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A. My name is Stan Golden. And I live at
8740 Roswell Road; Atlanta, Georgia. And I was born on December 4, 1923 in
St. Paul, Minnesota.
Q. And how long did you live
there?
A. We lived there until
l933, in September of 1933, and we left at that time. And my father worked
his way across the country from St. Paul to Los Angeles. And we lived in
Los Angeles for about 6 months—less than that, about 4 months, I guess. And
then we moved to New Orleans; and then from New Orleans, about 3 or 4 months
there, we moved to Birmingham.
The
reason for all this moving was that he was a salesman, and when it came time
to give up the area he was working in, we moved to another area. Always
with this particular time he was selling the same merchandise. He was
selling a piece of equipment to gasoline stations. Some people in Chicago
had invented this machine and had contacted—prior to our leaving St. Paul,
he was a salesman with Harts, Shaffner and Marx, men’s clothing. And he
traveled North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. When he was
contacted by these people in Chicago, they had this machine that they called
moto-sway??? which was sold to garages and gasoline stations, so that
the—what actually the machine did, was rock the car from side to side so
that the springs in the back that need grease, you get grease into the
springs when it was rocked up into the air on one side, the springs
separated and then they could put the grease in there; and then the other
side. So that’s what he was selling at the time we were doing this
particular moving around. And after Birmingham, we moved to Chicago. And
after about 4 or 5 or 6 months there, we moved back to Los Angeles for two
and a half years. And then from Los Angeles, we moved to East Orange, New
Jersey for a few months. And then we made a stop at Jacksonville, and then
back to Birmingham. And then from Birmingham, we moved to Cincinnati; and
then to Cleveland. And then to Rochester, New York; and then to
Winston-Salem; and then to Oakland, California. And then we went back to
St. Paul for about 6 months; and then we moved to Asheville. And that was
the end of this traveling days.
Q. How old were you when you
moved to Asheville?
A. Sixteen, I guess. In
December of ’39 I was l6; and we moved to Asheville in February of ’40. I
was a junior in high school at the time.
Q. Now all this time that
you were moving, was your dad working for that same company?
A. No, when we left Los
Angeles the second time, he had given up the Moto-sway; and another woman
had contacted him about taking a piece of equipment that she had invented.
It was an aluminum frame that was used to block lady’s knit dresses. It was
calibrated so that they could get all the measurements, and sold to
dry-cleaning stores, so they could block the dresses back into the shape
they were suppose to be in after they were cleaned. And there were
measurements for the size of the arms and lengths and waists and so forth,
so that they could calibrate it and get blocked back into the proper form.
And that is what he sold until we moved, until after we moved back to
Cleveland.
My
mother’s sister and her husband were living there; and they were in the
siding business. And he and his brother were working for a company; and
they talked my father into joining them and going into business for
themselves, which was the siding business, which is what we went to
Rochester with, and Winston-Salem, and then to Oakland. And then back to
St. Paul. And then when we moved to Asheville, he had the intention of
doing the same thing, selling the siding. And when he got out into the
rural areas, around Canton and that area, people were not only interested in
the siding, but they wanted additions on their homes. They wanted new rooms
put onto the houses; so he expanded it, and went into remodeling. And we
did that until after the war started in ’41. And banking became a little
tight and interest rates went up and people couldn’t afford it, so he had to
look for something else to do. And there was a leather jacket factory up
for sale. It was owned by a man by the name of Lou Pollack. And my father
bought the factory from him. It was on Biltmore Avenue. And a gentleman by
the name of Julius Lowenbien ran the factory and was managing it, and he was
a salesman. He would go out on the road and do the selling; and he would
come back and cut the leather jackets and make them and ship them. So when
my father bought it, Julius still remained on the road; and they hired
someone else to be the cutter and designer. And he did that until after the
war. And then he went into manufacturing lady’s suits, coats and dresses.
Q. What was the name of the
business that was the leather business; and the name of the business that
was the dress business?
A. Well, originally, it was
Highland Manufacturing Company. And then after the war, he wanted to change
the name; and it just became Goldblums, Inc. Goldblum was our family name
at the time, which I shortened, later on, after Betty and I were married.
