it all seems complicated. Also, before she left for the day, Dora told me that to make the hamburgers I had to “mush” the meat with my hands. With my hands?! It made me sick to think about it. Well dinner time arrived and Herman picked me up at Ida’s and we went home. I mushed the meat and made hamburger patties for the first time. Somehow I survived. In fact one thing I did made the hamburgers taste better than the way Dora made them. I thought I had burned them but what I actually did was sear the outside of the patties and seal in the juices and the flavor. After that meal Herman never let his mother make the hamburgers again. Sometimes you just have to be lucky. I began embroidering a tablecloth. Every day I would sit in my room embroidering while my mother-in-law took care of the house and made all the meals. I guess I was hiding out because I didn’t have the confidence to assert myself too much in my mother-in-law’s house. Not that she was doing anything to make me feel insignificant, it was just the way I felt. By the time I finished the tablecloth and began to consider embroidering the napkins I couldn’t even look at them anymore. Dora finished the napkins for me. One day she handed me a few of Herman’s shirts and announced that it was now my wifely duty to iron them. Dora was both training me and letting me know what my responsibilities were.
A GIFT FROM IZZY Every other day Herman would work both day and night at the restaurant. After he came home for dinner I would go with him back to the restaurant and spend the evening waiting for the restaurant to close at midnight. Herman’s broth- er, Izzy would often come in and wait until his bar was closed and then go and collect the money from his till. Izzy would sit with me and keep me company. He taught me a word game – one in which you see how many new words you can make from a single long word. I still find myself filling spare time with it even today and I taught it to all my kids. As a newcomer to Chester, PA, I was a bit of an outsider. Betty and Occie Shapiro were a couple of locals who took me under their wing. They became good friends. Occie was in the wholesale toy busi- ness. They were both good looking and fun. I got so many toys from Occie that you could hardly see our living room rug from all the toys. A SURE THING Once, Occie had a “sure thing” at the harness races. He told Herman to go to the bank because this was a really hot tip. So we all went to the track to see our horse win, all of us laughing and confi- dent. Of course the horse didn’t. We weren’t laugh- ing then. When someone tells you something is a sure thing the only thing you should bet on is that it probably isn’t.
Dinner Party - Left to Right - Sylvia and Izzy Shooster, Dora Shooster, Herman and Dorothy Shooster, Ida, Sadie Schluger
123
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator