We called her Bubba, the Yiddush word for grandmother. She was born in 1849, married and gave birth to sixteen children. She lived in a small town on the outskirts of Sanok, in what is today southeastern Poland. Prior to World War I, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Three of her sons and one daughter had immigrated to the United States, and in 1920, she and her husband Berel, and their two youngest daughters, Bella and Anna, left for the U.S. on the Neuiw Amsterdam. On September 11, 1920, Berel died in Philadelphia.

Bubba was a very religious woman: she arose at daybreak and chanted Yiddush prayers in her bedroom. When she came into the kitchen, she silently prepared her own breakfast and then went out the kitchen door and sat down on her “chair”, a wooden orange crate. Her feet rested on a wooden cream cheese box that she got from Saler’s butter and egg store on the corner. Her hair was covered with a “shaitel”, a wig worn by ultra-Orthodox Jewish women.

Although we all lived in the same house, I could never have a conversation with my Bubba. She didn’t speak or understand English and I couldn’t speak Yiddush – although I did learn to understand some phrases. She was satisfied to speak with my father’s customers as they came to buy their kosher meat or poultry. They all spoke Yiddush and they thought in that language, so they were grateful to have someone to communicate with in their language.

When I was four-years-old, Bubba fell in the bathroom and suffered many injuries. My father called his youngest brother Ben, who was a doctor and lived just a few blocks away. He examined her and said that she had broken both legs and had many internal injuries and that she would never recover – let’s just keep her as comfortable as possible – and let her die. This occurred on the first day of Chanukah, and every night for seven nights, my parents went to her room and lit another Chanukah candle. Bubba never complained, but on the last night of the holiday, she passed away. As the family descended on our house, my parents suggested that the younger children play on the “patio”, which was actually the black tar roof over the kitchen and was accessed by a door in the bathroom. So my cousins and I, our ages ranging from 3 through 7, stood at the edge of the roof/patio and looked down in awe as we saw the pine box bearing Bubba’s body being carried out through the kitchen door and into the funeral director’s hearse.

Meet My Family

My mother was born December 1899 to German, Polish parents who arrived in New York
City in Nineteen eighty nine. She was the oldest of eight children born to a father who would close his tailor shop when the union organizers came to town. He’d close the doors to his store which was the front of the apartment where his family lived, grab his soap box and make speeches. While he supported the bread lines my illiterate grand mother was keeping home making certain her eight children were clean. The only problem was that money was scarce and food was not in abundance but her husband refused to allow her to stand on those very lines he supported.
My father was born May 1901to Russian immigrants who arrived in Philadelphia eighteen ninety one.. The only thing I know about them is that they also had eight children my father being next to the youngest.
Both sets of grandparents arrived via steerage in America before the establishment of Ellis Island in 1892. Three of my grandparents died in their forties and fifties long before I was born except for my angry, bitter maternal grandmother.
My tall willowy mother with long slender arms and legs and a smile that was contagious was determined to leave the ghetto and said she would rather be an old maid than a victim of poverty with a bunch of kids who played in tenements running up and down stairways from the cellars black with coal to fire the furnaces then up to the roof tops trying not to get caught by the janitor. Or in the crowded narrow streets dodging cars and horses tethered to wagons selling fruits and vegetables. True to her promise, my “old maid mother” met my father at a wedding in 1930. She was a model-buyer-bookkeeper for a coat and suit manufacturer. My dad who I never thought of as handsome was slightly shorter than my mother had turquoise eyes that sparkled. He had just taken the exam to become a Certified Public Accountant {CPA}. They were married a few months later in June of ‘thirty one. My mother often told me that when they met she was hypnotized by his eyes, impressed with his humor and his love of barber shop quartet music where he would sing along but she only learned to love and adore him more and more during their thirty seven years of marriage.
My sister Carol was born April nineteen thirty three. She had my mother’s long legs and slender arms. She was tall for her age and slim. She was gentle, soft spoken with long blonde curls which she wore in braids and wrapped around the top of her head when we went to the beach. Her body was my mother, her face was my dad. When I came along three years later I looked just like my mother but my body was my dad’s stocky build, short legs and chubby arms. I was loud, born screeching and was a tom boy….no dolls for me. I wanted to climb the fence in the schoolyard when it was locked and play ball with the boys. But Carol and I were friends, at least most of the time. As a family we took car trips, went to the beach every day in the spring and summer. My dad taught me to swim and play ping pong at the Brighton Beach Baths. Life was good. Life was Fun. My home was special.
Until April nineteen forty two.

By Reiss

“Hello.”

“Hello, who’s this?”

“This is the devil. Who in the hell do you think it is?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have the wrong number.”

“Probably do. Who did you want to talk to?”

“Well, I was calling Sylvia, but I think I might have dialed wrong.”

“Sylvia who?”

“Umm... Sylvia DeLay.”

“You really want to talk to her, eh?”

“Yes sir.”

“But you didn’t ask for Sylvia. You asked, ‘who’s this?’ Why in the heck should I tell you who I am when you call my house, don’t identify yourself and greet me with, “Who’s this?” I don’t have to tell a stranger who dials my number who I am, now do I?”

“No sir, are you Sylvia’s father?”

“Who are you and why do you want to know?”

“I’m her classmate and I want to ask her out on a date.”

“Well, you’re not getting started on the right foot are ya?”

“I don’t know. I just called to ask her out.”

“Ya gotta get to talk to her first.”

“Yes sir.”



“That’s right.”

“Well...uh.. can I talk to her?”

“Yes you can because, obviously, you have a mouth, you speak fairly clearly and I’m sure you can talk to her the same way you are talking to me.”

“Well..can I?”

“I said, I’m sure you can unless you lose your voice.”

“Well....”

“Well, what?”


“Can I please talk to Sylvia?”


“I told you I’m sure you CAN, but the question you should ask is, May I talk to Sylvia?”

“OK, May I please talk to Sylvia?”

“That’s better!”

“May I?”

“You might..... if you call the right number. Bye!”

HER RIDE, MY RIDE by Judy Williams

Several months later in the summer of 1985 I was sent by the Community Development Council of Orange County to a conference in Fresno. They had hired me as a consultant to investigate the possibility of starting a food cooperative among our low-income residents. After absorbing the information presented there, I flew back to Los Angeles International Airport. In those days, there was a bus from LAX to Disneyland in Anaheim and then a bus from Disneyland to El Toro, now called Lake Forest, where my husband, Russ, was meeting me.

On the bus from Disneyland I met a quite frail, elderly lady who confided that she was unsure anyone would be meeting her at the final stop. I offered her a ride home if it turned out that no one came for her. No one did.

Imagine my shock, however, when my husband arrived in one of the vehicles that had been donated to Sunshine Outreach: with a faded white stripe around the center and rusty handles and locks, the aqua blue van was truly on its last legs.

The van only had the two front bucket seats. We had removed the bench seats in the back so we could haul food gleaned from orchards and fields. Of course, the little old lady got the front seat – and I, looking lovely in my business suit and heels, sat on the bare metal back floor with her suitcases and mine. My husband was most gracious helping me into that dirty, litter-strewn food holding area. Ugh!

Our guest was giving methodical directions to her home, slow and sure. Go right. Go left. Go right. But then, an abrupt command: left here, left here! All Russ’ attention was on achieving that last-second left turn but the sharpness of the change in direction forced the rusty handle lock on the double doors on the right side of the van to spring open and I went for a miracle ride that I will never forget!

My husband told me later that the woman lightly tapped him on the arm and without any emotion at all said, “Excuse me, but I think your wife just went out the side door.” They were half a block away by then!

And me? I was flying - about 8 inches above the asphalt for a long, long time…my arms straight out in front of me like Superman. Eyes wide open, yelling, “Holy angels of God, bear me up!”

Like watching the heads of a crowd at a tennis match, the eyes of five teenage friends sitting on the curb passing time on that early summer evening, followed me as I flew by. In unison their jaws dropped at me as my eyes bulged at them in disbelief of what was happening to me.

About 60 feet away I came to a soft landing on the road, just like being set down gently by invisible hands. My tan silk blouse was unscathed and my hands and knees didn’t even have one friction burn.

My husband arrived to find me standing in the street, waiting to tell him and his passenger a most astounding tale.

###

This is holy ground – we’re standing on holy ground.
For the Lord is present and where He is is holy.
We’re standing on holy ground and I know that there are angels all around.
Let us praise Jesus now. We are standing in His presence, on holy ground.
© 1979, lyrics by Geron Davis

My little white china piggy bank sits on my dresser as it has for most of my life. It’s a happy little piggy, winking and smiling, with its head cocked to one side. Its brown eyes, one open the other closed, look out over puffy pink cheeks. A little pink tongue sits in its open, laughing mouth. Even the insides of its ears are pink. But the toenails are brown, and in the back is a curly brown tail. Like a saddle over the back is a pink chrysanthemum like flower with a brown center and green leaves. The slot for money is across its head, between the ears. There is no hole in the bottom to remove the money. But I won’t break my little piggy bank.

Somewhere in my adulthood I asked Mom who gave it to me and when was it given. She didn’t remember, but she did tell me a story that isn’t in my conscious memory.

“Nancy, you were about two or three years old, Mary was just a baby, when I awoke in the middle of the night and heard footsteps; an intruder was in the house. I quietly woke your father and motioned for him to turn the alarm so it would go off. We let it ring a long time, and we made loud sounds of yawning and stretching, said we’d have to get up, better make the coffee and things like that until we heard the footsteps leave and the door shut. We got up and looked around. You girls were safe and everything looked ok, so we went back to sleep. The next morning as I was fixing breakfast you came into the kitchen all excited, holding out your hand which had a few coins in it. ‘Mommy, Mommy, I dreamed the money jumped out of my piggy bank. Look! Look what I found on the floor. The money really really did jump out of my piggy bank!’ Then I was frightened to think the intruder had been so close to you girls. A few days before we had a woman in the house helping us. We suspected she saw you girl’s banks and told someone, and that’s what the thief was after.”

I was so impressed with my mother. What an ingenious way to get rid of a nighttime intruder. And I’m glad it worked! Today she’d probably be shot!

In my conscious memory the coins never jumped out; I have to work to get them out. I lie on the bed and hold the bank upside down and shake it. Some coins are cooperative and turn on their side so they can slide out of the slot. Others require the assistance of a bobby pin. The coins land on my face, my chest, and the bed. Some go splat and stay where they land, others bounce to a new location. Gathering up all the coins is another adventure.

My piggy bank is so important to me I’ve wanted to give piggy banks as baby gifts. But the ones I’ve found in stores aren’t special like mine. They are just china pigs void of personality. Once I bought one and a friend painted it to make it special. I have no idea whether or not the now 15year old recipient likes it, but I did.

My little china piggy bank sits on my dresser winking at me as if it has some magical secret. I think it is saying, “Little girl you were right. The coins really did jump out of your piggy bank.”