And then he ran that business until he died. In December of l956.
Q. Do you know how it was
that they decided to send him to Asheville?
A. When the three of them—my
father, my uncle and his brother—went into business together, we all went to
Rochester together. This was like September of ’38. And we were all out
for Thanksgiving dinner out to a motel. The weather was fairly decent. It
was cold—it was wintertime of course. And by the time we came out from
dinner, there was 2 feet of snow on the ground. And they decided that
wasn’t a good place to be in the wintertime, in the kind of business they
were in. And so they decided we should go south. And they divided up, and
we went to Winston-Salem, along with my mother’s youngest brother, who was
working for them at the time. He went with us to Winston-Salem. And my
uncle and his brother and their families moved to Atlanta. And they worked
the Atlanta area until just before the war. And they moved to Lake Charles,
Louisiana; and then to Houston. And we moved to Oakland with the business,
which didn’t do too well—it wasn’t a good area, so we moved back to St.
Paul. And they were looking at the map, and just decided Asheville would be
a good place to go, that we had been in Winston-Salem. So that is how we
got to Asheville.
Q. Do you think they knew
anyone in Asheville?
A. No. My mother and father
left St. Paul and drove to Asheville and got things organized and set up.
My sister and I took the train from St. Paul to Asheville.
Q. How long a trip was that?
A. Overnight. When we left
Los Angeles the second time, my mother and father had left and gone to East
Orange, which is where my aunt and uncle were living at the time. And they
decided—my father decided that they were going to stay there and he would
work around that area, so my sister and I took the train from Los Angeles to
New York, or Chicago rather, and then drove from Chicago to New York.
Q. Well, we probably need to
backtrack just a little and figure out how many—who were your parents, where
did they come from, how did they get to St. Paul, and who were your
siblings?
A. My mother and father were
both born in St. Paul. Their parents came here from Poland. The late
1800’s, but because—it had to be the late 1800’s because my mother was the
youngest in her family, and she was born in 1899. And my father was the
youngest in his family, and he was born in 1895, in St. Paul. They mother’s
and father’s siblings were all born in St. Paul. And my father’s family, he
had two sisters and one brother. His brother moved also—he worked for Cats
Paw Rubber Heels??? and he was a salesman for them. And in l934, shortly
after we had left Los Angeles the first time, he was transferred to Los
Angeles and in charge of the West Coast. So they lived out there from then
on. He had one sister who also lived in Los Angeles, but she was much older
and didn’t have a family, for many years. And his other sister lived in a
little town of Royalton, Minnesota, which was up near St. Cloud. And her
husband ran a general store in Royalton. They stayed there until l935, and
then my uncle and their family moved to Los Angeles. My uncle and my
father’s brother-in-law went to work for him; and he has two sons who also
went to work for the company; and they stayed out there and worked for Cats
Paw.
Q. How many schools did you
go to?
A. About 20.
Q. What was that like,
moving from school to school?
A. Well, in the long run, it
wasn’t too bad. We ran into some areas—when I first started school, since
my birthday was December, I started school in January or February—in
Minnesota at that time they had two starting-times, in September or
February. They divided the year. And every place we moved to seemed to
have the same arrangement, until we moved to Cincinnati. I was in the last
half of the seventh grade when we moved to Cincinnati. And the question
was: Do I go back to the first part of the 7th grade? Or do I
go to the 8th grade? And they put me into the 8th
grade, so public school ended at 8th grade and then you went into
high school. So at the time I was in Cincinnati, I was in the 8th
grade. And when the school year was over and we graduated, and I was going
to go into high school—which I did when we got into Cleveland. And
actually, as it turned out, when I graduated high school, I was only 17, in
Asheville. And when we moved to Asheville, I was a junior. And in North
Carolina in those days, a junior was in the 10th grade. Your
senior year was the 11th grade. And they had no 12 years-schools
at that time. But fortunately the school at that time was still accredited;
and we were able to get into colleges.
Q. Where did you go to
college? Did you go?
