things like
plays. Wanamaker’s
was on 8th
Street and Lexington Ave, I believe.
It’s not there any more.
It’s
right near where David had a play.
It’s
diagonally across from the Shakespearean theater.
We could walk there, because we wouldn't ride on a
Saturday. And this
was free, so there was no money
involved. We
couldn't ride on Saturday
but we could see the play because we didn’t pay for it.
There’s a difference because you didn’t
spend money and you could walk. It
could have been Sunday; I may be wrong about what day it was.
My Aunt Mae used to take me to
plays, and
those didn’t scare me, because they were people up there. And you knew they were
performing. Besides,
they were funny. They
were Jewish
plays. There was
Yiddish theater up in
the Bronx.
When I went to school, in first
grade—I
have to outdo my brothers, that’s why I have to give you this one. I was in first grade, and
they asked me to
be Betsy Ross. I
think I was the first
one in the family to act. Your
father
acted in school. I
don’t know if it was
before me or after me. But
I always
said I was the first one in the family.
I never acted after, but that’s all right.
As an adult, I used to play hookey,
when I went to
work and I knew there was a good play on Broadway.
All of a sudden I got sick, at three o’clock. Two o’clock. To go to a matinee. I saw
Oklahoma that way. I saw a lot of good plays
that way. I found
out that if you go to the office
just before the show began, you could get in.
I went over to the office and said, “I haven’t got
more than $25. Do
you have a seat?” And
I would get in the orchestra. This
is when I was still working. I
worked until about 6 years ago. They
would let me in, as long as there were
seats available. They'd
rather fill it
up than have it empty. I
learnt it as
something that happened, to see if I could get in for $25, and then I
realized
you could do this.
Sometimes I’d stand on line and get
tickets. Lately I
haven’t seen any
plays.
Sylvia had to be sent to Craig
Colony. That’s a
hospital, or a place
for people like her. Her
elipepsy was grand mal. She was very bad. She
would have her fits, and she’d get banged up with them.
It would be very awkward.
There was one time years later, when Eddie and
Mae were married, they took Sylvia home.
They were still in the city, lived on the west side
in the Bronx. They
took her out of the home, helping to be
able to help her. Mae
was pregnant with
you. I came home
one day. Mae was
very upset. I had
gone to work, she was home, Eddie was
out working. She
told us that Sylvia
had tried to beat up on her. So
they
couldn't keep her under those conditions.
You can’t keep somebody that way.
Mae was very tiny compared to Sylvia, who was about
5-6, 5-7, and Mae is
no more than 5-2. And
Sylvia was big,
and Mae is very petite. It’s
hard to
believe we were all petite at one time.
Anyhow, they decided it was no good. It was too dangerous to
keep her
around. I tried one
time to take her
out, and it didn’t work at all. She
became very nasty and abusive. It
didn’t work. She
had grand mal, and as far as I know
it’s
much worse than normal epilepsy to live with the person. I have an aunt who was
epileptic. All her
life she raised a whole family. She
never had this. She
had petite
mal. She
would have a fit, it would
go past. I’ve known
a couple of people
who’ve had petite mal. But when you have grand mal, you bang your head so often,
you're bound to do some
damage, I guess.
[I
sense a lot guilt in the family around Sylvia.]
Yeah, you always feel guilty. We went up to visit her,
Leo and I. Sammy
was a baby at the time. And
all she wanted was pennies. Sylvia
had this thing that she had to count
pennies. She gave
her dollar, she would
change it into pennies. The
bulk of it
was important to her, not the actual money.
Everything had to become something she could carry. There were times when I
worked for Uncle
Irving that I bought her clothes, and I would send it to her; and when
I would
visit her, I found out that she had sold it so she could have pennies. To me, I spent $7 on one
of the skirts I
sent her... It was
so beautiful, I had
wanted it. But I
had to send my sister
something. It cost
$7, and when I came
up, she didn’t have it. I
was about
17. And she had
turned it into
pennies. I don’t
know what happened to
the pennies. She
didn’t have that much
money; she didn’t get hold of that much money.
She didn’t turn $7 into pennies.
She may have turned it into a quarter of pennies. It wasn’t the value of the
thing, but how
many pennies could somebody give her.
She would take the pennies instead of the garment. It wasn’t the value that
she used. For me it
was $7, and I worked for it for a
week.
She was fixated on whatever she
wanted. She used to
want different
things, and my mother would go and buy it for her.
Like a doll. She
saw
something. Or she
wanted a hair ribbon.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Sylvia was always disturbed. Then she became religious. She became Catholic. She believes in Christ. You know, you don’t tell
people, “Don’t
believe,” just ‘cause you're a Jew.
You
say, “If that helps you...” She
was a
very pretty girl, and she was very strong, and very capable. I don’t think she ever had
dates. She went to
school, but there were problems
because if she had a spell, she’d have to come home.
A spell meaning a fit.
I
don’t know when she actually got violent.
That time she got violent with your mother is the
year you were being
born. So she was
about 22.
Sometimes she had fits, sometimes
it would
be days, and then all of a sudden it could be every day. It was never more than
several days between
fits. When she had
a fit, she was
out. She had to be
put to bed. She was
exhausted. The
violence was something else.
The only person she hit was your mother. I don’t what happened. We
don’t know what happened with other people because she wasn’t living
with us
until that time. I
don’t remember her
losing her temper or speaking abusively.
I have no idea what led up to that incident with
your mother. All I
know is that your mother was pregnant
and she had been crying, and she had been hurt.
That was enough.
We always felt guilty. We did.
We tried, but you still felt guilty.
There was a time when your mother and father first
got married—she was
pregnant then, too. I
don’t know if
your father puts this into his, because he stopped before this, before
he knew
your mother. There
was a time he and Hy
had gotten hold of a car, he and Hy.
And I was with them, and Mae was with them, and we
picked Sylvia up from
the Craig Colony and went up to Niagara Falls.
That was an important time.
I tried once to find my sister
Sylvia. In fact I
was up there, but they told me
they moved her. She
was in Craig
colony. I pass it
when I go visit some
friends.
Table
of contents
Hy was very enamored with a cousin
of mine—Ruthie—at a
point, and she with him. First
of all, Hy was an intellectual, and she was trying to
be one, which is very important to some people.
She read and read, and Hy would direct her what to
read. She wasn’t
interested politically. I
never heard her say anything. That
whole family wasn’t political. But
they weren’t anti-anything. I never
heard them say anything very nasty.
By the way, I don’t know if you
want to put this
down. I saw my
cousin, Francine, the
one I told you about. Her
husband had
died a few years ago. She’s
very
depressed about it. She
took care of his
children—8 kids, all went to college.
They're all professionals.
Her
own son, from her first marriage, also went to college and is doing
very
well. (She
was Hy’s—Ruthie’s youngest daughter.
Ruthie is my first cousin.)
And
even if she reads Eddie’s thing, he mentions something in there—he
doesn’t
think Francine was Sidney’s child.
I
told her that I wanted to introduce her to her cousins.
She said, “No, Sidney was my father.
I have a lot of people, a lot of children, I
don’t need any more life with anyone I don’t know.”
I told her about Hy. She took it. In fact, we were talking
and she said that her oldest sister was
always very embarrassed by her mother’s affairs.
Her mother always had affairs.
So they knew of all these boyfriends, and she was a
little bummed. I
love Ruthie. I told
her if she wants to change, she could get in touch with
me. I doubt it,
though. She’s got
MS. And it’s been
fine all these years. She
has to watch it. The
doctor said to her, “If you feel like running, walk.
If you feel like doing any big exercises, take it
easy. Don’t over do
it.” And she’s been
doing very well.
She has a wonderful sense of humor.
She says to me—we were talking
about
family—“You know I always really thought you were the smartest one in
the
family.” [Chuckling] I said, “You kidding me? I’m the dumbest. Or at
that point anyhow, I always thought I was the dumbest.
But I was smart enough to keep my mouth
shut.” You know,
it’s a good
thing. They thought
I was smart.
I told her she had two brothers. But she has no interest in
meeting
them. I know Henry
would want to meet
her. That’s Henry.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Hy and Ruthie made me a birthday
party. I can’t
remember what year. I
know I didn’t know Evelyn until I was like
18 years old or something, and they asked her to get my friends. She didn’t know my friends. So she brought two black
guys to the
birthday party that I never knew.
Those
are the only people that were at my birthday party.
[Laughs] I know it was Evelyn who
brought the guys
because nobody else I knew would have done that.
I had loads of friends in the
Bronx, but
nobody knew who they were, including Evelyn.
I met her in Brooklyn.
That party, I had a cake. I think they had music. I don’t remember. Just the five of us. We
went out to the candy store or something and had a soda later. That was it.
Nobody made me a birthday party
when I was
a kid. I still
don’t have parties. My
mother couldn't afford them. If
anybody would have done anything, it
would have been Eddie. Eddie
always
tried to make big things out of all the holidays and all.
The only present I remember is when
my
aunt, Irving’s wife, gave me the present.
I was 13 years old at that time.
I don’t remember any of the kids in the family
getting birthday
presents. We knew
it was our
birthday. Probably
we said happy
birthday, but that was about it.
Anyhow, I don’t remember birthday
parties
at all.
I always gave birthday parties for
my
kids. I always
baked a cake, and if I
didn’t bake a cake they would get very angry.
They didn’t want a birthday party from a bought
cake; they had to have a
Mama cake. I loved
to do it. Poor
Rebecca. Her
girlfriend was on the same floor.
She had the exact same birthday, so I had to have
her name on the
cake, too. It was
cheating Rebecca a
little. But my kids
always had birthday
parties.
When I was grown up, my family
would be
very nice to me on my birthday. They
would push Leo to buy a present for me or something.
I don’t remember any big deals for me. I always made something
for Leo, but he never reciprocated.
Men are very funny.
You have to tell them to do it.
