Memories
of Nat and Alice Lerner....
When
I was a child I was always called "Momma’s Boy" and teased about that. I sued to help with the laundry, the sewing,
even scrubbing the floors. When my
mother got sick, I was about eight or ten years old. I used to hurry home after school and help my dad in the basement
bakery. I would fall asleep on the
flour sacks waiting for the last loaves to come out at 12 o’clock midnight, and
my dad would carry me upstairs. Why did
I do all that in the house? I guess
because I always felt sorry for my mother, raising seven sons (five at that
time) alone. She had it so hard, I
wanted to make it easier for her.
I
can remember going to my cousins in Montreal.
They were a little better off, and used to serve nicer food in a more
special way. I always felt they looked
down a little bit on my mother. It was
nothing she or anyone ever old me, or not even anything I ever talked about
with anyone. It was just something I
was aware of. And I felt bad for her....
I
guess I was what you would call accident-prone. At the age of three I saw a man cutting the lawn with a
lawnmower, something I had never seen before.
I asked him if it was sharp. He
said, "If you don’t believe me, put your finger in it and see." So I put my thumb in, he pushed, and it got
cut off. I carried my thumb all the way
home. Cousin Sol took me on his
shoulders to the hospital.
Another
time Irving and I were shoveling snow off the balcony. We were excited - it was a new
snowfall. So Irv drew a line down the
middle of the balcony, each of us had his section to get to shovel. Irv went over the line on my side and I
yelled at him to get back. Irv hit me
on the head with the shovel and I had to go to the hospital.
I
always tried to keep up with Irv but I couldn’t, physically or psychologically. He was my older brother. I remember a time in the country when Irv
raced and jumped on the horse-drawn hay wagon.
I ran and jumped...and missed. I
fell down and the wagon wheel ran over me.
I got so scared when I ran all the way home.
So
when people would ask Bubby, "Are you going to the country this year?" Bubby
would answer, "If God is willing and nothing happens to Nathan!"
Even
though Irving and I got in many fights growing up, we were very close. I couldn’t help by feel some jealousy toward
Irv, who was older and a leader in street games, so I fought him. But Irv would always win, although that didn’t
stop me.
I
remember a time I’d bought a new tie.
It was a Saturday night and there was Irv getting dressed, putting on my
new tie. "Hey," I said, "that’s my new tie you’re putting on. I was going to wear it." "It’s all right," He says, "It looks better
on me."
The
thing I remember about my brother Moe is that when you got him going, he wouldn’t
stop talking. One day he learned about
microbes in school and how they were so small that the naked eye couldn’t see
them, and he was telling Irv about it.
I thought they were talking about the particles I’ve seen floating
through the air and said, "I can see them." They told me o go away and leave
them alone, there were talking about SCIENCE and I was too young to
understand. I insisted I could see
microbes. Moe ignored me. "Bug off," he
said. I called him a "son of a bitch."
Then Bubby came in and asked, "So nu, what’s a ‘son of a bitch’?" When I wouldn’t tell her, she smacked me
across the face.
At
the time that the Olympics were in L.A. in 1932, both Irving and I were working
for Peerless Laundry. We both wanted to
work part-time for the Olympics. Peerless
had a rule that you paid for your load of cleaning before you took it out to
the customers. They held you
accountable daily. We needed to get
some money ahead to buy merchandise to sell at the games, and weren’t able to
pay for a couple loads of cleaning and have the money for supplies. We also wanted to load for two days so we
could work the Games in-between. Irv
wrote Peerless a couple of checks that bounced which gave him the necessary
leeway to buy supplies. He had an
investment in his truck which he figured he would get the money out of when he
went to sell it. I went ahead and
loaded my second load of laundry on the truck without saying anything. When asked if I had paid for it, I honestly
replied that I only owed for that day and the load I was just packing. They said to unpack what I’d just loaded and
go pay for today’s load, then come back tomorrow for this load. I told them they could "shove it" and I quit
then and there. Then I contacted all my
customers and set up my own independent laundry route which would start in two
days (and allow me to work the Olympics.)
