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Caution: You're About to Be Prolerized
The Memoirs of Samuel Proler
By Alan B. Berkowitz
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Alan B. Berkowitz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5164-9
Chapter One
The Early Years
Snow settled on what should have been grass on the narrow streets outside the cracked bedroom window. Ben, Rose, and their 2 year old daughter Sarah, lived in a small, two-room, cold-water flat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. On February 1, 1917, Samuel Proler entered into a world closed off to him for the past nine months. Eyes sealed shut, the baby screamed his little lungs out, no doubt wanting to return to his earlier environment and its warmth. He calmed down when he found himself in his mother's bed cradled in her warm arms and welcoming breast. Few were born in hospitals at that place and time.
This new place was nothing like the quiet of his last home. This place was cold and the people around him were alien. Later, he would be called Samuel, or Sammy, or Schmuely. Sometimes he was called "Tatele" just to add to the confusion in his new life. At that moment, all Sammy yearned for was the warmth of his birth-mother protecting him from the strangeness around him. Sister Sarah, in the adjoining room, played with an old rag-doll she had found around the corner of the house three months earlier. That was before the white blanket covered her outside playground. Rose Proler was exhausted by her laboring struggle, but she found a new joy and tenderness in embracing the newborn babe in her arms.
It was colder inside than it was outside; The snow blanketed the roads, while the cold-water flat was just plain winter-cold. Big sister Sarah was wrapped up in woolens, and Rose had the inner warmth of childbirth and a hand-knitted coverlet to protect her. Sammy squirmed around in this newly found strange place. He was comforted in this odd new world by his hostess and caregiver for the last nine months. As is Nature's will, the transition from womb to breast is quick and accommodating.
Rose's husband, Benjamin, worked as a laborer at Simon Dunie's Junkyard. He had gotten the job due to his relationship to the Dunie family as a distant cousin. At the Dunie Yard, Benjamin separated incoming assorted junk into its various categories: Metal was separated from glass products, leather from seats, etc.; It was a job. Benjamin knew this wouldn't be permanent. Yet, despite that fact, he saw the junk business as being profitable. He strived for better. Neither the Prolers nor the Dunies ever Anglicized their names like many of the Jews had done at the time of their immigration to America. Some of Rose Saperstein's relatives shortened their name to Stein, for example. Cohen may have been changed to Cone, Coen, Corn, Cahn, or Kahn.
A famous Yiddish tale relates the confusion of Anglicizing names. An old Polish Jew was advised by his relatives to change his long name, Moishe Kapuyitcz, to an "American" name when he arrived in the States. He was told it would make it easier to find work. They decided on his new name; It would be Morris Capp. Upon his arrival at the Immigration Office in the U.S., a large Irish-American clerk asked for his name. The old Jew was so nervous and flustered, he answered in Yiddish, "Oy, Ich hub shoin fergassen." ("Oh, I forgot it.") The Irish-American clerk entered his new name into the record of his arrival:
SEAN FERGUSON.
Rose Saperstein came to America from Russia. Benjamin Proler's family originated in Jonava-Kovno, Lithuania. There was no need in Ben's case for a name-change, as there had been Prolers in the United States since the early nineteenth century. However, many of the Saperstein family shortened their names, some to Stein.
Ben Proler met Rose Saperstein in New York City, where she was working as a seamstress in the garment center. She was 18 at the time; Ben, two years her junior, arrived in New York by way of Baltimore, Maryland. He worked as a stage hand at the Yiddish theater on Houston (pronounced HOUSE-ton) Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues on the lower east side of Manhattan. Many New York immigrants gathered at the Yiddish theater to be entertained by plays and other performances in the language they all shared. Ben met his future wife during intermission one day. He had finished his part of the job and sat in an empty seat to enjoy the show he helped to set up. The young lady seated next to him was with a group of her co-workers, but at intermission between acts, Ben sidled up to Rose and started to chat with her. She was shy at first, and somewhat perplexed by the attention he was giving her, since she was one of several women from the sewing factory who went to the theater to get away from the long hours and harsh conditions of the sweatshop-like workplace. Ben had inherited the Proler gene that triggers the "never quit" circuitry in the brain, so he set out to find out all about Rose that day. Soon, they courted, as was the proper way for young Jewish people to behave.
The marriage union of Ben Proler and Rose Saperstein was not arranged as was the marriage of their parents (and some of their children), but it was performed according to the laws of Moses and in the Orthodox Jewish traditions of those who came before them. They were united in a Shul (Synagogue), through the ceremony performed by an Orthodox rabbi.