I’m sorry, but it’s true.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
In Roosevelt’s time, before
1936--when he started in
with the CCC camp, in his first term—my brothers both joined the CCC. My father had money to a
certain extent
because he worked—and this was the depression: a lot of people didn’t
work, and
he had a car. He
was a salesman and
went South, selling chances to the farmers and people in the villages
to buy
things. You could
get blankets, or you
could get dishes. It
was a mail order
house. My father
worked for his
brother, my Uncle Irving. He
was the head
of a crew that went to poor people
Eddie and I used to get along very
very well. We used
to do the dishes and sing The Mikado
and all the Gilbert and
Sullivan songs, and some other songs.
We had a very good time.
I was
going to school. I
flunked English
because I couldn’t understand the English teacher.
Her accent was so deep; it was like she did it
deliberately. English
was a good language for me; here in
NY I had no problem, but there [chuckle]
I couldn’t speak English. I
failed.
I had friends there, and they were
black, and you’re
not allowed to do that. At
that time.
1937, many people there were still very anti-black.
I don’t know what they are now.
But at that time, “What do you mean, you have black
friends?” People
don’t want to know you. Whites.
Being Jewish was an issue to a
certain extent with my
father. He used to
call himself Mr.
Louis
I never hid anything. I
didn’t have a
hard time. He had a
hard time
sometimes. But I
don’t think they knew
what a Jew was. Some
people just don’t
know. They’re not
brought up to
discriminate against somebody they never see.
They’re brought up to discriminate against blacks because those they see.
I had no problem.
They lived behind us.
Blacks
lived in the alleyway. You
were on the
street side, and they were in the back.
There were no blacks in our school; the ones I knew
were from the
neighborhood. I
didn’t know about
discrimination until it hits you.
There
was no reason I shouldn’t know blacks—there weren’t that many where we
lived. When I was
in the home, I was
very friendly with an Oriental girl.
My
father wouldn’t say anything, because it would only come back. He may have said he had a
different name, but
he wasn’t about to... They
could be
customers, too. And
he wasn’t anti-black. We
never talked about it.
My brother, Eddie, worked in the
store. He was going
to school down there. I
think he had some problems in school
because he was Jewish, but I don’t remember what they were. We used Yanowitz when we
were in
school. You had to
register. My father
didn’t deny being “Yanowitz.” He
used “Mr. Louis” because, he said, it was
easier for people to remember.
Jean
picked up a Southern accent and never lost it.
Even I had a little bit of something when I came
back, at about the age
of 15. I wasn’t
there long—a year or
two.
Then I moved in with Flo when I
came back, about 15,
and when I was 16, I moved out again and found my own apartment. I went to work for Uncle
Irving, and as soon
as I found that job, I moved out.
While I lived with Flo, I went back
to school. My
brother, too, went back to school.
We both went to a school in Brooklyn where
you had to pay. He
needed only one
course. They said
he had to do
history. (This is
late 1930s, before he
knew Mae.) He had a
teacher who was a
real reactionary. This
was before the
US was in the war, but the war was on in Europe.
The teacher believed the Germans were right. Try to learn something
under such a
teacher! Ed didn’t
get his diploma
then, because he couldn’t take the teacher.
I understood far less.
I was a
very naive person compared to other people that I know today. People at that age today
are so much
brighter and know what is going on.
I
didn’t.
I didn’t finish high school at that
point, but I did
after I had children.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Some time after my mother died, my
Aunt Helen (my
mother’s sister) wanted me to go live with her.
She lived in Rockford, Illinois.
But I was already 18, 19 years old by this time. She had wanted me earlier,
while my mother
was still alive. My
mother had 6 kids,
and Helen felt if she took me, it would unburden my mother. But my mother told her no. She wouldn’t give up any
of her children,
although we were very, very poor, we were on welfare, and she was a
very sick
woman by that time. So
some time after
my mother died—I was about 18—my aunt again offered to take me. But I said no. I was already working, I
was very independent. I
don’t know what happened, but I don’t
think she knew for maybe 5 years that her sister had died.
She had children—two or three
children that died in a
tornado where they lived in Illinois.
Two were killed in a tornado, and the other one died
fighting in the
war. She lost all
her children. I
think that’s when she decided she wanted
me to come and live there.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
There was a time when I needed
pajamas. When I had
come out of the home I had some
clothes from them, but I didn’t have much.
So my father said, “You’ll make your own.” I didn’t have a sewing
machine.
Everything had to be done by hand.
He was very stingy when it came to me.
He was stingy period—when it came to Jean even. For her birthday, he’d go
out and buy
himself a box of cigars. This
was
typical of him. He’d
say, “I bought you
a present. I’m
smoking them.” It
sounds funny, but it became a joke.
You just didn’t expect him to do any better
than that. That was
a big story in our
family. He always
did it; he thought it
was funny. He would
do this every
year. “She wants
something? Let her
go out and buy it herself.” He
wouldn’t worry about giving Christmas
gifts.
Jean worked in the store with him. I guess she had access to
the money. She’d
been a bookkeeper at one point. She
could have gone out and spent if she
wanted.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Eddie worked in Idaho. Eddie, according to what
he tells in his
story, worked chopping down trees and things, and because he knew how
to drive,
they made him a driver. Then
he had to
cook, because a driver had to cook for the crew.
Hy must have gone somewhere else, because I know the
story with
Hy is that while they were up in the CCC camps, he was helping people
to learn
how to write and read English, because they were very uneducated. I don’t know if this was
his job or just
something he did on the side. And
one
of the guys that he taught to write English ended up to be a crook, and
when he
stole something he wrote a beautiful note,
[Laughing] I don’t know what he did,
but he wrote
it. Hy told the
story that this guy who
didn’t know how to write English all of a sudden became a writer.
Hy had like s photographic mind. He never finished high
school. But
you couldn't compete with him in
knowledge because he read anything and everything.
Table
of contents
At one point I wasn’t working for
some reason. I went
from my uncle’s place when I was 16
or 17. I can’t
remember these
dates. I quit
school at a very young
age—I think it was 16. I
went to work
for my uncle. The
war in Europe had
already started then.
It was a mail order house, and I
was filling
envelopes. My uncle
was giving me $4 a
week, and I said, “I want an increase.”
He said, “Go ask Sokoloff,” who was his partner. Sokoloff said, “Yeah,
sure,” and he gave me
an increase. But a
few weeks later, I
said this is ridiculous—from $4 to $6, something like that. I was working 8 hours a
day, 40 hours a
week. (But it was
only a nickel to get
a hot dog, a nickel to go on the subway.
It’s all relative.)
And then I went out and found
myself this job working
on table cloths. I
was a sewing machine
operator. It was a
sweat shop, but it
was clean and nice and neat. I
don’t
think I belonged to a union yet. It
was
in the West 30s in Manhattan. I
got $17
right off the bat. I
was making
tablecloths—decorative tablecloths.
There was no pattern, and I would know in my head
that if I held the
tablecloth in a certain way the decoration would be right.
From there I went out and found
other jobs. Underwear
and different things. Everything
was seasonal. I’d
work at one job, maybe several months,
until they laid you off. I’d
find
another job right away. I
didn’t
collect unemployment, not because I couldn’t but because I didn’t want
to. I would always
find a new job. I’m
the type of person who, if they showed
me one machine and somebody else was working on a different type of
machine, I
had to learn it. Not
because the boss
said learn it. I
wanted to learn
everything. That’s
why I was never out
of work—because I knew everything.
I
learned so many different things.
These
were all garment industry jobs. The
salary kept getting higher and higher.
Especially during the war, it went into the 40s. That’s a lot of money,
when you’ve started
at $4 and a few years later you’re making a lot more.
And even after the war you still made.
I worked on parachutes. Not parachutes for men,
but parachutes for supplies that were dropped.
I’d sew the parachute.
I had a 4-needle machine, and it flops over
and makes...it would have a seam—on your shirt, that’s only 2 needles,
but ours
was 4 needles, so I’d be sewing 4 lines at a time.
You’d just hold it, and it goes.
This was the parachute itself.
The parachutes for men were silk, but these
parachutes were nylon; they
weren’t worried about a person’s life, but just to send down ammunition
or
whatever.
After the war, I still worked in
the garment industry.
When I was working during the war,
they used to say,
“Loose lips sink a ship.” And
people
would say, “Oh, that’s a lot of baloney.”
And I said, “Wait, I’ll show you.”
Now we had a 4-story building where I was working. And I said, “Watch this.” Somebody passed me by, and
I made a
statement—I forget exactly, something about, “Oh, we’re going to be
laid
off.” In 20
minutes, it came down, “Did
you hear we’re going to be laid off?”
I
mean, this is the way rumors can go.
I
was trying to prove a point to somebody: “Watch, if you say something
here, the
4th floor is going to get it, and then we’re
going to get it. It
will go through the whole building.”
I was just saying there are certain
things you don’t
talk about, even in your own private life.
You keep your mouth shut about certain things. But some people go
overboard with it, too—I had a friend who did
that.
What else did I do?
I even did dressmaking.
I worked
in non-union shops to try to help organize them.
The trouble is, the ILG is such a horrible mess,
that I would
help out to try to organize, and then I was in a place where they
literally had
me fired. The ILGWU
had me fired. [David]
Dubinsky, no less. They
felt that
everybody should contribute to the Labor Party, and there were a lot of
people
who weren’t Labor Party people. And
I
don’t feel you had a right to force people to contribute. This is after the war—the
American Labor
Party, Henry Wallace’s party. I
just
felt that people were complaining, and I don’t think the union had a
right. We had to
give one day’s
earnings to the Labor Party. One
day
for the year. You
have about 50 people
working, it’s a lot of money. And
they
insisted you had to do it, and I talked about not doing it. Then I got in trouble, and
then they had me
fired.
The shop was now a union shop. I had organized this place. They didn’t fire me—they
had the boss do it,
and they wouldn’t defend me.
Another time I irritated them
because the ILG decided
that instead of us having 2 weeks vacation, they would take our
vacation money
and split it with everybody. All
the
union members who were working had to split their money with people who
weren’t
working. But I
didn’t believe
them. I believed
they took it and put
it in their pockets. I
never found
anybody who didn’t work who ever got anything from the union. So I fought it, because I
felt it was just
another thing that the union was doing.
