Betty Pollock Golden

A.  My name is Betty Pollack Golden; and I live at 8740 Roswell Road, Atlanta, Georgia.  And my birth date is June 16, 1926.  I
 was born in Asheville, North Carolina, at the Mission Hospital. 

Q.  And when did your family come to Asheville?

A.  My father came to Asheville in, oh dear, I don’t know what year.  He was traveling, he was on the road.  He decided to stay in Asheville.  He had not met my mother yet.  And he later met my mother, but he had a business, the Globe, which was a ready-to-wear.  They had a bowling alley at one time.  He had a movie theater at one time. 

Q.  Before he met your mother?

A.  Yeah.  As I understand it, later when he had the movie theater, my mother played the organ at the movie theater.

Q.  Do you know what year it was that he came to Asheville?

A.  Well, let’s see—they were married in l914.  So he had been there already, a couple of years.  He was from Pittsburgh, at that time.  Either Pittsburgh or Detroit.  They were in Pittsburgh.  She was in Detroit.  But they met in Pittsburgh.  He met her—he knew—as he tells it and she tells it, he picked her up at the movies.  And she was standing there, and he tipped his hat to her; and he knew—his sister knew my mother’s sister.  His sister was Aunt Bella, knew my mother’s sister, Aunt Dora.  So he went home and told his sister that he saw the girl he was going to marry.  And they were—my mother and father—went to a party, and my father told his sister, he said “There is the girl I told you about,” and it was my mother.  And they got together, and I don’t know for how long, but there was going to be a big picnic or party or something coming up in a few months.  He was already living in Asheville and he had to go back.  She says “If you come back and take me to that party, I’ll marry you.”  So he showed up, and they were married in l914; and they went to Asheville.

Q.  So they were actually married in Pittsburgh?

A.  Yes.  I have their marriage license and the newspaper description of it too.  Eventually, he went into the shoe business; but he came down there with Leo Kadison.  And Leo was not well when they went down, and they were in the mountains where it was healthy for him.  And they started selling, on the road selling; that’s what they were doing—he was a salesman. 

Q.  So Leo Kadison was a friend of his from Pittsburgh?

A.  Yes.

Q.  Do you know where your father’s family came from?

A.  They came from the border of Poland and Russia.  It really was Prussia, which doesn’t exist anymore.  But if you want me to tell you about that, it is quite a story:   His father and his oldest brother—Sam Pollack—Grandpa Pollack and Sam Pollack—they came to this country first, and they went to Pittsburgh.  And they wanted to earn the money to bring his wife and children over.  So he had to buy the tickets just a couple at a time.  So he first sent Grandma four tickets and she was to bring 3 children.  And they came over on the ship, first-class.  And this was Aunt Bella and Uncle Ben.  Now Uncle Ben later was in business with my father.  So about the third or fourth night out, the matre di came to my grandmother, and told her that she could not bring that little boy back into the dining room.  And she got scared to death, because she thought they were going to throw him off the boat.  So she asked them why, and they said because he is so messy.  So she couldn’t figure that out; finally they found out—he had never seen so much food—and he was embarrassed—he didn’t know what to do when they put all this food in front of him.  And he couldn’t eat all of this food, so he kept throwing it under the table.  And my grandmother didn’t know it—nobody knew he was doing it except the matre di found out, after the meal.  So they straightened that out, and they were able to keep going.  So they got here, and they got off the boat.  And my grandfather was standing there waiting, and Uncle Sam, and there were only 2 children.  And he said “Where is the third child?”  She said “She died.”  And she was afraid to tell him; she was afraid they wouldn’t let her come.  So now, there is two children left over there:  my father, and my Aunt Ida.  And I don’t know how long in-between—

Q.  Did the child die on the boat?

A.  No the child had died before they got on the boat.  So she had paid tickets for four, but she couldn’t switch children, because that would only leave one behind, and she didn’t want to do that—leave one by themselves, I guess.  So in the meantime—I don’t remember how long after that—but Daddy and Aunt Ida were to come, and they had to—they were really runaway, being hidden, and they had to leave like at midnight in the middle of the night, so that the soldiers—there was war going on, and so that they wouldn’t be found.  So they are out there waiting for the truck to pick up these people to take them to the boat.  And as they are waiting, the truck comes up—my Aunt Ida was so scared, she hung onto my father so—Daddy was 15 or 16 and I don’t know how much younger Aunt Ida was.  So the truck comes, and it was a lot of people.  So it was hurry, hurry, hurry!  So they pushed him onto the truck, and Aunt Ida got left behind.  And she starts to scream her head off, and she is calling for Lou!  Lou! –I am here.  I am here.  And he made them stop the truck and goes to get her.  She’s got herself wrapped around a tree, hanging on for dear life; and he grabbed her, and they got on the truck.  Now they didn’t get to come first-class.  They came steerage.  And so it was such a totally different experience for them.  And that poor lady was scared to death all her life of anything you could name.  She really was.  She just didn’t want anything to go wrong, she was just so afraid.  And it was a shame.  It was a traumatic experience.

Q.  The other two children who came with their mother were younger children?

A.  Yes.

Q.  Do you know where your mother’s family came from?

A.  Mother came from London, England.  Her maiden name was Schultz.  And her name was actually—we didn’t find this out until just a few years before she died—she told us one day, that her name was Ida.  And because Daddy’s sister that came over with him was named Ida, they didn’t want two Ida’s in the family, she changed her’s to Ada.  As far as we knew, it was always Ada.  So she was Ada Schultz Pollack.  And her father was a tailor to Queen Victoria.  And he made all the dresses for the ladies-in-waiting.  And mother use to go to the palace with him and deliver the clothes.  And the description of him was that he always had a tape measure around his neck.  And when he did it, he would keep the pins all in his mouth, and had them on a stand, and measure them and put the clothe on them.  And according to my mother, he actually invented this little item called the zipper.  Shoes and clothes had buttons all the way.  And he started a zipper.  He never patented it.  Life would have been totally different for the family if he had.  But she said he definitely started it, put it on purses; and so it was quite exciting.  They had the seal of Queen Victoria.  And it seems that every sister thought every other sister had it, and nobody had it or ended up with it.  She was only 4, she came over quite early.

Q.  Do you know why they came?

A.  I am assuming that they came to change their lives, I really don’t know.

Q.  Did they have family already here?

A.  Let me think.  They came to Pittsburgh.  They must have had family.  Mother had sisters and brothers, and I think they all came at the same time, but the exact reason, I really don’t  know.  Now that I think of it, there must have been cousins there. 

Q.  Do you know what year she came?

A.  She was born in 1897 and she was 4 years old, so about l901 would be about right.  So that would make her 15 when they got married in l914.

Q.  What year do you think your father came?

A.  Now he was 9 years older than my mother, so he had to have come over in the early l900’s.  He was 69 when he died.  Born in 1888.  So he was l6 when he came in l904.

Q.  So about the same time, and both families went to Pittsburgh. 

A.  When did they go to Detroit?  They were in Detroit when they met (looking in a book)  She was born in London, England, April 28, l897.  Her father and mother were Minnie and Morris Schultz.  She was born at home.  She lived in an apartment in the Marshall Building, it was called.  In l965 we went there—my father was gone—and she took all of us girls, and we went to Europe.  And the main thing she wanted to go for, was to go back and see this big house where she grew up.  And she always talked about the big white house; and how they walked to the Palace not too far from there, because they would deliver things.  And eventually, we finally did find where she was talking about.  It turned out to be a two-story house; but to a four-year-old, it was a very BIG house that she lived in.  And she said that she had a cousin—friend, Fannie Feinstein, in America.  That was one that she had.  And she came here in l901.  “My father came first, then my mother, me; my brothers and sisters came later.”  She doesn’t say how.   “My brother was born in Russia, my sister Rebecca in Russia, and Rose, and Dura, and mother were all in London.”  And they lived in New York for a year, and then moved to Detroit.  I was six when we moved to Pittsburgh.”  She talks about how she loved baseball.  That’s funny, because we all love baseball, and in later years, as she was  writing this book to our grandchild, we use to call her and get on the television—“the Braves are playing, the Braves are playing!”—and she always enjoyed baseball.  She could sit and watch all the games.  And it was interesting for that time—you know, for her age.  She says “Don’t you remember your Daddy and I use to go to those Asheville McCormick field, the Asheville Tourists?” and I said “Well, why didn’t you take us, then we would remember that you went there.  And she says “Well, we enjoyed it.”  I don’t know why they didn’t take us.  So what’s next?

