We took off one of the interior doors, put it in the kitchen on a couple of chairs. Izzy and Harry were babies. I didn’t have a carriage, just two little clothes baskets. I put them in the baskets, and we slept together. We didn’t have money for coal. Pop used to go to the railroad tracks, and gather a buck- et or two of coal that fell off the trains. When we had a little bit of money, Frank invested as much as he could. He bought a rental house and then another. I didn’t demand anything. He saw then that the boys were coming out of school soon and what was he going to do with them. He didn’t have any money to send them to college. Mr. Lindenburg, the Realtor, loved Pop. He told us that Mr. Ostrow wanted to sell his house for $6,000. The place where Pop worked was getting too small for us. We gave Mr. Lindenburg a $200 deposit on the property. It was a house and a store combined. We needed another $200 to make the settlement. Pop said, ‘Your brother, Benzy belonged to a corporation where we might be able to borrow the other $200 and pay it back.’ Which is what we did. When we bought the house Frank’s uncle from Canada was in town. He told a carpenter to make us three rooms from the two rooms downstairs. He suggested to Pop to pay him out a little money at a time for his labor. He built us a beautiful front for our store. Rabbi Unionman would try and teach our two little boys. My uncle was impressed that I followed the Jewish tradition. The Rabbi told Frank, ‘If you don’t have $20 to give him at that time, then you give him $10. But, you are a tailor, and you should do this rebuilding to your house. My uncle told Frank that he was a big businessman and that he should listen to him. He was a millionaire. So, Mr. Meade measured everything out and built me a living room, dining room, kitchen, and a summer kitchen with beautiful windows.
Mr. Lindenburg encouraged Pop to buy more real estate. He told Pop to buy Mr. Montgomery’s house, for $500. He suggested that Pop borrow $100 in The Corporation and buy this house. Then Pop got acquainted with Mr. McDevitt and the corner where we had our station. Pop bought this piece of property on 9th Street if they would give us a deed that the other corners that were all empty at that time could not be sold for a gas station. They gave us that deed. Mr. McDevitt was the Real- tor in this sale. We were the only gas station at that time. Herman Shooster - We lived at 1904 West 3rd Street, with the tailor shop in the front of the house for at least the next 18 years. My parents learned to live frugally, forced to be self-reliant. Sensing a need to grow finan- cially, they started to buy real estate. With a very small budget, they bought small homes in poor neighborhoods. There were plenty of those in Chester. BIRTH CONTROL Dora Shooster - I’m ashamed to tell this story. One day my sister-in-law comes in, and she says, ‘What shall I do, Mrs. Shooster? I’m pregnant again. Maybe you know something? I want to get rid of it. You know Benzy’s not making a living. I already have three children.’ So Frank heard, and said, ‘I’ll go into Moiger’s drugstore, and I’ll find you something.’ So, he went into Moiger’s drugstore; he didn’t give her anything for, he didn’t even ask him, he gave her something to take and lay down.[sic] She thought this was it. She was going to get rid of the baby. Haha. So she didn’t get rid of it, she kept on being pregnant until finally, she gave birth to a 7-pound baby. Frank said, ‘I took care of her. I made her comfortable. I gave her an aspirin.’ I check on them every day. I had two chil- dren myself. She struggled. Plenty struggle.
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