by Ann Huber
The taxi driver took us to 128 South Connecticut Avenue to the New Yorker and waited, watching curiously, as the hotel’s matronly owner greeted us. “Come in; come in” said Mrs. Gabby Wolfson, imploring us joyfully, amazed to see young guests at her door. “Your daughter will have a great time here,” she assured my mother. “I have two young, handsome Jewish waiters she will love to meet. Herm is in Philadelphia today. He had to go to register for the military draft. But his friend, Irv, is here and I will introduce you to him at dinner.”
After mulling it over between us and seeing that the room was nicely appointed and clean, my mother and I decided to stay for at least one night. It would give us time to explore the city and to find other accommodations. Besides, we felt sorry for Mrs. Wolfson.
And so it was that on July 9, 1965, in the fading light of the early evening, my mother and I strolled down the Atlantic City boardwalk for the first time. We ran into Irv, the waiter whom we had met at dinner. I liked Irv but was not attracted to him. But he was standing on the boardwalk next to a tall, slim and handsome young man whom he introduced that same evening as his friend and fellow waiter Herm, who had just come back.
Herm was eighteen years old, with a muscular build, wearing a short-sleeved, button down shirt with tight black denim pants. I was intrigued by his handsome chiseled face and Romanesque nose. His olive, tanned skin complimented his crystal clear blue eyes and emphasized his captivating smile. His resemblance to Paul Newman in the poster for the movie Hud, which hung in my bedroom at the time, was uncanny—at least to me.
I have no memories of what the pleasantries were, but I was immediately smitten, and so was he. Although I already had a steady boyfriend at home, I no longer cared—after all, I was only fifteen and what happened on vacation didn’t count—or so it was in the movies.
The next morning during breakfast, I watched Herm doing his work in the dining room. I noticed his beautiful hands, long fingers with clean, well-shaped nails, hands that would prove to be strong but gentle. Herm was no speed demon; but slowly, methodically, he went about his duties. He poured coffee, delivered plates of food, and bussed the tables.
He served lunch in much the same way. After lunch was over and all the other guests left, I stayed behind in the dining room, hoping to attract his attention. As Herm made his way from table to table, clearing each one and setting it for the next meal, I followed him around unabashedly, waiting for him to make a move. We made idle conversation as he went about his chores. Still no speed demon, he was undoubtedly mulling over how to go about asking me out. Eventually, he had the good sense to invite me to the beach with him later that afternoon, during his break. We were certainly on the same wavelength.
On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City.
We went to the beach near the hotel, right off Connecticut Avenue’s intersection with the Boardwalk. Since it was a Thursday, it was not too crowded, but there were plenty of people enjoying the sand, sea, and air. I don’t remember it being very hot but maybe that was just a function of my youth. I do recall jumping the waves with Herm before we plopped down on a blanket on the hot sand. Then I seductively put on my lipstick, as I’d probably seen in some Elvis Presley teen movie. This time he was a speed demon, gently saying as he leaned into me, “Let’s see how that lipstick tastes.” Pretty corny, but sweet.
After that first date on the beach, Herm and I were inseparable for the balance of my five-day vacation. In the dining room, he continued waiting on my mother and me. Obviously, we never did find the need to go looking for another hotel. My mother joked that, “Herm had better find another way to make a living because he served our soup with his fingers inside the bowl.”
Herm quipped back, “I guess that’s why you only left a $5 tip for the week.”
After lunch, I’d hang around the dining room until it came time for us to go to the beach. After dinner, I waited until Herm finished clearing, setting, and sweeping so we could walk the Boardwalk. One evening, we even got special permission from my mother for a later curfew so that we could go to the movies to see What’s New Pussycat?, Woody Allen’s debut comedy with Peter Sellers and Peter O’Toole. The dialogue was so far over my head, I don’t think I understood the movie until about twenty years later. But the plot didn’t really matter. I was just so happy to be out with Herm. The title song, belted out by Tom Jones, became our song.
