One-way romance is no good. I told Jake that I liked him and respected him and I didn’t love him, and if you love me one way that’s no good. One Friday night when it was boy night, I was living with a cousin of mine, Jake came for me. He was surprised that I wasn’t dressed up because I always got dressed up. The best good time he could give me was to buy a bag of popcorn for 10 cents and go to the park. We would sit and talk. He could never take me out for dinner. Being a painter, if it rained, he couldn’t work, and he never earned more than $10 a week. I told Jake to sit down that I wanted to talk to him. I told Jake there is no one that I had to ask for advice in America and that I was the one to decide if I loved him, so it was important to make up my own mind. I said, ‘Let’s stop seeing each other for a while. If I see that I am lonesome for you, we could get together again. But, I would like to try this out.’ There were no telephones to call me. He went away. In the middle of the week, he met me at the shop and told me, ‘I am going back to Russia. I am going to do my duty and serve in the Army. I like you, but I can’t stay here.’ I bid him goodbye, and he went away. I never saw him after that. He went to Russia and went to the induction center and signed up. In our little town of Tuchyn, they taught the soldiers the drilling. He knew that my father lived in that town. In the old coun- try, Jewish people were always afraid of the soldiers, Polish people, and of anybody that wasn’t Jewish. They always thought there would be trouble. One day, the bell rings at my father’s grocery store. My step-sister went out to the store and saw a soldier. She got scared. He said, ‘I would like to see your father.’ She got more scared. He told her, ‘Do not to be scared.’ My father didn’t recognize him from the picture we had sent. He was not dressed as a soldier in the picture.
My father went into the house with Jake, and there was our picture on the mantel shelf. He explained, ‘Dora felt she had time to settle down.’ I wanted to say, ‘Hello’ to her family. She always used to talk about you. Jake served in the Army and ended up losing an arm. I found that out through his lantzlite. He never came back to America. ROSE ENGELMAN This friend of mine, Rose, went around with her boyfriend, Frank Shooster. One day she came to work, and we were sitting around the table when she told us they made up their minds that they were going to get married. I wished her the best of luck and asked when it would take place. She told me, ‘In a couple of weeks. She was living with her step-sister at 515 Montgomery Avenue. They were planning no wedding. Frank lived at 19th and Cather- ine Streets. They were just going to fix up his apartment. We talked about it, her friends and me. When she went out for lunch, I got a hold of the pressers and the finishers and told them that Rose was getting married. Let’s make her something, and we all pitched in to buy her a wedding gift. Everybody liked her, and they were all willing. So, they all pitched in some money, and we made a little set-up to surprise her on Saturday. We went to the bakery and bought some cakes, and the pressers used to have a little stove that you could make coffee or tea. Some- thing to drink. We set it up with cups and the present, and everything and we waited for Rose to come down to collect her pay, and then she would be surprised. We wait and wait, and Rose doesn’t show up. There were no telephones to call. Monday afternoon, when we went out of the shop and walked to Rose’s house. We got there, and I knew Rose’s step-sister Engelman, was her name. I asked her, “Where was Rose?” She told us that when she came home from work on Thursday, the next morning she didn’t come down. I sent up my little girl,
38
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease