Branches Book

BRANCHES

from Romania, who also lived in London just like I did, though we did not meet there. We got married a couple of years ago, and her name is Giza Buimovici, but she wants me to call her by her American name, Jennie Eger. I decided to change my name from Alie to Louis in London, and my surname from Yanofsky to Young here in America. I don’t know that this will help much, but at least I won’t deal with any discrimination based on my name on paper. I’m making a decent living working my Five and Dime Store in Aliquippa, just outside of Pittsburgh. It’s very different from my days in London, a lot quieter. The only thing missing from our life is a child, but we are young, that can wait. April 9th, 1906, Ataki, Bessarabia, Russian Empire It was so cold this morning. I woke up shivering, and left the bed with my blanket. The ceramic stove was still warm from when Papa was baking bread. I sat on top of it to warm up like I do every morning. Papa was out in the vineyard bringing back the grapes. He brought them back and put them in a big bucket, and then we stomped on them! They felt so weird and slippery popping under my feet! It was so fun, and my feet turned purple from the grape juice! After that, papa told me to get the eggs from the chicken. She tried to peck me, but I was quick and I got her egg. Papa beat the egg, and put matzo in it. He put some sugar in it! We never have sugar! He made us sweet matzo-brei as a special treat for the first day of pesach or Passover. He sent letters to all our relatives, so they could come to our house on the last day of pesach to celebrate. My mama is calling me, I have to go hang clothes to dry. June 11th, 1911, Baltimore, Maryland, America Today we arrived in the American city of Baltimore. The voyage was terrible, the rooms in steerage were hardly big enough for one person, much less a family. The boat rocked back and forth on the waves so much that it would throw us out of bed sometimes. When we woke up to get food in the mornings, I usually stayed in bed and didn’t eat much. The food was so disgusting that I would practically rather have jumped ship to catch a raw fish. Keeping strict to kosher food just wasn’t possible. They gave us stale, moldy bread with rancid meat in the middle. The Poles on the boat who also spoke Yiddish told us these were called ‘sandwiches’, and that they too didn’t care for them, much preferring their strange ‘perogies’, or what the Moldovans back home called pirosti . Despite the long, hard voyage on the boat, we have Hinda Millman → Hilda Goldstein 1900-1997

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