Page 168 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

At the secondhand shop

In the early years of this century, people in this country were still
in the habit of living a home life. The older folks were attached to
home and family, and the younger ones were still conservative and
lived with their parents at home. The family was grouped together
around the central figures of father and mother. Father worked and
brought home his wages and turned them over to Mother, and when
the children grew up and had to work to support the household, they
too turned over their earnings to Mother. She allotted pin money to
the young helpers and all were happy with their lot. Industries were
centered in big cities where the workers lived out their lives, and so
did the next generation. The people who advanced and expanded
beyond the frontiers were the agricultural population in search of
land or the adventurers and gold-seekers in quest of fortune. Most of
those people usually went with the whole family and their few
belongings; their family life remained closely knit in their newly-
established rural communities.
Now, I had been away eight years from my family in Europe, and
not being able for financial or political reasons ever to return to
them, I did not have a strong desire to go home. But Fannie, who left
home very young, lived hoping every day to go back to see her
parents and brothers and sisters. I was not making much in the
cleaning business, yet we were living very frugally and saved up a few
hundred dollars. She was pining away to see her family, so she went
to New York with the child, who was then about two years old. Hilda
was a healthy child, and very lively, making friends with people. They
had a fine trip to New York, remaining three months. In the hot
summer days, the child took sick with tonsillitis and had to have
them taken out. That operation was not so expensive in those days,
as doctors were living like ordinary people and their fees were
reasonable. As much as she enjoyed being with her family, so did I
suffer and long for her and the baby. Those three months seemed
like a year.
Before she left for New York, we gave up housekeeping and sold
our few household goods to the Goots. I lived in a room in a hotel
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