Meeting My Grandparents

My father’s parents lived on the East Coast. When I was born, during the depression, there was no money for travel, and when the war started, no one was able to travel much either. As a result, the first time I was able to meet my grandparents was when I was a teenager. My Uncle Harry lived in Los Angeles, and both my Aunt Pearl and my Uncle Fritz had visited us occasionally when I was a child, but my grandparents were elderly, and did not venture far from home. For some reason, my parents never made the trip east to visit them there. Uncle Fritz was my father’s youngest brother, and he was within draft age for the Second World War, although probably at the upper limit. He did serve, and sometime in the late forties he bought a house for his parents in the San Fernando Valley on the G I Bill. My Aunt Pearl and my grandparents moved to California, and for the first time they lived in our part of the world.

As a teenager, I was very active in the Y-Teens, and during my Jr. year in high school, I was elected to the All-City Y-Teen Council. For my Sr. year, I was elected president. The summer before I was to take office, the YWCA was sending me to a leadership conference to be held at Asilomar, a conference center outside of San Francisco. It was decided that this was an opportunity for me to continue down to Los Angeles to meet my grandparents.

Another girl from Seattle, Joyce Ishii, also had relatives in the area, so after the conference, we were to stay one night in San Francisco, and then take the train together to L.A. My mother had written to the YWCA in San Francisco to make reservations for us to stay there. Our adult chaperones from the conference took us to San Francisco and Joyce and I made our way to the Y. I remember that we learned the hard way that the downtown streets in San Franciso followed the shoreline, and did not run parallel. We had walked quite a ways out of our way before we figured this out. We were tired when we got to the Y, only to find out that because Mother had not sent a deposit with our reservation request, a room had not been held for us. The Y was full, and could not take us.

They did suggest another hotel where we might stay, and we were able to find a room there. I do remember that the hotel clerk was a bit hesitant about renting a room to us. We were only sixteen, after all. I think that one of us was Caucasian and the other Asian might have had something to do with it. It was 1951, but there was still plenty of discrimination going on. The room was on the inside, and the only window overlooked an airshaft, but was clean and comfortable enough. We got a good night’s sleep, and continued on our way the next morning. We were smarter about getting to the train station, and looked at a map for the shortest way before we left the hotel. Both of us were met in Los Angeles by relatives, and my visit with my grandparents began.

I stayed at my grandparent’s home, which was a fairly new rambler, typical of the type of housing development that was springing up everywhere after the War. It was sparsely furnished, as I don’t think they were able to bring much furniture with them when they moved from New Jersey. I thought it was a very nice house, much newer than my family home in Seattle. My uncles were afraid that I would be bored, staying way out there in the Valley, and they took turns taking me sightseeing around Los Angeles.

I now regret that I didn’t have more time with my grandparents. There are many questions I wish I had asked them. I really would like to know more about their life in Russia before they immigrated to America. Why did they come? What was the trip in steerage like? What was it like to be a young bride and mother in teeming New York City in 1891, when you didn’t speak the language and couldn’t read or write? I didn’t even know the questions then, and at sixteen I didn’t think to ask much. Grandmother would have been happy to tell me, and I treasure the things that I did learn.

She said that they were married twice. First, in a religious ceremony in their village, and then by the State in Odessa. I believe they took a ship from Odessa to Holland, where they stayed for a short while until they could get passage to America. Grandpa told me that he had registered for universal military training in Russia when he was eighteen year’s old, and that he was five feet tall at that time. Time had eroded that stature by quite a few inches by the time I met him when he was in his late eighty’s or early ninety’s.

Grandma told me that her good children died young. These were my Uncle Lou and my Aunt Frances. I personally thought that they were her good children because they were no longer around to make her angry. She had seven children over a period of twenty-one years. “And thirteen times I blooded the bed”, she told me, so I suppose those were miscarriages. My father was the firstborn. She told me he was the first of many children who were named Nathan in honor of her father, Noah (Nathan) Garbut. She was mistaken in this. My father’s first cousin Nate Garbut, the son of her brother Hershel, was several months older than he. He also had another cousin, Nathan Glotzer, the son of Grandma’s sister Goldie, but I do not have a birth date for him.

