Kibbitzing around Pearl and Al Nipon, Dorothy and Herman Shooster
Dora suggested that I wear Sylvia’s and Ida’s hand-me-down maternity clothes. Somehow the difference between a size 6 and a size 12 or 14 didn’t seem like an insurmountable obstacle to her. But, being young and having a dress shop of my own, I had a style of my own that was a bit more fashionable than my mother-in-law’s house dresses and low heel Oxford shoes. But my mother-in-law knew more about survival than I did. She had been married to a man, Frank Shooster, who earned $4.00 a week at one time. Not only that but her husband had a sister who had been widowed and left with four children. Frank gave his sister $2.50 a week and gave his wife $1.50 a week. One day Frank came home and told Dora that he had an opportunity to go into business as a tailor with a partner if A SURVIVAL EXPERT
he had $200.00. Dora stunned him when she gave him the $200.00 she had saved from the meager $1.50 a week pittance that she had to run the house. Dora would keep an onion boil- ing in a pot so that people walking by would think there was plenty of food to eat in her home. Imagine the discipline and the pride she had that didn’t want anyone to know how poor they were. When I would go shopping with her if celery was one cent cheaper across the street, she would shop across the street.
When I think about Dora she was, in many ways, a heroine to be admired. She came to America alone, a young girl without parents to guide her or help her, not know- ing the language, nothing but her common sense and her strong will to survive. Dora’s brother, Baruch, was a little guy, a peddler. Wendy is named after him. He was a good man. One day he needed to talk to the Jewish butcher, he picked up the phone and told the operator in a thick Jewish accent, “I need to talk to Cherad- owski the katsovim on 3rd Street.” It seemed like he was on the phone with the information operator for half an hour. Finally he yelled to the operator, “He is the shayhert on Third Street. I nearly fell off my chair in surprise when she finally connected him. I couldn’t believe it. I wonder if technology could handle that kind of request today.
Dorothy Shooster
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