Over the next several years, changes came about in the Proler family. Looking back over ninety-four years causes events that took place in their own time to speed up when expressed in historical periods. In Europe, Germany provoked the start of what would be called "The War to End All Wars." (History records it as World War I.) President Woodrow Wilson, an isolationist, waited until the last minute before entering the United States into the war in 1917. (In 1918, the war ended.) By the time Sammy Proler turned three, Wilson was replaced by Warren G. Harding. This took place shortly after the Prolers moved from Pennsylvania to the far off "Great State of Texas".
The Prolers settled down in Houston. There, Ben Proler joined other members of the Saperstein family that had been in Houston for many years. He was told he'd find continuous work from relatives that had a dairy on Clark Street. Little Sarah had a bronchial problem as a child; Now recognized as tuberculosis, her disease was dubbed "consumption" at that time, because it seemed to consume people from within, with a bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting. It was due to Sarah's condition that the Prolers chose to move to a warmer climate for her health, as well as the health of the rest of the family.
Ben worked a minimum of 15 hours per day as a peddler, selling various produce from a horse-drawn buggy that was given to him by the local Jewish Assistance Guild. The established Jews in Houston saw this as a way of helping newly arrived brethren with a head start toward their earning a living. This mode of transportation was given to him without any obligation on his part to repay. They knew that when successful, the community would be repaid with charitable contributions and in-kind selflessness. There was an inherent Jewish bond which never failed them in their past experiences.
Ben could not speak English very well, but he wasn't deterred in his quest for income to provide for his family. He was very gifted in making his customers understand his sales-pitch. His broken English, Yiddish, and knowledge of German were a work of creative wordsmithing. In addition, after emptying his cart of its produce, Ben made sure that his trip home was equally active by picking up artifacts and other people's castaways. He then sold the scraps he collected to the local junk yards. That was something he learned in his days at the Dunie Company. "One man's junk is another man's treasure," was not just a sign on an office wall; It would become a way of life for the Prolers. His family was growing, and Ben, with his meager savings, bought their first house.
By the time Sammy was five and entered Anson Jones Elementary School in Houston, Calvin Coolidge was about to become America's 30th president. Prohibition was the law of the land and the Roaring Twenties was in full swing. It was during this era that Sammy entered Miss Wooster's first grade class. To his teacher's surprise, she discovered that the Proler child could not speak English; His entire family spoke only Yiddish and some other foreign tongue she couldn't discern.
Sammy spent the next two years in public school learning to read and write English. At that tender age, a new language was easily introduced and mastered. After school hours and on the weekends, the little fellow spent his time with his other teacher and mentor, his father, who he started calling, "Pop". Sometimes, there were three of them on the road: Pop and his son were joined by a small, jovial black man named Bobby Pender. Sammy remembers how Pop taught Bobby the words to Yiddish songs. They rode together on the horse-drawn junk wagon, singing these Jewish melodies as they sold their miscellaneous items. Their customers stared in disbelief at the black man's knowledge of Yiddish. On the return trips, Sammy pointed to anything that wasn't growing or tied down, with a gesture to his father as to its worth. On all these trips with his dad, young Proler also learned a third and different language: the language of business.
Yiddish slowly became Sammy's second language as he progressed in his studies. By the time siblings Israel (called Izzy) and Robert arrived, the newest Prolers developed English as their first language. In due course, Sarah, Sammy, Izzy, and Robert were joined by newcomers Billy and Ethel. Later, they were joined by the next group of siblings: Ruby, Herman (called Hymie), and Jackie. Jackie was born in 1931 and was the baby of the family. The entire Proler clan lived in what was known as the south side of Houston. From Rose's point of view, her progeny was God's blessing to keep her constantly busy. However, from Pop's perspective, the brood was a constant reminder that he needed to earn more money.
With a bit of an upsurge in earnings (in part from selling some of the castaway items), Ben bought an old, two-story house in the 5th Ward. Located on a large lot at 2305 Odin Avenue, the house fronted railroad tracks that ran parallel to Mary Street. The property was both his business and family residence. The first floor was used for stocking and collecting cans, bottles, bones, old batteries, lead pipes, and scraps of all sizes that could be easily moved. The yard was used for accumulating scraps of everything too large to be stored inside. Junked iceboxes, metal chairs and tables, shelves and junked car parts were the unique landscaping design. Pop Proler was no longer a peddler; He was officially in the junk business. He made it official by calling his business, simply, The City Junk Company. The year was 1926, and Sammy Proler was nine years old.