On another day, while we were out for a walk, a sudden, torrential rainstorm soaked us as we ran back to the hotel. Innocently, I invited Herm to our room to dry off. My mother walked in while we were toweling ourselves. She was horrified. “What are you doing?” she bellowed.
“We came back to dry off because we got soaking wet,” I sputtered.
“I don’t care if you are wet. You cannot have a boy in our room under any circumstance.”
In anger and fear, she turned to Herm and demanded, “You get out of here right now!”
I later learned from Herm that he felt wronged by her reaction. He never had any bad intentions. In addition, he told me that on his way out the wind caught the door and it loudly slammed shut. I don’t think either my mother or I noticed this at the time but Herm worried all that night that my mother thought he had slammed it in a fit of anger.
I soon learned that despite the maternal dramatics, my mother actually liked Herm—“a nice Jewish boy”—and had secretly accepted our explanation about the rain.
The following weekend, three days after we met, Herm’s brother, Lenny, came to the beach to see his little brother and have a little fun. Atlantic City was also Jewish Philadelphia’s favorite summer destination. Nine years older than Herm, Lenny was in his late 20s and newly divorced. Though not as tall as Herm, Lenny too was pretty svelte with an olive complexion, thick head of dark hair, and the same enchanting blue eyes. He did not seem to have any problem attracting the ladies.
The three of us spent most of Saturday afternoon together, lying on the beach, talking, joking and jumping into the ocean every once in a while to cool off. Always a charming storyteller, Lenny told a joke I still remember about a Jewish radio station that announced, “1210 on the a.m. dial, but for you, 1200.” I enjoyed being with the two brothers, who were very close despite their age difference. Quickly, Lenny sensed that Herm and I had something going. Ever the responsible one, he called home to alert his parents to a potential development.
After all the hardships Moishe and Pesche had known, when I met them in 1965, times were relatively good. They were working in a grocery store they owned, but not as hard as they had in the past. Every other week, alternating with their partner, they took two days off from work.
Lenny had already graduated from Drexel Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical engineering and was working for a large-equipment company. Herm had just graduated from high school and would be starting college at Temple University in the fall as a psychology major.
Herm and his friend, Irv, decided to celebrate their high school graduation with a summer of freedom in Atlantic City. It was a place where they had gone many times as youngsters for sun and fun, a place they knew would have lots of work for them in its numerous hotels and restaurants. Their plan was to get summer jobs as waiters, spend as little as possible on a room at the Sun-Fun Manor, and spend their free time picking up girls.
Lenny thought his parents would be concerned about Herm’s life being complicated by a girl. It did not seem a problem to us, but for Herm and Lenny’s parents, Pesche and Moishe, who had dedicated their lives to their sons’ education and well-being and had seen Lenny forgo further post-graduate education for marriage, it seemed like a “tragedy” waiting to happen. They firmly believed as all immigrants did that a college education was an immigrant’s ticket to success. They did not want anything to stand in Herm’s way. Herm’s falling in love with a girl from Canada seemed even more problematic and would create unpredictable difficulties. Moishe and Pesche were so concerned that they were soon on the way to Atlantic City to investigate
the “crisis” for themselves.
Probably what Herm’s parents saw.
Moishe and Pesche arrived together on Monday, the day my mother and I were leaving. We met only briefly outside the New Yorker Hotel. Herm’s father was wearing long pants and a short sleeved white shirt, his face red and flushed from the heat because he was so fair. I examined Moishe’s face closely in the bright sunlight and noticed a resemblance to Herm, the same bright blue eyes and a shy, devilish smile. Pesche, with a round, full face and olive skin wore a colorful tight fitting dress that showed off her small waist and large bosom. They were friendly and courteous to both my mother and me. I did not pick up any budding hostility. The true extent of their disapproval was never and will never be known to me, but their immediate reaction, I later learned, was to nag Herm relentlessly about the disadvantages of a long distance relationship.