The ILG tried to say that they were a liberal union. They were far from liberal.
I was in the Communist Party at the
time and I
realized—a lot of people told me, “Hey, the ILG stinks.” The ILG claimed to be a
communist union, but
with Dubinsky, you had to be very careful.
I knew enough, because I was in the Party, that you
don’t just accept
people because it’s a union. Like
my
union that I ended up in—the last one (at GHI), I used to fight with
them. I knew that
they were only going to fight as
hard as you want to make them fight.
You don’t accept unions because they’re unions. Somebody even
told me this, whom I didn’t
agree with at the time, but she was right: she hated the union. This was the first union
she ever was
in. But it’s true. You just can’t ignore what
could be happening
under your nose, because they don’t want you to know.
You have to be careful even with the more
progressive unions.
I don’t know if they were all this
way. My father was
in the Furriers, and he
believed in them. And
yet my father was
a sceptic, because he used to say to me when I was in the Party,
“Remember,
nobody is a god.”
People would get up and sing,
“Browder is our
leader.” I couldn’t
do it, because I
remembered that, although I never liked my father, I felt what he said
was
true. Never put
anybody up as a god. There
is no such thing. So
I would never be able to sing the song.
I wasn’t what you would call a good
communist. I didn’t
believe in everything. Hy
was a much better communist than I.
He and Leo were very much Stalinites. I didn’t know enough to be
a Stalinite, and
I couldn’t bring myself to do certain things.
I was in the party, I recruited people, it’s true. But not on the basis of
Russia. Rather:
you’re a worker, and you have to
understand what’s going on.
Hy was in the party when we still
lived in lower
Manhattan. My
girlfriend even
joined. I got in
early 42/late
41--around Pearl Harbor. I
lived with
Eddie and Mae, but just before that I lived with some people, I boarded
there. (We lived in
a basement
apartment near Jean and my father in Brooklyn.
I don’t remember the street—it’s a long time ago.) I was just 20. My joining had nothing to
do with Hy. It had
more to do with these people, these friends of mine.
I ended up living with them, being very
friendly with them, and then when Ed and Mae found an apartment, I went
to live
with them. They
were party members.
I never really resigned from the
party. I don’t
agree with it any more. Basically,
I agree with it. I
just don’t believe in men being honored to
the point where they could do no wrong.
Like Leo still believes in Stalin no matter what he
was. I know a
number of people who are like
this. You prove to
me that something’s
wrong, then something’s wrong. Nobody
is an idol.
I’ve always been in unions. I believed in unions. My
mother believed in unions. My
mother
was a socialist. My
father was in the
Furriers Union. He
had to be careful
because he had lost his [American]
citizenship. He was
a naturalized
citizen. He was a
big man with very big
hands. They would
go into open shops at
night, where they had workers working at night.
He was caught banging heads around.
So he went to jail, and he lost his citizenship.
He actually beat people up, with
other people. He
was a strongarm guy. The
object was to make people scared so
they’d join the Furriers Union. The
union sent him and these people out as a conscious organizing activity. Who was head of the union
at the time? Ben
Gold?
When he was running away from the police, I
understand that he stayed at
our house to hide. I
was probably still
a kid. It was
before my father was with
Jean. I don’t know
if Gold got caught. There’s
a book we have somewhere on the
Furriers Union.
When you go to an open shop, you
can’t just walk in
and say, “You can’t work here.” They’d
call the police and throw you out.
So
you have to go in and be sneaky. I
didn’t know what he was doing. I
only
heard these stories later on. The
police may have come while he was there.
I know he was arrested.
But he
told me he had lost his citizenship.
If
you go to jail, you lose your citizenship.
It was brought up on TV recently.
I was watching a show.
I don’t
know how long he went to jail. Maybe
it’s that you can’t vote any more.
But
he couldn’t go out of the country.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
I had no problem when I went to
GHI, which was the
first job I had in an office. Before
that, I worked for Head Start. This
is after
I went back to school. I
volunteered:
all my kids were either in school or day care.
This was in a Methodist church.
I got along very well with the minister. The girl who got me into
the work was the educator. She
did everything, except she was afraid of
the minister. It
was her minister, but
she was afraid he wouldn’t do what she asked, so she used to send me to
ask him
for things that she wanted. He
asked,
“Why doesn’t she come and ask me?”
He
was an easy guy to get along with.
He
was black, and she was white, although she didn’t discriminate. I got along with her and
all the
mothers. The only
thing is, I had a
very bad memory for names.
When they closed this head start
and opened it where I
was living in the project up in the Bronx near 233rd
St., they asked
me to take over as the main homemaker, for $100 a week, which was a lot
of
money. I said I
can’t take the job
because I have such a bad memory that I’m embarrassed not to be able to
know
the mothers’ names. They
said, “But
you’re so much better than the one who’s there.”
The one who was doing this work in the church was a
black woman,
very aristocratic, and the mothers didn’t like her because they
couldn’t talk
to her. She always
had a smile, and she
was sweet, but they felt no rapport.
Most of them were black.
The whole idea at the beginning of
the Head Start
program was to mix children of different ethnic backgrounds and
different
financial backgrounds. Some
of the kids
we had were very wealthy. Now
it has
become really for the poor. I
think
they’d like the ethnic background to be there, but they’re having a
problem
with that. There
are places I’ve been
out of town where the children are all white.
They have them everywhere, but they don’t have rich
kids in there. The
rich kids are the hardest to deal
with. They want
more than you could
give. Our children
were very good, very
bright. The next
step was to go into
school, and we felt they didn’t need to go into kindergarten because
they’d
already learned a lot of things, more than most kindergarten children.
I enjoyed the work there, but I
found it was a little
much. I had a bad
inferiority
complex. I was
unsure of myself, didn’t
think I was worth anything. It
was
awful. When I
finally got this job in
GHI, my doctor called the boss up there—the president—and told him she
wanted
me to work 3 days a week. But
they
didn’t have 3 days a week—they had part-time work, but it was 5 days a
week. She felt I
shouldn’t be working
too much, because it was after I’d been ill.
This was 25 years ago—I started there in 1969.
When I took the job there, I
realized I wasn’t
stupid. I became a
shop steward. I
knew a little more than somebody
else. I realized my
memory wasn’t that
bad. There were
times I fought, not
just for my workers all the time, but I fought for people who came in
for
claims. I had
memory about what was
right and what was wrong.
Do you know what Jobst hose is? They’re a stocking that
people with
phlebitis wear. Their
leg is measured,
every inch, so it only fits them.
When
I first came in, I was taught by somebody who was working on this all
the time,
and she had told me that the insurance paid for this.
Months later, or maybe a couple of years later,
somebody came in
and they were being rejected for Jobst hose, and I said, “You can’t
reject the
claim.” Nobody
remembered that it’s
payable. It’s a
medical service, like a
cane. Hose at $100,
or $55, or whatever
it was. They’re
expensive because
they’re made for just one person.
I
finally won out. We
finally found
it. There are books
and books and books
and books in these places. One
of my
friends finally found it for me. She
was a correspondent and sort of remembered.
But I felt so sure of myself about certain things,
which gave me a lot
more to be proud of. I
wasn’t the way I
had been.
When I worked at GHI, I was very
proud of myself. I
realized that I had a better memory than I
ever gave myself credit for. I
had a
temper that when I sat down at a negotiations table, they listened. There was a time that I
fought for certain
things. We had a
4-day week. We
didn’t have to fight for it. The
union and the boss decided the city
needs to have a 4-day week, with 35 hours over that time. Even management wanted it,
but the workers,
both men and women, didn’t want it.
They said, “We’re going to have to work so many
hours!” It came out
to 8 � hours a day. “I
have a baby at home.” “I
have a sitter, and she’s going to be
angry.” Eight and
three-quarter hours
on the phone is a long day, after all.
And you got less of a lunch to make those hours and
get out at a decent
hour. You only took
a half-hour
lunch. With the
7-hour day, you had an
hour lunch. When
you looked at it, it
didn’t sound right.
But I got up, and I spoke so
eloquently; I didn’t know
I had it in me. I
wasn’t in on
negotiations of that nature at that point.
Only a handful of people were allowed to sit in
towards the end when you
negotiated.
I said, “Listen, a 4-day week is a
very great
step.” People were
booing me. I looked
around, and I said, “You know, I
didn’t boo anybody. I
didn’t agree with
people, but I didn’t boo them. I
think
I should have a right to speak.” And
I
spoke. I couldn’t
believe what came out
of my mouth, because I convinced everybody we should have a 4-day week. I told them the history of
how people in
labor used to have to work a 20-hour day, or a 10-hour day, and then
they came
down, and they finally got the 8-hour day.
“Now look at us: we have only a 7-hour day. This is progress. We
don’t want to go back. Think
about what
you could do with an extra day at home.
You can go away for a long weekend.”
I did a terrific job, because by the time I had
spoken, we had 100%.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
It becomes part of our family:
we’re not afraid to
open up when we have to. When
we had
the 4-day week, management realized it wasn’t good for them, but I
wouldn’t let
them take it away. I
again had to stand
up. This was not
that big a meeting,
but I was in it. I
was one of the
speakers, and when they kept saying we have to do it, I got up and
yelled,
“We’re not doing it! We’ll
strike
before we do it.” This
happened at the
end of a 2-year contract during which we had the 4-hour day.
We used to have shop stewards all
over the place, and
they said they didn’t want so many.
To
sit at the table, you had to be chosen.
After that, I was always chosen.
Once you sit at the table, you’re still not allowed
to open your
mouth. They tell
you that only the
union representative and the chief shop steward could speak. But I had learned already
that management
and the union are in cahoots to a great extent.
They’ve made decisions before you even know it. You’re fighting it, and
they’ve already
decided. So you
have to open your
mouth. I learned
this over years.
