My father’s Russian immigrant parents opened a bakery in Lower Manhattan around 1910. They had no employees. Grandpa baked all night and slept all day. Grandma ran the counter plus tended to their three children (or neglected them). They lived in a cold water rat-infested tenement. My grandparents slept in a small bed and the kids shared a mattress on the floor. Once, while my father was asleep, a rat bit his toe. When my grandparents contracted tuberculosis, the social workers took the kids away and sent each child to a different foster family. After discharge from the sanatorium, my grandparents got their children back but they lost the bakery. Grandpa got baking jobs and Grandma worked as a cleaning woman. They left Manhattan and rented a room in Lizzie Borden’s house in Fall River. I am named after my grandmother who died two years before I was born.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 07:00:04 +0000
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