Q.  Where were the places that you lived, when you were little?

A.  Well, I just happened to look at this—this is funny—she says “When we got off the boat, my brother Nat was in such a hurry to get to his father, which was Barry’s great-great grandfather, Morris, that he slid down a rail and split his arm open, he was running so fast.  And Uncle Nat was eventually in New York and had an ice cream—a newsstand.  And we use to love going up there, because he would let us make milkshakes and all kinds of cold drinks and everything.  He was in an office building.  And her sister, Rose, every Saturday night when she got paid, she brought me presents.  My mother was spoiled.  “My first ice skates.” And you know, they use to ice skate all the time.

Q.  But your mother was the baby, so that’s why…

A.  Yes.  And she also knew sign-language, my mother, and she had some neighbors that were deaf, and they taught her sign-language.  And she could do it quite well.  She was very knowledgeable with it. 

Q.  Did any of her sisters or brothers come to Asheville to live?

A.  No.  Aunt Rebecca lived in Pittsburgh; Aunt Dura lived in Detroit; and Uncle Nat lived in New York.  That was all, right.  Am I forgetting somebody?  That’s right.

Q.  So, when—your mother came to Asheville when she got married?

A.  Yes.  My—at that point, she was keeping a Kosher house.  And they get down to Asheville—this little town—she didn’t know how she was going to do it.  And for years, they ordered food—it use to come out of Cincinnati, most of it.  But by the time some of the Kosher meat would get there, because of the refrigeration problem, it would spoil.  And they just kept throwing things out, and she got very frustrated.  And she says that, after a lot of years of this, that she told Daddy—and we were all girls, you know, bored by ____--and we were—and she says something to the effect that she wants to make a change, for our benefit I guess, more than anything else.  And so she didn’t want to have the Kosher—she didn’t mind keeping the Kosher dishes and everything—I remember her changing for Passover—but she needed to make a change, as far as the food.  So he says to her “Alright, but I don’t want to know it, when you do it.”  So she goes, I think to Mr. Chandler, the only Jewish grocer in town, and that’s where she bought her food.  So this time she had to go to the market.  She bought a chicken.  She took the chicken home and she cooked it and she put it on the table; and at that point, she couldn’t eat it.  She couldn’t bring herself to take a bite of the chicken.  So my father was looking at her, and he started to laugh, and he knew exactly what was happening.  So he did take the first bite.  And after that, she said O.K., it’s alright.  So that’s how they changed over from keeping Kosher.  Because she said she was tired of just throwing food away.

Q.  Did Mr. Chandler have Kosher food?

A.  Mr. Chandler was Kosher, definitely.

Q.  But that’s where the meat came out from Cincinnati, and it spoiled?

A.  Yeah. 

Q.  Do you remember the different places they lived?

A.  I was told they lived on Broadway.  That was my oldest sister’s.  Where Hillside and Broadway, that area, where the streetcar came along there.  Who was it that was on the streetcar sharpening knives—I guess that was her father?  No, somebody else did, in Asheville, on the street car.  The people would just set it up near the street car, and the people would come and they would sharpen knives.

Q.  Somebody Jewish?

A.  Somebody that was part of our family.  You know, in those days, they use to get big  houses and bring the cousins and the aunts and uncles; and you know, everybody was in the same house.

Shuwitz, Hack (?)—he eventually ended up in the shoe business also.  Anyway, I got off the track.

Q.  No, that is interesting.  Did he live in Asheville, or just come for the summer?

A.  No, as they came over from the old country, they were living together; and each family went on their own eventually, but—

Q.  But he was part of your family?

A.  Yes.  It was a cousin.  What is his name???  I know it.

Q.  You’ll think of it.  Your parents and your sisters had a house, and more relatives would come—

A.  A house and a little Boston bulldog, and they lived on Broadway.  Then my father decided he was going to buy this house that was being built in Kenilworth.  And I don’t know—I think they bought it when she was pregnant with me—at some point close to when I was born.  And he, as they were building it, he was able to add a few things that he wanted to do.  So it was kind of customized.  And I went through the same thing that my mother did; because to me, it was always a big house.  A few years ago, I went back over there, and I was looking and going through it; and I am thinking, this is a big house, but not quite as big as I thought it was, all the years I was growing up.  It was 24 Child’s Avenue.  And it is definitely there.  It has changed hands a number of times.  And after they left there, my mother, if you want this story, my mother got this word that it had become a house of ill repute.  And she was having a fit.  And she decided she wanted to go see if it was true.  It is a wonderful old house.  And so she drove up and parked the car down the street, and she walked to the door; and when she rang the bill, she told them she was having trouble with the car, and could she please use the telephone.  And she went in, and she was just horrified.  It was a pay phone hanging on the wall; and the floors had been painted and all this stuff.  And she could never get over it.  But then later it was sold, and nice people had it.  And we knew them, the last ones.  In that neighborhood, the Pollacks, the Perlmans, the Blumbergs (not Jack, not Louis, not Sigmund—it wasn’t that part of the family—it was another part—but they lived opposite us on the corner.  The Perlmans lived on the other corner.  The Breemans lived there.  The Robinsons lived in Kenilworth, but not in that corner.

Q.  Wadopians?

A.  Yeah, they lived on Forest Hills Drive.   The Robinsons, and Jacobsens.

Q.  Where did the Jacobsens live?

A.  They lived across the street from the Robinsons.

Q.  What about the Wadopians?

A.  Not then, they weren’t there at all.  Yom Kippur, we use to walk, and we were a long way.  If you were in Kenilworth, we were like on the other side of the track somewhere.  And we were the furthest away.  So we would start out walking, and we would pick up these people as we went along.  The Obley, the Pinsaleys (?)—Whitleys lived up there, past the Robinsons.  So as we went along, we picked up all these people, and we all walked across town. At that point, there was a Shool ? and there was the Temple.  And so the kids knew where they were going; and we separated and went our own ways.  It was a very nice memory for me—I wish I could walk that far today, but I can’t.

Q.  So where did you live after that?

A.  I lived there all my life.  And Mildred, my oldest sister, had married Bill Michael Love, and they were living with us.  And then they moved over to—where’s the ballpark, up that hill—

Q.  I don’t know what that’s called.

A.  And their daughter was born there, they lived there first.  That was before Montford Avenue, I guess.  Their daughter’s name was Maxine, and she was the first grandchild.  And it was a tragedy.  We lost her in a bus accident.  And she was 6 years old, had just turned 6.  She was a beautiful, beautiful little girl.  And she rode—they had the rhododendron parade downtown—you probably got the story about that—in July usually.  The rhododendron all in bloom and we had a parade.  And she rode in the parade in a little horse and buggy.  She was just like a little princess, she was so beautiful.  And it was after that, the following year actually.  She was 6 years old.  And then they moved to Montford Avenue, a house.  I can’t remember the exact location.  Further down than the Temple.

Q.  So the Jewish Community Center was on—Chestnut—it was the Temple—

A.  It was right on the corner there.  It was a big house.  We had a Seder there, a big thing I remember.  Of course it was a whole Jewish community.  And we were in all the rooms, everybody, you know, it was filled up; and just about the time when we opened up the door for Elijah, little Allen Hughbard came in, and like, with a flare.  And I never forgot that, because everybody was so hysterical, because I guess he had walked outside, and they opened the door, and in he came, like Elijah, you know.