Now, I’m not there any more, but
they don’t try it any
more—to take away the 4-day week from those people who have it (which
are the
old-timers). If
you’re there a certain
amount of years, you’re allowed to go on the 4-day week, but the new
people
come in on 5. When
I was there,
everybody came in on 4. They
took that
away; they always get something. Some
would get Monday off, some would get Friday off.
I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish. It’s impressive.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
The last union I had—it worked for
office workers:
When I went to one of my first meetings, someone told me that GHI, whom
I
worked for, was buying a hospital and a building, and we were kept in
the dark
about this. Now the
union knew this,
but they didn’t do anything. And
when
we came to negotiations, they gave us like a 10 cents increase. 10 cents or 10%--I know
it’s a big
difference. I went
to them and said, “I
hear they’re doing this and that.”
And
they said, “Yeah, we know.” And
I said,
“How can we go with such a little increase?
We can’t do that.”
I wasn’t on
the board. I was
just sitting in.
There’s many times you fight your
union more than you
fight your boss. I’ve
done this a
number of times. My
bosses understand what I want;
my union
doesn’t want to fight. Anyhow,
we got
our increase properly. I
think we got
10%—the union representative wanted us to have $10.
After that, we had a couple of incidences... I’m very pro-union, but I
won’t let the
union screw me, either. I’m
not blind.
The head of the union, who died
just recently, he and
I got along. This
union gave me a gold
watch. I had
retired already, and they
had my girlfriend take me to Atlantic City to one of their big meetings. I felt that was very nice. My girlfriend was sick,
and she took me to
Atlantic City. She
knew I was getting
an honor; I didn’t know why. Normally,
they don’t ask retirees unless they’re active, and I wasn’t active. Not any more, because I
hadn’t been well.
The head of the union got up on the
stage and said, “I
have to honor one of our members who is no longer working”—I had no
idea who he
was talking about; I was talking on the side—“I have to honor her,
although we
didn’t always see eye to eye. We
fought
on certain issues.” He’s
right. We did.
I didn’t let him get away with it.
If I knew I was right, I insisted I was right. Then they called me up to
give me my watch. Which
they didn’t have with them, because
it’s being engraved. I
have it now. I
think that was very nice, to
acknowledge... That
was at least 5
years ago.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
A lot of industries have
disappeared. Progress.
Table
of contents
Your parents bought the farm. I was still in New York. You were born in Bronx
Hospital. At that
time they called in Bronx Hospital.
There was Fox St., then Bleecker St.
Your sister wasn’t born yet.
Then the one in Borough Park was the
next. From there I
think they went to
the farm. {Editor’s memory: We went to
the farm in 1946, when I was 4 and my sister was 2.]
I thought from Fox St. they had
moved to
the farm because I remember that I was away and my girlfriend took over
the apartment
in Fox St. For some
reason, I remember,
she was having a problem keeping it.
Your mother had to come in from out of town to save
it for her. She
came in, I thought, from Jersey, to go
to court with her so she could keep the apartment.
Cora, that is.
Cora and I
lived in the apartment together for awhile.
Then I left. I
went to Europe,
then came back. It’s
a bit muddled
now. Your mother
may remember this
better.
So they went down to the farm. I came back. I remember when I came
back Judi was like three years old,
sitting on the couch. She
was
delicious. I adored
her. But you know,
I adore babies, I adore
children. I stayed
because your mother
was pregnant with David.
David got very sick. You got sick too at the
time. He got
pneumonia. You got
Scarlet Fever.
Your brother was almost dying, you got very sick,
and I told your
mother, “I think we better go look at Ricky.”
When the doctor came, he said it was a very good
thing they had a
dishwasher. Otherwise
we all could have
caught it. He said
without the
dishwasher, we would all have been sick.
There was one point that your
mother got
very angry with me because I said I want to go back to New York. It’s no place for me. I mean I wanted to meet
people. I was young. I wanted to live my life.
And she said, “Well if I’d known that, I wouldn't
have had another
baby.” Inside I
boiled. I didn’t
say anything more. They
tried to talk me into not moving.
I had just read [Lestantio?]
de Moro’s book, A
Place of Splendor. I
was very taken
by it. She had
opened a place in
Mexico. Your
parents had read this in
one of the books or papers or something, and they offered to send me
there for
a vacation. But I
said, “No. I want
to go back to New York.”
I was there on the farm quite a
number of
years. A few years. But your mother took it
for granted I was
staying. You get to
a point where,
“Hey! Eventually I
want to get married,
eventually I want children.” I had to have friends. I had no friends there. It’s a farm. How many friends? You had
a couple of friends that were your mother’s or father’s friends’
children. But who
did I have? There
was nothing.
They needed me because they were so
worried about David. He
was so badly
sick that Dr. Ernst said he needed some penicillin, and it had just
come
out. Ernst sent
Eddie to Atlantic City
to pick up the medication, but Ernst had no idea how to use it, and he
poured
it into David’s mouth. The
baby’s mouth
was burnt, and he couldn't even drink a bottle.
It was horrible.
I think
they had to give him intravenous at the time.
I don’t know how it worked.
But
he was in horrible pain. With
the
pneumonia, he had to have this.
He finally recuperated. He had been a big fat
baby, and everybody
said he shouldn't have been that fat.
Thank God he was fat!
He had
enough fat to lose. He
may not have
existed if he was a skinny baby. I
always get annoyed when people say a baby’s too fat.
“Leave him alone!
They
outgrow it!” They do!.
I may remember some thing wrong a
little,
but I thought you had scarlet fever, and I remember I told somebody
recently
who (their boiler broke): “Well you can still wash your dishes in the
dishwasher.” She
said, “No, no. You
have to have hot water!” You
don’t.
The dishwasher has its own mechanism to make hot
water.” Did you
ever see the bottom of a
dishwasher? What
has it got down
there? A coil. It’s got coils. I mean, she didn’t have
hot water for two days. She
had a dishwasher full. I
said use it. Whatever
it is. All I
know: the doctor had said if she didn’t have a dishwasher, we would
have all
been sick. So I
assumed it had to wash
them, too. It
couldn't have been just
the hot water. We
could have used the
hot water in the sink You
take out your
dishes, they're burning hot. You
burn
your hand.
[Did
Judi and I feel abandoned when you left the farm?]
I don’t think so.
You still had your parents.
I would come and visit.
It’s not that I stayed away completely. I would still come out.
I found a place to stay in New York. I had friends, and I ended
up staying with
Paula. I had two
friends. One, I
think she may have had the
apartment. I went
back to Fox St.
maybe? Then I went
back and I lived
with someone else I boarded with; I didn’t know the woman, I just paid
rent. And then I
lived with Paula.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Once when you were little, your
grandfather was
telling you something and said, “Now you repeat this.”
You said you couldn't.
He said, “Why not?”
You looked at him, and you said, “Grandpa,
when I’m as old as you, I’ll be able to remember these things.” You were, I don’t know, 6
years old, maybe
5, maybe less. He
was reciting a poem
and thought you should know it. He
didn’t get mad; he knew it was too much.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Your father used to have very very
close
friends. Three of
them. He was
married. Mae didn’t
like one of their wives. She
didn’t like... I
don’t remember. Benny
was married,
Sammy was married. Joey
was the Italian
guy that I had a crush on once. They
were very close. They
did everything
together. Then all
of a sudden, they
stopped having them. And
then when they
moved to the farm, they had some friends. When Hy was out there, he
made friends
one-two-three.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Even with you kids—I don’t know if
you
recall—but even when Judi was young, when she got pregnant with Heidi,
she came
to me and I said, “Judi, don’t get married.
You really don’t care for the guy, and it’s not that
terrible
today. You'll
manage. You'll stay
with me if you want.” “No,
it’ll hurt my mother and father.”
So she got married.
She was miserable.
What the hell did she have to marry somebody and be
miserable? Then she
had another kid,
and she finally decided, ok, I can get a divorce now.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Do you know what happened with me
and your
mother? With GHI? I once said to her, “When
I get a teacher on
the phone, they ask me to take them because they're so arrogant. They're teachers, and
we’re just
workers. What do we
know?” We happen to
know the contract better than
they know. The fact
that I said that
they were arrogant, she never forgave me.
So one day I said to her something about Sammy,
telling her about his
problems [as a teacher]. “Oh!
Teachers are okay because your son is okay, right? Because your son is a
teacher.” It had
nothing to do with that. I
didn’t say teachers were bad. Lawyers
are the same as teachers. You
get on the phone, and you have a
contract to read, and they read it the way they want to read it. You know you can’t forget
the comma, you
know you can’t forget the period, or the paragraph.
They intend to do whatever they want and change the
whole
composition. And
I’ll read it to them,
and they'll say, “No, you're wrong,” and I say, “I’ll tell you what. You get one of your
friends to read it to
you, ‘cause I’m not going to make any difference to you. And if you want to take it
court, it’s your
prerogative. Period.” I’m not going to argue. “Really,” I said, “You
forgot the period,
you forgot the comma. Hey. It’s not what you said it
says. It’s
different.”
This is my job.
I had to know
it. And if I didn’t
know it, then I was in
trouble. And they
don’t let you get on
the phone and talk to people if you don’t know what you're talking
about. You can’t.
But she took it very very personally.
The last time I went to see them, I
said
to Rebecca—Rebecca takes me out—“Rebecca.”
She said, “Ma, I want you to go, because you want to
see your brother so
badly.” I said,
“Yeah, but I don’t want
to get into anything with my sister-in-law.”
She says, “Don’t worry.
I’ll
keep her away from you.” And
I sat with
your father, and we had a wonderful talk and a wonderful time,
reminiscing. We
have a good
rapport. And she
kept Mae away. She
said she didn’t say anything to Mae, but
Mae calls up later and said to Rebecca, “I’m sorry.
Tell your mother I’m sorry.”
I’m there, mind you.
“Tell your
mother I’m sorry. I
won’t do that
again.” Because
every time I saw her,
she brought up the same thing about teachers.
I said it once, she never let me forget it. She didn’t apologize to me.