Herm and I had had a tender and difficult separation the night before, promising to maintain contact and to write often. Before my mother and I climbed into Moishe’s car, a blue 1961 Chevrolet, for a ride back to the Greyhound Bus Station, Herm and I exchanged photographs. On the back of Herm’s high school graduation picture, which I carry in my wallet to this day, he wrote the following:
The photo Herm gave me and his
inscription on the back.
I was too pre-occupied with the business of traveling to think or feel much. I was confident that Herm and I would see each other again. Herm did not wait for our bus to leave. In his first letter, he wrote, “I’m sorry I didn’t stay to see your bus leave, but I guess I just wasn’t thinking correctly. I didn’t think it would happen, but tears began to form in my eyes when I said good-bye to you. That must be a good sign.”
The optimism of youth is such a good thing.
My daughters, who met and married their husbands in their later twenties thought it absurd that parents would be concerned about an 18-year-old son’s five-day-old relationship. But given the family’s history, struggles, fears and hopes, and their strong involvement in their children’s lives, I didn’t find it so surprising. Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust, Siberian exile and four years in camps for Displaced Persons, Moishe and Pesche had come to the U.S. with almost nothing but their indomitable good will, determination to succeed, no matter how much hard work it took, and two small sons whose future meant everything to them.
I sometimes wonder what life would have brought had I chosen sleep-away camp over Atlantic City that summer. Were Herm and I fated to meet, if not there and then, somewhere else? Sometimes I believe we were meant to be together, would be together, regardless.
Chapter Nine
LONG DISTANCE
THE FIRST THING I did when I returned to Montreal was break up with my steady boyfriend. When I told Tommy and my best friend Kathy about this wonderful boy I’d met, I said he was not only handsome, but considerate, soft-spoken, and mature. A rare find. I never had a relationship with anyone in which I was made to feel like we were equals. I certainly never saw it at home or was treated that way by Tommy. He had never valued my opinion about anything. Herm cared about what I had to say and about how I felt. I never saw Herm angry.
Tommy showed little reaction although I knew he felt hurt for which I genuinely felt bad. He refused to show that I’d hurt his feelings. Overtly, his attitude was to discount my story. Consequently, no one believed me. My friends thought I’d invented him. Even seeing Herm’s picture didn’t convince them my story was real. I don’t know why they would think I would make such a thing up. I wasn’t prone to tall tales, lying or showing off. But, I must admit, sometimes, I didn’t believe it myself. It seemed too good to be true even to me—that in a few short days, my whole world had changed completely. At those times, doubts arose about whether we would ever see each other again. Was it just a summer fling for Herm?
Herm had the sense to suggest a letter-writing schedule, to help us sustain a long distance relationship without putting too much pressure on either of us. We each wrote every two weeks. So, one week I would write a letter, and the following week I would receive a letter. To make the endless two-week interval bearable, we planned to call one another. We also planned to see one another next during my school Christmas break, less than five months away.
In Atlantic City, my mother and I had borrowed a small, transistor radio and an old blanket from Herm. When it came time to leave, we left these on a chair in the lobby for him to retrieve. As Canadians, we trusted they would not be stolen but alas, the radio went missing. In his first letter, Herm gently suggested that we check our luggage to see if we had “accidentally placed my radio somewhere.” I was mortified that he might think we’d taken it, and immediately responded with a short letter and a check to cover the cost of the radio.
Just after I mailed the letter, the Canadian postal workers went on a wildcat strike. It felt like a personal affront. “How could they do this to me?” I wailed. It was the first strike of its kind in Canada. Now my letter was stuck in the mail.
The illegal strike organized when postal employees’ workloads doubled without a corresponding increase in wages, was the first of many more crippling postal strikes over the years of our long-distance courtship. Worried that my letter would never reach Herm, I agonized over what to do. “Should I call? He’ll think I’m chasing him.” In those days, it was unheard of for a girl to phone a boy, especially one she’d known for such a short time. But if I didn’t? I couldn’t let him think that I hadn’t written back.