Q.  Now that is a family I never have heard of.

A.  Beck Hughbard.  Beck had two sons:  Malcolm and Allen Hughbard.  And she worked for my father in the shoe store.

Q.  Were they Jewish?

A.  Yeah.  And I guess he died, or she was divorced—I don’t quite remember.  But there was no husband, that I remembered.  And she worked for my father, and she was in charge of the hosiery for the store.  And so she was—the hosiery, purses and bags.  She worked at the store in Asheville.  There were a lot of Jewish merchants.

Q.  Let’s step back.  When did your father go into the shoe business?  Well, first, I think you need to tell the story of Maxine, and how she died.

A.  She was in a bus accident.  PAUSE   I don’t think I want to tell the story.  It was very traumatic.  I was in Chicago.  And I do remember that part—I was with my sister and brother-in-law—Alberta, my next sister.  There were Mildred, Florence, Alberta and Betty.  And between Alberta and me, there was a boy who died, Alvin.  He died as an infant.  Maxine was like a little sister to me.  And I was visiting, and we had gone out to the camp where she was, and saw her before we left.  And we were in Chicago and visiting somebody.  And my brother-in-law called, and he told my sister that there had been an accident; and that we had to leave and go to Asheville.  Of course we had to drive.  And so we went there, went back, got the stuff in the car, and we left.  And we drove all night, and we got to Chile’s Avenue, to the house; and one block before, he stopped the car.  And that’s when he told us that she had already died.  And so that was the first that we realized it.  He carried it all the way; he just couldn’t tell us yet.  Anyway, that was Mildred and Bill’s daughter, the first grandchild.

Q.  Was she the only child at that point?

A.  No, Kenny was 2 I think.  She was 6.  I was 15.  I have a picture of Alberta and Maxine and I all dressed alike, like these mother-daughter—the three of us all dressed alike.  She was a dear child, a gorgeous little girl.  And I am not saying it from the family point-of-view—she really was beautiful.  And a photographer who had taken her picture, had, unbeknownst to my sister, had sent her picture into a contest of some kind, a photographers’ contest.  And it turns out—I don’t know if you would remember—but when little charm bracelets first started and these came out, they had a little round charm and they had pictures in them.  That was the first time anybody had ever seen that, in a frame,, and her picture was in it.  And they started to (like a stock photo)—like you buy a picture frame and it has a picture in it.  And there she was.  And he had sent it in and he had won this contest.  I don’t know what it was all about after that.  But then people started letting my mother know, and letting my sister know, that they saw her picture in these charm bracelets.

Q.  Now what did Mildred and Bill do, for work?

A.  His father was the IXL store, the China shop.  By that time, they had already changed to the National Mercantile, a restaurant supply business on Broadway.  And his business was right down the street from Roccamora.  Friendly competition, yes.  So that was his business, at the time.  They had another child, and in later years, they were divorced.  Richard was the youngest, he was born after Kenny.  His father was on Patton Avenue, the IXL business, Samuel?—Abraham or Samuel.  But we all called him Papa.  He was a dear man.

Q.  So was his business on Patton Avenue near your father’s shoe store?

A.  Well, nothing was far away.  But if you go down from the Square, down Patton Avenue, our store was in that central block there, and then Haywood Street.  And he was just further down Haywood.  On the other side of the street, past Haywood and on the opposite side of the street, beyond the S & W.  The S & W was a meeting place, Thursday nights, we grew up in the S & W—maid’s night out.  And we grew up with Mickey Mouse, when it first started.  They had a little room upstairs, and we would gather up there, and they had the movies going for the kids.  And it’s still a beautiful building—it’s a landmark.  I mean it has a lot of memories for all of us.  We did spend a lot of time there.

Q.  Do you know where your father’s bowling alley was?

A.  In Biltmore, as you drive in, where the main—there was nothing else around, there was just one little main circle.  The railroad station, and there was a bowling alley. 

Q.  Did he run the bowling alley?  Did he have a partner?  Was it another Jewish guy?

A.  He did have a partner, I really don’t know his name.

Q.  Where was the movie theater?

A.  I understand that the movie theater was right where Woolworth’s—next door to Pollacks’ which was then become Pollacks Shoe Store.

Q.  Woolworth on Haywood?

A.    Woolworth on Patton Avenue.  But I have no recollection of that.

Q.  And was that before he had shoes, or he had someone to manage that too?

A.  It was before.

Q.  Now he was the manager of the Globe, but do you know—

A.  I have a little wine glass that has The Globe on it, that was from there.  That was his.

A.  (HUSBAND)  That was the other guy’s.  They split up, and he owned the shoe store.  It started with a B.  Last name.

Q.  I’ll have to research that.  Did he run the theater himself?

A.  I have no idea about the theater.  I was shocked when I heard about it.  I don’t know anything about it.

Q.  So when did he open up his shoe store?  Do you remember it?

A.  Oh sure.   I can show you a picture.  I worked in the shoe store, for years.  He had—I think it was in the middle ‘20’s.  Because the first known picture that I had here of the Christmas parties was ’31.  I think there was another one from ’29.  And he had already been open.  But when he started this Christmas party deal, he and—he started it first, and he says he wants to give shoes away—so he started working with the churches and with the Salvation Army; and he counted how many shoes he wanted to do that year, when he first started.  And they got the most needy children, and they brought them there.  And then it grew.  They had so many children, and he never turned anybody away.  It became a real special thing:  for this Jewish man, who was having this Christmas party for children, that needed shoes.  And my memories of that are so unbelievable, that I will never forget it.  And I remember the Salvation Army use to have a board, a dime-board, and everybody walked by and put a dime; and they wanted a mile of dimes, and they collected money.  And it was always in front of our store.  And between the mile of dimes and this Christmas party, you can imagine all that was going on there.  And there was a man whose name was Carl Perkins, and he use to come down there, and start singing with the children, about 5 o’clock in the morning they would come down there.  And they would start singing Christmas carols; and he would lead them.   The store was like a U-shape, and they were in there—it was cold.  And then they would open the doors, and Daddy had helpers there that you wouldn’t believe.  He had judges that came in, lawyers that came, some from the police department.  And the nuns from St. Genevieve.  Who else?  Anybody that wanted to come, could come.  And they would walk down—my father could have all these children seated, and he would go down and say 3-B, 6-A, 2-B—and he name what size they needed.  He had all these shoes up there, and they would get them.  But he could look at your foot and tell you what size shoe you wore.  And I was in charge of socks.  So they had to first  come to the hosiery counter, and we had all these sock, and we would measure the children by their fists.  If you put the heel and the toe of a sock together, that is the size of your foot.  So we would measure the socks, hand them the socks; then they would go and sit down.  If the shoes were still in condition that they could wear them—most of them were wearing the ones from the year before that they got there—and if they had holes in them, he took them away from them.  If they didn’t, and they were O.K., he would put new laces in, and they would put them over their shoulder and wear their new shoes out.  And at the end of the day, he had taken all these shoes that were just of no use—and they had started piling them up, piling them up.  And it looked like a big Christmas tree, when they got all through.  And it was quite a stunning sight to see.  Every year.  And as everybody else came into the family—you know the pictures that I had—you know, Stan is in some, Richard and Kenny, when they were little—so it was an experience, for children to grow up with.  Later, when we went into business, I wanted to do the same thing.  And we followed through.  We were in the children’s wear business in Michigan.  So we did it in such a way that we got families, and got clothes and everything out, to get for them.  And there was a man next door to us that had a shoe store.  And he gave the shoes for it.  So it was a tradition for us.

Q.  Who was Carl Perkins?

A.  Perk—they had, at North Carolina, the Library, they put a picture in the paper that I had given them from the shoe store.  And Perk was in the front.  And somebody wrote to us, and said “I know who that is” and so, he was a man that was in my life, doing that.   He was a friend of my father’s.  I can’t remember what he did.  I don’t know.

Q.  We have a lot of people who called, and told us stories, so I probably have it written down.

A.  ‘Cause I had her name, I kept it, but then when I lost all the E-mails out of the computer, I lost that and don’t remember what it was.