A. Yes, for a short time I
went to Georgia Tech for one semester. I was taking Architecture, and
decided that that wasn’t for me. And so I came home and waited until the
following year, and I went to North Carolina State, and I was studying
Textile Management. And then we had had some people from the Army came
around, and talked to everyone who was interested in staying in school, that
if we would join what they called the Enlisted Reserve Corps, we would be
able to stay in school and not have to go into active duty. So a lot of us
did that. This was in October, I think, of ’42. So we were all content
with the fact that now we were in the Enlisted Reserve Corps, and we would
be able to stay in school and finish. Well, in February they called up the
Enlisted Reserve Corps to active duty. So that was the end of school at
that time. After I got out of the Army, I didn’t feel like going back to
school. So Betty and I got married, and I went to work.
Q. Where were you in the
war?
A. Well, I had basic
training in infantry in Camp Wheeler in Macon, Georgia. And then there was
a program called the Army Specialized Training Program, ASTP, which had
several branches you could get into: engineering, medical, and some
others. Anyhow, I applied for the engineering division; and I was sent to
Clemson to take orientation and various exams, to see what my capabilities
were. And from there, I was sent to Boston MIT, and I was at MIT from
September until about February, when they disbanded the entire program,
except for the medical part. From there I was sent to Camp Forest,
Tennessee, which was in Tullahoma, Tennessee, which was half-way between
Chattanooga and Nashville. And we were sent, the whole school—there were 90
of us—we were all transferred into the 17th Airborne Division,
which at that time was a glider division. They had one battalion of
choppers, and the rest of it were glider-troops. The idea would be to root
off all these infantry-men into gliders, which would be towed into the air;
and then land in enemy territory, and then everybody would bust out of these
gliders and do whatever they were trained to do. After about a month or so
in that division and training, they decided to take about a hundred or 150
of us—there were about 400 ASTP personnel that were transferred into the
division from various schools. After a month or so, they decided to take
out about a hundred or so—one of which was my fortune to be—and send into
other types of training. And I was transferred into a medical depot company
that was just beginning their basic training with a lot of new draftees.
So that is where I went, and
I stayed with that. From there we went to St. Louis, and then to Columbia,
South Carolina, to Ft. Jackson. And then from there, we went to New York to
go overseas. We sailed from New York around the middle of February—we
probably set a record of troops being at a POE and the longest, because it
was right around the time of the Battle of the Bulge. And they didn’t need
supply troops there, they needed fighting. And the 17th Airborne
Division happened to come through and went out, and their wounded came back
before we even left. We sailed to France, and when we were in France, and
Belgium, and Germany; and then we were sent back to Marseilles, and from
Marseilles, we went up over a ship. For 30 days we went to the Philippines.
Q. What year did you go to
Europe?
A. 1945, February. And then
we were there until July. We sailed in July to, we think we were going to
Okinawa, but we went through the Panama Canal. And ten days out of the
Pacific—we left Panama—the orange pad??? was over. They had dropped the
Atom Bomb, and there was no need for all these troops to go over to Okinawa,
or wherever it was. We were all diverted to Manila. And we were in Manila
from the end of August in ’45 until February of ’46. And we were sent
home. We got back in the States right after the first of March, l946.
Betty and I were married the end of March.
Q. And what was your exact
job in the Army? Or Navy?
A. I was transferred into the
Medical Depot Company. I was a medical clerk-typist. And then when we,
before we went to France the first time, I was still a clerk-typist. And
then when we got ready to go to the Philippines, I was a warehouse foreman.
We were a medical depot company and we supplied medical supplies to the
various hospitals, and medical implements ???; and when we were in the
Philippines, they had constructed warehouses for us. These warehouses were
very well built. On about 20-foot poles, with a roof and no sides. And we
just had medical supplies just stacked in these warehouses. We had about 10
warehouses. We were protected by the Philippine Army, because, being a
medical company, we were not allowed to have any firearms in those days.
And so they thought we needed protection from the civilians, who might come
and try to steal and loot or whatever. So they had the Philippine Army
infantry walking around in these warehouses to protect us. However, it
seems that most of the Philippine army “protectors” had friends on the
outside who they wanted to get these supplies to. And they were stealing us
blind. What could we do, with no firearms, when they had the firearms? And
they would take stuff and throw it over the ten-foot fence we had around us
to accomplices outside. There was nothing too much we could do about it.
