Page 162 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

A new baby and a new business

The fruit season was coming to an end. October was beginning,
and fruit was going off the market. Prices were so low that no one
cared to sell fruit; I bought muscat grapes at thirty cents a lug of
thirty pounds, but I could not sell them. I tried to get work from the
Jewish charities, or, as they were called afterwards, the Federation.
Its leader was a man named Victor, who asked me if I had many
children; he could send me to Bakersfield to pick apricots. Finally, in
my idling around seeking work or friends, I came across Mr.
Goldberg, my landsman, in his little cleaning and pressing store on
East Seventh Street. Originally, he was a shoemaker or shoe repairer,
and was well-to-do according to the standards of that period. He was
tired of that cleaning business, and he offered to sell it to me for fifty
dollars. His tools were an old table, a dilapidated sewing machine and
an old iron, which he heated on a gas oven. I did not know much
about that kind of work, but it was looking better than peddling fruit,
and he was willing to show me how to press a suit. I accepted his
offer.
As I did not have any money and he wanted cash, I decided to sell
my horse and wagon. I drove down to Mr. Watkins and put them on
the auction block the next day. Now this team was not the original
one that I bought when I first came to Los Angeles; I had already
sold that one to save some money, and bought another from a man
named Shukin. He also peddled junk, but gave up the retail junk and
entered the wholesale business, opening a yard around First Street.
Shukin sold me his team for forty-five dollars, a wagon and a buff-
colored old mare, which was fit only for buggy-riding on Sunday for
an old couple. My first laughing horse was a Percheron compared to
that heap of bones. It was a happy day for me when Sam Watkins—
who still has an auction house on East Twenty-fifth Street—knocked
down the hammer and said, “Sold!” After paying the commission and
a few dollars I owed on fruit, I went and paid Mr. Goldberg the fifty
dollars and took over the business. I became a cleaner and presser.
He gave me a bill of sale, but claimed later that the machine was not
in the deal, so I had to give him five dollars more, the last that I had.
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