Q.  So did your family go to the Synagogue, or Temple, or both?

A.  Yes, to both.  My father was at the Synagogue.  And he was always at the Shool ? , you know, when he went to services.  But with the idea, he made changes because of us girls.  Since he didn’t have any boys, to follow through with him.  They talked about it again, and they decided that we should go to the Temple.  And you know, do the Reform, rather than the Orthodox, so he was very much a part and parcel of both.  And he wanted us to know both.  So there are many things to this day, I don’t know the difference.  I don’t know whether I got it from Reform or got it from the Orthodox.  It was a very good life experience.  Because he only wanted us to know that we are Jewish, do the best we can; and I always think of him when I think he always use to say “I don’t have any boys that look say cattish ? for me”.  And we kept saying to him “Daddy, you got boys.”  Well, I don’t have any—my kids, to say cattish, and we say cattish  every year for him.  And I always think of that, when he said that he was concerned, because he didn’t have boys that would say cattish.  He later realized that the girls were just as good.

Q. What about the cemetery?  Tell us about the Lou Pollack cemetery.

A.  He was very concerned within his heart, he wanted to be sure, that the ground, that the people who died in Asheville, had the right place to be.  And so he and several others, the founders of the cemetery—and Chandler was included in that too, and Argetar???.  And they were all friends, you know.  But they got together, and they started formally, fixing the cemetery.  But Daddy was the one who would go out there every week.  He would pick up these guys downtown that would mow the lawn, and would do the weeding.  And he was always doing something, and that came out of his own pocket for a long time.  And then, when they got to be formalized, and people were starting to try to pay a little, you know, for the graves; the book that he kept, really, is priceless.  You know,  how each, whether they paid $5, and who paid and who didn’t, and he had to go ask for it.  Things like that.  Since he did so much work for it, that’s when the Shool came up with the idea that they would change the name to the Lou Pollack Cemetery, Lou Pollack Memorial Park.  And they had a big, really lovely dinner, and presented him with this plaque;  and that’s what they called it, because he really made it what it is. So we have always been—I carry that on, because I feel very strongly about.  He and Cinder Argentar would go out, and the two of them would sit on the benches and play pinochle while all the men were doing all this stuff; and then Daddy would oversee the weeding and the mowing.  And I was sitting there going around, and read the stones, or sit there and play cards.  So going to a cemetery is not to me, like a lot of people—very hesitant about.  And I want it kept up too, because this is what, to me, what Judaism is—it’s hallowed ground.  And those people deserve to be in a respected place.

Q.  When they started it, was there no Jewish cemetery, or just a Reformed one?

A.  The Reformed one was first.  The Temple was part of the City cemetery, but there was nothing—I mean listen, it goes way back.  They had some people, and they buried it, and that’s where they had the grounds.  But I don’t know what year, really, he started being a part of it like that, and working out there.

Q.  I think the book went back to l915.

A.  Yeah, that could be.  So that was right after he was married.  So he was probably involved in before that.  He was very generous, thank God, my father was.

Q.  Did he ever tell you a story, about the Synagogue burning down, before you were born?

A.  No, I don’t remember that.  My sisters might, but I don’t.

Q.  So what was it like to go downtown, when you were growing up?

A.  Well, we practically lived there!  You know, I can picture all the stores.  And you know when you think about it, a small town, like Asheville is, and let’s face it—the town was Patton Avenue and Haywood Street.  And that was it!  No shopping centers and all that.  But when you think about the Jewish merchants, and how many of them there were;; and I can picture walking from the Square—even around the Square, you were there—the Argentar’s and Finkelstein with the pawn shops, and coming down with your family—Schochet’s, and Murray and Fannie Gross had a jewelry store just before Pollack’s Shoe Store.  And E. C. Goldberg had a little news stand that was just about this wide, and he sat there all the time, right next to the Imperial Theater.  And Zagier’s and Joe Cooper’s Men's Store, and Shoss—that’s right—that’s what we took over.

Where the dancers’ is.  And after we were married, his father and my father got together and put us in business.  When I think about it—What was it called?

A.  HUSBAND:  The New Hollywood (?)  LAUGHTER

A.  You had to be young to do this.  I was teaching school at St. Genevieve, in west Asheville.  His father had a factory on Cox Avenue.  Martin was born, we had the baby at home.  We use to go downtown.  I would drive, take him to the factory; I would go to the store, open up the store, stay there and work until noon.  He would come up and go into the store and I left to go to school for the afternoon; and then later when we closed the store, we went home.  We were living then—we moved 9 times the first year we were married, but by that time, we had—we had some crazy places—we were living where Wesley Brown and Beaver Lake had a two-story duplex—did we rent it from him?  It has been kind of rebuilt over it, but it is right on the lake, and it was like a round, very modern in those days.  And we lived upstairs.  Between Marlboro and Merrimon.  Why are you laughing?

Q.  Because Mom and I drove by there last night, and Mom said “I remember when Betty and Stan lived up there.  I hated that place.  You had to go up these stairs—it was awful.”

A.  The first flight of stairs was outside.  Then when you were inside, you had to go up another flight of stairs.  But we had two porches or balconies:  one facing the lake, and one on the side.  And the summer that Martin was born was the summer that polio became so bad.  And we girls had a mar chon game; and what we did, because you couldn’t go to any public places—they had closed the Beaver Lake swimming pool.  They closed everything, so you couldn’t take the children.  So they would come over and bring the babies, and we’d sit them out on the porch, and we would play mar chon; and when the sun started going down, we took them all to the other porch.  And we stayed there, and this is what we did, you know.  You just did the best you could.  And at that point, Brody’s was down there too, and had their toy shop.  You know who I worked for, for awhile?  David Lowenberg.  His shop was near Fader’s Drugstore, between Fader’s and Edward Berge Shoe Stores.  A men’s shop.  Old farmers use to come in there, every Saturday, in the overhauls.  They had wads of money like this, and they would come in and want this shirt, and you know, we sold.  And I worked at the shoe store for a long time.  And I never in my life, until now, had to go out and look for a job.  Somebody would always call us:  “Can you help us out at Easter?  Can you help us out?”  You said Beloven—they were on Biltmore Avenue first, and then came down to Haywood Street.  They had the first Cancellation Shoe Store there.

Q.  What did you do in your father’s store?

A.  I was generally, behind the counter, either cashier or the purses, or the socks or hosiery, or the 'go ‘fer'.  Max Share, he worked for my father.  We had the downstairs store, over on College.  The entrance was on College Street, but the steps were on Patton.  And he was the manager of that part of the store; and Carl Rinehart was the men’s department.  But Max Share had two sons:  Melvin and Harvey  (END OF CD 1)

Golden:  I came across this story when mother met daddy.  She says “I went to the theater, I was late and the first act was over.  I had a ticket in my hand.  Lou was wearing a black derby, a navy blue Norfolk suit, and he tipped his hat.  I ignored him.  He did it again, and I got mad, and tore the ticket up, and went back to my father’s office.  He went home and told his mother he saw a Jewish girl that he would give anything to know who she is.  And that night Ida gave a party.  When I walked in, he pointed and said ‘There’s the girl.  Who is she?’ ‘Dora’s sister.’  ‘How come I didn’t meet her before?’  He took me home, and my father came out on the porch and said tomorrow is Labor Day.  The next night I was at the street meeting—it was a workday—and I was at the street car, delivering a suit.  She was out delivering clothes.  On the way home, he asked me ‘Do you take a dare?’  And he said ‘I dare you to marry me.’  ‘I’ll take you up on it,’ thinking I was safe, because he lived down South.  And I thought it was the end of the world.  ‘You come back with a picnic in a week and I will marry you.’  He almost made it, but missed his train in Cincinnati.  However, Ida told me how her brother was crazy about me.  He called me on the phone, and Dora said to my mother ‘A man is calling the kid.’  She answered ‘So if a man is calling the kid, let the kid answer.  Why are you answering?’  The second time he came back, he went we went to Highler’s Ice Cream Parlor, and he took out my diamond ring and put it on.  I was working at Coffman’s Stockroom.  Then a sales lady, and then at Johnson’s (in Pittsburgh).  My father didn’t like it.  They thought Dora should marry first, because she was older.  And mother said, ‘If hers comes first, let her take hers; when Dora’s comes, she’ll come later.’  And I did two years later.”  So we always had the idea, you know, that the oldest should marry first. 