They organized an inventory team. There were four medical depot companies
in Manila at this time, that had come from various places. One came from
Australia. They had been in the Pacific for three years. And there was
ours, and a couple of others that had just come there. And they had made up
an inventory team, so they could see what they had supply-wise, and what
they didn’t have. I was quick to be on that inventory team. And it turned
out that they came up like 10,000 bed sheets short, because these civilians
were stealing the bed sheets to make clothing from. Anything we
inventoried, they were short. But at least they knew where they were. So
that went on for a couple of weeks, and we were just back in our own
companies. And we were just getting in and sending out to the various
hospitals. And when we were in Germany, we had three platoons in our
company.
Two of the platoons were
stationed in Bonn, and had a Depot set up there. And our platoon was sent
down to Frankfort. And we sent up a medical depot in what had been a fire
station. It was much different than our fire stations here. It had a big
house where the men lived, and then in the back, they had individual garages
for all the motorized equipment. There were probably 8 or 10 stall-type
garages. We used that as our warehouse. What we were doing there, was we
had German medical supplies. We had a team of 15 or 20 guys and a couple of
officers that went up to the Austrian border, to a German medical supply
depot, to get their stuff and bring it back for us to stock. And their
depot was in a salt mine about 200 feet below ground level. And they went
up there, and it was supposed to have been not a good detail, but it turned
out to be a real good detail for the ones that went, because they had some
real good experiences up there. They got caught in some cross-fires. And
they also had some equipment that they were able to take home with
them—cameras and such, that were part of the German medical supplies that
would have been in our signal corps in our army. And we had German doctors
that were officers in the German army that would come into our warehouse and
pick up supplies to take back to the POW’s. So that they were actually
using their own medical supplies, and not ours, to treat their sick POW’s.
Q. So this was before you
went to Manila?—when the war was still in Europe?
A. Yeah. We were there—the
war in Europe was over in May, and we were still in Frankfort at that time.
And then the war was over shortly after that. We started our transfer to
going to Manila. From Frankfort, we went up to a little town called
Fulga???, which there was a small camp there where we got supplies and
things; and then we went down to Marseilles, where we sailed—we were there a
couple of weeks, and then we sailed to Manila.
Q. When your service-time
was over, what was your rank?
A. I was a Staff-Sergeant.
Q. Did you experience
anti-Semitism in the military? Were there other Jewish guys in your group?
A. When I took Basic
Training at Camp Wheeler, most of the—at least in my platoon—most of the
guys were Jewish from New York.
Q. Did they have any inkling
about Jews in the South, or—
A. Not too much. We had
Racheshaun—dinner, the Jewish people, and in Macon, dinner for all the
Jewish soldiers that wanted to come in Macon.
Q. In some building, or
somebody’s house?
A. In a building. There
were a couple of hundred. And then in Passover, in ’45, I was in Rimes,
France. And the Jewish families in Rimes had Passover, and there must have
been five or six hundred Jewish soldiers that came to that Passover. The
women did all the cooking for everybody. They did have a Synagogue there,
but it was in a big hall. We encountered a little anti-Semitism among the
individuals in our—but it wasn’t anything to complain about. But, when I
was in the medical depot, we had maybe 25% of the troops were Jewish. We
had one Jewish officer who was an optometrist. We had—this medical depot
company was quite different than most service units. We had 120 men,
enlistees, noncommissioned enlisted men, and 8 or 10 officers. And when we
finished our basic training, we ended up with three privates and everybody
else was a noncommissioned officer.
Q. So when you came back to
Asheville, what mode of transportation did you use to get back to Asheville,
and what was on your mind, as you were coming home?
A. We were sailed from
Manila on a troop ship. I had three of these so-called voyages, very
different, because when we sailed from New York to go to France, we were in
a French—it had been a freight ship converted. And our company, and
probably altogether two or three hundred men down in a lower hole in
triple-height bunks. And it was very crowded, and if you got seasick, you
had to run up three flights of stairs to get to the railing. And that was
not an enjoyable trip. When we went from Marseilles to Manila, we were on a
cruise ship that had been converted; and there were four of us in a cabin.