She told my daughter.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Your mother is an intellectual. I can’t deal with
intellectuals like
that. I mean,
you're an intellectual in
your own right, but you're not. You're
so down-to-earth. You
are basically, on my end. You've always made me feel
great. You're my
love.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
When your mother met your father,
she
decided she was going to marry him.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
My brother
I used to count on. He
was like the one
with the tough shoulder to cry on.
Table
of contents
I had gone back to New York from
your
parents’ chicken farm, and when I came back to visit, Hy and Mahty were
there. Eddie and Hy
had had a big
fight. Do you
remember Jimmy, a black
guy, he became David’s godfather?
Jimmy
Wilson. Jimmy had
some friends who
needed a place to stay. Next
to your
house was a small house that was attached to a barn.
But it didn’t have toilet facilities or running
water. You could
sleep there. People
were sleeping in boxes at that time,
anywhere.
They would come in to use the place. They would walk in and use
the water and use
the bathroom, and Eddie got sick and tired of what they did. I don’t know what
happened, but he was very
angry, and he told them they couldn't come in any more.
And Hy got very angry when he told Hy this. Eddie said something like,
He’s a master of
his castle; he has a right. And
he said
it to me. When I
went to visit I went
to Eddie first, because he picked me up.
And he told me the story, and I sort of took Hy’s
side. Because it
was the dead of winter. Where
were they supposed to go now? The
inconvenience is one thing, but where do
these people go? He
finally got rid of
them, but it was sad. I
could
understand his side, and I could understand their side, and I could
understand
Hy. If it was Hy in
reverse, he would
have accepted them, period. He
said,
yeah I have to accept. Because
Hy was that
type of person. It
doesn’t mean he was
right. He was that way.
Anyhow, these people were homeless. He gave them a roof, but
he felt they should
find another way or use a bucket and not come in and out constantly
like that,
whatever. Anyhow,
Hy and Eddie became
friends again before Hy left. I
don’t
remember for how long they were estranged.
I wasn’t there all the time, but when I came to
visit, I found out this
had happened. Then
I went back to New
York. I had a job,
I was living my own
life then.
Hy decided to go back to Europe,
and he
and Mahty and the kids stayed overnight with me in New York, and then
he
realized he hadn’t taken the tickets, they're still on the kitchen
table. So he had to
get up. I don’t
think he slept. He
just got up, went back to South Jersey to
pick up the tickets, and then came back to New York, and then went down
to get
his ship. He took
the Queen Elizabeth,
I think.
Hy came to South Jersey to be a
chicken
farmer because your father talked him into it.
He didn’t want to.
I don’t know
if he actually talked him into it.
It
was a lonely life for Mahty. Mahty
was
treated like...they had friends, and the woman would talk to Mahty like
[slow, labored speech],
“You-have-to-do-...” You
know, like she
was a moron. And
Mahty understood
English. You talk
to her like you talk
to anybody. She was
very upset, and she
didn’t feel that close to your mother.
I don’t know if I ever said to you in this thing: my
brother and I were
very close, Eddie, and when your mother came on the scene, she was very
nice in
the beginning. Then
when I lived with
them, when I came down to Jersey, I felt like she resented it at times,
Eddie
and my friendship.
You know, people don’t have to say
anything and you could feel the resentment flowing?
Sometimes I said to myself, “No, no, no, you're
imagining
it.” And other
times I said, “Schmuck,
you're not imagining it, it’s there.”
I
decided not to be that close. I
moved
my space back. We
hadn’t been that
friendly. As I got
older, we became
friends. As a kid
he beat me up. But
as we got older, you know, Hy was over
there, and I was over here, and Eddie was a little jealous of my
attachment to
Hy. That made him
even closer to him,
when we went down South and we lived with my father down there.
I don’t know if I told you that,
because
I’m reading his,
and I’m mixing it up.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
[How did you hear about Hy’s
marriage to
Mahty?]
They let me know.
They wrote me.
Of course. I
couldn't
afford to go over at the time, they couldn't pay for it. But I went over once. What happened with my
going over there was
that I was working, and it was time for a layoff. I could have had another
job. I didn’t want
to. I decided I’m
going there.
The trip was $350 round trip to go to Paris by ship. The fare itself was not
expensive, and I was
going to stay with them. But
I couldn't
get back because I was on the Ile de
France, and I wanted to stay for 6 months.
I had a 3 month visa. When I got there, Mahty
wasn’t there
yet. They had been
in Tunisia, and when
they were there, Hy got very very sick.
He tells the story, how they used to swab him in oil
to pull out the
sickness. He got
very ill. He came
back to Paris before Mahty. She
came back after him. He
met me, not at the boat; he met me in
Paris, at the Gare St. Lazare.
When I got in there, he took me
home, he
got my luggage and all. We
had to go
home by cab. We
went up to
St.-Cloud. I stayed
with them about 6
months. Jai-Jai was
born. Mahty and her
sister were there.
[Me:
“You hung out with your brothers when their wives were having children,
didn’t
you?”]
I was always there.
I don’t know why.
I’m just that type of person.
[Chuckle] They make sure I’m around. Mahty was scared stiff of
the baby. She
wouldn't give him a bath. Her
sister Papoon, Collette, was in Paris
and her brother was there. She
was
afraid to handle the baby, and Mahty was afraid to handle the baby. Jai-Jai tells everybody
that I’m his first
mother, ‘cause his mother couldn't take care of the baby. She was scared stiff.
I showed her, “Mahty, you can bathe
him. He can’t drown. He just came out of your
womb, which is full
of water. He won’t
drown, believe
me! He goes under
the water for a
minute, nothing’s going to happen!”
She
finally conceded and accepted it.
But
she was very na�ve when it came to babies.
She adored
having a baby. But
she was scared
stiff. It’s a good
thing I was
there. Papoon
wasn’t much better. They
made baby clothes, but the baby didn’t
even have warm clothes. Like
we have
undershirts? They
made silk
undershirts. They
come from a hot
climate, but in Paris it wasn’t hot any more at that point. It got hot later, and
that’s when I kept
saying, “You don’t overdress the baby.
Take some of the clothes off.”
Then I came back after 6 months. In order for me to get my
passage okayed, Hy
had to get—in order for me to get my passage okayed—you know, I could
get the
passage, but I couldn't get out. I
needed the visa. For
the visa, so I
could stay another 3 months, he had to buy it.
With cigarettes and stuff.
That
was the exchange. His
brother-in-law
used to get the cigarettes and sell them so that he had more money for
his
education. Cigarettes
were a bribe to everybody.
American cigarettes were at their height.
I didn’t bring cigarettes when I
came. I brought cream cheese.
My brother
only wanted cream cheese. Now
they have
cream cheese. But
for years you
couldn't get cream cheese in Paris.
The destruction in Paris from the
war
wasn’t that bad. I
saw some of it, but
I don’t remember too well. The
poverty
was bad. The people
who owned the
house—Hy would bring them soap, and he’d bring them some canned food. He was in the PX. He was working for the
government. He came
out of the army and he got a job with the government to
find housing for their personnel.
So he
had access to the PX all the time, and he knew a lot of soldiers and
generals
and this one and that one—you know, no problem.
So he would get things for them.
He got soap, he got all sorts of things—and yet when
I washed clothes,
they would come up and ask me to leave the water so they could use it
to wash
their floor. They
wouldn't use the
soap. They were
still afraid another
pogrom would happen, or whatever you want to call it.
Another war. These
weren’t Jews.
They owned the house, and we rented
the
top. We had to go
downstairs to the
toilet. Mahty used
to have to carry her
pail of whatever she did at night, pee or anything, to throw into the
toilet. You were
always afraid that
you'd drop it on the steps. Because
we
had no toilet up there. It
was just a
two-family house. We
were on the second
floor. There was a bathtub, and there was a sink
upstairs. But Mahty
insisted on putting all the
groceries in the bathtub, so you couldn't use it.
So what I would do once a week, I would get to one
of Hy’s
friends who had a toilet with a bathtub, and go there.
Everybody else would just wash
themselves. So I
would go into Paris. I just didn’t like sponge
baths. My brother
used to yell, “It won’t kill
you! Learn how to
use the sponge!” [Laughs]
I had clothes there. My sister-in-law used to
have all her
clothes made, ‘cause Hy made a good living compared to Parisians. She would have these
beautiful clothes made. But
I made my own, not bought it. I
had a steamer trunk, so when I came I
didn’t need drawer space or anything, because a steamer trunk has
drawers and a
place to hang clothes. We
had a little
room. There was
only heat in Hy and
Mahty’s room. And
that’s where we hung
out all the time. The
baby’s crib was
there, their bed. The
next room was a
dining room, which we would freeze if we ate in there, so we tried not
to
unless it was warmer. They
had a stove
in their room. There
was no other
stove. The room
that Papoon
and I slept in, we slept together.
They felt that I was very wealthy
to have
all these clothes. Most
of it I had
made. And when I
got to Paris, I had
made myself a purple suit and a yellow hat—yellow and purple. A hood, not a hat. Mahty thought it was
horrible.
She says, “My God!
Such
colors!” The next
week, all of Paris
were wearing purple and yellow. She
swears that I brought the colors to Paris.
It was springtime already.
So
she tells everybody, “Millie brought the colors.”
I thought it was cute.
I
may have for all I know. Who
ever
thought of the combination? Me! I also thought of the
combination blue and
green. At that time
nobody wore the
color green with a navy suit. I
did. If I could do
it, I did. I had a
nice figure in those days. We
all did.
Everybody had nice figures when they were
little—young. Mahty
was gorgeous. Your
mother had a lovely figure.
I didn’t speak French. I understood a bit. I understood certain
things. I learned
one thing that I tell all my
friends when they go. The
one thing you
have to know is: be polite. The
French
may not be polite, but you have to be polite, and if you want to know
anything,
you say, “Excusez-moi, s’il vous plait,
je ne pas parler fran�ais.”
Then
you could speak English, and they will help you.
But if you go up and said, “Hey!
Do you know where this is?” they won’t say a word. They'll walk past you. ‘Cause I did it once
without thinking, and
they looked at me like I was crazy.