She wanted to know if I had a boyfriend. “You go home and marry that nice boy, and make quick with a baby.” She wanted to be a great-grandmother, as all of her friends were. I think she really felt shortchanged in the grandchild department, as Mary Lou and I were the only ones she had. I did, eventually, marry that nice boy, but she had to wait for five years, and another year after that for the great-grandchild. When Aunt Pearl told her that Tim had been born, she said that she was great lady indeed.

I think that her granddaughters were important to my grandmother. She would have preferred a Jewish daughter-in-law, but I think she came to accept that any granddaughters were better than no grandchildren at all. She told me several times, “It is the same God darlink, the same God”. She had pictures of my sister and me that she carried around in an envelope, protected by feathers to ward off the evil eye. She was certain that a neighbor had put the evil eye on my Aunt Pearl, and that is why she was sick again, and had to be in the hospital. Uncle Fritz could not understand where she got the idea, as the neighbor was a very nice woman who had been good to the family. She made beef tea to send to the hospital to help Pearl get well again, and my aunt was convinced that it helped her.

My grandparents had been married about sixty years when I visited them. I’m afraid that their marriage may have been a battleground. The whole time I was there, they were yelling and screaming at each other. Since my own parents never quarreled, this was a new experience for me. He accused her of drinking his rubbing alcohol. She screamed back, “Moses says liars get the electric chair.” One day, Grandpa and I took a walk. He told me that Grandma was much older than he was. They were actually the same age, but she did look much older. He was very vain about his appearance, and had a huge collection of ties. He hadn’t seen my father for so many years, that he was sure he wouldn’t recognize him “if someone told me, that is your son”. I said that I thought he would, as they looked so very much alike.

Grandma kept a kosher kitchen. There were separate dishes for meat and for dairy; each kept in their own cupboards. She was so short, that she had to stand on a stool to get anything out of the upper cupboards. It took me a while to understand why she kept giving me glasses of milk to drink between meals, but I couldn’t have any with dinner, when I really wanted some, but, of course, I couldn’t mix meat and dairy at a meal. We had chicken for dinner one night. She soaked the chicken in a bucket of water until she was sure all the blood was gone. Then she put the water on her tree. She told me she had the best tree in the neighborhood. I wondered if her children might have grown taller, if all the good nutrition hadn’t gone to her tree.

She was cooking something else, and I thought she was using a lot of salt. She told me that “after sixty years, I should know what he likes to eat”, so I kept my mouth shut after that. My grandmother had a reputation for being a very good cook, and certainly all the meals I had at her house were delicious.

My Aunt Pearl was quite ill with tuberculosis, and was at the City of Hope Hospital. When they lived in New Jersey, she had a very good friend, whose name was Ann Shevelow. She was now living in Los Angeles to be near her son, Jeff Chandler, who was a well-known actor. He had a very distinctive voice, and had played the role of Mr. Boynton on the radio show Our Miss Brooks. He was now doing mostly movies. He had been instrumental in getting my aunt a place at the City of Hope, through his membership in the Screen Actors Guild.

Every week, my Uncle Harry would give my grandfather the money to take the bus out to Duarte, and then to take a taxi out to the hospital, so he could visit Pearl. Harry found out that Grandpa was walking out to the hospital from the bus, because he wanted to have the money. Harry just about had a fit when he found out, but he let Grandpa keep the money. Uncle Harry could be very tight with money. Grandpa needed some dental work done; (it may have been false teeth that he needed). Instead of giving him the money, Harry arranged for grandpa to get a short-term job as a cutter, so he would have the money to pay for it himself. I think grandpa must have been a very good cutter for someone to hire him when he was in his eighty’s.

I also went to visit my aunt in the hospital. She looked very thin and ill at the time. I remember that someone told a joke, and Pearl repeated it for her father in Yiddish, so he could understand it better. That was the first time a realized that the family spoke Yiddish at home and that English was really their second language. My grandfather could read and write some in English, but my grandmother was illiterate. She never even learned to write her own name, and always made her mark, an X, on legal documents. Aunt Pearl told my mother once, that she thought Grandma would have learned to read and write, if her daughters had been born first. They would have insisted that she learn when they did, but instead, she had four sons, who never seemed to notice. I think that Frances may have tried to teach her, but by the time she started school, Grandma would have been in her forties, and busy with her six children, one an infant. Aunt Pearl was born another six years after that.

