The Ash Creek Papers

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”.

I remember… Looking out the window in the morning and watching snow fall accumulating at the base of trees and in the nooks of the shrubs in our gardens… I listened for the sound of the plows clearing the streets… and the absence of that scraping noise meant that the storm was in its early stages and the plows would be busy in other parts of the city.

The joy of no school… or even as an adult not being able to go to work, could not be contained. Check the news for a sense of how much more snow would fall… please let it go for 36 hrs or more!

Nothing to do but have fun! The last time I had this joy was when we were living at Sunrise Hill Condos… Zack was a toddler, and the entire condo community was “house bound”. We enjoy a big breakfast… had to bulk up for later shoveling.

The snow lessens and I put on my gear and begin to attack the white stuff with my shovel… the snow has to be piled up in careful mounds because of the tightness of space in the complex. Shovel… shovel & shovel — it’s cold but I am cutting a sweat and have developed a big time thirst… I fetch 3 beers and plunge them into my created snow bank. After finishing our area, I pitch in to dig out 2 other older neighbors… and those beers slide down as well as any I have ever had during the heat of a summer day.

The snow subsides and Zack emerges from the home looking like a stuffed “Pillsbury Dough Boy” done up in blue with a red tartan scarf for a bit of panache. Time to put down the shovel, and take up some serious sledding down the street in front of our condo. At first shy, Zack warms up to his first real “downhill” experience; but he prefers to take his shovel and dig about the drifts.

He is replaced on my downhill runs by Barney my Keeshond who runs along the side of the sled and then hops on my back piggy-back, and finishes the run to the base of hill. Cloris my other Keeshond prefers to remain at the top of the hill with Zack & Ellen.

Hot & sweaty from all the activity… I go back inside. Take off all my wet clothes… a wonderful hot shower, and then into some fresh dry clothes… put on a fire… some hot cocoa and lie on the couch looking for a suitable “snowy day” show to watch on TV… and then story time for Zack & we both take afternoon naps.

We combine with neighbors for an impromptu cocktail party… bring whatever you have… lets hang out until the kids have to go to sleep…

Exhausted… happy from the day… oh please… let’s have another storm so we can enjoy another day just like this one.

Oh yes, I remember