You
don’t talk like that. And
yet when
they're here, especially when I worked downtown and I’d have people
stop me,
they'd never say excuse me. They
just
say, “Je parle parler fran�ais.” I
said, “No, but maybe I could understand.”
‘Cause usually they speak a little English if you
speak it slowly, or
they understand.
I loved Paris.
I went back a number of times.
When I go now I visit other places.
I’ve gone to London since.
I’ve
taken a tour around France. I’ve
gone
to Israel. Gone to
Italy. Gone south.
Did you ever go to Mahty’s boyfriend’s house? [Conspiratorial] They don’t invite people. Me, he invites. He thinks I’m wonderful.
Mahty said he never invited people before. He doesn’t speak English,
but we have our own way, and we
laugh. I have a
feeling he understands
some more than he admits. But
we get
along. Mahty
translates for us. The
thing is, when I came the first time
that he was there, I brought him a present.
A scarf I think.
And he was so
delighted because nobody ever did that.
He was amazed.
And Mahty said, “Nobody ever
brought him a present. So
you've won him.”
When I went over there with Louise,
my
girlfriend, about 10 years ago, we first went to London and Amsterdam,
and then
we came to Paris. She
stayed with them
for a whole week. Then
they took us out
to eat. Before they
could take us out
to eat, I said, “Louise, you're here a whole week!
You've saved yourself a hundred dollars a day. Let’s face it: you went to
a hotel, right,
and had to eat out?...” I
said, “You
buy food. This time
you pay in the
restaurant.” “Oh
no, no, no, I’ll pay
with you.” “I said,
“Oh, no, no,
no. I’m family. They won’t accept from me. But you are a friend
coming with me, they'll
accept.” They wouldn't accept from me.
They wouldn't allow me to spend a penny. Wherever I go, Henry
insisted on
paying. His friends insisted on paying.
Your mother gave me money to spend
on
dinner. We all went
out to dinner. She
wanted me to treat everybody. They
know it came from her and your
father. And I had
like $20 left. I
handed it to Henry. The
last time I was there and I had money
left, I handed it to Jai-Jai’s daughter, Claire.
Oh is she gorgeous!
She
takes after her grandmother. Very
much
like Mahty.
Table
of contents
There was my girlfriend I lived
with for
awhile, Paula. She
was very very active
in the Party, and then she met this guy, her first marriage. He was completely the
opposite. She was
active in everything. And
then she married this guy who was
anti-everything she believed in. I
could never understand it because I couldn't do that.
I couldn't marry somebody who was a reactionary, and
this guy
was. I don’t know
what attracted them
to each other. She
was very sweet, a
lovable person. She
was. She’s dead.
She was generous and very good-natured.
And I guess by that time she may have slowed down
anyway. She was in
her sixties. So
maybe she had slowed down enough to relax
and meet somebody who could care for her.
She had a crippled hand, so she always had that
which kept her from
wanting to date. Leo
once got her a guy
from the Maritime Union. They
were very
close for a long time. They
broke up; I
never knew why.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Evelyn and I went to camp on
vacation. And this
gorgeous hunk of a
man, six feet tall, blue-eyed, blond hair, liked me.
I don’t remember his name.
But he was so sweet.
I was about
20. He insisted on
dating me. You were
an infant at this point. We
were dating up there. We
were having a very good time. He
was a lover boy, and he made me feel
great. I said, “Why
did you pick me out
of all the girls. You’re
not going to
get to bed with me.” He
said, “I don’t
care. I want to be
with you.” Very
gentlemanly. I
wasn’t in love. I
was
enamored with him, not in love. There’s
a difference.
That’s when I got the call from my
father
to come home and take care of Mae.
She
had hepatitis. I
get a call from my
father saying, “You have to come home.”
I said, “Why?”
He said, “Mae has
hepatitis. Your
mother. You have to
come back and take care of her.”
So I had to leave.
I had a week’s vacation, and I was called
back after a couple of days. We
didn’t
get back together after the camp.
I got back to the house. I guess I got in by train. The camp was upstate New
York
somewhere. Camp
Unity. Not as high
up as Albany. So I
got back, and your grandparents (your
mother’s parents) were sitting there like this, like they're going to
die. They were both
sitting there like they were
going to pass out. It
was very, very
hot. There was no
fan in the
house. Your mother
was in bed. It was
Fox Street. There
are other reasons I remember that.
I think maybe you were sleeping in the crib
at the time, but you were there already.
They were so glad to see me.
They couldn't breathe any more.
They just wanted to go home.
They couldn't help Mae.
So my
father called me because they
couldn't take care of her, their own daughter.
And I had to give up my vacation.
It’s true, I resented it for the rest of my life. Because they weren’t old. At my age, I go to help
people who are
sick. I’m 72. What the hell was wrong
with them? What was
wrong with my father?
Your grandmother wasn’t pleasant,
and
neither was your grandfather to me.
But
when that thing happened, afterwards, I was so angry that Mae was sick. I couldn't blame Mae. I blamed my father, but
there was nothing I
could do. Because
he wasn’t there. They
must have called him. And
she has two sisters: they didn’t
come. I was very
resentful for a long
time.
When this thing happened, I lived
with
your mother and her sister,
and my brother was in the Merchant Marine.
You can put this on tape. I’m
annoyed.
When I remembered this, I said to
myself,
“What the hell are you hiding? You're
the one who’s the victim?” After
that,
Mae got well. It
was ok. We moved to
Bleecker St., with her
sister. Her sister
had a room, and
Eddie and Mae had a room. Well,
Mae had
to have a room, with the baby. We
were
supposed to share the rent three ways and the food three ways. Virginia resented it
because you were there,
and Eddie was coming in on weekends, and why should she pay for you or
Eddie? She was very
selfish.
Your mother didn’t make that kind
of
money. I went to
work at night so that
she could work during the day. I
watched you until you got old enough to go into a day care, which you
did as
soon as you were accepted. But
Virginia
resented having to put out one penny more.
She made more than both of us, I think.
Not together, but either one of us.
For instance, we had ration coupons. She made sure hers were
only used for what
she used. She would
tell us how to cook
vegetables because she wanted you to boil the water first and then put
them in
because they would lose their vitamins.
So we did it her way.
She and I were friends. We used to go out together. This one day you were sick. You had a bad cold or
something. You were
sitting in the high chair, and
Eddie was in, and her bedroom window and the kitchen window had a line
between
them to hang clothes. She
came in and
opened the window in the kitchen.
I don’t
know if your mother or Eddie said to her, “Virginia, the baby’s sick. Close the window. Go through your room.” “It’s my house, too!” So Eddie got up and got
mad and pushed her
out of the kitchen. He
did not hit her.
She went to her room, got dressed,
and
went up to Mount Vernon and told her parents that Eddie had hit her, or
beat
her, or shoved her. They
came down,
furious. I opened
the door when they
rang. They rushed
into the house. You
were sleeping. The
door was closed to your parents’ room, or your room, and they
opened it. Now
listen: he’s on home
leave. [Chuckling]
You don’t just
rush in! Knock! They weren’t there anyhow. So they proceeded to beat
up on me. Both of
them. Both of them
assaulted me.
I couldn't believe it.
I don’t
know if they knocked me down, but they did hurt me.
I was more hurt mentally.
I got no bruises.
It isn’t that
they're so strong or anything. They
may
have been young in our eyes. He’s
your
age? They acted
like two old
farts. They always
did. They always
seemed to me to be old
people.
They didn’t come to beat me up. They came to beat up my
brother. He wasn’t
there, so I was the next best
thing. After they
left, and Eddie and
Mae came home, I told them what happened.
They got very upset, and Eddie called my father—I
think to borrow the
car. But my father
came along, and they
all went up to Mount Vernon. The
next
thing I knew, they came back and they said it was all settled. Everything was ok. I think eventually I got
an “I’m sorry” from your
grandparents. I
don’t know what form it
took; I don’t even remember if it happened.
Mae said they were sorry.
I never spoke to your aunt after
that,
Virginia. When Judi
got married, I saw
her again for the first time. I
was
pleasant but I wasn’t friendly. “Hello,
how are you, bye.” Mae’s
other sister,
Sylvia, was a much nicer person, but I didn’t get to know her that
well,
either.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
I dated one of Ed’s friends, Sam. We dated only once.
I dated a guy who was an artist,
Harold—I was so in
love. I was about
25. When I went out
with him, at the restaurant,
who should be there—somebody I hadn’t seen in years and years and
years:
Bea. That was a
wonderful night. That
night I went out for my first meal of
seafood. With my
father I’d had some
seafood, but never a complete meal.
Everything was delicious.
We
went to City Island outside of the Bronx, near
Orchard Beach (20-25 minutes at the most), where everyone goes for
seafood.
I had everything.
I got violently ill that night.
Mentally—because I was taught I wasn’t allowed to
eat this. I was
brought up very religiously.
I went out with Sam only once. He’s a cheapskate. He asked me for a date. I
had heard from Lily, who wanted me to come out to the beach. We went out. Sam had been working; he
wasn’t unemployed. He
took me out here, and these kids—the
young people—were going for soda or something.
We ended up eating something, and Sam walked out of
the restaurant so
other people had to pay, which was very embarrassing to me. So I never
went out
with him again. I
think I sent him home
and I stayed with Lily that weekend, because I remember sleeping on a
couch
that was very, very uncomfortable.
Sam
was Eddie’s friend, and they were very good friends.
Harold was a guy I met who wasn’t a
party
member. He was an
artist. When I met
him I fell in love with him, and
we had an affair—my first. I
was 25
already. We had a wonderful
evening, only I got very
very sick. I threw
up all over the
place. [Chuckle]
You know, it was
all mental, because I’ve eaten seafood since but nothing ever happened. At that time I got so sick
that I had pulled
my esophagus in such a way that I couldn't eat unless I had medication
before
each time I ate. I
had to go to a
doctor because that was so sore, it took me three weeks to get over the
wrenching, the soreness in my esophagus.
That was a very trying time; it was horrible.
