A Key to Remembrance

A single dad during the Great Depression

I often wonder whether my grandfather was rare, uncommon, atypical, or simply remarkable. I think, perhaps, he was all four.

The short story of his life would be that he left Russia for America, the promised land, to build a better life. He became literate in English, worked hard to earn a living, learned the restaurant business, saved his money, and became a United States citizen.

He met his wife, another Russian immigrant while she was hanging clothes out to dry. She just happened to be singing a well-known Russian folksong as he was walking by. They struck up a conversation and, as is often written, the rest was history.

Or so one would think. The reality is, there's rarely a short story where family is concerned. Is there? Often, it is the story of a lifetime.

After leaving the crowded tenements of Manhattan, the couple moved to Lake Saranac in upstate New York for fresh air and to raise a family. There, he spent his savings buying into a restaurant. It was also there where my mom was born, the younger sister to an older brother. A younger male sibling came shortly after.

Life was good, especially for his children; fresh air, trees to climb, and plenty of grass in which to roll around wrestling. The restaurant, too, thrived.

That is, until 1929 when the Great Depression hit. The restaurant failed along with most of the lake's businesses. Locals could not afford an evening out for dinner. Worse, even the wealthy stopped arriving for respite or to breathe in the lake's renown curative atmosphere. No longer did the popular lake enjoy brisk tourism during the summer or winter months. .

So it was back to the crowded tenements, now teeming with immigrants, men out of work, and a family of five trying to make a life.

As if life weren't hard enough, the grandmother I never met, died of pneumonia in 1933.

This was the point in life where my grandfather became rare, uncommon, atypical, and simply remarkable.

He did not quickly look for a woman to take his wife's place and be a mother to his children, to cook for the family, to do the laundry and to warm his bed. He did not separate his children. He did not send them off to distant relatives or friends in the tight Russian immigrant community. Neither did he make them work to help support the family.

He kept his kids together and bore parental responsibility himself. He insisted they go to school and especially, most especially, finish high school. When WWII broke out and his younger son came home with papers for signing so he could join up, grandpa tore them up. There would be no Army Air Corps until high school was finished.

Unlike her two brothers, grandpa sent my mom to a special school, Manhattan High School, which at the time was an all-female trade school. My immigrant grandfather sent his GIRL there so she could learn a trade. So she would never have to be dependent. So she could be able to get a real job. So she would not have to work in a factory

Imagine that! My grandpa, the feminist.

And a real job she got straight out of high school, a good one, eventually becoming a couturier/dressmaker.

But as a motherless teen living in a cramped apartment with three males, there was a lot she didn't learn, especially about personal care. Mom could not even bathe with privacy in the kitchen bathtub without one or both of her brothers pulling apart the curtains surrounding the tub in order to tease and expose her.

Mom often recalled how her teachers at Manhattan High gently advised her about personal care and hygiene. For helping her learn how to evolve from a girl with dirty fingernails into a blossoming self-assured woman.

I don't know how she afforded it - maybe my notoriously frugal grandfather had a hot moment of generosity - but when mom graduated, she bought herself what was called a key at the time, and which was worn on a chain. Mom urged me to purchase a key when I graduated from high school, but I opted for a class ring.

Nevertheless, she wore her key on a gold chain around her neck with pride throughout my childhood. "Why a key?" I would ask her while fumbling with it when I sat on her lap.

"It doesn't even look like a real key," I would say. To her it was a key to her future. A symbol of all she had achieved in spite of once being the motherless girl with dirt under her fingernails.

When mom passed away, I found the long-forgotten graduation key buried in a jewelry box.

I wear it frequently and it often becomes a topic for conversation. Indeed, it is an unusual piece of jewelry by today's standards, but it has treasured memories for me. and a lot of history besides.

But that's a long story ... maybe for another day.