Page 281 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Reminiscences

Jeremy (AR’s grandson)

My earliest memory of my grandfather is when I was two years
old, on my birthday. He and Mema brought my present over to our
house. It was a teddy bear in a big square box with a kind of floral
design. Later he brought me my first bicycle, which he had put
together from pieces he found in a junkyard.
I can also remember the old sewing circles from World War Two:
Mema and some other ladies sitting around making things for the
soldiers. That was back in the early forties; my parents used to drop
me at their house, and I would spend some time there. Mema
sometimes took me downtown with her, and we would go to the old
newsreel theatre, where they showed newsreels constantly, and then
have lunch at Clifton’s Cafeteria.
When I was a little older, I used to run around in his basement
workshop, and sometimes accompany him down to the produce
market early in the morning before going with him on his delivery
route. He continued to go down on Santa Fe to the wholesale market
to shop even after he gave up his truck and his delivery route. The
big thing was the banana room, a sort of underground cold storage
place; the people working there told stories about huge tarantulas that
would fall off the bananas onto your back. He took a sort of sadistic
pleasure in telling us these kinds of things.
We used to sit in that concrete back yard of his with a huge lens
that was on a stand, and he would turn it so that it burned a piece of
wood or paper. He would try to burn your name into a piece of
wood. I remember the mustiness of the cellar, the smell of the
pickles, and, most of all, the wine casks. And the ‘48 Oldsmobile.
And crawling under the dining room table at Passover. They had a
cupboard in the dining room with two glass doors, and after dinner
they would open it and bring out the toys. I remember the one with
little pieces of wood you could put together in different designs.
He had a garden out in front of the house on Figueroa Street, and
raised cucumbers, dill and tomatoes there. He gave us tomato worms
to take home and study as they became chrysalises and turned into

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