While I was in Los Angeles, my aunt’s friend Ann Shevelow invited me to have lunch at her home. My Uncle Harry’s friend, Anne Moore, took me. I expect the house was very expensive. It was small, but built on several levels, and had beautiful exposed beam ceilings. We had a lovely lunch, probably a stuffed chicken breast, and I remember eating dressing for the first time, and really enjoying it. My mother’s dressing was always too heavily seasoned; quite dense and heavy, and I never cared for it. I have really like dressing ever since. She had posters of her son’s movies decorating one wall. I expect they would be real collector’s items today. My hostess was a charming woman, and I enjoyed having lunch with her.

Jeff Chandler predeceased his mother. He died while having back surgery. The surgeon nicked his aorta, and they were unable to get the bleeding stopped in time to save his life. I happened to be in Los Angeles at the time, but I don’t remember why we were there. It was after Jerry and I were married, and he may have been attending a business conference for the Upjohn Company. At any rate, I attended the funeral with my Uncle Harry and (now) Aunt Anne. Aunt Pearl had already died of her tuberculosis by that time. The streets outside the funeral home were lined with people who wanted to see all the movie stars. I guess this is typical of any event in Hollywood, but it was a new and uncomfortable experience for me. There were many actors and actresses in attendance, but I only recognized them as such because most of them were wearing so much stage makeup. They had probably come directly from work, and would return after the service. We did not go to the cemetery for the internment, but my uncle felt that he needed to go to the funeral, as Mrs. Shevelow had been so kind to my aunt.

Both Anne Moore and my Uncle Harry worked for the same garment maker. He was a cutter, just as his father had been, and she was a machine operator. Uncle Fritz took me there so I could see where they worked. I think that Fritz sometimes worked there, too, as a presser. I was fascinated to see how the garments were cut from huge stacks of fabric with an electric knife. Harry put spikes down through the entire stack to keep the fabric in place. He felt that this particular company was cutting too many garments at once, but that is how they kept the cost down. High quality garments are cut a few at a time, and lower quality in greater volume. Harry should know, as he cut for some very fine companies, including Hart Schafner and Marks, and Lantz. When Mary Lou and I were little girls, he often sent us beautiful Lantz dresses, always identical.

That day, they were making wool knit sport shirts. I got one to take home for Jerry, and Harry gave me a length of fabric so I could make a dress for myself. The fabric was beautiful, and I loved the dress when it was finished. My grandmother fingered the fabric when I brought it her house. “Very nice, very nice”, she said. I guess, that when everyone in your family works in the garment industry, you learn to appreciate good fabric. Her daughter Frances worked as a designer. My mother said that she was so good, that even during the depression she could walk in and get a job anywhere. My aunt Pearl said she always had beautiful dresses and coats that Frances designed and made for her. Jerry was in a car accident in Georgia, when he was in the army. He was riding in a convertible that flipped over, and her was thrown from the car. He ended up sitting in a field without his shirt. It was the one I had given him. All the buttons were torn off, and the shirt as well, as he flew out of the car.

When it was time for me to return home, I went with Uncle Fritz to the grocery store to get something for me to take for lunch on the train. I chose ham and cheese to make a sandwich. When my grandmother saw it she was very upset and screaming in Yiddish. Fritz said he had to take a minute to pacify his mother. “She’ll die, she’ll die.” It was the ham, of course. I had thoughtlessly forgotten that pork products are forbidden in Jewish dietary laws.

It was very hot on the train going north from Los Angeles. By the time I got around to eating my sandwich, it really didn’t look all that good to me. I thought that my grandmother was probably right about the ham.

I never saw my grandmother again, although she lived for five or six more years. My grandfather came to Seattle to visit with us the following summer. I don’t think he was terribly impressed with our house, but my parents took him over to Grandview on a visit to my mother’s sister, my Aunt Barbara. The lived in a large old farmhouse surrounded by apple orchards. My grandfather thought that was more like it.

My future husband said that when he first met my grandfather he didn’t know whether to shake his hand or to pick him up. He was diminutive. The entire Krause family was both short and small. I think my Uncle Fritz was the tallest, and he was several inches shorter than I am. The daughters were both petite. My mother’s neighbor, Mrs. Shoemaker told me once that my Aunt Frances reminded her of a beautiful little bird. The certainly is very pretty in the photographs I have seen. Pearl looked a lot like the film actress Betty Davis. She never had very good health, however, and was always very thin.

Grandfather died shortly after this trip in 1952. I had already started college, and I remember my mother’s phone call to tell me of his death.