All I wanted was a piece of bread. They were wealthy people. They had a mill where you make flour. I used to have to steal an extra piece of bread. I stayed there for four weeks. I didn’t stay there; I just suffered there. Anyhow, I growed [sic] up to eleven. I never slept in a bed. She wouldn’t let me sleep in a bed. I had to sleep on top of a stove with some rags, with all the wealth my father had. So, I thought to myself, how could I better myself? So, I went into a neighbor’s house. The third house from us. An elderly woman lived there. She raised a granddaughter because her own daughter died. The granddaughter went to school. So, I came into her and begged her not to tell my father or mine stepmother that I‘ll come in every day and wash her floors and do whatever she wanted me to do, so her granddaughter would give me a lesson in Russian, or Jewish. I didn’t want to grow up dumb. So she said, “Alright Dobe, you come in, at such and such a time.” Whatever I know now, I learned from her. A DANGEROUS FALL When I was about 11 years old in the old country, they didn’t have running water in the homes. You had to bring the water to the house in a pail, and in order to get water, you had to go to the well, or to the river. This happened on a Friday when you’re not allowed to carry it on the Sabbath. After services at the schul, my stepmother said to me, “You have to go out and bring in two buck- ets of water.” We had a well about two blocks from the house. It was in the street where all the farmers lived. They were very good friends with my mother. I took the two buckets tied on a rope. The weather was very bad. It was in the wintertime, it was slippery, snow. I went to the well and let my bucket into the well, and I was shivering cold and trying to see if the buck- et is full enough. So, I lifted the rope, and the bucket was gone. So, I got very scared. I could not come home; she is going to kill me. How can I tell her that I lost the bucket? I have nowhere to turn, don’t know what to do. I start looking down in the well to see if I can
An Old Well found in Poland Drawing by Stephen Shooster
see a sign of the bucket. Maybe I could look down and see the bucket. I fell into the well! I don’t know which way I fell, but I stood up, and I started to yell. I was on the street where all the families lived in that territory. I don’t know who went by, but they heard me hollering. There was a man, and he used to deal with us. He had a grocery store, and we made cereal for him. He says, ‘Don’t move,’ in Russian. ‘Stay there, I’m going home, and I’ll bring you a ladder. I’m going to bring a ladder, and I’m going to lower it down into the well. I’ll bring you up, and I’ll call some of my neighbors.’ He didn’t know who I was. So, I stayed there. He comes back with at least four Russian people. They knew my father very well, and they knew my moth- er well. They came down with the ladder and a light, a big ladder. One man came climbing down, and he recognized me. He called me by my Jewish name, “Doba, what are you doing here?” He took me up, and I said, “I can’t go home unless you find the bucket.” So, he looks around. It wasn’t too big of a territory. He finds the bucket, they cover me, and the wife and the man say, “What happened in the well?” He says, “Somebody in the well fell, and that’s the whole reason they hollered.” The wife came running with the husband. This woman took off her coat, and she wrapped
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