Page 96 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Smuggling

While we were in Ochota, after the grocery failed, my father found
a small bread delivery route for me with the same bakery in Warsaw
where he was employed. It was not a regular independent route, just
an appendage to my father’s route. He had a team of horses and a
driver, and I had a one-horse wagon which I drove myself, working
one trip in the morning. Driving a horse, selling bread, and collecting
money was a man’s job and I felt like somebody—I made a big hit
with the boys in the bet hamidrash. It brought me in contact with
people and helped me to see the world outside of Pelcovizna. But
credit stepped in and clipped my wings: the route was taken away
from me and consolidated with my father’s regular route. At the time
we moved back to the old place my father lost his route, and we were
left in very bad circumstances, a large family without subsistence.
But being most of the time in tow to my father on the bread
route, I had to listen to his discussions. He considered me as one of
the crowd, and tried to impress me with moral philosophy or his
views on the current political occurrences in the world. It was the
period of the Boer War and the Spanish-American War, and he was
busy with his opinions and predictions, so I learned all about those
wars—I probably knew more about the battles and the names of
generals and admirals than many of the boys living in the countries
where they were happening. Every movement made by Kitchener in
Africa or by Dewey, Sampson and Schley my father had to explain to
his followers. As a rule, people of different countries or races like to
claim great heroes of battle or art and music as their own, so, when
Admiral Sampson was victorious at Manila, my father attributed it to
his being of Jewish descent, since he had the biblical name of the
strong man in the Book of Judges. America was to us just a great
island at war with Spain, and since Spain was known to us as the
place of the Inquisition, we as Jews were desirous to see Spain
punished for the injury she had caused us.
The bakery manager was a good friend of my father’s, and also
wasn’t very prosperous; although he handled thousands of loaves of
bread a day and managed the flour mill, he could still use a little extra
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