Page 70 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Wisoka Mazovieck

meals once a week for our bunch and for others, as well. Those meals
were fine if one could get enough to eat. The populace was poor, but
food was cheap and so was lodging. David paid my half of the three
rubles for our six months’ lodging with a Jewish family until the
Jewish New Year.
Food was cheap because of the simple and frugal way those
people lived. At home we used to eat meat quite often, as there was a
slaughterhouse close by. The beef trimmings, which are difficult to
sell and to hold over without cold storage, were sold in the
neighborhood very cheap. Spleen, lungs, intestine, oxtails, calf’s feet
or heads, were often on our daily menu, but in that town of Wisoka
one very seldom tasted meat on weekdays. White bread was a
scarcity, except on Sabbath days. Black pumpernickel, about four
pounds a loaf, was baked once a week, and one had to wash it down
with mock noodle soup. The lakshen noodles were genuine, but the
soup was just boiled water flavored with beef grease. Buckwheat with
diluted milk for breakfast was not as bad as those noodles.
At home I was the oldest boy in the family and Mama’s darling.
She hoped to have a son a rabbi, so she used to give me the best
food, whatever it was. My brothers and sisters were jealous of me
getting a better serving of meat or two joints of oxtail instead of one,
as they received. When I began to eat those noodles with that greasy
flavor and that old black bread at my patrons’ homes in Wisoka, I felt
like crying. Like my ancestors did in the desert when they had to eat
that manna every day in and out, and wished to be back in Mizraim,
so I wished to be back at my mama’s house.
As I mentioned before, I was shy with strangers, especially
women, so when I sat down in a stranger’s house in Wisoka and
began to force down those noodles with the hostess watching me eat,
I would hang down my head and not finish the soup. Then the
hostess would say that last year she had another boy who ate well and
was very smart in his studies. So I could not do otherwise than finish
the noodles and, before I had a chance to get up, after opening my
mouth to say the after-meal prayers, she would shove another bowl
of that good noodle soup under my nose. I could not say no, being
so backward that I did not know how to excuse myself; therefore I
had to force that mess down into my stomach. David and I slept in
66