Year 1919
Albert in Business
Albert and Ruth came in the afternoon of January 5th. They were both store-crazy, wanting David to open a store for them. A couple of days later, Mr. [Sam] Mark came in the afternoon and David talked over the matter of setting up Albert in business. He was anxious to lease the King Hotel store. In February, David had a talk with Mr. Mark. Lena began nagging David. Why had he not rented the King Hotel store for Albert and set him up in business? Lena was persistent in her talk with such insurmountable barriers that David was forced to leave the house without eating any supper.
February 25. Albert told David that Mr. Mark had changed his mind regarding renting a store in the St. Francis Hotel for him, and was asking David to give up his shoe department for him, so that he might have it exclusively as a shoe store in South St. Paul. David said, “Nothing doing along such a line. Good God! Such nerve!”
March 5. David came down with a severe cold and was hardly able to stand on his feet. He went home at noon and called for a doctor, who sent him to bed. Lena had a bad spell of lumbago while she was nursing him. Albert’s store bug was growing. All week he was planning. Nothing else would do except a store for him in South St. Paul. One brilliant spring morning, the air was radiant and [David] seemed to have heard a bass [note] in it as it touched the treetops. It vibrated, it rippled. The leaves were green and sharp. Albert made a proposition to work for David, asking him again to turn over the shoe department to him. A telegram arrived from Helen offering [David] her services if she should be needed.
What are the insurmountable barriers? What is David upset with? What does he want for Albert, and what does Lena want?
Confused lines of authority over Albert’s destiny. In Yiddish the extended family is called the machetenum. Was Sam Mark acting in the normative way here? Was it that Sam was asking David to put resources in Al without paying the bill?
March 25. Albert said pointblank that he wanted David to give him money to open a store with. David told him that he was no banker for such an enterprise. The next day, David received a telegram from Helen that she was coming home in the morning. David bought a railroad ticket to Hot Springs. Albert offered to Lena his services to stay in the store during David’s absence. She refused his offer and he was stark mad. Two days later, David left for the south. Arthur and Helen arrived from Trenton, New Jersey. During David’s absence Helen circulated a report in the Twin Cities, a story that her father was incapacitated to run his business and she wanted her husband Arthur Singer to take hold and manage the business for him.
Where is Hot Springs? Does he need that for medical treatment or was he escaping emotional conflict over Al?
Perhaps Mud Baden, that’s where they go several other times.
Note that he also leaves in time to avoid the other burr in the seat of his pants: Helen.
I am wondering how Helen managed to circulate a story in the Twin Cities when she was just coming in from Trenton, New Jersey. Who on earth would she have had as agents of communication?
April 10. Albert …wanted the car for a day. Lena also wanted to go to the city. Albert insisted that he would not ride with [his brother] Mose in the same car. Helen slammed the door, saying, “I shall not wear out the seat of your damned car!”
Early in May, Albert cried bitterly with tears before his mother because David would not set him up in business in St. Paul.
On Sunday, May 25th, Lena was stark mad at Mose for taking the car for a joy-ride and putting it out of commission. David attended a protest meeting against Polish atrocities inflicted on the Jews.
Further rebuke of Al for his presumptive attitude that David would help him out financially. David stands on top of the family pyramid, but judging, not helping. We read shortly about Al’s intense reaction to David’s rejection of the request for help: he cries!
The contrast of his family’s petty, self-centered squabbles against his own attendance at the protest meeting speaks volumes about David’s perspective — his sense of place in, or beyond, his own family.
Then, a few days later, Albert came in and told his mother, with tears in his eyes, of his misfortune in not getting any assistance in starting a store in St. Paul and said Ruth was willing to go to the country with him [to open a store there]. A month later, Albert took the auto and brought it back in the morning all smashed up. The horn wrenched, the wheel twisted and the top torn. It was a $60 repair job. A few weeks later, Albert told his father that he had rented a store building in Belle Plaine, Minnesota. On July 5th, Albert and Ruth came in the afternoon and told David that he and Mr. Mark were going on an Eastern trip to buy an opening stock for his Belle Plaine store.
So who is paying for the store rental? Why would they have to travel so far for supplies?
On Rosh Hashanah eve, a strong wind had been blowing all the previous night and the rain shattered and hissed through the trees and dead leaves. Albert and Abe came and had dinner with the family. Helen came late that afternoon. Lena reprimanded her for sewing on the holiday. Helen then accused her mother of talking about her, that she had to tell everybody that she was married and lives in Minneapolis. Her mother replied, “You cannot put out fire by throwing kerosene over it. If people are talking that way, don’t give them any chance to talk about you. Any kind of gossip will die out if it ain’t fed. The thing to fuss about ain’t what people are saying today but what they will say six months from now.”