We were above sea level, and it wasn’t too bad. And then when we came home,
we were on a troop ship. At that particular time, the normal arrangement
would be that the enlisted personnel would be in the holes down below deck.
And the junior officers were ordered in an area where there were about 12
and a large rec-room and a very nice little set-up. And the higher you got
in rank, the fewer number of people that were in each cabin; and as it
turned out, there were not that many officers going back, so that the first
three graders, from Staff Sergeant to Text Sergeant and Master Sergeant were
quartered in the junior officers quarters. So that is how I came back to
San Francisco. And then from San Francisco—I called Betty from there to let
her know I was back, and she was at her mother and father’s at Palm Beach—
Q. What did she do during
the war?
A. She went to school. She
was in school when I was in Tullahoma, she was in Nashville in Peabody. And
then she was there—I guess she was at home visiting her parents when I got
back. She was in Palm Beach when I called her. And then we were there a
couple of days in San Francisco, and we took a train to Ft. Bragg, which was
where I had gone into the service to start with. And dropped people off all
the way along between San Francisco and down to New Orleans and then on up
to Ft. Bragg. And when I got to Ft. Bragg, we went through our discharge,
whatever we had to do. And my mother and father and sister and Betty all
drove down from Asheville to pick me up.
Q. So at what point did you
and Betty decide you were going to be married?
A. When I got back.
Actually at one point, we wanted to get married before I went overseas. But
our parents didn’t think that was such a good idea. I was discharged I
think on the 10th of March—something like that. And we got
married on the 24th. In Asheville at the Grove Park Inn. Of
course her mother and father were in Florida, and she had one sister living
in Chicago, one in Jacksonville and one in Asheville. Her oldest sister
lived in Asheville. And so through long distance, the sisters arranged for
the wedding. What was going to be done, and they did a nice job in the time
they had to do it. And the reason we got married when we did, was because
Passover was coming up, and that was the one time we could have gotten
married before Passover. So we had to get married, go on our honeymoon and
be back home before Passover, 10 days later.
Q. Where did you go on your
honeymoon?
A. We went to Mobile,
Alabama, the Loxley. My father had a friend who was an attorney in Atlanta
who insisted on making arrangements for us in Mobile at a very fine hotel on
the beach, the Gulf Coast. And so we were going there, and we drove from
Asheville, to Mobile; and we got to the hotel around 6 o’clock, or
something like that, after having gone through a heavy rainstorm, as we now
know they have in this area in the springtime. At one point the road was
covered with water—you couldn’t tell what side—where the road was on either
side, it was just water. And we got to this hotel, a very fine hotel, and I
went in and told them I had a reservation and gave them the name, you know,
“I’m sorry, we don’t have one in your name”. I said well, what about this
lawyer’s name? And they said “No, we don’t have it.” And we did not have a
room there. We were just as well off, because looking around, these were
all old people there, sitting around in their tuxedoes, and very stiff. So
we had remembered seeing a hotel or a lodge that we passed on the way down
there, so we went back there and we were able to get a room there. The
reason they didn’t have a reservation for us, all they had to do was see my
name and my face. LAUGHTER
Q. Was the lawyer who was
suppose to have made a reservation for you there, was he Jewish?
A. Yes.
Q. And was that a joke?
A. I don’t know. I never
saw him again.
Q. Maybe he wasn’t such a
good friend of your father’s…
A. We went back and got a
room there, and the next day we were out taking pictures
in front of the place. And
another couple came up, and said if you will take our picture, we will take
yours. And so we got to be friendly. Turned out to be the fact that they
were married the same day we were, in Lafayette, Indiana. And we remained
friends with them for over 50 years, until she died. Then we kept up with
him, and then we lost track of him. They came and visited us in Lansing,
and we visited them in Lafayette. And then after we had the car repaired,
after Betty had an accident—LAUGHTER—on our honeymoon—fortunately, they had
a car and we were able to get around with them in their car. And then when
our car was repaired, the four of us went to New Orleans for a few days
before we went on our way home.
Q. So then where did you
work when you came back?