Q.  So you also came across some stuff about where they lived?

A.  This was in Pittsburgh, l914, when they were married.  And they had about 75 people there, and her mother did all the cooking.  A lot then, and I guess they didn’t think anything about it.   They would go to Cincinnati for buying trips.  Daddy was on the train all the time.  And I’m not surprised he would miss the train in Cincinnati, because from the time I could remember anything, when we took him to the train, he was always running when the train was running out of the station:  “Wait!  Wait!—I’m here!”  And it was like “Here comes Mr. Pollack,”  and he was always right behind the train.  “On our 35^th wedding anniversary, every hour on the hour he brought a present to my mother.”  “In l901, four years old, she went from London to New York, 11 months later to Detroit, until I was six.  Then Pittsburgh, then Asheville, when I was married.”  Cincinnati was where they went on their honeymoon on a shoe-buying trip.  LAUGHTER  They had a 10-day Excursion ticket, and they went to Hot Springs, Arkansas.  They use to always go there.  They went on cruises.  I have a picture of my father on a cruise, in a pool.  The swimming pool that they had on this ship, looked like—it was probably oil cloth, I imagine.  But it looked like these large black plastic garbage bags.  And you could see in the picture, that it was like a large wooden tub, lined with this, and they had the water in there.  And you can see how close it is—the ocean is like right behind where the pool is.  It would have made me a little nervous I think.  When you think about cruise ships today, with the pools.  And this literally, was like a lining.  1939 they went.  They went on a 38-day cruise to South America.

Q.  Wow.  Was that an occasion, like an anniversary?

A   They had been to West Indies, South America, a world-cruise, Hot Springs three weeks every year.  These were things that she told me.  They went to Atlantic City; they were in Israel, she went on a cruise.  He never got to Israel.  They were in Montreal.  They traveled, as he got older.

Q.  So who would watch the store?

A.  I’m sure, by that time, Carl Rhinehart probably did; and he had Hassack was there.

A.  HUSBAND:  Carl had left, and was on the road selling shoes. 

A.  Was he?  I don’t remember Uncle Ben being there either…I don’t know.  When did he retire?   In ’39, after he had the stroke.

Q.  What year did the store close?

A.  He sold it to Butler’s.  It was called Pollacks at that time, and after that they moved to Florida.  They sold it right after the heart attack in ’39, so around that same time.  Once it belonged to Butler’s then we were out of it.  That’s where Uncle Ben was, at Butler’s.

Q.  So what was the deal with Uncle Ben?

A.  Well, he worked for him.  He was in the Navy; and when he came back, he worked for him, in WWI.  But then he went to Butler’s when they bought Pollacks.  Daddy did not.

Q.  Well, why is there the Pollacks Shoe Store and then there is that Pollacks one on Haywood that I showed you.

A.  You know, we don’t know, because I think that was a Cinderella shop.  Sandra took that picture and brought it home, and we cannot figure out—Cinderella was a shoe store that he owned.  And it was a second store.  To my mind, that store on Haywood was the Cinderella store, but he must have had it as Pollacks.  Family shoes, just like Pollacks.  Cinderella was all girls; there were no men’s shoes there.

Q.  Well, my dad said to me that he thought your dad had a small chain of about 16 stores…

A.  No.  HUSBAND:  He did.  B:  He was in Greenville and Spartanburg and Greensboro and Raleigh.  Probably Charlotte.

Q.  So who ran all these stores?  Relatives?

A.  I think he just hired people.  There were a few pictures of ribbon-cutting, when they did that.  I was in one in Greenville, but that was all I ever saw.  You know, by this time Alberta was gone, married; Mildred was married; Florence was married; so I was the only one at home.  They weren’t working at the store.

Q.  Did he ever want his son-in-laws to go into the business?

A.  Yeah, he was in it for five or ten minutes.  Bill was already in his own business.  And then when Florence got married, she was in Florida?  Her first husband worked in a store for awhile in Jacksonville.  They were married in Asheville.  Now Alberta is married to Roy, who was from Chicago, so she really has been gone the longest, out of Asheville.  Because she left there when she went to college, and she got married, and that was it.  Yeah, he wanted the boys in there; but the boys didn’t want to be there I don’t think.  Well, you were the only one, after Herbie left.  That was after he was out of it too.  You were on the road.  Didn’t you go out selling shoes?  HUSBAND:  No, I was selling women’s wear.  B:  And he would get so upset, because Stan would come home and say he couldn’t sell, nobody wanted what he was selling.  And Daddy got so upset, because there was never a salesman that ever, ever walked into his store that he didn’t buy something from.  If he threw it out, he didn’t care.  But he bought something.  He said “The man is on the road, making a livelihood—how can you turn somebody away?!”  He would get so frustrated when this happened with him.

Q.  Do you think that most of his salesmen were Jewish salesmen?

A.  I don’t know.  Wasn’t that Frenchman a shoes salesman that he made friends with and helped along the way?  Had a lot of problems, and Daddy helped him get back home.  But as far as the shoe business, by the time we were married, he was already out of it, when we were married.  That is why the two fathers bought us this business, this Little Hollywood shop business, was to get us going.

Q.  First, let’s go—did you all grow up knowing each other?

A.  No.

Q.  How did you meet your husband?

A.  Well, the story is, my version is, see, the boys would have a list and they would call the girls and somebody would call and say we are going to pick you up at a certain time; and we would go over to the Jewish Community Center or go to a movie, or whatever.  So I was on the other side of the tracks out in Kennelworth, so it was really a trek, everybody had to come pick me up.  So I got a call, and he told me his name—and he had such a sexy voice on the phone, you know—and I thought, hmmmm, this is somebody new.  And he says we will pick you up a certain time.  So we went to the Jewish Community Center, which was—no it was the Women’s Club on Charlotte Street.  An EZA dance.  The place we went to was called the Women’s Club, and that was not a Jewish place.  They rented it for parties.  But this first time, we were at the Jewish Community Center; and I asked somebody to please point Stan out to me.  And they pointed to him.  And I looked, and I thought boy, he sure doesn’t look like his voice.  And I found out later, it wasn’t him.  It was Raymond Fox.  Raymond Fox—and I have no clue when the two of us met, if my life depended on it.  I’m sure it was that night.  HUSBAND:  I don’t remember a dance at the Community Center.”  Maybe it was at the Women’s Center.

Q.  Was Raymond Fox, Ben Fox’s brother?

A.  Yeah.  (he and husband in high school together).  And we saw Raymond and his wife Goldie were at a school reunion.  So we were with them a couple of reunions.  He died a few years ago.

Q.  So how long did you go out before you decided to be married?

A.  Well, he went in the Army; and I went off to school.  I was in college in Illinois first, and then I came back to Asheville.  University of Illinois.  And then I was in Asheville and didn’t know what I was going to do.  We were writing, and he was stationed in Camp Forest, Tullahoma.  And so he started telling me about this school in Nashville.  And I ended up going there, to the Peabody, to a teachers’ college.  So he came and went from there a few times; and then he left, and went overseas.   And that was in ’44.  I had graduated ’43, so by now it is 1944.  And he came back in l946, and I was in Nashville; and it was right coming up to the end of the year.  And I left and went—he came in—and my father and mother had by that time built some apartments in Palm Beach, Florida.  And they were living there, so I went there.  He came home, and we were married ten days later, in Asheville at the Grove Park Inn by Rabbi Jacobs.  He had confirmed me, Stan’s sister Ann and Dorothy Zagier Fleegal—the three of us were the whole confirmation class.  Rabbi Jacobs confirmed us, and then he married us; and he left shortly after that and went to Hillel ? up in St. Louis.  He was 94 when he died a couple of years ago.

