Page 273 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Reminiscences

They used to do a lot of canning, and give us the excess juice to
drink when we came over; it was good stuff. And they made some of
the best all-done pickles you ever tasted; the reason was that he grew
the cucumbers in adobe soil in front of the house. That makes a big
difference.
He was a big-boned man. His wrist was something like seven and
three-quarters or eight inches in circumference; most men have a
smaller wrist. And he had very large hands. He would hold me up
over his head; and when I was larger, I had to stand up there, on the
palms of his hands. The taller I grew, the longer the drop to the
ground became, and I got more and more frightened—so we had to
stop doing it. Another trick he had was the ability to turn his eyelids
inside out, to look weird and scare people. And he would tell you
suddenly to look up, and when you did he would tap your Adam’s
apple. And grab a little kid’s nose and pretend to pull it off, showing
the child his own thumb poking through his fingers; after I had a few
nosebleeds, my mother made him stop.
I also remember when I was very small he would sit with his legs
crossed and bounce me on his foot, calling it a horse-ride; I was very
disappointed when I became too heavy for that game. He also had a
habit of taking snails out of his garden, turning them over, and
pouring salt out of a salt-shaker on them. They would bubble until
they died. After a few years of that I think the women got on him
about it and he quit doing it.
Abe taught me how to play a Polish game, with a rectangular piece
of wood pointed on both ends. You would hit one of the pointed
ends with a stick and it would pivot around, jump up in the air, and
come down on one side or another—each of which had numbers
painted on it, like dice. Another thing he used to do was on Purim,
making gregors and a “hit Hamen” toy, which you would shake from
side to side to make a sort of hammer strike.
He was always giving me small gifts for occasions, sometimes
silver dollars. And he would bring me things from the junkyard,
pieces of equipment that were interesting. Pretty soon I had a big
collection there in my mother’s house. He liked to bring home old
model train transformers and show us the electrical sparking.

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