A. Well, my father had been
talked into opening up a furniture store. And little Bill Michael, as he
was called, was running the store. Before the war, Bill had worked for
Perlman’s. And during the war, he was in Red Cross. Sometime after he got
out and before I came home, he had talked my father into backing him in the
furniture business. So they opened up this furniture store on Biltmore
Avenue, Stanton Furniture, which of course is my name. But I was not too
happy in there, and stayed there for about a year I guess. And then I went
to work for my father in the factory, in the suit, coat and dress business,
called Highland Manufacturer, on Cox Avenue. He had moved the factory from
Biltmore Avenue down to this larger two-story building at the end of Cox
Avenue next door to Swannanoa Laundry. The building is still there today; I
think it is an auto parts store or something.
Q. Where—how did they sell
their things?
A. During the war, he had a
couple of salesmen on the road. But after the war, he went into contracting
business. He contracted with other manufacturers, one particular one was
Shirley Cloak and Dress, right here in Atlanta, that he contracts where they
ship the material up and they would do the cutting and the sewing and send
the finished garments back.
Q. Do you know who owned
that?
A. That was owned by—Melvin
Mayor worked there. He was a friend of mine in Asheville. His father had a
shoe repair shop in West Asheville. Max I think. They lived on Mt.
Vernon. Right after graduation from high school, he moved to Atlanta, and
went to work for Shirley. And worked for them until after the war, and then
he started his own business here. I really don’t remember the name of his
store. I visited him there one time when we came down from Lansing. It was
the needle business.
Q. Do you think maybe that
connection was why your dad’s factory made clothes for
them, because you knew them,
and you made that connection?
A. I don’t think so. He
was—I don’t know what he was doing at the time, but no, that wouldn’t have
had any connection. Melvin died a couple of years ago.
Q. Were most of the people
he made clothes for, outside of Asheville?
A. Yeah. Well, it must have
been around ’53 or so, he started selling right at the factory. He had a
show-room set up right on the main floor. Selling direct to the public,
wholesale prices. Originally—it was still called Island (?), but then he
changed it to Goldblum, Inc.
Q. So when people went to
the retail discount showroom, they were going to Goldblum’s?
A. Yeah.
Q. So where did you all live
at that time when you first came back?
A. The first apartment that
we had was in Mrs. Gray’s Boarding House. I was in high school with her
son. We lived on Merrimon Avenue. We were renting a house that had
belonged to the Fayors???. And Mrs. Gray had a boarding house on Merrimon
Avenue on the next corner. And sometime during the war, she converted it to
what she called apartments. They had a rental law at that time, that you
had to get approval from the government for how much you were going to
charge, and that sort of thing. And our apartment had formally been her
dining room. This was on Merrimon Avenue and the first cross-street.
Closer to Beaver Lake. Austin Avenue dead-ended into the cross-street that
came up across Merrimon.
Q. Coleman?
A. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
She had the boarding house there. And the bathroom in our so-called
apartment had been a closet that she had converted. It had a shower stall
and commode. The closet we had to hang our clothes in had been her china
closet. So it wasn’t very wide or deep. So, when we would hang our
clothes, instead of side to side, they were front to back. And our kitchen,
she had converted the back porch into a kitchen. And unfortunately, there
was no heat in there. That New Years, my mother and father and sister had
gone to California; we were staying up there at their place, in Beaver Lake,
in Midland Drive, a big house. Anyways, we had a New Year’s Eve party up
there. And in the morning, we found people we didn’t even know laying
around—LAUGHTER. We went back to our apartment, and found Mrs. Gray in
there mopping up, because the pipes had burst in the kitchen, it had gotten
so cold. And so that was the end of that, we didn’t go back. That’s how we
moved over to Marlboro, a duplex on Marlboro. Wesley Brown owned that. We
lived there—we brought Martin home from the hospital to this duplex. From
there we moved to a little house on Barnard Avenue that my father had
built. He was still building a few houses; and he had built two on Barnard,
and we moved into one. And then we decided to move away from Asheville.
And I got a job with Wing Insurance in Greenville, and we moved down to
Greenville. And Sandra was born there. And when she was 3 or 4 months old,
we moved back to Asheville, and went back to work for my father in the
factory. And that lasted about 4 years. And we decided it was time to move
on and get away from the families.