Q.  So you had the store, and how long did you have the store in Asheville?

A.  Several hours too long (LAUGHTER)  We had it a couple of years.  And then, you know, we needed to find something.  We have done a lot of moving, unfortunately.  We went from Asheville—he got a job at Wing’s Shirts in Greenville—Bill Rosenfelt, who was our best man at our wedding was living in Greenville, and he told him about it.  And so he got a job there.  While we there, Sandra was born there.  Martin was already born in Asheville.  And so we were there for a year and a half.  It was like friends from there forever.  And right after Sandra was born, we moved back to Asheville.  Sandra was born in 1952; and we went to Lansing, Michigan in 1956—the same year my and his father died.  He worked for his father those four years.

Q.  How did you end up in Lansing, Michigan?

A.  Well, I had friends there.  And we were looking to get out on our own—a girl I had known at Peabody, and we stayed friends all our lives.  And she and her husband were living up in Lansing.  And we corresponded constantly.  And I had written to several people, and said, you know, could you find anything, that there is an opening or something?  So he called us, and said that he knew of an opening.  So Stan went up there, and he went to work with Federal’s Department Store, first.  HUSBAND:  For the people that were leasing the furniture departments at Federal.  B:  So he went up on the train, and then I took the two children on the train, with the dog, with a young girl who was taking care of the children; and we all went to Michigan in the middle of winter, January.  And I had never seen so much snow in my entire life, as what we got into.  My cousin picked us up in Detroit at the train station.  And he said to me, for which I never forgave him “I am going to drive you to Lansing.”  We were going to change trains.  But no, he had to drive us.  Well, it was so icey, and it was so bad, that he drove on the side, the shoulder of the road the entire trip to Lansing.  And there we were all in the car, and how we got there safely, I will never know, but we did.  And we stayed there 30 years.  1956.  And shortly after he went to work—we were in the furniture store.  And they fired a man, he was manager, and they hired Stan.  And I worried about that.  It just plagued me, I said “Don’t trust them, if they can do that.”  And sure enough, they closed the furniture department.  And again, the same friend, again, had overheard a conversation that somebody in the ready-to-wear, was looking for a manager.  And he went in there, and he was a Jewish fellow, and he talked to him, and he got a job there, for 8 years, until we decided to go into business ourselves, in the same shopping center.  We opened a children’s wear shop; and we were there for 20 years.

Q.  Now how did you decide to end that?

A.  Well, I think discount houses kind of made the decision for us, you know.  That was then when it first started; and it got very difficult.  We held our own for a little while, but we were a family children’s shop.  And it was very hard.  They started discounting things all over the place.  We hung on longer than anybody thought we could.  And then we decided—somebody came along and they wanted to buy it—I use the word loosely—and they took it over.  And by that time Alberta was living here in Atlanta.  And my mother was in Sarasota.  And they had a terrible hurricane.  And I was so worried about her, because she got left in her building.  And my mother was never afraid of anything, and she had lived through plenty of the hurricanes; but this time she was really upset.  And they finally got her into a school-shelter; and she didn’t have her medications.  And she was by herself, because they had taken the other people from the building somewhere else.  So at that point—she herself made up her mind—we had wanted her to come up to Atlanta, to be near Alberta—and she said “I am not going through another hurricane.”  So she decided she would go to Atlanta and she called me; and we didn’t know where we were going to go.  And she said “If you go to Atlanta, I’ll go.” 

Q.  Can we go back again, did you do much in Hendersonville, with the Jewish community there?

A.  Not really.  It wasn’t as easy to get back and forth then, you know.  About 45 minutes to get there.  We were all AZA and BBG; and I got to be Sweetheart one year at BBG.

Q.  Who were the other people like your age, maybe in the Shool your age, that you remember?

A.  Dorothy Zagier, Dorothy and Joanne.  First of all, I didn’t—every time my folks went away on a buying trip or whatever, I boarded at St. Genevieve’s, so I was not always in the circle, until we got older.  And then when we got married, the only people that we knew were my sisters’ friends who were married.  Because you suddenly went from this one step of single, to married.  So we were friends with the Marters, Dave and Estelle.  They were friends of my sister Mildred’s.  She lived in Asheville, and we knew them all, and this is where it started.  Then Marilyn and Buddy Patton were married; and Dorothy was married; Phyllis Gallumbeck Sultan; Mary and Louis Lapenski, Louis, Jr.  And so we really didn’t have a lot of people—Ginger Goodman and Mel and Stanley Watts.  Part of the Goodman…

Rhonda Winetrof and Elaine Fabian.

Q.  Who did she marry?

A.   Michaello.  Beck Fabian was her father.  Beck was Bill Michaello’s sister.  And that was his girlfriend, Elaine.    (MICHAEL LOVE?)  The day we got married, she turned to somebody, when we came down the isle, and said “I give it 6 months.”  And we celebrated our 59^th year already, going on 60.

Q.  Well, you know, we left the best to last, because we haven’t asked you at all about your schooling.  So where did you go to school, like the different schools, if there were different schools, tell us.

A.  I went to one school; I lived in one house; and I went to one school.  And until I married this man, I never moved anywhere.  And then I did nothing but move.  I went to St. Genevieve.  My sisters had gone there, so I automatically, because I was the youngest.  My oldest sister Mildred, did not have enough credits, when she graduated, to get into college; so she had to go to summer school to make up the credits.  So she went to Duke University.  At that point, my father didn’t want to have the girls go through that, so he took Alberta and Florence out of public school and put them at St. Genevieve.

Q.  You mean when your older sister graduated from public school, she didn’t have enough credits?

A.  Right.  Lee Edwards, at that time, was not an accredited high school.

HUSBAND:  In those days, the public schools only had 11 years.

1. So she had to go the school; and in the meantime, we were the first Jewish family.  He went to St. Genevieve and talked to them.  And they loved him, so, because he brought a lot of the Jewish children.  Because we went there, a lot of the other people followed.  So it was like a second home to me.  You have got to remember—I was 5 years old when I started going there.  And went almost all the way through.  There is 8 years between Alberta and me, because there was a boy there.  My older sister is 91 and I am 70; she is 12 years older than I.  And my junior or senior year, my mother and father were already in Florida; and I was going to live down there with them, only because they were going to let me stay at St. Genevieve’s—but my girlfriend, who was a Catholic girl from Havana, Ann Steinhart—she and I were very close friends.  Her father pulled her out of there and put her in a convent school in Palm Beach.  I think, coming from Havana, he found this school, and thinking it would be a lot easier.  You know, you didn’t fly in and out of Asheville, in those days.  But he took her out of St. Genevieve and put her in there; and she started writing me letters, that I should come down there.  And that oh, they are doing fine, and it is the Sisters of Mercy School.  And so I started writing mother and daddy, and one thing led to another; and I left St. Genevieve’s and went down there.  And I wasn’t there 20 minutes until I knew how that school was so clean.  And Ann was “Well, we do sort of wash things around here;” and she was so unhappy; and I said “How could you do this?”  Well, the two of us then went to our fathers, and we absolutely wanted to go back to St. Genevieve.  So I told her I was going to make a call; so I called Mother Potts, collect.  And I told her what was going on, that we were so miserable, could she talk to both of our fathers, and let us get out of there.  And she did.  And Daddy just came to us, and her father came to us; and we went back to St. Genevieve’s.  You know the story about these two girls on television that one of the girls wrote from St. Genevieve’s—she’s the writer.  And I said “My gosh—that was our life,” you know.  Except for the fact that I think they had a swimming pool there, that we never had.

I just talked to her the other day—Ann Steinhart.

Q.  But you didn’t stay there all the time?

A.  I boarded out there at least once a year.  Because any time my parents went away, that’s where I went.  I would go for several weeks at a time.  Or I might go for a semester, you know, if they were home.  But I think mostly, it was only for a week or two or three.  Except until we came back and they were in Florida.

