Page 183 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

The First World War and after

The crisis came when Ben quit me altogether and joined my
brother Joseph in the vegetable business. In an emergency, like when
some fellow could not start his junky Ford in the wintertime, I had to
leave the garage for half an hour with nobody to take care of it. Ben
wanted me to buy out his share, and like a good man—or, as it would
be called, a fool—I gave him the last money we had left of the five
thousand. I stayed in that garage for a year, all by myself, starving
until I found a young fellow who bought me out. I got back five
hundred dollars, not spot cash, but in installments.
When Ben moved out from his side of the house, I had to rent it
out and send him the money. The first people who moved in were
the Hartmans and their daughter Malvina (now Gold, who lives in
Fullerton); they became our friends for a long time. Across the street
from us lived the Mellons, and Charlie Moss and his children. His girl
used to play with Carmel. She was a very nice little girl, now married
with two nice children. Moss was peddling fruit, and was quite a poor
man. I was not much better off, but I had a house of my own. After I
got rid of the garage, Moss, whose junky little truck I used to repair,
asked me to join him peddling fruit.
Moss and I were not very successful people in business for
ourselves, before or after we were partners. We worked hard, going
out in the country sixty miles to sell apples, jumping around in an old
rehabilitated Ford truck, from Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Oxnard, to
Long Beach, San Pedro, Fullerton, and everywhere else. When I sold
my garage, I kept a lot of parts from discarded old Fords, and I built
up a chassis for a large truck. Being of a branch of the Bezalel family,
who built the first temple for Moses, I inherited the aptitude for a
hammer, saw, and square, and learned in the world to master a drill
and wrenches. Lumber was cheap and plentiful in those days, so I
bought some cut-offs of hardwood at the California Hardwood
Lumber Company for a pittance, and built a cab and bed and the
stakes, and I had a large truck. Oh, yes, painting was an inborn
faculty with me, so I painted my truck a sky-blue color, dedicated to
the blue sky of Los Angeles.
By this time, Moss and I had parted, in a peaceful way like
Abraham and Lot of olden days. He took the west of Los Angeles,
toward the western beaches and their tributaries, and I turned to the
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