Peerless Laundry took me to court, as an example that they wouldn’t let
drives get away with that. I to hire an
attorney, but I lost the case. Why? The
only attorney I could afford stuttered!
In
1927, Irv and I took a six-month trip to Montreal and New York City. I was 19 years old and he was 21. We drove a Model "T" Ford all the way across
the country and back. At that time there
were no freeways, and much of the trip was on gravel roads. There was one day we have twelve flat
tires!!! They were tube tires and you
had to patch them, but with the gravel roads the patches would come off.
When
we reached Cleveland, we were looking for a quiet place to park and sleep in
the car. We luckily found a spot with a
babbling brook. When Irv looked to try
to figure out where we were, he discovered we were in a cemetery! "Let’s get out of here!" he yelled. "Why?" I wanted to know. "It’s a nice quite place..."
Our
first destination was Montreal. We made
it in three weeks. After visiting the
family, we decided to forge on to New York City where we stayed for three
months.
The
day after we arrived in New York City, a crowd was gathered in front of our
Model "T" Ford with its California license plates. We wondered what was wrong.
They wanted to know if we really had driven to New York from California
in this car. ‘Yeh. We sure did." Given
the condition of the roads and the distance, they seemed to be more impressed with
our feat then Charles Lindberg’s crossing the Atlantic, which had occurred the
same year!
In
New York City, I got a job working on the streetcars as a 5¢ fare
collector. We were called "nickel
snatchers." Irv couldn’t pass the
vision test (don’t ask me why you needed 20/20 vision to collect fares) so he
worked for Borden’s on a milk route.
When the weather started to change and the cold weather started to come
upon us, Irv was very clear that it was time to return to California. On the milk route he was directly in contact
with the weather. I, on the other hand, was nice and warm inside the streetcar,
and was in no hurry to leave. But when
I realized that Irv had his mind made up, I worked jus tone more day on the
streetcar. It was a known practice that
the "nickel snatchers" would pocket the fares from time to time. The unspoken rule was that if you were
caught, you were given one warning; the second time you were dismissed. I already had one warning. On the last run of my last day, I kept all
the fares from the Brooklyn Bridge to the end of the line. When I turned in the fares, my boss asked, "Is
this it?" "Yeh, that’s all I collected." "My God," he answered, "it’s amazing you’ve
returned the streetcar!"
The
next day we headed back to California.
It took us ten days coming back.
We had left sic months before with $600 apiece...when we returned we each
had 50¢ left.
I
first met Auntie Alice (Steiner) at a Jewish Dance when she was fifteen and I
was seventeen. Not too long after Irv
and I got back from our trip, I saw Alice again. We became engaged shortly after.
I was nineteen years old.
Alice:
I just want to add that I think Bubby was the greatest mother-in-law one could
have! The daughters-in-law were always "right"
if they had an argument with one of her sons.
She would encourage the daughters-in-law to go out, but a new dress;
treat themselves well ... that her sons would pay for it. (Irving put his foot down on that one!) Over the years she took in many of the sons
and their families to live with her and Zadeh for a period of time. We moved in to take care of Zadeh when Bubby
went to Montreal. Belle and Irv moved
in after Belle gave birth to Frank and went to a convalescent hospital for six
months. Jack and Bess moved in when
Belle and Irv moved out.
Years
later, after Zadeh died, Joe and Pearl with Marvin, Leon, and Audrey, moved in
with Bubby. When Bubby decided to sell
the home on Vineyard, when wanted to move to the Westside and live with one of
her children. For me, it was one of the
hardest things I ever had to do when I was asked to tell Bubby why I didn’t
think it would work out for her to live with us. Eventually Bubby moved to a flat on Wooster Street and had a roomer
live with her. To her credit, she never
held it against her children that no one felt able to take her in....