Q.  So Ann roomed singly until you came, and then you roomed together?

A.  No, we were together, somehow—I don’t remember.  Then I graduated, and then I went to Havana with her, my graduation present was a trip to Havana.  That was something, because he was very big in Havana.  They were head of the Bacardi Rum.  Her uncle was there, and they lived in a house that was next door to Hemingway.

Q.  But Steinhart wasn’t Cuban?

A.  No no.  Her mother was Cuban.  It’s possible he wasn’t.

Q.  How was it that you were so close to Mother Potts and you remained close to her over the years?

A.  You know how you are attached to a teacher.  And really, there were a few that I was scared of.  But I went to camp in the summertime out in Hendersonville:  Little Flower Camp.  And I went there, and so I spent an awful lot of time—and she was there—she was head of the camp—Mother Stellig and Mother Potts.  And I was—the reason that I have such good memories is that they had such respect for my father and for our family.  The school bus driver, who was their driver, took me to services every Friday night; and to Sunday school every Sunday.  I was never asked to do anything that would be the least bit off from Judaism.  And because we were kids together—particularly the boarders—they would ask me questions; I would ask them questions.  Well, I grew up learning a lot about their traditions.  And the funniest thing was, when we opened our children’s store in Lansing, we opened it up right before Easter.  And we had all these little white communion dresses and Christening dresses—we had a whole window of it.  And a family came in with a little girl, and she was going to be confirmed—First Communion.  So she goes from the pants and play-clothes, she puts on this beautiful little white dress and the veil and the white sock.  And I said “Now, get down on your knees and see if your dress touches the floor.  And the mother looks at me and she says “How did you know that?!”  Well, I had my little secrets too.  I know our skirts had to touch the floor when we kneeled down; that’s how we knew the length of the clothing.

Q.  When did you kneel down?

A.  Many times, when we went to Chapel, morning when I was boarding, and we all went in there.  But I knew the rules had to be and the uniform had to be.  That’s how we measured.  And I was never asked to go to Mass.  I kept the telephone in the office; and I would answer the phone during Mass.  And I just became so close to all of them by living there.  And Mother Potts was just that—she taught English ‘til the day she died.  She was really such a dynamo.  And she had such a way about her that everybody that will tell you how close they were to her, feels that they were the only, the most important one in her life.  And that is an art, it is really an art.  Then again, I know that I was.  You never know.  But she also, when we were in Michigan, she was coming through there; and she wrote, and we invited them to stay there—she and Ebbie Wright—a girl from St. Genevieve that I absolutely adored.  She was very athletic and she was older than me.  But she was like a big sister to me; whatever she was doing, she pulled me into it.  I wanted to be on her team.  But Mother Potts told me, she said “When we come through there, I would like to go to the Temple, to the Synagogue with you, because I have never been.  And I have always thought, that the first time I go, I want to go with you.”  And so we said “Fine.”  And so they came to the house, coming in on Friday too—I think we were kind of rushed.  She came in, and I had told the Rabbi and everybody there that she was coming.  And she went to put on—she says “Should I put on my veil, or—‘  I said “Please do the whole works.  Put the veil on.”  Of course it was short; by this time she was in regular clothes.  And so we went to Temple.  And right before we walked in, I said “Now Mother Potts, just remember one thing:  please do not genuflat (?) when you get to the middle isle.”  She says “Alright, I will try to remember that.”  And it was succos (?) outside; and I said “Mother Potts, you have no idea of what they are doing for you out here.”  And she was just, very sentimental about it; and we were too:  over the fact that’s that’s where she wanted to go first.  And they were all taken with her, and always called her my Mother Potts, your Mother Potts.

Q.  So what did the St. Genevieve’s uniforms look like, that you said had to touch the ground?

A.  A white blouse and a navy skirt.  We all wore uniforms.  We had bloomers on athletic day, field day it was called.  They were all different, each class had to choose a theme. Sometimes we were soldiers, but at athletics, we had bloomers and shirts, and always white gloves

Q.  Who were some of the other teachers you remember?

A.  Oh my goodness.  My first-grade teacher was Mother Jubier; my second-grade teacher was Mother McGarrity; my third-grade teacher was Mother Long; fourth-grade teacher, I think was Mother Daly; then Mother Winters; then Mother Gibson; and Mother Gannon, was a wonderful lady, who always had such a great sense of humor.  She would sit at the desk in the classroom; and if she started to laugh, she would all but roll back in her chair.  And this was the picture we had of her—always throwing her hands back in the chair.  And then she would say “Now, if you don’t behave, I am going to tap you on the back of your hand with a wet noodle.”  Now that’s a hard hit, not exactly a ruler.  Who else?  I took our kids out there constantly after they came along; and they loved to go out.  And there was a sister Mother McCormeyay, who use to tell them stories—you would know her, because that was later.  And every time we would go out there, she would start telling them a story, sitting in the front desk.  And she would always get in the middle when we left; she would never finish a story.  She’d say, we’d finish it next time.  And the kids couldn’t wait to go back to do that.  Listen, I saw some come and some go:  Charlotte Archey was a graduate with my sister Florence; and she went into—became a nun the same day.  And she stayed there for quite a long time, and she took sick and left.  And she married after that, and had children.  And Mother Gibson, she left because she was sick.  And Mother Stellan.  Now Mother Corbett—I was there in the summer, waiting to go to camp.  And I stayed out at the school and everybody was gone.  There were two other girls—two Dutch girls that were there.  And there were two older girls, and they introduced themselves.  And one was Betty Ann Mason, and the other was Ann Corbett.  And all the sudden, one morning, we go to get up, and here comes Betty and Ann in a habit, and they had taken their vows.  And we didn’t even know it.  And so they came in, and now it’s Sister Mason and Sister Corbett.  Betty Mason left this particular convent, and went somewhere else.  Sister Corbett stayed, and I saw her—I went up for Mother Potts’ 90^th Birthday in Boston, and she was still there.  And we had not seen each other in many years.  We had talked on the phone, but it was really something, to look at her and say “I was there, when you started all this.”  So I saw quite a bit in my day.

Q.  Who taught French?

A.  Oh, Mother Julienne, oh my goodness; and Mother Mukay.  Mother Mukay was a French nun who walked around with two knitting needles between her arms, like this.  And her hands were going a mile a minute, all day, no matter where you saw her, she was knitting.  And she taught us all how to knit, and we were knitting scarves and socks and all this for the boys, you know, during the war.  And she taught us how to do French needlework, so when we got married, he kept getting holes in his socks.  And I kept sewing the only thing I knew, was French knots.  But it didn’t quite work with socks, so (LAUGHTER); so I said “Listen, I can’t keep doing this”, so I would just buy him a new pair.  I didn’t know how to darn socks.  I don’t remember the Rabbi saying I had to darn socks when I got married.  But these were—now, Mother Hayes—she was almost blind, but she could see.  And she would go up to you and say “You have a little thread”—she was always getting a little piece of lint or something.  But she couldn’t see anything else.  But Mother Potts did eventually go legally blind, which was very sad.  So, yes, I knew them all:  Sister Lundsford, Sister Winters—did you know?  Every time I came to Asheville, I went out there.  So I watched the change.  But we lived in the old house, the big old wonderful house.

Q.  I guess Lauren Hall was built after you?

A.  Yes, that was named for Mother Lauren, who was a Reverend Mother.   After—when I was older.

Q.  Was Mother Jeffery there when you were there?

A.  Yeah, she always had real red cheeks.  She was always heavy.  There were two Jeffery’s, one in Hendersonville..  But I didn’t really know her. 

Q.  Was it the same Order in Hendersonville?  Oh, the camp?

A.  No no no.  They didn’t have anything to do with the camp.  St. Genevieve in Asheville was the camp.  But they were teachers, for the same Order, but by this time, they needed the school there, so they lived there.  But it was the same Order.

