CHAPTER FIVE             PROGENITORS                    P. 54 - 63

 2. Maternal Side 

The oldest progenitor of the maternal side of our family who is still remembered by my brother David, sisters Helen and Rose, and myself was Bobbe Haie, the mother of our other grandfather Avrom Meishe Winograd. In my childhood she was a stooped, almost hunchbacked old woman, always dressed in dark clothing, who occupied a tiny room in the house of her daughter-in-law, my maternal grandmother Peshe. She was my personal enemy, because she always defended her two granddaughters by another son, who lived across the yard and whose long braids I could not resist pulling when­ever an opportunity presented itself. The girls would howl, and Bobbe Haie would come after me, shaking a bony finger and calling out in her quaking old voice: "Kum aher yingele un ikh veil dir geben a patch!" (Come here little boy and I will give you a slap!), while I stood at a safe distance grinning or making faces at her. I also used to annoy her by banging on her door, then hide and listen to her imprecations when she came out looking for me. Of course I was reprimanded and punished many times by grandmother and my mother, but the feud went on until I started going to heder and discovered more interesting things to do than torturing the poor old woman. But I never really liked her. My sisters tell me that she was kind and nice to them, and no doubt would have been so to me also had I not behaved so atrociously. She certainly had reason enough not to dote upon this great-grandson of hers, and I hope that she has forgiven my transgressions against her.

Bobbe Haie performed her last act on this earth, whether she knew it or not, after her death. My sister Helen, then about five years old, developed a boil on her face which did not heal despite all the standard remedies. So superior powers and healers were resorted to. The child was taken to the old woman's bier and was put through the ordeal of having Bobbe Haie's dead hand placed over the boil to the accompaniment of certain incantations. This was an age-old remedy for afflictions which did not yield to ordinary methods of cure. Did it work? All I know is that the boil disappeared--eventually.

Zaide Meishe, my maternal grandfather, was also born in about 1860, and he was married to Peshe Leah Hondelsaltz at the age of twenty. For some years he also worked as a shinglemaker, like my other grandfather, and  they traveled together
to the United States at the turn of the century. Upon arrival at Ell is Island, however, misfortune struck Meishe--he was refused entry because he did not have the "show money" of twenty-five dollars as a guarantee that he would not immediately become a public charge. During the inspection he was separated from Leiser Ber because each was in a different line , the one for people whose last name began with a W, whereas his companion was in line A. In his bewilderment and inability to make himself under­stood, his pleas to be taken to Leiser Ber went unheeded, and before he knew what was happening to him he was back aboard the ship on which he arrived, and on the way back to Europe. It is almost impossible for us to realize what a calamity this was. Every last kopek and probably some borrowed money, too, was spent for the fare, the horrors of steerage passage of those days endured, and a penniless wife with five children left behind in the hope of support to come from the "Goldene Medineh"--the Golden Land--all brought to naught with one terrible blow. Under the Immigration Laws the steamship company was obligated to return him whence he came, but to go home in disgrace and misery was unthinkable. He got off the boat at some port in England and managed to find his way to London, where he had a brother who had left home some years earlier with a forged passport under a different name, because of his liability to military service. Grandpa Maishe had forgotten, or perhaps never knew, under what name his brother came to England, nor did he know whether he was using the assumed name or his rightful name Winograd. He only knew that his brother's given name was Isser and that he was a cigar maker. Despondent over the traumatic experience at Ellis Island, without money and unable to speak English, he walked the streets of London until he saw a man who looked to him like, and who in fact was a Jew and spoke Yiddish. The man took him to the nearest synagogue where people began making inquiries and by a stroke of good luck came upon a milkman who had Isser as a customer. The brothers were thus reunited, but Isser was hardly able to support his own family and was in no position to help. Unskilled in any trade other than shingle­making, grandpa was unable to find any work, and the lure of America was still strong. So he wrote to Leiser Ber asking for help, and the latter, with the assistance of his two sons who were already established in New York, sent him money for passage and pre­sumably also the all-important "show money." Meishe made a second steerage voyage and this time gained admission to the coveted land. Seven years later he returned home to arrange for the marriage of his second daughter, Hanye, whose wedding is very vivid in my memory and will be described in a later chapter. But Zeide Meishe was destined to recross the ocean a third time, with fateful consequences for myself and my family.

