David's Search for His Father
$15 then would be worth approximately $340 in today's currency.
Leah had the address of a man named Zigler who once worked for her father and was supposed to be living in Madison Square. She told David to find Mr. Zigler first and tell him of their plight and to ask for help. David left after breakfast to look for Madison Square. He had with him $15 in American currency in an inside pocket. It was a hot and humid day and on reaching the square David learned that Zigler had moved away about a year before, but no one seemed to know where. David was advised to go to the Grand Central depot for a ticket to Ludington. The long hot walk made David weary and on reaching the depot he was told that they sold only first-class tickets and that the price was $34. He learned that the only way to get a cheap ticket was through the immigration office in Castle Garden.
I love this family myth, Deborah. It reaffirms all I believe about the nature of history as a sort of vast, unfinished mosaic—a work of art, logic, misconceptions, and other distortions.
David had no alternative but to walk back to the pier. It was 2 p.m. and David was tired and hungry and his tongue was parched from thirst. He dared not touch the $15 ticket money, but passing a bakery he stepped in and took a bun from the counter and laid down a Prussian 10-pfennig piece, for that was the only coin he had. He was turning to leave when the salesgirl yelled, “Hey, come back, give me back that bun! Your money is no good here. You seem to be an expert in palming off foreign coins.”
It was a dreadful day, when the sun seemed to take a fierce delight in parching the streets and sidewalks of New York with intense heat. The countless human beings that congested the city dragged themselves listlessly along. Coats were removed, drenched with perspiration.
David was heartbroken when he left the bakery shop. Tears trickled down his eyes. He walked along a few blocks and came in front of a row of brownstone houses in the course of construction and seeing a faucet there he stopped for a drink. Wearily he sat down and wept bitterly at his misfortune and especially at the thought of the fate of his mother and the children again aboard the ship.
Here is David at his best—adventurous, persistent, brave and creative. Somehow David has to make it from Castle Garden Immigration Center to rural Michigan, to find his father—long before there were cell phones or airplanes.
A rather portly and well-dressed man with a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard and gold-rimmed eyeglasses came from inside the building and approaching him, asked, “Who are you, young man? Whence camest thou?”
David instantly rose and answered him briefly. The man then said, “Come and have something to eat first.”
The man led the way to a restaurant, ordered a good dinner for David. While eating, the man drew from David his entire story, his failure to find Mr. Zigler at the Madison Square address and how his mother was detained on the steamer. David swallowed more of his own tears than the food he ate.
“Stop your crying,” the man ordered. “I’ll see you through.”
After David finished his meal the man paid for it and said, “Now let’s go.” He led the way to a Kosher delicatessen and ordered a large picnic basket to be filled with food and also a bottle of wine and then told David they must hurry to get the ticket.
In ten minutes they were at the ticket office and man said to David, “Give me that $15.”
Here he is trying to reproduce a more formal speech, perhaps to indicate that the speaker is speaking German, which has a formal mode with the "Sie."
David trembled, fearing that the man might rob him, but he handed over the money. Within five minutes the man was back with the ticket and said they must cross on the big ferry to the New Jersey side to get the train. When they reached the depot the man spoke to the conductor of the train asking him to take care of the young immigrant and see him safely to his destination. He took David into the car and when he was seated in a red plush car seat he handed David a $5 bill for pocket money, shook his hand, and bade him a safe journey. He also promised to find Mr. Zigler and see that that family got off the steamer.
Getting up more courage, David asked, “Man, who are you? What is your motive in showing such generosity to a stranger like me in a strange land?”
This is great. I love how David the author is constantly showing how good deeds help one later. The world is so big, but also so small... good turns that are done with no hope of reciprocation result later in help in an emergency. Also the world of Russia and the world of America were not necessarily experienced as two absolutely alien places. There is a net of human connection that helps us understand how they could take the risk of uprooting.
“Well, my son, can you remember this?” and he lifted up his left hand which was minus two fingers. “I am the crippled student who played with you after the pogrom in Melitopol when your mother cared for me for a whole week at a time when I could see she had none too much for her own family. She saved my life then and I have prayed for the time to come when I could repay her for her kindness. I am more than glad for this occasion. I’ll take care of your mother and the children in the morning.”
Arriving in Ludington, David discovered it to be 6 o’clock on a Sunday morning. He walked up from the depot on Main Street, meeting the night policeman. David asked about Mr. Bloomstock, and the policeman, with due politeness, led him to the house. David marveled as he walked along the wide streets, at the store windows with their marvelous display of merchandise without any iron shutters drawn down as was the case in Russia. He wondered and thought how honest a people the Americans must be.
Here we wonder whether David the novelist has taken over the manuscript. Is it possible that in the midst of crowded New York City he could have encountered someone his family had helped years earlier, only to be rescued by him at this most difficult time of his immigration?
Not to mention the fact that he probably could speak no English. This seems as improbable as some of the plotlines in David's novels, but if it really happened then it encourages the suspension of disbelief for those stories!
I love this scene in the story, and almost don't care whether or not it's fabricated—except that I would love to know that this kind of kismet is possible.
This is great. The police know where everyone lives!
The solicitousness of the authorities in those days is remarkable. First David is allowed to leave Castle Garden against protocol, and then enjoys door-to-door escort by the police!