Q.  Is that Immaculota in Hendersonville?

A.  I don’t remember the name of it. 

Q.  You said you taught at St. Genevieve’s in West Asheville?  What was that?

A.  They had a school out there also.  On Munsford—Joan of Arc.

Q.  Did they run St. Joan of Arc?  And that’s where you taught?

A.  Yeah, I taught elementary school there, after I was out of college and just married.

Q.  Was it different?—Did nuns teach at Asheville Catholic?

A.  I don’t think there was another Order.  The only other Order there was at St. Joseph’s Hospital—so they were the only two in Asheville.  Oh, and Mother Sherry.  She was just a beautiful lady, and she was head of the high school when Alberta was there.

Q.  Do you know why they started the school in Asheville?

A.  They actually almost didn’t.  They came there, and it would be interesting, if you want to read Mother Potts’ book.  Did you ever read her book?  It’s wonderful.  And she tells the story in there about how these few nuns did come over with the idea of opening the school; and then they couldn’t find one, they didn’t have enough money.  And things kept going wrong, until finally, they were living on the corner of Broadway and Woodbin, where the YMCA was.  And there was a house there, and that’s where they lived, 6 or 8 of them.  And Bob Reynolds was a friend of my father’s—he use to come to our house all of the time—and he had a convertible—Yes, he was a Senator.  And he married the Hope Diamond, whatever—I can’t remember her name—anyway, I am pretty sure that it was him—he had a car, and he came over to the school, and Mother DePlunc was the first Reverend Mother.  And he took her for a ride, and how she loved to go for a ride in this car.  Mother Potts use to tell us that story.  And I think it was Bob Reynolds, or someone came to Mother DePlunc, and told her about this house.  And they were able to manage to get this house.  And that is what they needed.  They had to have a place to start; and that is when they started.  But they came over here—I don’t know how they happened to come to Asheville.  But I think she may have that in the book.

Q.  So now, we interviewed Dorothy and Joanne Zageir, and they said that when their parents traveled—a lot, and they boarded there when their parents traveled.  Well, I know Dorothy did; Joanne actually went to Fessafern (?). 

A.  Dorothy I think came, but not nearly as much—and C. G.—my cousin—Uncle Ben’s daughter; and Sylvia, who lives here.  But they moved here to Atlanta when they were still in grammar school.  And it’s funny—I don’t remember Dorothy boarding out there very much. 

Q.  Somebody told us, and I think it was them, that they let them board when they were 6 years old.  Did you?

A.  Yeah, if my folks went out of town.  My cousin said to me once “You know, I always was concerned about you, because it was like every time your parents went away, they put you out to St. Genevieve to board, and she said I always felt terrible, because that’s what they did.”  You wouldn’t think of leaving your child home alone with somebody—they didn’t have sitters—so that’s what I did.  And I said “To tell you the truth, Ruthie, I never—you know, that was it—I figured everybody lives that way.  How do I know the difference?  It was like a second home to me.  I didn’t always like it, but at the time, or I was a kid and got unhappy; but it was not that unusual to me.

Q.  What were some of the traditions when you were there?  Like when I was there, we had a thing called Hazel Day and Field Day and—and we had Daintes (?) with the boys from Asheville School and then from Cray School.  Did you all have anything like that?

A.  Mother Potts started Hazel Day.  We didn’t have boys.  No, we had May 1, May Day; and there were a lot of regular things.  But I would have to give thought to what they were.  Field Day was the big thing that went on once a year.  I was very athletic, which I am paying dearly now.  But we played tennis and basketball.  I wasn’t the student- or book-type.  I actually always---Mother Potts used to call me the President of the Rug Club.  Did you ever hear me saying “You lie like a rug?”  I wasn’t lying, but I could tell stories.  And her feeling was, that I always had kids around me, the little ones on the ground or something, telling them stories.  And they were always sitting there wide-eyed.  And she would stand there and just laugh.  And she knew I was just making it up as I went along.  I don’t know how I did it; I don’t know why I did it.  But the little kids—from the time I was little, I remember that, because I had older sisters, and I kind of didn’t have a place, and that’s the truth.  I was more comfortable with younger children than I was with the older ones.  And I am still like that.  I am still doing that.  But that’s a story for a couch.

Q.  So did you go Downtown when you were at St. Genevieve’s?  Did they take you Downtown?

A.  Yeah, we would go for an outing.  We would wear white gloves; we were young ladies, from St. Genevieve.  Conduct yourselves like young ladies.  We would go to the movies—and then of course the families would come and take us and do different things.  Oh, and when Mr. Steinhart came to town, he came with flowers from Cuba, he came with all kinds of presents for everybody.  We loved having him come.

Q.  Now when you went Downtown, with the girls, you probably knew a lot of the business people, and the other girls didn’t.

A.  Well, we didn’t really go Downtown that much.  If we had an Outing, we went on field trips.  And I will tell you something:  There are many times, the one thing to bring it back to the Jewish point of view—everything, as you well know, football games, dances—everything was held on Friday night.  So I missed a lot.  And at the time, I didn’t realize that there were a lot of parties that went on, that I was never invited to, by my school friends.  And I was not invited to.  And I knew that there were things at the Biltmore Forest Country Club.  But when we had our first reunion of our class, which was the 25^th I guess—was the 40^th the first one?—well, Mother Potts had written me, and she said “I want you to be the Mistress of Ceremonies, for your reunion.”  I said “I don’t know, Mother Potts, if I can do it.”  She says “I want you to do it.”  Well, I loved writing programs; I write songs; I write poetry; so O.K.  So I got it together; and I talked to all the girls; and we got all the plans and everything was done.  And where was it being held, but at the Biltmore Forest Country Club.  This was our 40^th?—l983.  So when I went to pick up Mother Potts that night, and who else—Mother Lunsford came and Mother Schuber, Mother McGarigee.  The nuns that were around that we invited.  We picked up Mother Potts, and he was driving, and she—I was in the backseat with her.  And she says “I want you to know something. I was very deliberate.  I wanted you to do this.  I knew that you could do it, but I wanted you to do it, because I knew that from the time you were young, it always hurt me that there were things going on, that you never got invited to.”  And it was her way of saying to me, she was like, she was sorry that it happened.  So she took care of it.  Because here it was the first time in my life—you know, I didn’t care—if they don’t want us, I don’t want them, you know.  I didn’t really care.  But I didn’t know any better.  I didn’t know how it could be.  So when I walked in there—she says this is why I wanted you to be—and we had a great reunion.  We really had a good time, and it went very well.  And so that was, you know, her way of bringing me into the fold, so to speak.   HUSBAND:  Her way of getting even.         B:  Yeah, that’s true.  None of the Jewish families were out there until Perlman’s and—when the couples with the young people started to go out there, this was the first time Jews were ever allowed to go in there.

Q.  Yeah, we neglected to ask you the important question we ask everybody:  Do you feel like you ever experienced anti-Semitism in Asheville when you were growing up?

A.  No, I really didn’t.  We talked about that in Asheville, at the Temple.  I did not.  I didn’t understand it at the time; I didn’t know it was out, as far as being open.  The only experience that I had was when I was working for Dave Lowenberg, and it was a Saturday afternoon—and I told you the farmers came in and everything.  And I can remember this big man in the overhauls pulling out all this wad of money, and I was showing him shirts, plaid flannel shirts or whatever—the country shirts.  And he was buying several.  And he says “Since I am buying so many, can I Jew you down?”  And so I didn’t have a clue what he meant—never heard the expression.  So I said “Just a minute.”  So I went in the back and got hold of Dave, and I said “How does he know that I am Jewish?”  LAUGHTER  He says “Why?”  I said because he said he wanted to Jew me down.  Well, he got so disturbed, and he was laughing so hard.  And he then explained to me what it meant.  I never had heard it.  The only time I saw it, was when we went to Florida.  And in Florida, there were signs, in the ground, right in front of apartments:  No Jews, no dogs.  And I was shocked.  But I really did not—it was not like that, to me.

62 minutes (CD 2) and 4 hours, really pushing it.