Unlike my other grandfather, who had three sons and one daughter, still in her teens, Zeide Maishe had four daughters and one son. The latter was quite pampered not only because he was an only son, but also due to his delicate health--he was thought to have had a touch of tuberculosis, the "white plague," in his youth. The three younger girls, my mother's sisters, were still unmarried, and when a match was proposed for the oldest of them grandpa came home from America to see it through. After the wedding, the expenses of which plus the dowry having exhausted his American dollars, he returned to the United States in 1911 and remained until 1922 when he rejoined his family for good, but not before bringing me to this country, thus paving the way for the eventual immigration of my parents, brothers and sisters.

I have a rather vague recollection of grandpa Meishe in Shershev, the most vivid event being a trip he made all the way to Warsaw, apparently to undergo an operation for prostate trouble, because I remember overhearing whispers about his having difficulty in passing water. He was accompanied by grandma Peshe for whom this seems to have been the first trip to a large city. It was also her first encounter with indoor plumbing, to which she reacted quite critically. They stayed at the apartment of her nephew, Yisroel Elie Handelsaltz, which had an indoor toilet. Grandma ex­pressed her indignation about the indecency of it in no uncertain terms: "It is a shame and a disgrace! Here you sit in the kitchen and eat, and right next to it, behind the door, they sit down and . . . . " You can even hear the noises from there! Feh, nit shein! " (Phooye, not nice at all !)

What grandpa Maishe did in the United States during his first stay of seven years I do not know, but when I arrived in 1921 he was in the "coal and ice business." I was appalled when I discovered what this "business" actually was. He rented a cellar under­neath one of the apartment buildings on Chester Street, in the then almost one hundred percent Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville, in East Brooklyn. In this cellar he kept his merchandise: lumpy black coal in winter and large rectangular cakes of ice in summer. Neither central heating nor electric refrigerators were fixtures of the tene­ments, each tenant having to use a coal-burning iron stove for heating in winter and a tin-lined wooden chest with a chunk of ice inside for storing perishable food during warm weather. Grandfather was selling the coal and the ice, but . . . he had to deliver the stuff to the customer. Most of the buildings were six stories high, without elevators, so he had to climb the stairs to his customers either with a sack of lumpy coal on his back or with a chunk of ice, held by heavy iron tongs, resting on a drip­ping burlap bag thrown over his shoulder. Each of these trips meant a sale of fifteen to twenty-five cents, out of which he had to pay his cost of the coal and ice and the rent for the cellar. This toil was carried on six days a week, early morning to evening, being covered with coal dust in winter and with dripping ice water mixed with his sweat in summer. That was "business" in 1921. Where did he live? In an apartment or a rented room? That would have cost a few of the hard-earned dollars so badly needed by his wife and children at home. $o in addition to his "business" grandpa got himself a job as a night watchman in a nearby clothing factory. This provided a place to sleep and to keep his few miserable belongings; and on top of that he got paid two dollars a week. Food? No problem. One bought some bread or rolls, cheese, sour cream, a cucumber or tomato, and had a nourishing meal. Occasionally one splurged and bought a corned beef or pastrami sandwich, and washed it down with a glass of tea--not bad! But once a week one lived it up. On Friday afternoon one went to a public bath and washed off some of the grime accumulated during the week, then put on a clean shirt and went to shul to welcome the Sabbath. After services one went to a kosher restaurant and had a meal like a king: some marinated herring or chopped liver; nice fat chicken soup with noodles; a quarter of a boiled chicken; and tsimes--prunes, carrots and raisins stewed together with a slice or two of lemon thrown in for extra flavor. On Saturday, after morning services, one gorged oneself again--the same meal, but perhaps with some flanken instead of chicken, and compote followed by tea and coke. Why, sometimes one could even have cholent--that savory concoction of meat, potatoes, carrots, onions and plenty of fat, all stewed in an earthenware pot placed in a sealed oven overnight, and dished out on Saturday for the delectation of the most fastidious palate. And then the delight of an afternoon nap in the warm factory loft--life really was not so bad after all!

What were grandfather's earnings from this life of toil and privation? In an affidavit sent to me in 1920 for submission to the American Consulate with my visa application, he declared his income to be twenty dollars per week, and his total sav­ings as amounting to two thousand dollars. I suspect that these figures may have been exaggerated, to impress the consulate with his ability to support me if need be.   It is doubtful if he sent home more than five dollars per week on the average, since in those days a family in Russian Poland could manage very well on such amount, which was equivalent to ten rubles. Besides, grandmother and children operated a store in the market place from which they derived some income of their own. His personal expenses could not have been more than five dollars a week, of which two came from his watchman's job. So even if we accept the two thousand dollars of savings as being correct, his earnings from his "business" could not have been more than twelve dollars per week on the average, or two dollars per day. Yet I never heard him grumble or complain. Such were the "good old days".