David received a very friendly reception at Bloomstock’s home and was told that his father was now in Milwaukee. So toward evening they led him to the steamer that crosses Lake Michigan during the night to Milwaukee. Arriving there in the morning, David at once went to the address given and was told that his father had just left for the depot. He hurried to the depot and there he found Ben-Zion sitting inside the train about to depart. Father Ben-Zion was glad to see David and to learn that Leah and the children all were in New York.
“Go back to the boarding house and wait until Thursday evening when I will return and we both will go to Ludington,” Ben-Zion instructed his son.
David immediately wired to his mother that tickets for the rest of the trip would be forthcoming by the end of the week.
I find it so amazing and bizarre that father and son should meet in this way. The level of disorganization is so startling. Train about to depart. The message: Ben Zion is elusive. People often lost each other then. Maybe it wasn't the sign of indifference but of less stable families than we expect to find because WE are romantic "bad historians."
David apparently has already found a room somewhere in Milwaukee.
David had an idea of filling in the time while he waited for his father to return, and he asked his [landlord] if he could take him to a shop where he could work for the four days while waiting for his father to return. The landlord was an obliging sort of man and took David to a shop where the foreman gladly accepted him and put him to work. David’s eyes almost popped out of his head at the end of the period when the foreman handed him eight silver dollars, the first real silver money he ever had seen.
David is so good... he has four days and he goes to work! This is so admirable, this work ethic and familial/social expectations. Also interesting the kinds of labor they find on such short notice for just a few days.
Ben-Zion returned on time and they took the steamer to Ludington where they wired money for the tickets to the Immigration Office. The stranger, as soon as he put David on the train, [had] worked fast. He found Mr. Zigler and by telephone arranged with him to be early at the dock.
Mr. Zigler was only too glad to do all he could for Yanke Hennes’ daughter and her children. He signed papers at the Immigration Office that the family would not be a public charge and they were released. They were taken to Mr. Zigler’s home and entertained with the hospitality befitting Yanke Hennes’ daughter.
In the meantime Ben-Zion bought furniture [and] rented rooms, and the Bloomstocks prepared to receive the “greenhorn’s” family when they arrived.
Is he being mocking about "hospitality befitting Yanke Hennes's daughter?"
I don't think so, Zigler respects Leah's father.
Ben-Zion felt acutely the necessity of making a living and a home for eight in a new country. He was a stranger to the customs of the people and without much knowledge of the language. He had no money and was forced to wrestle in a strange environment for a mere subsistence. It was a grim economic struggle. There were Michigan’s severe winter storms to face, drifts that made the roads impassable and peddling out of the question. The boys found some work and the two older girls worked at dressmaking to help tide them over the bitter winter.
Life became almost intolerable for the family. Kosher meat had to be bought in Detroit and delivered by express. In the summer it came by boat from Milwaukee. Sometimes it was delayed and before it was delivered to the home it was not fit for use and had to be thrown out.
The New Year holidays came. The few Jews in Ludington had a minyan or meeting wherein they held holiday services. Ben-Zion and Leah could hardly endure the crude makeshifts, especially Leah, who always had pride in her heart when she remembered she was Yanke Hennes’ daughter. She imagined she had married a man beneath her in dignity. They both felt despondent at their ill fortune in the land of the free and both grew pessimistic. The boys opened a shop of their own and the girls worked with them.
Life began to grow easier and improvement cautiously crept into daily existence. In the meantime Leah gave birth to a baby boy [Joseph], destined to add to the grief of her old age. Leah tried her utmost to keep the home fires burning, to preserve peace at all hazards, but the baby was sickly, which added to the mother’s burden. Ben-Zion became very arbitrary and insisted that all money earned be handed over to him. The girls wanted some of their money for respectable clothes but Father Ben-Zion could see no need of it and there was much waste of money and he left the family.
This is where the theme of hard work and perseverance really strikes a strong chord in me. Despite the lousy weather (one wonders why didn't they immediately head south to Florida and thus enable generations of us to avoid Minnesota winters!) they all set to work, plying whatever trades they knew in a search for economic stability.
Since both had the training I assume it was a tailor shop.
With the Leah/Joseph issue left mysterious, is David trying to provide foreshadowing and pacing, or is he simply weighed down by the melodramatic tropes of his times? In fact there is a back story to Joseph that we don’t know to this day, but some clues will be revealed later in the Diary. I'm assuming that Joseph was actually born at least nine months after Leah arrived in Ludington in fall 1884, so this paragraph probably belongs in the next chapter.
It is interesting that this part of the story becomes uncharacteristically vague. Perhaps the family's struggle with adjusting to their new circumstances was so overwhelming and disorienting that even David's ability to describe it fails. He probably would not have recognized what was happening to his family as culture shock, which no one really acknowledged in those days. But it seems to me, and I have worked with many immigrant families as a teacher, that this played a significant role in their deteriorating family dynamics. As the story progresses, David becomes further and further removed from his parents' and siblings' immediate lives.
"He left the family"... so understated! Fantastic detail, the father is upset about money, and the daughters and their clothing desires are pawns in his conflicts with Leah about money. A lot is written about the shirtwaists and how much they cost. Notice the father is against daughters buying clothes, yet David the author often takes the view of the women.
This is so amazing. I remember hearing that "your great-grandfather David arrived in the U.S. at age 8 with $15 in his pocket." Now I see the quite different origins of the family myth! In the family story, David with the $15 was a very young boy and also alone in the USA.