by Ann Huber
Whenever Herm and I visited the bustling market, we each helped to manage the cash register, separately. We learned to greet the customers while also keeping an eye on known shoplifters. The wall behind the counter was stacked full from ceiling to floor with merchandise and particularly, cigarettes, as one of the more expensive and popular commodities in the store.
Harry’s Market made it possible for Moishe and Pesche to build a new life, to develop friendships with other “greener” (newcomers)—immigrants who were survivors and newcomers such as they were—to live more comfortably and to educate their children. Lenny, who was nine years older, attended high school at the highly regarded Akiba Hebrew Academy, which counts among its alumni a number of luminaries, including Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie.
Herm also attended Jewish parochial schools after a brief public school stint, starting with Beth Jacob, an orthodox grade school where children wore “payos” (very long sideburns) and religious garb; later, he also attended Akiba Hebrew Academy in Lower Merion. His graduating class only had twenty-three students but they all got an excellent education. Most of the students attended not only college, but went on to graduate education as well.
Pesche and Moishe placed such value on education that they made the sacrifice to pay, and even Akiba’s reduced tuition was a struggle for them. Yet, they often lamented, “We paid $500 for every Hebrew word Herm learned, of which fortunately, there were not many.”
It was also Harry’s Market that eventually made it possible for them to realize the American dream, their own home in Overbrook Hills, a suburb near the Main Line in Philadelphia. The night before the closing, Moishe spent a sleepless night panicked about the $20,000 mortgage. He need not have worried. They made all the payments, regularly and on time including the last payment, made with much fanfare by Pesche in 1988.
Harry’s Market was hard work, twelve hours a day on their feet, seven days a week but they continued to work there for many years until Moishe’s death and Pesche’s retirement about a decade later. When Pesche retired, the local residents warmly presented her with a fancy Certificate of Appreciation.
Chapter Eighteen
AN ENGAGEMENT PARTY
I ARRIVED a few weeks after their closing on the home. Herm’s parents were so welcoming that they renovated the kitchen in its original footprint, leaving a tiny adjoining room to be a guest room for me. It had little more room than for a single bed, but I loved it because it was sunny and bright. It remained “Chanala’s room” for years to come.
I met my in-laws at such a young age that they became an important influence in my life and we became very close. They were warm, loving and so generous it was impossible not to love them. Moishe was balding, with gray hair, blue eyes and was of medium height. He loved to tell funny stories and jokes. Pesche was very giving and enjoyed chatting, especially on Shabbat mornings, when she would often reminisce about her past.
Over the summer, Pesche and I worked at decorating the rest of the house together and preparing for a for Labor Day weekend engagement party. Pesche wanted my advice about the latest home fashions, a subject I knew nothing about; I was not really much help, but it was fun to go shopping together and discuss various styles and colors. And of course we discussed and made menu selections for our engagement party. It would all be homemade food, much of which would be prepared by Pesche since my cooking was basic, at best. We decided she’d make kreplach, similar to Italian tortellini or small Chinese dumplings. She was a marvel as she formed these delicacies effortlessly at amazing speed. I enjoyed her maternal company as she taught me to speak Yiddish. She would correct me whenever I used a wrong word, laughing very gently. Later in the day, she would report on my progress, including my mistakes, for the others to enjoy.
Pesche could be unintentionally funny. Her orthodox Jewish upbringing served to breed wariness of non-Jews and a rather small and limited view of the world. For example, one of Herm’s Irish Catholic friends, Frank, once had a light-hearted discussion about religion with her. She began informing Frank that there are “Two religions in the world, right?”
“Oh, really?” was his surprised response.
“Yes,” she asserted, “Jewish and non-Jewish,” to which he chuckled.
Pesche was so easy to be with that we had a wonderful stressfree relationship, utterly unlike my relationship with my mother. My mother was often anxious, and at times overly critical. She was not so generous with her feelings, her time or her money. Regarding money, of course, Herm’s parents had reached a point where they were much more financially secure than my family was. My mother always tried to be the parent and would never let her guard down. She was ever vigilant about my relationship with Herm, continuing to run interference between my father and me. My father, on the other hand, had been easier to be with when I was younger, especially when he took care of me while my mother worked. But, the older I got, the less comfortable he seemed to feel in my presence. He was shy and so easily embarrassed about anything feminine and personal. By my midteens, we stopped taking our long walks or having our talks.
Our limited interior design skills resulted in anchor-blue wall-to wall carpeting, a shag in true sixties fashion on which our children would later repeatedly slide down the stairs, as Pesche complained that they were wearing down the rug. Pesche also picked out a blue and gold cut-velvet couch with matching gold armchair, both of which she encased in industrial strength plastic. Our skin stuck to it every time we sat down, just about tearing our butts off when we got up. The only item on which she was willing to be a little more adventuresome was a side table with a shellac, shell top. Passé now, but quite daring then. I can’t say that any of the furniture was really my style, since I did not yet have a style, but I think it was all in good taste and sturdy. It outlasted the childhoods of five grandkids over the next twenty years. Not only did manufacturers know how to make good quality furniture in those days, but people knew how to take care of their things. Of course, the plastic helped too.
