Page 160 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Early days in Los Angeles

or, rather, the junk enterprise. My brother worked with me on the
wagon, teaching me how to buy junk in the alleys. He did the singing.
We collected very little, mostly bottles and rags, and could hardly
make enough to feed the horse. Since the horse was crippled and
deficient in one organ, he had by the law of evolution developed
another organ stronger and better. His stomach had the greatest
capacity for storing food. He would walk up on a lawn to eat the
grass. I used to pick up the cut grass from the fancy lawns in the
millionaires’ district on Figueroa and Adams, where the Japanese
gardeners were glad to give it away, and feed Behemoth.
We never bought a sack of barley for him, only a little barley and
hay. As my horse fared, so did my dear wife and I. I was fortunate; at
home, my wife had lived with her family; they were not rich, just a
hard-working family, living frugally like the rest of the working class
those days, knowing little of luxuries in life and getting along the best
they could. When my funds were exhausted and I was earning hardly
enough for a day’s food, she never rebelled or bemoaned her bad
luck. She got along on a few measly cents a day. This is not
exaggeration. It was marvelous that my wife, who was just eighteen
years old, away from her mother and friends, could get along with
very little, get meals ready, and be satisfied. Oh, how painful it was to
see that horse without food, and to leave in the morning to collect a
little junk, leaving that young woman with about twenty-five or fifty
cents to prepare meals. A pound of meat was fifteen cents, bread ten
cents, and she could get a few potatoes. She was calm, self-possessed,
courageous, and sympathized with me. Although she was homesick,
she would not show her feelings, so I would not suffer more.
There really was not enough money in it for one man, but we
were both hungry and did not know about the value of things. I
worked for ten weeks with that horse peddling junk. Then I gave up
junk and went to peddle fruit with Ben. It was summer and
strawberries were cheap those days. People used to do canning, as
canned fruit in stores was not as plentiful as nowadays. We would
buy thirty crates of strawberries and peddle from house to house,
selling them by the basket or whole crates for canning. The earnings
were hardly enough to exist on. After the berries came cherries,
which came in iced on trains from the north. They would hardly hold
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