Helen had a bad temper like a snapping turtle. She was unreliable as a waterbug when it gets a skin full and goes to sleep. So Helen cursed her mother, hoping that her tongue should become paralyzed forever, and she left the house. That was the cause of Lena’s weeping on Rosh Hashanah eve. She cried so much she had no more tears left and her eyes and throat were filled with them. She bore the insult with womanly courage but at last she rebelled.
But where else can you find more genuine or more sublime human behavior and devotion that that of a mother? A woman as weak as a lamb is able to stand up and defy the whole world like a lioness when filled with the white heat of natural love.
She felt so strained that she could neither stand nor sit down. She heard her heart beating like the sound of a drum. She trembled. The thought of that possibility made her feel as though the light had gone out of her life.
This sequence of events reads like a dismal choreography: Lena scolds Helen in front of everyone, so Helen points out something Lena has done — in an accusing tone. Lena counters with a smart-aleck remark, prompting Helen to amp the argument up all the way by delivering a curse of mythic proportions, declaring that she hopes her mother’s tongue may be paralyzed forever. Nasty, yes. But this is apparently what it takes for Lena to stop making negative comments.
And yet David’s odd folksy humor peeks through as well: I love the mixed metaphor of snapping turtle and waterbug!
"That evening, as the family sat at supper in silence, they seemed drained of all energy and their speech became utterly devitalized, as if a great vampire bat had sucked their hearts’ blood. Now and then Lena wiped away her tears with her kerchief. David’s hands trembled more than usual as he tried to lift the mustache cup to his lips. Lena’s whole body was numb with weariness and mental strain. She did not care what David said when he tried to console her. She wanted to be alone.
Lena walked upstairs so swiftly that when she reached the landing she thought she was going to faint. As she clutched the banister her heart hammered so hard from anger and excitement at Helen’s insults that it seemed about to burst through her corsets. She sat down, merely tucking one foot over the other. Her heart swelled up with misery until it felt too large for her bosom. It beat with jerks. Her hands were cold and a feeling of disaster seized upon her. There was pain and bewilderment in her face.
Gradually the sickening feeling began to depart. In a minute she felt all right and slipped down quietly into the kitchen and unloosened her corsets and crept up and lay down in bed. A new terror overtook David. His heart began beating irregularly, his head swooned slightly, a choking sensation rose in his throat. His head fell a little and his eyes closed over as his lips parted, though it lasted only a few minutes. Lena stayed home both days, being sick at heart on account of Helen’s meanness.
One night in the following week, Lena opened her loose mouth, which capped the climax and shattered David’s calculations to go to an important Masonic Lodge meeting, as it took David off his feet, but he didn’t say a word. A paralyzing numbness lay upon David at that moment, while in bed that night. His eyes fixed on the brass knobs in the corner. He felt his flesh wilt, his skin tingle damply, as if he had lost his heart completely. After all, he thought at last, she is a woman who has had difficulties enough to turn a stronger head than hers could ever have been.
Helen has apparently nearly killed her parents by inflicting grievous suffering upon them once again. Honestly, I cannot see the “sublime devotion” of Lena to Helen anywhere in these pages, unless sending her wedding linens counts.
The mustache cup is a nice touch! (A cup with an interior guard to keep the contents from soaking your mustache.)
October 13th, a metallic hardness dropped upon that day. The arch of the sky was steel, sunless, yet bright with cold. At the rim it dipped to copper save where the western brazen brass sun sent out harsh light to rest on the fields and make them too like brass. Soon thereafter, Ruth gave birth to a baby girl at St. Joseph’s hospital, named Miriam. Two days later, Arthur called to say that Helen gave birth to a boy, Mordecai, at Ashbury Hospital in Minneapolis. All went to visit Helen, and Arthur shook hands with Albert, reminding him that Albert had beaten him to it, saying “Our marriages were two days apart and our children also came two days apart.” There was rousing laughter from the nurses and from all those present.
