Page 253 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Reminiscences

So Mama learned to drive in the Chevrolet. In those days, they
threw in driving lessons when you bought a car. I can remember
sitting in the back seat when she was being taught. The 1929 Moon
was purchased after that. She became as fearless a driver as Papa; she
would get out and fiddle under the hood with a hairpin to get the
Moon running. People were astonished to see her doing that. In the
fifties he bought a secondhand Oldsmobile from a friend—I forget
who—as the Moon became more and more indisposed. And by that
time he had given up both the truck and the produce business.
He drove his car like he had driven a horse and wagon, swinging
way out to the opposite side before making a turn. That was scary.
He finally quit driving after going home from our house on Coventry
Place one winter evening near Christmas. He mistook a green
Christmas light for a traffic light which in fact was red at the time
and, although there was no accident, I believe he was pulled over.
Then it was clear that he was suffering from cataracts; but he would
never go to a doctor to find out why his eyes were getting so bad.
The only time he would become expansive was at the High
Holiday meals. He loved having people at the table, with a real
holiday dinner for as many people as they could seat around the
table—sometimes sixteen at Passover. It was smaller at Rosh
Hashanah. My mother and father did fast at Yom Kippur—and so
did I until I got a bit older. He felt that Passover was the important
holiday, no matter what else you did. It was the first holiday of a
successful strike for freedom, and it had to be remembered every
year.
The other holidays were very minor, as far he was concerned.
When Purim came around, Papa would boil pennies in vinegar to
shine them up, then give them to the grandchildren as shalakhmones.
But when we were children, we didn’t get eight presents over the
eight nights of Chanukah—we were very short of money. For years
we had clothes made for us by my mother from other clothes sent to
her by her sisters in New York.
Before the High Holidays, he used to bring home live chickens
and slaughter them in the back yard. He came from a town whose
main industry was slaughtering, so he could do the work of a shochet.
After he cut the bird open, my mother would clean out the insides,
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