| The following column appeared in The River Reporter on June 18, 1998. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, June 18, 1998
— Pop
This weekend we celebrate Father's Day. I like to think of my father as the sort of man who made America great: an immigrant in a strange land, a dreamer and a doer, ever thankful for what America gave him, and ever trying to pay back his debt to the land where he and thousands of other immigrants found the streets paved with gold — the purest gold of freedom.
Where he was born, he wasn't really sure. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire stretched from Vienna to the Russian border. A good guess would be Czechoslovakia, but that country didn't yet exist. His father, whose name I never knew for sure, was a widower with four children. He married a widow with seven kids of her own, and his four outnumbered youngsters became second-class citizens. So Pop ran away from home. He was all of 13.
Today, if we send a kid from Narrowsburg to Port Jervis, we hang a tag around his neck and make sure someone is waiting for him on Sussex St.
Pop had only two interests: to get $25 for a steerage ticket and then to get to a seaport. He slept in haystacks, begged meals from farmers' wives, did odd jobs, and saved his money. He made it, barefoot, to Hamburg with his bankroll and his shoes hanging around his neck. It was 1897.
The steerage passage in those years was a horror that is, by today's standards, unbelievable. The hold of the ship was divided into two sections: men on one side and women and children on the other. Wooden bunks, five high, were the order of the day in the airless hold, with malodorous and oily water sloshing around on deck. Since Pop was only a kid, he was made to clamber up to the top bunk. He thought this unfair until the ship hit the open North Atlantic. As his fellow passengers began upchucking when the ship got underway on the bounding seas, he found that he was lucky to be on the uppermost level.
The voyage lasted about two weeks. The food was the same for every meal: herring and potatoes, and a cup of black coffee in the morning. A can of about two pints of water was issued for either drinking or washing, as you wished.
Arriving in New York, the steerage-passengers were allowed up on the top deck to admire the Lady with the Lamp. Pop was duly impressed. He passed through the immigration station, got two letters chopped off his last name, got a new first name, and walked down the gangplank to America the Golden.
What to do next? He didn't know about ethnic neighborhoods such as Little Italy, Hester Street, or Yorkville, but he knew he was in America. Then came the American miracle. A man accosted him and said, in German, "Kid, do you want a job?" America had lived up to its promise.
His new employer ran a large grocery store. Pop got up at five every morning, cleaned the chimneys on the kerosene lamps, toted merchandise up from the cellar (no packaged goods as yet), and ran errands as needed. No salary, mind you, but he was allowed to eat anything on the shelves. At night he was locked in the store, where he slept on the counter.
His new objective was to learn to speak English. Unfortunately, the grocery was located in Hell's Kitchen, a solid Irish neighborhood at the time. So Pop learned English, but with a brogue! It remained with him all of his life. He once told me about his first sentences spoken in English. Having discovered that slavery was illegal in this country, he went up to his boss and said, "You Boss? Go to hell. I quit!"
And what a brogue! When I visited the house of a friend who would misbehave, his Dad would say something like, "Oiving, ifya do somthink like that again, I'll give ya a hit in the head."
Back home, when my older brother and I would act up, Pop would say, "Behaave yerselves, ayther of you larrikens! I doon't wan anymoor of yeer shennigans now!" (Can anyone tell me what a "larriken" is?)
War broke out in 1917, and Pop felt that if America needed help, he would enlist. But with two small children, he was not eligible, so he sold Liberty Bonds with vigor. He got a brass medal for his efforts, and boyo! Was he ever proud of that!
He taught us, my brother, my sister, and me, a lot. He taught us to play ball and to root for the Yankees. Those were the golden years of Ruth, Gehrig, et al. He taught us to love our country, to love our mother, to be honest. He bore a proud title as he drove his truck for 50 years, selling and delivering: among his customers he was known as "Honest Ted." With a proud smile and a few tears, he sent my brother and me off to fight for America the Golden.
He loved Mama with all his heart and soul for 48 years, and taught us to love her too, which we did anyhow. He even chastised us with love and never laid a hand on us, even though there were times when it took some real effort.
Thanks for everything, Pop, wherever you are, probably running up Old Glory over the Pearly Gates on every legal holiday.
And say hello for me to Mama, Stan, and Chickie. I am proud to have had the opportunity to call you "Pop."