I decided to give it a try since I had a valid excuse, a good reason. I had to tell him I’d sent a check for the radio. I was no thief.
To heighten the drama—and my anxiety—I couldn’t reach him on the lone telephone at the Sun-Fun Manor, where he and Irv were renting a room. But once I’d made the decision to call, I wasn’t going to give up easily. I tried the New Yorker Hotel but he wasn’t there, either. I had no choice but to leave a message with the owner, Mrs. Wolfson. She was not only very cooperative and supportive, but actually insistent that she would relay the message. I know she liked Herm very much, and she took full credit for our relationship. “Such a nice Jewish boy, and handsome, too,” she reminded me, as if I needed reminding.
It was his friend Irv who called me back. He explained that Herm was not at work because he was too sick to work. “What? Herm is sick? First, the radio, then the mail, now sick? What else is going to interfere with this relationship?” I asked the Almighty.
Herm, though I didn’t know it yet, was a first-class ruminator himself. When he received my message, he worried that if he didn’t return the call quickly enough, I would get the wrong idea about his interest in me. He was never comfortable with ambiguity.
That evening, in the middle of one of New Jersey famous Nor’easters, and quite ill with bronchitis, he dragged himself to a boardwalk pay phone to call me. He could barely hear me over the howling wind and pounding rain as I explained, “I wrote you a letter, but it is stuck in the mail.”
“Don’t worry. I understand,” he said.
“I am so sorry I got you out of bed.”
“I’m not really that sick,” he tried to reassure me. “Just bronchitis. A little rest and the antibiotics will take care of it.” I felt relief. Our relationship would continue despite these minor setbacks. And I thanked the Almighty.
Despite the post office strikes, a couple of letters did make it through the mail. In the first, Herm returned the money I had sent for the radio. I used it to pay for a couple of our long distance calls—very expensive in those days. In his next letter, he said, “As usual, it was heavenly speaking to you on the phone.” He also expressed frustration at our being apart. “I’m afraid to go to sleep because I immediately begin to dream about us, and I’ve had so many dreams that they’re driving me crazy. (Who wants to dream? I want the real thing!!).” I was having the same dreams.
As the summer came to an end, I still felt even closer and more attached to Herm. How I longed to see him again! In
every one of our letters, we expressed an urgency to be together again, my Christmas break was still four months away.
Then, unexpectedly, in mid-August, Herm wrote he would be coming to Montreal. Moishe and Pesche decided to go along with Herm’s wish—“Since I came home from A.C., that’s all we discussed. I’m happy to report that it looks pretty definite that we’ll be coming up.” It would be a family vacation before Labor Day.
I was surprised and elated when Herm told me he was coming, although doubly surprised that his parents would accompany him. It caused a stir in our household—a flurry of cleaning, baking and cooking broke out in preparation for out of town guests. We know that to honor their being kosher meant we would be eating all our meals in. I remember singing and dancing my way around the apartment in anticipation, as any starry-eyed 15-year-old would do. At the same time, I felt very uneasy about what his family would think of mine. Herm was so ecstatic he could barely contain himself in a long, romantic letter he wrote, “This week has been so exciting for me that I don’t know if I’ll be able to last until I see you…. It’s going to be strange to see you after all these weeks. I hope you haven’t changed, because you were just fine when I saw you.”
What could he be talking about? Did I change? With him, I felt more like myself than I had in all the years since we had come to Canada.
After a couple of weeks of anticipation, Herm and his parents drove the three hundred and sixty-five miles along winding Route 9 to Montreal, long since replaced by the New York Thruway and Adirondack Northway. They came directly to our apartment, where they met my grandmother and my father, “Your parents were simply great and so nice to me,” wrote Herm later. “And your grandmother is so sweet, I think she’s my favorite.” She certainly was my favorite.
