My childhood memories are not like our Suzanne's. At 28 she asked my wife Esther if she remembered being pinched on the breast by her; Esther remembered it well -- it had hurt. It seems that Suzanne was sitting on Esther's lap at a table, with her brothers and their boy friends, all considerably older, sitting nearby. Since the boys had very flat chests she wondered if Esther's was just padded and had to find out.
I have few memories of life in Canada so much of the following is second-hand. How big was Plum Coulee? In later years Jerry and Rose visited there and Jerry decided to look up his birth record. They stopped at a one room "house of records" and found that the last entry was a year before he was born (later births had been at a nearby small town that had acquired a hospital). He was given permission to enter his birth. Rose recognized the house we had lived in so they stopped to look at it. Seeing someone watching at the window they went to explain -- the lady of the house remembered the family and who Pop had worked for at the time -- about 60 years earlier. The house was just as Rose remembered it.
When I was born the family consisted of Ben and, in order, sisters Rose, Molly and Emily. The community was largely German-speaking (Pop had been hired because of his knowledge of German), so Ben and Rose found the local school depressing (the ongoing WW I didn't help). Ben is left handed, but his teacher hit him with a ruler if he used it -- so he is now ambidextrous. On the way home from school one day Ben and Rose were the only witnesses when a robber ran from the bank after killing the teller, an episode that remained vivid in their memories. The killer was caught and, after a trial, executed (Ben and Rose were not called to testify because of their ages.)
I didn't speak until, at age three, I was taken to a hospital in Winnipeg where my tonsils and adenoids were removed and my ears were lanced. I have been told that my first words were "Mama take me home". Was that the first time I wanted attention (with the four older siblings I apparently was left to my own devices a good part of the time) or did I have a hearing problem? (I do now, and Rose thought it went back to my childhood, but certainly not as severe as it is now). We moved to Winnipeg a short time later.
We remained in Winnipeg until I was ten. With the addition of Jerry, a fourth sister Lillian and third brother Arnold, we were eight children. We moved a number of times in Winnipeg (probably because we didn't have the rent money.) I had attended two schools (but apparently had transferred back and forth between them).
Pop was not an animal lover and had a temper. Somehow we acquired a cat, but when he found it asleep curled under Lillian's chin he threw it out of the second floor window! Much later, when he was having trouble making ends meet in California, our income was supplemented by his buying the furnishings from people who were moving and then selling it to auction houses. On two occasions dogs came with the purchase, so we briefly had a Spitz and later a German Shepherd, both very ferocious. I lost a pair of pants to the German Shepherd.
At one house in Winnipeg the neighbor woman wouldn't speak to us and wouldn't allow their boys to play with Ben. One day, when their phone was out of order, we received a call for them. Mrs. Jex came over and left when the call was finished, but returned shortly afterwards to apologize. She had heard that we were Jewish and had "learned" that Jews lived like pigs -- Mom was a meticulous housekeeper and Mrs. Jex realized that our house was at least as clean and orderly as hers.
The families became good friends. Ben and the Jex boys had a string telephone between their upstairs bedrooms. Ben also built some crystal radio sets, as I did later.
I have some memories of the bitter cold winters when hands would stick to the door knobs if one was foolish enough to try to open the door without gloves (-50 degrees Fahrenheit was not uncommon), of a very heavy sweater made for me (apparently a friend had influence at a factory), of building a high fort around the house with snow blocks made from the snow in the yard and of the high slides on the iced-up Red River for tobogganing.
During the hot and sultry summers we spent some time at friends cottages at Lake Winnipeg. I recall cutting a toe at a rocky beach while Emily recalls a nice sandy beach; Rose said we were both right -- we visited two beaches.
I remember eating lunch in one of my sisters' school room and being surprised at how simple the arithmetic on the board was. Apparently the school philosophy wasn't much different from what I see in the California schools today -- a great deal of repetition so that the slower ones have a chance to catch up.
We had problems in Winnipeg. Rose lost her ring finger to blood poisoning (no antibiotics then) and Ben almost lost a leg to osteomyelitis. In 1923 the world collapsed on us. Lillian, the apple of Pop's eye, the blonde in the family (Pop was fair skinned), died of complications from scarlet fever. Pop was so broken up he ran away and when we next heard from him he was in California.
Mom's brothers told her that she was well rid of him and that she should stay in Winnipeg -- they would take care of the family. But she elected to follow him and managed to get the money to do it. The family, except for Ben and Rose who remained to finish high school, left to join Pop in California. The train trip was notable for one thing -- our reservations were apparently confused and on the first night out we had no sleeping accommodations -- the great actress Sophie Tucker gave us her state room!
Two of Pop's brothers had preceded us to California and had changed their last name to Bertram, so we followed suit (I have considered returning to Abramovitch). Much later I discovered the reason for it; Uncle Nat had a job as a bookkeeper and was liked by his supervisor, but when the owner of the business learned that there was an employee named Abramovitch he said he wouldn't have any foreigners around. Nat and his supervisor contrived to drop the Abramovitch, so Bertram, an anglicized version of Nat's middle name, became the family name.
Our family had observed many of the Jewish customs in Canada, but Pop's family was not religious. On the first Passover after we arrived in California we had dinner at Uncle Nat's and, without thinking, I had a slice of bread, rather than the matzos that is mandatory for the holiday. That night I had the only nightmare of my life! Being away from Mom's family we quickly dropped the religious customs.
Pop had little tolerance for organized religion -- he saw it as the primary cause of problems in the world. His sentiments are expressed very well in the two hand written notes of Appendix 1. Pop would say that he wouldn't get caught dead in a church, and meant it. To honor his memory when he died we arranged a simple service at our home with our siblings, their mates and children and many of his siblings' descendants in attendance. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered over the ocean.
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