During his college years, Herm always took a summer job to save money for his own expenses. One year he worked for the Post Office, picking up mail from myriad street-corner boxes. As we drove around the city, Herm proudly and assuredly pointed out each and every mailbox he had serviced. (He still does this.) The following year, when he couldn’t find a summer job, he decided to attend summer school and help out in Harry’s Market as “chief stock boy for $1.40 per hour.” Herm’s summer job the next year was in a tobacco warehouse, packing up cartons of cigarettes from which he reeked at the end of the day.
The summer we spent together at his parents’ house allowed us every evening to compare notes about our day (something we still do). I told him about our designing and shopping experiences. He told us about the warehouse job, where he met all sorts of interesting blue-collar workers who treated him well. Most importantly, we managed to find concentrated periods of time to try out being together for more than a week at a time. Not only did we get along really well, but we loved being together. It was such a comfortable summer. I already felt a part of the Huber family. His parents seemed to feel comfortable with having me there, too. I often saw them warm toward one another. They were also quite playful and frequently I would catch Moishe reaching around Pesche to plant a juicy kiss on her cheek, as she laughingly shooed him away.
The summer was not conflict-free, though, because there were arguments between Herm and his parents about the timing of our wedding. While my parents would have preferred for me to finish college first, as time passed, I think they were very happy to marry me off. Herm’s parents worried that if we got married, he would forego an advanced degree as Lenny had. Their initial panic when I’d first appeared in Herm’s life, which they worked through just before he started college, now reared its head again. We assured them we had a workable plan. I soothed them when I promised I would make sure he graduated. They eventually relented.
My parents and grandmother, who were never a part o
f our arguments with Herm’s parents about the marriage, flew down to Philadelphia for the engagement party. After a two-month separation, I was genuinely glad to see them. They met a number of the Hubers’ friends, all of whom had similar stories of immigration and desperate survival. They were all new immigrants. As I made my way around the living and dining room, observing, mingling, I was really happy to see my father smiling and my mother having a good time feasting on the good food Pesche and I had prepared.
The engagement party was also an opportunity to meet some of Herm’s friends, many of whom I would not see again until their 50th high school reunion. We received many thoughtful gifts such as a large tray made of the newest plastic (wave of the future), à la The Graduate, Mexican crystal wine glasses that we still use although they are foggy now, and an ice bucket that played music! We were also given cash gifts, totaling an amazing (at that time) $158 for our new joint account. My parents also gave Herm an elegant gold Longines watch as an engagement gift. His parents gave me a diamond watch. They were both beautiful and thoughtful gifts, which may have been coordinated by them without our knowledge or were simply the parental engagement gift de rigueur. At the time, we were afraid to actually wear the watches: they were the most valuable things we owned. Today, Herm no longer has his watch. He gave it to our first son-in-law, Mike, as a wedding gift. Mine has long since stopped working. Fortunately, the marriage far outlasted the gifts.
At the engagement party in Philadelphia with
Sandu, Netty, Mamaia, and the happy couple,
summer 1968.
In a letter a few months after I returned to Montreal in the fall, Herm wrote, “Believe me Moishe wants us to get married, and he loves you with all his heart.” Moishe was so overcome with the fact of our engagement and Herm’s leaving the home for graduate school, he was simply unprepared for it to hit all at once. Herm said that his father was “mad at himself for becoming so blindly attached to us.”
Herm was reassuring himself that we could remain close to his parents after marriage if we corresponded with them regularly, called, and visited once in a while. He seemed also to want confirmation that my parents were facing the same agonies of their child leaving home. “My parents have a happy relationship and they’ll feel lonely; I just hate to imagine how your parents will feel,” he wrote.
Without intending to, he tapped into my concerns, some voiced and some not, about leaving my family in Canada. I thought he was also expressing some of his own doubts and guilt about taking me away from them. Mostly though, I was really looking forward to running away from a life that had become increasingly difficult. The future could only be better.
It was no secret that there was much tension in my home. My father went through a devastating bankruptcy while I was in high school. We lived only on my mother’s salary from Woolworth’s, which made Sandu feel worse and worse about himself. He drank more as their relationship deteriorated and he became more embittered and remote. My parents helplessly looked to me to find solutions for their problems. For example, I had to sit in on their meetings with their accountant to help make decisions. I had neither the skills nor experience to make them, and it burdened me with impossible responsibility; I felt overwhelmed and trapped. Thus, whenever they tried to parent me thereafter, I rebelled. I screamed and yelled, which only escalated as I got older. In fact, it might even be accurate to say that I terrorized them. I think they were eager to see me marry and leave, expecting some peace and quiet. I couldn’t wait to do so, though not without some guilt about abandoning them.
