The Ash Creek Papers

The entrance to Hopkins sits on a hill above our old home on Alston Ave. To get to the school you would have to go up a rather long, steep and snaking driveway to where the academic buildings were clustered on yet another hill. And to get to the playing fields one had to go up another elevation to a “plateau” where the fields existed, side by side. It was an area that had been cleared of the forest… a forest that had probably been there since the last ice age.

To a six year old, the fields looked like the Russian Steppe. And one of my first memories as a child was being on that field, on a grey Saturday morning to watch Hopkins play football against Kingswood. I was too young to know what was going on, or really to follow the path of #19.

But Paul was there… one of the tri-captains on the team, and its star halfback.

The field was not fancy. I don’t recall bleachers; but it’s possible that there was minimal seating. And I probably kept myself busy during the first half running around and “messing about”, as my parents stood and watched the play on the field.

At half time the team retreated to the far corner of the clearing (the locker room was too far away?) where they took off their helmets and sat about as the coaches began to assess the play from the first half. And almost immediately Mommie Soph appeared bearing a gigantic tray heaped with oranges cut into quarters. She walked gingerly thru the scattered bodies of sweat besmeared boys offering them reviving sweet and sticky oranges.

To all the boys, Mommie Soph’s appearance had been a welcomed and accustomed sight. That day, not only was Paul Winston my big brother; but Mommie Soph was my grandmother!

Mommie Soph participated in our lives. She kept a watchful eye over us. And sometimes it could be a bit annoying. Lynn would come home from a date, and waiting at the front door, light on, removed corset under arm, stockings rolled down, a cup in her hand (with her false teeth), welcoming Lynn back to the safety the home. The only thing missing was Bobby Short playing piano on the front lawn Isn’t it Romantic? It mortified Lynn.

Ten years later I suffered a similar embarrassment. I had brought Ellen back to the house (perhaps after going to a movie?) and we had staked out our den… put on the tube, hit the lights and proceeded to make out on the couch. And completely unbeknownst to me Mommie Soph had stationed herself on the couch in the adjacent living room. But after a bit I heard a voice ask not so quietly, “Jimmy… when are you going to take her home?”

How she behaved with Paul’s dates I haven’t a clue. But she did watch us, and my guess is she put her two cents in with my parents as to what should be what.

She was always there for help. As mentioned, she help set her sister’s husbands in businesses. And significantly when my Dad started Chipp in 1947, it was Mommie Soph that staked him to $10,000 (ironically, my Dad’s partner was staked to his share by his wife… but they were still short 10K. Mommie Soph offered to make up the difference; but my Dad refused because he was worried that if Chipp proved a failure he would have stripped Mommie Soph of her life’s savings. So, a third partner was brought in for the money — and the money alone… that guy never worked a day in his life after 1948… and I was still paying him off long after my Dad had passed on).

And she was always providing for little things around the house.

After she retired from the meat business all of her chopping blocks were brought into our basement which she transformed into a butchers corner. I think I must have been 15 years old before I realized that the super markets offered already ground meat for sale! And every day she would drive to the market, for example and buy 3 kaiser rolls, a quarter pound of sweet munchie cheese & a bag of pecan sandies. Without fail, every day she would go to the store to make a purchase of some type. And at one point my Dad would suggest to her, “Ma… why don’t you buy a dozen rolls and only shop once a week?”

And later I could see that my Dad had missed the point entirely. Shopping for food… shopping for the home… shopping for us, was a way for Mommie Soph to demonstrate her love. More than that, it gave her a sense of value, of being valuable and needed. To deny this would be to strip her of her esteem.

Daily she would get in her car and drive to do an errand… and perhaps she stayed behind the wheel past her years; but as one would suspect she was very, very reluctant to give up her independence. And yes, at the end there were days when she would drive off in her car, get lost and disoriented in a city that had been her home for 70 years… only to have a police car lead her home… and invariably my mother was told…”You know Mrs. Winston, maybe it would be a better idea if your mother didn’t drive alone anymore… oh by the way, my mother used to buy meat from your mother…”

How she was able to do it I don’t know… wonderful mental dexterity I guess. Here it was, the memories of the murder of millions as fresh as your breakfast this morning, when your heritage and ancestry was put on the chopping block… to somehow be able to see beyond the fear was something to marvel at…

And Mommie Soph knew this was America… that she was as close to the promised land as you could get. That she had pride in her traditions was unquestioned; but also she was not troubled by her children’s blending old values with new ones.