Q. So during that time, was
that when you lived on Ottari Road?
A. Yes, when we came back
from Greenville, we moved onto Ottari Road, which had been where Betty’s
sister, Mildred and her family lived. And they had just moved over to Lake
Shore Drive. So we bought their house on Ottari, and lived there until we
moved to Lansing in ’56.
Q. Do you remember some of
the people who were your friends in high school? Did you go to Temple or
Synagogue?
A. Temple. Michael
Robinson, who was a Rabbi. Eli Archentar??? and Harvey Share???, whose
father worked for Mr. Pollack. And there was the family, Winetrov family,
Ron and Rhonda Winetrov, brother and sister. They moved away when the war
started.
Q. What did their father do?
A. He was on the road
selling, but I don’t know what it was. They lived out in Beaver Lake. And
then Paul Rubenstein, he and his mother lived in an apartment on Coleman,
behind Mrs. Gray’s boarding house. I don’t know what they did. He went to
school. I don’t know what happened with during—he was in the Army. He
became a lawyer. And was in Chicago. And Sidney Goldstein, lived over on
Cumberland.
Q. Was that Nimi’s son?
A. No. I don’t know whether
they are any relation. And Bob Rosen, who became a doctor and lived in
Miami. Fred Cantor (?) –They lived right down the street from us on
Merrimon. His dad also was a traveling salesman. They had moved to
Fayetteville from Hendersonville when Fred was probably about a sophomore in
high school. He had an older brother, Ed, who was in college at the time,
who was also a lawyer in New York. Gloria Kaplan, who lived, she and her
family lived in a house under the Chestnut Street bridge. I really don’t
know what her dad did, if anything. She had the reputation of being a
communist. And then there was Libby Issan. An attractive young lady, and
very vain. She should have been wearing glasses, but didn’t like to wear
them on the street; and she’d pass people who she knew and they would say
hello to her, and she couldn’t see them. I don’t know what her family did
either. And then Sylvia and Doris Patla, who of course’s father was Joe
Patla, an attorney. And Elaine Fabian, whose father was Michael Love.
Q. What did her father do,
Mr. Fabian?
A. I don’t think she
worked. I don’t know. Her husband had died, or they were divorced. I
don’t know. But they lived over on Hillside. My sister went to UNC,
Greensboro, and took a 2-year secretarial course; and when she came back
home, she went to work for Norman Ayers (?), who was an accountant.
Q. Where was his office?
A. In the Haywood building.
She worked for him until my father died in ’56. And then they moved back up
to St. Paul for a—well, they moved to Lansing for a short time. And then
they moved to St. Paul, where my sister got married, and moved to
California.
Q. Was your mom still alive
then?
A. Yeah, she stayed in the
same _____, and then she took sick and we moved her to my sister’s, and she
lived there until she passed away in ’74.
Q. Well, why don’t you talk
a little bit about what you remember about Downtown, when you were a
teenager, and then also when you came back?
A. Well, personally, the S &
W was a hangout, and what was that little restaurant they had next door?
Q. It was called the S & W
Annex.
A. Yeah, that was a hangout,
after school. And we use to go to the movies at the Imperial or the Plaza
Theaters, and most of the social life, at least mine, had anything to do
with, with mainly centered with the Jewish population. We did very little
intermingling at that time. Whatever we did was usually a group affair. And
we use to go out to Royal Pines on Saturday night; and had picnics out
there. And of course when I came back after the war, we were married, and
we started to hang out with the old married crowd. And I think we were
about the first of our generation to get married. And after that, a few
more did get married. And we had a fairly good group of young married
people. And Rabbi Unger, who was the Rabbi at the Temple at the time,
decided to form what he called the Young People’s League. It was made up of
young marrieds and singles in their twenties and thirties. And we—our main
purpose was to help raise some money for the Temple. And we did that mainly
by having minstrel shows.
Q. We have those pictures.
LAUGHTER
A. We were in several of the
minstrel shows. I was Mr. Interlocketer??? for one of them; and Norman
Salton was, one time. And after that, why, we were all side-men in
black-face. And Betty and my sister Ann and some of the other girls had
singing and dancing acts that they did.
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