Harold I dated for about two and
half
years. I even
brought him out to the
farm—you don’t remember. We
broke up
because he found someone else. At
that
point he loved me. I
went to work and
played hookey from work. He
had a
studio. He was
still an artist, a
commercial artist. He
made money at
it. I never really
did anything. He at
least made a living at it. He
wasn’t a great artist. He
didn’t do any painting. He
painted me, which was very nice of
him. He kept that;
it’s a big
painting. Wish I
had it. I did see
him once. We had
gone out to Jones Beach. I
saw him and his wife and his daughters,
but he didn’t see me. I
didn’t make an
issue.
With Harold, I went out to the farm. Your mother and father put
us in separate
rooms, thinking that was fine. [Laughing]
Your father is a real puritan.
When we left there, we stopped in Atlantic City and
stayed there over
night. Did we stay
in separate rooms? Of
course not. We had
been together for quite some time already.
Your parents didn’t say anything. I went back to the other
bed, that’s
all. I think we
were in separate beds,
not separate rooms. In
the living
room. We stayed in
Atlantic City
overnight, then we traveled home.
He
took me to very nice places. We
went to
the airport where we had dinner one day.
It was lovely.
Kennedy
Airport. It was
Idlewild in those
day. They had a
place to sit and view
the airplanes. They
even had those in
my kitchen growing up, because we used to stay outside and watch the
planes
go. That was a big
thing for kids.
We’d go to the beach. We went all the way out to
Jones Beach. We
were there at night to see the play.
We always had interesting things.
He had a car. It
was such a small car that one day he couldn't find a
parking. There was
a parking that would
fit the car, but you couldn't get into it.
So he had some kids lift it up and put it into the
parking space. (You
once had a tiny car.) I forgot what this one was. But it was fun. There was even one time
when—I don’t know if we got hit—the wind
was so bad, we spun around in a circle.
This was on the highway.
We never lived together. I lived with my
girlfriend, and he had his
own little room, which was very tiny, so there was no sense in moving
in together. And he
had a room in his parents’ house with
all his art supplies. Where
did he
paint? When I met
him, he had his own
studio. I saw him
there.
We met each other again after I’d
had
children. It’s very
funny: I was going
to work—I was on a subway train—and sitting next to a friend of mine. We lived in a co-op then
in Queens. And all
of a sudden, this guy stands in
front of me and says, “Hi!” And
I
looked, and it’s him. Then
he walked me
to work. It was
after one of Leo’s big
affairs; we had no relationship, he and I.
I was like 40, I think.
Harold
was 5 years older than me. And
we had
another affair. He
was a free-lance
artist. He didn’t
have any specific
times. And he met
me that day after
work, and I called Leo and said...
I
had an excuse. That
I was going to do
something with a friend. In
the second
affair with Harold, he lived in the city, not far from where I worked. I had to take off half the
day. And we’d meet,
go out to dinner—lunch at
that time, go out to dinner later.
It
was very pleasant. He
was a nice
guy. Harold was
living separately at
that point, but he went back to his wife.
This affair lasted a few months.
Leo never questioned me. How could he question me? I never knew where he was. As long as he was willing
to take care of
the kids, at that point I could have my little affair.
I threw this at Leo when we broke up. Because he had, like, 5, 6
affairs, and I
finally got one. I
said to him, “You
know, I also had an affair.” He
said,
“You did?” I said,
“Yeah. Harold.”
It killed him, ‘cause he always accused me of still
seeing him. He was
very jealous, but he still had what
he wanted. But
that’s all right. That’s
Leo for you. I
don’t know about all men, but that was
him.
Anyhow, that’s my love life. I had boyfriends... Harold was the great love
of my life. He was.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
When I got married, I got married
on the farm. I
remember Lou and Jean were fond of
David. Jean was
very nice to my
children. But I
don’t remember my
father having anything. When
I moved to
a new apartment they bought me a vacuum cleaner.
When I got married, my father wanted to make the
wedding, but Ed
insisted on doing it. They
loved you.
I feel like such a schmuck about
marrying Leo. It
happens.
I was only as good as I could be.
I was drawn to Leo because I wanted
children. Leo was
very good with children. My
girlfriend had two children, and he was
wonderful with them. And
he was
wondeful with any child I ever saw him with.
To me, Leo was going to be the ideal father. You can’t tell these
things.
Who’d believe Leo could be the way
he is? They
eulogize him, his friends. I
mean, he’s still alive, but you’d think he
was the most wonderful person. He
had
an 80th birthday and everybody came up and told
Sammy and Rebecca,
“Oh, your father is so wonderful, he must have been a wonderful father.” Sammy felt like hitting
out. So did Rebecca.
My neighbor can’t believe that the
Leo she knows can
be the one I told her about. “He’s
so
sweet!” He’s always
nice to
everybody. But his
kids... Iris won’t
even call him Daddy. She
calls him Leo. He
treated her worse than he treated the other two.
At least Sammy had love from him before
Rebecca was born. Once
Rebecca was
born, he didn’t bother with Sammy.
I
got so mad that I couldn’t be good to Rebecca.
I felt very guilty about the attitude I had towards
her. How could you
do this to a child? How
could you ignore him? The
minute she was born it was like he
didn’t have a son. Sammy
knows it. He felt
it.
I’m not saying Leo never played with him. But he wasn’t important to
him any more. She was.
When Iris came along, she was cute, but
everything was Rebecca. He
doesn’t even
remember what Iris does for a living.
I didn’t finish high school until
after Iris was born,
in 1958. Then I
went back to
school. You go to
night school, it’s
different. I had to
take
everything. I went
back with a friend
of mine, Hedie, who’s Hungarian and lives in Arizona now. She is very, very bright,
and wanted to have
her diploma from America. She
came over
just before the war. We
got very good
marks—the teacher told us, “You have the highest marks I’ve ever seen
from a
student.” I don’t
think they were very
high, but at night you don’t get the brightest students. I took English and math
and history. The
tests were not the way they were in
school—they were multiple choice, for reading more than anything else. They gave you the story,
and then you had to
answer the questions. If
you read and
know what you’re reading, you really don’t have a problem; but some
people skip
along and are not really understanding what they’re reading. When I was very young, I
didn’t read, but by
that time I was an avid reader. I
was
used to reading, and comprehension was a very big part of that test.
The thing I liked in math was
square roots. I
loved them. I can’t
do it any more.
That was my forte.
Naturally,
they gave that on the test, so I had no problem, whereas a lot of
people don’t
understand it to begin with. The
thing
I can’t do is type. I
went back to school
to learn how to type, but I can’t.
I
have a block.
I went at night, so Leo was home. Then I went to art school
at night. I went to
North Pelham Parkway. I
went off and on for a few years. I
got my high school diploma. When
you go for a job and they ask how far
did you go, I don’t say I have a GED; I say, “Yeah, I finished high
school.” GED still
doesn’t mean
something when you go for a job. GED
means I went back at night and took the tests.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Lily and Diane were Jean’s sisters. Lily was a very nice
person. She told me
that my father made a play for
her. She rejected
him. Lily at that
time was a good-looking woman. After
that she had psoriasis. She
had rheumatoid arthritis, too, so she
was becoming very disfigured as far as her body, her hands in
particular. When
she died, Diane didn’t want me to come
to the funeral. But
my Aunt Mae
insisted I should go. We
went to Diana’s
house after the funeral. When
I got
there, somebody said to Diane—and Aunt Mae was sitting right there, and
Jean
was still alive at the time—“Who’s that girl over there?” Jean didn’t answer. My aunt piped up, “What do
you mean that
girl? That’s Louis’ daughter.”
Diane
never wanted anyone to know Jean had married a man with children. They couldn’t say anything.
I was married to Leo at the time. I’d had my second
miscarriage—I had a
miscarriage just before my father died, and just before Lily died. This miscarriage was
before Sammy, so it was
at least 42 years ago--1953.
After that, when Jean died, again
it happened. My
kids were grown up already. Diane
didn’t call to tell me that Jean
died. Diane called
my cousin Mike, Aunt
Mae’s son, and told him, and he called me.
I was on vacation.
I left the
country where I was on vacation and came back to New York and went to shiva call.
She had a tremendous house, with a grand piano in
one room. The room
was so tremendous. The
piano looked lost. There
were people sitting there. Diane
put Leo and myself in the
kitchen. “Stay
here, stay here,” she
kept saying. “We’ll
talk here.” One of
her twins walked in—both finally came
in—and they gave me a funny look and walked out.
Like I had done something wrong.
We talked for awhile, and then we left because I
felt I was being kept
out. She walked out
of the room for a
moment, and I said, “You know, Leo, she doesn’t want us to go inside. She doesn’t want anybody
to know who I
am.” This is an old
story with her, to
keep her sister protected, although her sister was dead now. I never heard from her
again.
Jean stayed with Diane before she
died, and I kept
telling Diane I want to come and visit her.
Diane kept saying, “No, no, no, she’s not well
enough.” At one
point we finally went over to vist
her. Diane was out
of the house. No
one was there except for Jean. We
sat in the garden—whatever it was—the
back yard. They
kept me isolated from
her, and she kept me isolated from them.
It was a very uncomfortable feeling, so I finally
stopped calling and
stopped trying to be nice. We
only
lived 5 minutes from each other.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Sylvia (Aunt Mae’s daughter) had
Stevie. She was
very domineering. He
stayed with me when she moved to New
Jersey. He was in
college then and
wanted to finish. He
lived with us for
three years. His
daughter in Israel had
asked me to do a family tree because she had to show it, and she wanted
something a little more than what her father could say.
One day when I was 15, I was
babysitting with Ruth’s
children, and she was out. I
turned my
back, and they were in a room that faced out on the street. I walked in and saw them
both sitting on the
window sill with their feet dangling. I
think it was the 2nd or first floor.