We had a small “breakfast room” in our house. It was a distinct room rather than a “nook”; and it was nestled in between our kitchen and dinning room.

It is where we took the majority of our meals. And on early Friday evenings it was reserved for something special. Mommie Soph and my mother would go in there to light the Sabbath candles. To this day I am not entirely sure of the math… how many candles do you light? I believe the tradition is one for yourself, and one for your husband. But for Mommie Soph and my Mother, this number only represented the beginning… a candle also had to be lit for this relative (because no one is lighting one for her, or that one, because her daughter doesn’t know what she is doing) or that person… or the gardner…whoever. I think the numbers of candles lit were fairly constant; but of that I can’t be sure.

But each Friday they would gather near sun down. They would cover their heads, typically with cloth napkins, light the candles, and then slowly circling their hands around the flames, they would bring the spirit to their hearts and cover their eyes with cupped hands. Prayers would be said silently, or occasionally you could detect a soft murmur. From start to finish it probably took no more than 3 – 5 minutes; but when completed there was a cleansing in the air… a look of sadness to their faces, which I always attributed to the sense of loss they felt for those that had departed. And then that melancholy would dissipate, and a feeling of renewal would spread thru the house…”our home is safe”.

This is a tradition that goes back thru 500 generations, still fresh…

And sitting along side the old tradition, the”new” tradition: Santa Claus… or as Mommie Soph’s accent would have it…Sendy Close.

How bizarre. Yet for some (it not many) of my parents’ generation Christmas presents and Santa Claus embodied Americana. That my parents should buy into this was perhaps understandable; but that Mommie Soph should be able to accept the newer tradition was more surprising. She was able to detach the religious core of Christmas and have the joy of the season the swept the country.

No, we did not have a tree… nor was there a sense of religious importance for our family (although we all were to become familiar with this side as we got older… both Paul and Lynn went to Mass with their college & high school friends… and I went to Church with my friends the Rowes)… but Christmas morning we did open presents… and while the wrapping paper had no religious symbols… they were festooned to the nines. And as we opened those presents, Mommie Soph’s eyes beamed. She was so happy for us. I detected not one hint of regret that some how we were violating our sacred traditions.

Food was critical to her… it was an obsession. And quantity was vital. There had to be enough. Of everything. Then some more for later. And while Mommie Soph remained kosher… she had no problem with the fact that we didn’t. She had a duplicate kitchen in our basement, and did her personal food preparation down there. Food prepared for the family would be done upstairs. And while she wouldn’t cook bacon for breakfasts… she would go to the market and buy it for either my mother or Bessie to cook it. Eating was important… and if you didn’t eat seconds you would face a series of probing questions… and you could tell if the answers were satisfying; because if Mommie Soph didn’t like what she heard there would be a sadness that would descend in her expression… and it was unmistakable that you just hurt her feelings.

Not only would she cook non-stop for the house; but she even prepared food for our Bedlington Terriers (Baa Baa and Rocky). There would always be this “stock pot” that would be brewing on the stove. She would throw bones, giblets (horrible looking stuff actually) into the pot, and then add cut carrots, potatoes, celery… some parsley… little bit of this or that… and this ghastly stew would be for the hundts (the dogs)… to us it looked and smelled vile. But it never ceased to amaze me how guests during the day would wander into the kitchen, as Mommie Soph was stirring up the pot, and peer into the pot, “Hmmmmmm, Soph that looks simply mouth watering!” I would run from the room gagging.

While not an exclusive American pastime,  she enjoyed daytime television, Friday Night Fights… and also playing an occasional card game of Bridge. Some of her unique subtlety in the game was lost on me until I started playing Bridge in college. But I do recall a night when she was playing with my Mother (who had a regular Bridge game), Paul and I forget the fourth (maybe Lynn?). Mommie Soph begins the bidding… “I bid a small spade…”

This was immediately followed by some discussion… of the inappropriateness of the bid… its sneaky quality… Years later I was able to piece together her craft. Convention has it that once you add the points in your hand (13 for an opening bid) you could open with a 5 card major suit (spades or hearts) or a 4 card minor suit (clubs or diamonds)… by bidding a small spade, Mommie Soph was telling her partner that she either had less than 13 points in her hand, or that she only had 4 spades.