My mother says that growing up, her family seldom visited her Uncle Al, Aunt Belle, or her grandparents. They visited David and Lena several times per year (Beth remembers having a Passover meal once at their house), and the Singer family would see Al and his children over the summer. My mother contends that this paucity of visits was at least partially due to their living “far away” from each other. Belle did help them find a house when Helen and Arthur returned with their kids from Texas, though (after the current timeframe), and once when Helen was ill, my mother lived with Belle for a brief period of time. Otherwise, considering the tensions among the Blumenfelds, it is no wonder that Helen didn’t relish spending much time with the lot. I don’t think it was religion per se that caused our branch of the family to move away from the others, but more a lack of regard and common interests. Though I feel regret at not having been more involved in our extended family or our Jewish roots growing up, perhaps it was precisely the rift that has enabled us to reconnect now and see each other in a fresh light.
Albert gave Arthur a look that showed he despised him. Albert, as a first lieutenant and a fanatical patriotic soldier, hated Arthur because he had dodged the military call. He would have turned him over to the military authorities as a contemptible slacker had he not been his sister’s husband. Albert had never any use or respect for him thereafter for that reason. “But my dear fellow,” Arthur protested, “most of them that went are sleeping beneath French soil.”
On the day of Hoshanah Rabbah, Ben-Zion came in the morning. Lena refused him admittance into the house because Leah was inside, sitting in the kitchen. She didn’t want to revive old sores, so Ben-Zion left for Minneapolis. Lena took Leah back to Freda’s.
This is terrific, we have the contrast here of how politics divides families.
His parents are now in the seventies or so, he must be in his fifties, and both aged parents are living in the Twin Cities, but don’t speak... this is really SAD.
On October 16th, David closed a deal with the Hamm Brewing Company for the purchase of a store building for $22,000. A few days later, David drove to Minneapolis to see Helen at the Ashbury Hospital. She told Lena that Mose lost fifty dollars of his expense money in a poker game. On the way home a fine rain began falling. The landscape was that of autumn; the sky hung with shades of gray and mist hovered about in the distance. A melancholy scene. The leaves were falling on all sides, like the last illusion of youth under the tears of irremediable grief.
On October 31st, a call came from the Home for the Aged that Ben-Zion was very sick and feeling dejected over the dimness of his eyes. A week later, David went to see him in the morning. On November 19th, Lena gave a Brith Milah party in honor of Helen’s first-born son. Later that month, David went to see Ben-Zion regarding his feebleness. That night, David had a horrible dream that upset all his calculations fearing a bad omen.
The next day, Lena went to a concert in the evening. Coming home we found Helen in the house holding her baby in her hands, saying, “He [is] sick. Infected from the brith [circumcision].” She called for a taxi, slammed the door and flew without saying goodbye. Later Mrs. Binder came with her car and took her bundles with her. Helen showed the Satan's pride to lug her down straight into brimstone when she’ll die.
Thanksgiving Day turned out gray and chill with an edge to the air that meant sleet and snow before long. But Lena’s Thanksgiving dinner, as usual, outdid many others by having three vegetables, two kinds of salad, roast turkey with an immense platter of fillings, which in itself was usual, and sherbet for finals. Arthur and Helen came in for Thanksgiving dinner.
December 28th. Mr. Mark and Albert came over and they talked over a plan for consolidating the Belle Plaine store with the South St. Paul store on a basis of 50-50 of net profits, Al to be given the management. The next day, Olson and Company contractors began remodeling the [South St. Paul] store building.
Now we have real proof of the extent of David’s success — he is able to buy a building for his store, for the impressive price of $22,000. Based upon the consumer price index comparisons, that would make the building worth about $350,000 in today’s dollars, and thus not a paltry sum. We are now about thirty years from David’s arrival from Latvia, and he’s the owner of a fairly major downtown retail building. Another “notch” on the ladder of his accomplishments.
Deborah:
How estranged can they be from Helen if they are giving her a birth party in religious terms?
Sean:
This invective certainly seems unjustified!
(Mrs. Binder is Arthur's sister Nettie.)
So Helen is in the soup again, this time for blaming her family for forcing a circumcision on her son? How important is religion among all the things they fight about?
How long does it take them to make up? Maybe these histrionics don’t actually affect the relationships that much, rather all the rage is going into the diary and NOT always displayed in angry behavior?
That would fit in with my mother’s recollection of David being extremely placid and silent.
Now we see that Al’s father-in-law, the locally prominent and successful A.S. Mark, was going to join with David in trying to help set Al up in business. So rather than this being a situation where Al was helping his father, it seems rather to be more a matter of Al receiving the help of his father and in-laws. And again, Al comes across as a demanding and unappreciative son, asking David to give up his lucrative shoe line so that Al could open up his own store in town. David expresses his judgment and criticism openly and sharply, clearly annoyed that Al has such presumptions. Even when David is offering to help his son, he stands in judgment of him — and we have to wonder, is he being fair to Al?