They were very young—like 2 and 3. I crept up on them, and I
grabbed them and banged their heads
together. I pulled them in from the window,
and I shut the window. I yelled at
them, “Never, ever do that again!” A
couple of hours later, Sid, Ruth’s husband, came home, and I told him
that they
had their feet dangling out of the window—and then I passed
out. I was so upset—they might have gotten
killed. In those days they didn’t have
laws—like nowadays if you have children that age, you have to put on
window
guards. It was real scary. I can still see it—two
gorgeous kids.
Another time, Steve had $10,000 in
the bank, and I
co-signed so I could take it out.
They
lived in Israel, and Steve wanted to be able to get the money when he
wanted
it. When he did
this, his wife called
and said, “Please take the money out and send it to me.” Meanwhile, his brother,
Joel, who was living
in NY at the time, told me that Steve was gay.
Now Ava called for money.
This
was money that Steve had earned. She
had a right to it, too, but I didn’t want to be the one who makes this
decision, so I told her there was a problem, and I couldn’t take it out. She and Steve got back
together. I told
him that I didn’t know what to do,
and he said, “it’s all right, you did the right thing.”
Steve and his wife lived in an
apartment in Israel
that’s very, very expensive. It
has 4
bedrooms, and a terrace that’s as big as the roof of an apartment house.
My kids don’t like Ava. I’m the only one she talks
to.
I’m the only one she’ll confide in.
She never told me about Steve’s extracurricular
activities. But
everybody likes to confide in me.
His brother died.
At one point, Stevie was going to
college, a number of
years ago. Rebecca
was about 17—20 or
22 years ago. Stevie
stayed with me in
New York because his mother had moved to Jersey, and he was going to
City
College. He stayed
with me about 4
years while he went. The
last year he
was with me, my Rebecca wanted to go away; she didn’t want to stay in
high
school in New York. So
I sent her out
to my cousin, Stevie’s mother, Sylvia, in New Jersey.
She enjoyed it to a point.
Sylvia was an ill person; she had a bad heart. We sort of exchanged: she
used to pay me something for Stevie’s
stay, so when she took Rebecca we just didn’t pay each other. That’s where Rebecca met
Larry. She had
another boyfriend before Larry, but
Larry fell in love with her. He
decided
to chase after her when she moved back to me, just before she graduated
from
high school. Her
last term was in
Lakewood.
She loved it, but she didn’t have
any freedom. I’m a
much easier going person. Sylvia
felt responsible. To
the point to really restrict her.
She had a daughter, Rita—Stevie’s sister—and
Rita decided that Rebecca was under her thumb.
She had two children who were little tubbies. Rita had been married, and
the guy left her shortly after she had
her second child. When
Rebecca lived there,
Rita made sure Rebecca cleaned. This
was the old story again, with me cleaning and me doing, and now my
daughter was
doing this. Ok:
you’re living there,
you have to help a little. But
she
couldn’t go visit her friends until she’d cleaned this and she’d
cleaned that,
and if there was any dirt left, Rita would yell and tell her mother,
who would
say, “Go back and clean it again.”
They
were quite strict.
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Iris works in a hospital and does
EEGs. She has a
very hard job. When
she was pregnant, the doctor called up
and said of a baby on whom Iris was to do an EEG, “Don’t bother to do
it, the
baby doesn’t have a brain.” And
she’s
pregnant.
She’s very important.
The hospital gives her increases because they say
they wouldn’t make the
money without her there. They
have
nobody to take over. She
carries a
beeper with her, and can be called in the middle of the night. There’s no union, but she
fights.
Rebecca was a shop steward for a
short time while she
was at GHI. Then
she worked at other
places that didn’t have unions. She’s
an excellent worker, but living with her husband, forget it. She teaches aerobics. She would do it 5 days a
week. But she says,
“I’ve got 3 kids, I run here,
I run there.” Iris
has no sympathy
because she works an 8-hour day, 5 days a week.
The only thing Larry can’t get into
Rebecca’s mind is
that she should vote the way he votes.
He’s a Republican, he’s a very reactionnary-type
person. And with
me, she’s had to tell him off. I
was invited over, he invited his
secretary, and they were baiting me, calling blacks “niggers,” and the
like. To me, this
is stupid and very
ignorant, and he did it to offend me.
He doesn’t like me.
Ask me
why. I’m alive, and
his mother is
dead. He can never
accept his mother’s
death. I never let
it get to me. His
father was a schmuck. He’s
still alive. I
won’t interfere. I
don’t go there unless he’s away. I
might be there and he’ll come back and say, “Oh, hi, Millie. Bye.”
She once said to me, “I know you
love Larry.” I
said, “Listen, Rebecca. I
love my children, I love my
grandchildren. I
don’t love your
husband. I can’t
love your
husband. So get off
it.” How can you
love somebody who can be like
that? He’s very
ignorant. He may
make a lot of money, and he does, but
that doesn’t mean he’s a brain. He’s
a
salesman. So big
deal. Like my
father.
Larry wants her to wear $150 to
$300, $400 dresses,
and Rebecca doesn’t know from these things.
I can’t say anything.
He thinks
she’s wonderful to a point. He
just had
surgery on his knee and will be home for 6 weeks. She can’t stand it. He’s normally home
weekends. She makes
him get involved with her sons
because she feels he needs it. He’s
home sick, he’s still doing work.
To
him his job is the big thing. But
she
screams and yells and says, “You have to do these things.”
She says she loves Larry. I said to her that I’d
like to see her before I leave. She says, “No, Ma, I’ll
see you when you get
back.” I know what
that is. That’s
because she doesn’t want me in the
same house as him. He
probably still
resents me. And she
doesn’t want to
have to listen to him. I
don’t blame
her. She had said
to me, “I’ll go crazy
if he’s here for six weeks. He
demands
so much.” She
stands up. She
fights him on some things.
You know, because of the money
involved, people don’t
get divorced a lot of the time. Like
my
girlfriend is living with her husband, she hates his guts, but she
won’t let
him out of her sight because she knows he screws around. But she won’t divorce him
because of the
money. They both
own the stores. That’s
the way she wants to live. Me,
I could never do it.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
Do you think it’s possible that
Sammy and
Rebecca could get close? They're
so
different. She
lives with a
reactionary. If he
knew half the things
that go on, he’d really get mad. She
told me recently, Larry has no real friends.
Larry doesn’t like people.
His
family is the only important thing to him.
If that’s the way it is, that’s closing himself in a
box. Larry could be
very sociable. Just
stay off politics with him. I’m
the one he treats the least nicely.
His brothers thinks I’m wonderful,
especially his older brother. I
cook
like his mother cooked. He
comes and
I’m cooking. They
treat me very nicely,
his family. It’s
only he doesn’t. One
time she said, “He’s like this because
when his mother died, he resented anybody else.”
His mother died, just before he started going with
her. So she has a
mother, and he doesn’t. It’s
ridiculous, and at this point in his
life he should be over it, but it’s his problem.
I’m not comfortable with him, and she knows it. And finally she admits, he
doesn’t like
people. What she’s
trying to say is,
“He doesn’t like you,” but she can’t say it that way.
Whereas Donald, my daughter’s
husband, he
loves me more than my daughter loves me I think sometimes. Don is a very nice basic
guy. I get alone
with Don and �lise. It’s
only Larry. I’m not
really a mother-in-law.
Rebecca wanted somebody who makes a lot of money. That had a lot to do with
it. She would have
been able to do much more for
herself, because she’s a very bright girl.
She never used it.
She says,
“No, Ma, I wasn’t that bright.” Wellll,
she worked in my place with me, and the vice-president, I had to sit at
the
table with him once, said to me, “Is that your daughter, Rebecca?” I said, “Yeah.” And he says,“Oh God, is
she bright!” It’s
her own make-up that makes her feel, like I felt.
She told me recently, “Ma, I’m not
as
smart as you think.” Whereas
I didn’t
realize how smart Iris was, and Iris has much more on the ball. She feels she’s very
brilliant. She’ll
argue with anybody. She’s
a real nice kid, my daughter. I
get along with Iris very well. We’re
more friends than we are parents.
But all my children think they're
my
parent at one time or other. Do you do
that?
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
I recently went to Florida to visit
a friend of mine
that I used to work with. I
didn’t know
her well except to go to dinner or lunch with her.
We liked going out to eat, so we got very friendly
that way. At one
point we were working together to get
people to vote. It
was done in the
building, and we had tables downstairs, and I said to her, by
accident—thinking
that she had voted, because she’s an American flag-waver—“Are you
registered?” She
said, “No, I never
voted.” So I
convinced her to
vote. Guess who she
voted for? Reagan!
It’s like throwing away my own vote.
I never would do that again.
Then recently, she’s retired, and I’m retired, and
she’s down in Florida
and she had open-heart surgery, and she called me, and I said, “Okay,
I’ll come
down to visit.” I
mean, you have a
place to stay, you think it’s wonderful.
So I went down to visit. First of all, she has a
kitchen with everything in it, including
a dishwasher. Her
dishes are covered
with plastic so she never uses them.
She does not cook.
She does not
use anything in her refrigerator.
I
said to her, “I have three meals a day.
I am a diabetic now, and I must eat my three meals. I can’t go without
breakfast.” “Oh,
we’ll go to...” One
of the places that’s very cheap for
breakfast. But she
doesn’t want to go
before 11:00, because this is her breakfast-lunch.
So we went out and I bought some cereal and some
milk so I can
have breakfast in the morning. I
got my
milk and cereal so I had my breakfast every morning instead of coffee.
I was only there four days. The second day I’m there,
we drive, and she says to me, “Isn’t
this wonderful, there are no blacks around!”
And I looked at her.
She says,
“Well, they used to know their place.
I
wish they knew their place now.”
And I said, “You know, Carol, they
were here way
before you or I.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. My mother was born here.” She’s 62.
This was this year.
She only
went down to Florida this past year.
Anyhow, I met a number of people
very similar to her
there.
I would not go see her again. After that comment about
blacks I said,
“Carol, let’s not discuss politics, because you know we’re not going to
agree.”
She’s the type of
person who thinks everything’s a big
joke. So I never
knew when she was
kidding me when she corrected me constantly, or debated with me. You got to a point where I
didn’t say
anything. I
couldn't talk.
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