Page 196 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Old age and the future

is certainly clear to me or any person of my age. When one has food
and shelter provided for, and only a few years to live, it is a simple
matter. The old saying that old men live in the past is the real
problem with me. The past, since my wife passed away, has been like
a motion picture revolving in my mind: pictures of youth, of
manhood, of family life, of my children’s youth, of grandchildren, of
close relatives, of the old birthplace, and of the land I was born in. I
felt I could record all those pictures on paper for the third
generation, who might wish to have a graphic picture of their
antecedents. Unfortunately, I was occupied with supporting myself,
and then my family, and had very little time and very little leisure to
write—or have any diversion or play.
I have been busy, working steadily, making steel bands at
Chandler and Freund on Alameda Street. The job is not as hard as
handling paper bundles, yet it is hard on my wrists and fingers, and
lifting bundles of steel weighing a hundred pounds each might not be
too hard for a younger man, but at the age of seventy it is a great
strain on me. Every nine-foot-long band must be bent at both ends;
then a buckle is put into the bend and hammered down. To make a
hundred bands a day means to perform three times twelve hundred
timed motions with your hand, or three energetic motions every
fifteen seconds, besides lifting and taking down the bands from the
table. I did this for almost five years, and it became a habit which
does not require the use of reason, or even consciousness, to control
the fingers. This gave my mind ample time to think of different
subjects while I work, not only about the past, like every old man
does, but also about transcendental and moral philosophy, social
relations, scientific possibilities, and the complications of life in this
progressive epoch.
Now and then I did write down a page or two, not finishing the
narration, and when, in the next distant moment I took up the pen, I
could not bring back the last half of the scene, and the whole work is
in disorder. When my dear wife died, and I was unemployed, I
thought it would be a help to me to write, to dispel the
lonesomeness; but lo: I cannot free myself from sorrowful thinking
and melancholy—which I have mentioned too often in my writing. I
have it in my mind to write about many things of interest in this
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