Zeide Meishe crossed the Atlantic for the sixth and last time in 1922 and re­turned to his family from which he had been separated for so long. He married off his two youngest daughters and his only son, and spent the last nine years of his life in peace and deserved repose with his wife, children and grandchildren. He died in the autumn of 1931 as a result of injuries sustained when he fell off a ladder while trying to open the hinged wing of the roof that was designed to be raised so that the exposed interior could be used as a sukka. His life thus ended in suffering and pain, which this good man bore with the same stoicism and resignation with which he endured all the trials and tribulations that fate decreed for him during most of his lifetime.

Grandma Peshe Leah, Bobbe Peshe to us, also lives in my memory very vividly, just like Bobbe Leie. During the first few years of my parents' married life we lived in "Bobbe Peshe's house" until additional children were born and there were just no more nooks in the house into which all could be crammed in. Peshe was rather tall, haggard looking, with a large angular face and prominent cheekbones--certainly not a beauty as far as her physical appearance is concerned. But those who got to know her were full of admiration of the loveliness of her spirit. She was the very embodiment of the "babushka" who is so often and so lovingly portrayed in Russian literature. The patience she showed toward us youngsters, the warmth she exuded, and the ability of calming and controlling the unruly brats, especially me, were remarkable. I will never forget the sheer animal feeling of languorous contentment I experienced as I lay cuddled up next to her on the living room sofa, on a winter Saturday afternoon, listening to her monotonous singsong reading of the Teitch Humesh--the vernacular translation of the five books of the Old Testament for those, usually women, who could not understand the original Hebrew. I felt as I think a little bird must feel under the wing of its mother--warm, protected, and oblivious of all peril.

Equally alive in my memory are the long winter evenings when we ( I think there were still only three of us then: myself, David and Helen ) crowded around her while she was busy at the stove preparing supper; or trailed after her wherever she moved, all the while rapt in wonder at the fascinating stories she told us. The heroes were kings and queens, princes and princesses, merchants on the road, brides and grooms, orphans and other poor people; who were imperiled by witches, werewolves, real wolves, bears, rob­bers, stepmothers, snowstorms, shipwrecks, and what not; and who were saved by wise old men, simple shepherds, poor but brave gallants, magic rings and incantations, and miracles performed by Lamed Vovniks. The latter, so named from the Hebrew letters Lamed and Vov which stand for the number thirty-six, are the righteous men of that number who, according to mystic belief, always go about the world disguised as beggars or itinerant workmen and constantly strive against injustice with the help of their super­natural powers. And whenever grandma paused to catch her breath, or more likely to recollect or invent further details of the adventures of the heroes, we would in our eager­ness to hear more tug at her long skirts and call out in chorus: "Nu, Bobbe, nu, nu?"

In addition to the stories Bobbe Peshe also had games requiring no toys but body movements to the accompaniment of singsong verses. Some of the stories were also in verse and were sung to a simple melody repeated with each stanza. Of these one in par­ticular is still fresh in my mind. It was an interminable saga about the miserable life of the Jewish storekeeper, beginning with: "Far a kremershen leben / Volt ikh kein 'groshen nit geben," ( For a storekeeper's life to live / Not even a cent would I give,) and continuing with an account of what such life was for the female storekeeper, the kremerke, who often did the trading to supplement the meager earnings of her husband. The song related how she had to get up at dawn to feed the children; send the older ones off to heder; leave the little ones with a neighbor or the maid; rush to open the store; stand in the freezing weather waiting for a customer; try to entice each passing peasant into the store; and watch that nothing should be stolen once he is inside. Then the story described the haggling over the price and the abuse received, and how right in the midst of it someone would come on the run to announce that one of the kids got hurt, or that a pig got into the house and created havoc ( pigs used to roam about freely in the streets); and more, and more, until she had to rush home at dusk to prepare supper, not even having earned enough to pay for it. How true all this was to real life I found out when I became older and started helping out in our own store. It left me with a lasting abhorrence for this kind of business.

To this day I am amazed at the gift of this semi-literate woman, who probably never read a book in her life except the Teitch Humesh, in inventing and embroidering all these stories and songs. It was no doubt the memory of those enchanting recitals that inspired me years later to invent and tell stories to my own children and grandchildren; and as I watched their eyes filled with wonderment I could see myself at their age enthralled by Bobbe Peshe's picturesque narrations.