Also, I was increasingly responsible for my grandmother. Her vision had worsened even as I continued to watch her inject herself daily with insulin. It was my job to check that there was always a Coca Cola under the kitchen sink for her to drink when her sugar dropped too low. I also took care of her in other ways. When she could no longer see the dials on the stove and oven, it was my job to check they were turned off. I also cooked her meals and regularly washed and set her hair, which I enjoyed. I realized that Mamaia would be the only one who would unconditionally miss me, as I would miss her.
Chapter Nineteen
A WEDDING
I RETURNED to my second year at McGill with even less interest than I’d had at the end of my first year, skipping most of my classes, and just barely doing the work. I thought the policy of mandatory attendance was ridiculous, and foolishly ignored it. When I was not playing cards, I was daydreaming about our upcoming wedding. There is no doubt that I was being reckless, but I was obsessed with wedding plans. My parents didn’t know what I was doing. Nor did I listen to Herm when he tried to scold me into being more responsible. I was exercising some very bad judgment and doing what I was starting to do best, defying authority.
I still have vivid memories of sitting on top of a card table in the Student Lounge, my left arm extended in front of me, showing off my diamond ring as I imitated Barbra Streisand singing in the movie, Funny Girl. “Sadie, Sadie, married lady, see what’s on my hand….” I often try to sing it to my grandchildren, but they mercifully lose interest before we get to the juicy parts—“The honeymoon was such delight, that we got married that same night….”
I did go to class occasionally. Once I missed a mid-term because I was totally unprepared. The next day, wearing one of those popular 1960s tent dresses that made everyone look pregnant, I went to see the compassionate, middle-aged female professor. I sheepishly asked for an extension for “personal reasons.” I did not lie. Nor did I correct her misconception. She gave me the extension. In the end, none of that helped. I ended up with four D’s despite the fact that I read the material and studied for the exams. Another professor, an American draft dodger, had announced at the beginning of the semester that he found mandatory attendance unnecessary. He gave me a “B.” When I questioned each of the other professors about the grade, they all had the same response—“It should have been an ‘F’ due to your lack of attendance, but you did well on the exams, hence the D.” I felt very depressed, and a failure, but I knew it was all my own fault. Getting married and leaving Montreal and McGill would be a big relief. As it turned out, I had to do a lot of explaining when I applied to Rutgers University for my next year, and to the law school admissions office ten years later.
While I was pre-occupied with wedding plans, Herm was worried and overwhelmed about graduate school. He was concerned that he would not be admitted into a good school, the only ones that offered programs in experimental psychopathology, his primary area of interest. He even applied to Canadian universities in his field.
There were many who opposed the Vietnam War and the mandatory conscription of men over the age of 18. There were deferments available, such as one for males matriculated in an accredited college as a full time undergraduate student. Many others, unable to obtain a deferment, went through extremes to avoid the draft. We heard of people with allergies to wool, rubbing their feet with mild acid solutions to simulate severe allergic reactions to military socks.
Herm’s family was terrified he might be drafted. Herm and I worried, too. Most people we knew were worried. Once he graduated from Temple, Herm would no longer be eligible for a student deferment.
Herm wrote about a touching, yet heart breaking incident relating to his parents’ fears about the Vietnam War. His father suddenly came to his room, stood by his desk wordlessly, his face contorted with tears. Herm followed his father into his room and sat next to him on his bed, his arm around his father’s shoulders, while his father cried, “Like I’ve never seen any man cry before. I was talking to him the whole time, trying to soothe him, and he couldn’t even answer…. Finally, he calmed down a little and we talked a little….”
“Anyway, my father said that the main reason he was crying was because he is scared to death of the draft… and my going to Vietnam…. But, there’s nothing to do at the present time since we have to wait until May or June when I graduate & we’ll see how the war, the new president, and the draft are doing then,”
he wrote.
Not my style at all. When I am facing a problem, I need to deal with it right then and there. Otherwise, I cannot stop ruminating until I find a way to address the issue. Herm is a big-time procrastinator. He did, however, unwittingly find a solution.
At a doctor’s visit, Herm was reminded that he suffers from a bone disease that affects his knees, Osgood-Schlatter’s Disease, which would disqualify him from serving in the military. It is a disorder involving painful inflammation of the growth plates of the lower front of the knee, where the large tendon attaches to the lower portion of the kneecap and which then attaches to the shinbone. As a teenager, he’d suffered greatly with knee pain, and needed casts on his knees for a time, but had less distress as an adult. A doctor’s note and a copy of the x-rays was all the Draft Board required. All that worrying for nothing.
My grandmother’s greatest concern was that she be able to walk down the aisle with us. It loomed large when she was suddenly hospitalized for unstable sugar levels. Herm’s response was unexpected: “I really care for your grandmother; she has so much of the level-headedness and ability to bring up children that unfortunately is lacking in your parents. I think you’re lucky your grandmother has been usually around to counteract the nervousness and coldness generated by your mother and father, respectively.” I was really surprised that Herm had picked up on this because my parents were usually on their best behavior when he was present. He was right, of course, which I didn’t fully realize until after I got to see how his family interacted.
