Page 39 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

The move to Pelcovizna

the garbage that had accumulated in the snow in front of the families’
houses all winter. Mostly it consisted of ashes: very little waste was to
be had in that poor place, for food was a luxury. Even potato-
peelings were sold to those Poles having a few hogs, sometimes for a
few kopecks, often for a few pounds of coal for cooking and heating.
The Polish people used to jump on the railroad cars carrying coal
from the mines, throw down big chunks of it into the snow, and
carry them off, eking out a living from that.
My father lived in that village until he was married. He liked to
read about plants and nature. He couldn’t buy books; money was not
to be wasted on such things. But whenever he found some old torn
book about plants, horticulture or floriculture, he would read it to us
and urge us to plant an apple or pear seed in a box of white sand to
grow trees. We lived eight people in two rooms, but we kept that box
of sand for months. Nothing happened. He told us about grafting
trees; we were astounded at such wonders, but all we could do was
plant potatoes and cucumbers, cut the buckwheat, thresh it, and go
fishing.
My family had moved to Pelcovizna to save rent. We occupied
two rooms on my grandfather’s property without charge. Five other
sons and daughters already lived there, too. When I say property, I do
not intend the meaning that word has in this country. It consisted of
five separate, very old, frame buildings. Whoever put up those
buildings at the beginning of the nineteenth century did not know
about concrete, and bricks were not cheap. So the foundations were
of eight-inch beams laid out on the ground; the walls were of two-
inch boards, the first cut of the tree—one side smooth and the other
side the curved outer surface of the tree. The edges of those boards
fit into eight-inch upstanding beams at the corners and the windows
and doors.
The top beams were also eight-inch lumber. Two inches each side
of the wall boards were plastered with soft clay, which was dug up
near the houses. To hold the clay they nailed onto the wall boards
three-foot long pieces of rough kindling two or three inches apart.
Into the first coating of clay pieces of broken old bricks or small
stones were pushed, then clay was smeared on again and smoothed
down with a wooden trowel. Every spring we used to whitewash the
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