A no-no in the game… but pure Mommie Soph, who only suffered a light chastisement.

And if food were the mortar of her existence, then her love of the family was its soul.

It was November something or other, in 1888 or so that Sophie Chatzek (Jewish name… Shaina Clara) was born in a small town near Warsaw. She would later say it was “Warshava Guberniya”… which is like saying “metropolitan” Warsaw. In that day the land was under the rule of the Russian Tsar… and growing up Russian would be one of the 3 languages she would speak and understand… Russian, Polish and Yiddish — the lingua franca of the Jewish people.

Although not the oldest of the 10 children (9 girls, 1 boy), she was the first to make her way to America. As a young teenager she made her way by train across Poland and Germany to the port city of Bremerhaven. Then by ship she traveled to America, and made land fall in New York.

She had the name of a cousin who lived in New Haven, and that became her destination. She moved into the flat of her cousin, and to pay her way she was a maid in the house, and also did cleaning for some of the other tenants as well.

Her cousin had a daughter who was roughly her age, and there was this man who was paying court to this girl; but my grandmother caught his eye. And it wasn’t long before this man’s interest turned fully to Sophie.

His name was Paul Fleischner and he was a kosher butcher. And he was to take Sophie Chatzek as his bride. Their first daughter was born in 1908… Tiny (a 5th grade teacher unhappy with the sound of that name, “changed” my Aunt’s name to Thelma… which became the name that Tiny would subsequently use professionally). Sophie was unhappy with her mother-in-law, and with America at that time, and lonely for her family, she returned to Poland with Tiny in tow.

She remained there less than two years when her parents prevailed on her to return to America and her husband. In 1912 a second daughter was born… Evelyn (my Mother), known as Eve to all.

Paul Fleischner died when my mother was in her mid teens… and Sophie took over the running of the meat business. She had a horse and carriage and would deliver meat to the door of her customers. She never learned to read or write; but she had an incredible memory for detail, and was famous for giving each customer a correct accounting for what was owed.

She was successful in her business and one by one she had brought everyone in her immediate family over to America. More than bringing her family over, she was instrumental in establishing businesses for some of her future brothers-in-law as well.

Back then there were family “councils” to help decide on issues, and when my aunt Tiny was of an age and wanted to attend college, the opinion of the family was “what did she need it for?”. And Sophie stood her ground, if her Tiny wanted to go to college, then she would go… so Tiny enrolled at Syracuse University.

And four years later the family again met to discuss Tiny’s desire to go to Law School. And again my grandmother asserted her support of her daughter’s decision… and Tiny entered City College’s Law School, and 2 years later she would be admitted to New York’s Bar.

Tiny would marry another attorney, Morris Rosoff, and they would have one daughter, Paula (named for Paul Fleischner). It was for Paula that the name “Mommie Sophie” was coined. My grandmother felt she was far too young to be called by the other typical titles: grannie, grandma, nanna, grammie…so she would forever more be known as “Mommie Soph…or Mommie Sophie”.

The meat business flourished. And Mommie Soph became either the first woman driver in the city of New Haven or in the state of Connecticut (I forget which). New Haven had a sizable Jewish population (the largest between New York and Boston) and she was one of two kosher butchers in town.

Mommie Soph never re-married. Why? I do not have a clue. As far as I know she had no “interests” either… although Lynn does make mention of an “old friend” who would be affectionate (but who was married to someone else).

When my parents married, Mommie Soph came into the house… and she would live with us until she passed away. It wasn’t long after I was born that Mommie Soph sold her interest in the meat business to a fellow who she had taken in as a partner a few years before.

But by that time she was a well known fixture in the community. Not only was she known by New Haven’s entire Jewish community, World War II put her on the map to just about everyone else. Meat was a rationed commodity back then… as was gas for example. If you controlled one of the key commodities, you had near celebrity status. Our family was never in want of gas (and the gas station attendant had no problem getting ground chuck).

But in the family her status was supreme. Amongst her sisters, and the cousins (my mother’s generation) her opinion was valued at the highest level.

She was also very forward thinking about America, and what constituted American Folklore. She was true to her heritage, and maintained her own kosher kitchen in our house; but had no problem accepting my parents desire to “Americanize”.