Chapter Two
Ben and Rose
It is impossible for Sam Proler to speak about his mother without tears forming in his eyes. At times, he outright cries and is choked up by talking about her:
"I can't help crying. I loved her so much. She did everything for her children. She raised nine of us and saw three of her children die when they were youngsters. Their deaths were attributed to what may have been lead or another chemical disease from living and being exposed to the batteries and other (God knows what) poisons that dwelled on the first floor of our house. There was nothing she wouldn't have done for any of us kids."
And so it was. Rose Saperstein Proler, born in 1890, cooked and cleaned and raised nine children. Some of them were filled with energy, while others were sickly. Nevertheless, she gave them all the attention each required from a mother. Some were given more or less care than others due to their hardiness, or lack thereof. No one could say she was negligent in her duties. There are no medals for motherhood. If there had been, she would have ranked at the very top of the honors class and would have worn her medals proudly. Rose was laid to rest on June 1, 1956.
Ben and his folks spoke Yiddish, with what was called a Litvak dialect. They were both from Jonava-Kovno, Lithuania, which at that time served as the capital of that country. There were approximately 220,000 Jews in Lithuania when Ben (1892-1970) and his family were growing up. Most of the Jews were either merchants or farmers. In 1941, Hitler's Nazis and other collaborators murdered 206,800 Jews in the Ponary Massacre and the Ninth Fort. The arithmetical sum left little question of the massive genocide of Jews to follow: The Holocaust had begun.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, European capitals, including those of Poland and Austria, changed boundaries and allegiances very frequently. During these confusing times, Ben Proler was often heard to use the Yiddish expression, "Alle Muntag und Dunishtag (meaning, 'every Monday and Thursday'), we became part of a different country." The significance of this expression is that by using those particular days of the week, it was the same as saying, "with regularity." By Jewish tradition, and in the Synagogue, in addition to Shabbat (Saturday), the only time the Holy Torah was allowed to be read was on Mondays and Thursdays. Hence the expression Ben knew and used often.
When they were in Houston, the family lived on the second floor of the house at Odin Avenue. They were unaware that some of the collection of lead and batteries, so close to their everyday entry and egress from their home, might be considered dangerous to their health. There was a lot still to be learned in those early years. Within the next decade, three of the Proler children would die as a result of the fumes from the various paints, chemicals, battery acid, and lead stored on the first floor of their home.
Sammy and Izzy appeared unaffected by the poisoned air around them. It was later surmised that because they lived in the house before the dangerous chemicals were introduced, they adapted little by little to its poison, and as a result, became immune to its power. The younger ones, Robert, Ethel, and Billy were exposed to larger doses that accumulated over the years and were home more often when they were young. These three children died in their late teens to early twenties from what was later thought to be lead poisoning; Ethel, 18 in 1940, Robert, 22 in 1943, and Billy, 23 in 1947.
Ben and Rose were devastated by the deaths of their children, but still were unaware that the house was the possible instrument of a yet unknown plague. In the early 20th century, mortality was a presumption, and the death toll from unidentified disease was, in part, why families were planned to be large. Larger families increased the chance of survival of the whole, and such was the case with the Prolers.
Mourning the loss of children is always most difficult on parents. The older generation expects to pass away before their offspring. Guilt is no stranger to the parents who feel somehow they might have done something to prevent the tragedy. For the other children, life provides them with the natural resiliency inherent in youth. They don't quite understand the loss, but they get over it quickly and move on with their lives.
Jewish Orthodoxy required Ben and Rose to observe the full period of mourning, called Shiva (seven), for each of their departed children. The seven days of Shiva following the burial were spent in isolation and grief. There was no work during this period. Kosher food (prepared according to Jewish dietary laws) was supplied by friends of the Jewish community and other family members. Visitations by the general community were allowed, but only for brief periods. The house was unlocked so that visitors could gain entry without causing the mourners to rise in attendance. Food and fruit would be brought as gestures of the condolence calls.
In the Proler house, mirrors were covered to avoid the vanity of reflection, and hard benches were substituted for the soft chairs of everyday living. The immediate family wore an article of clothing that was torn at the funeral service and which stood as a sign of grief. Cloth slippers, or simply stocking feet, replaced the comfort of leather shoes. Prayer minyans (quorums for official worship services) were conducted at the house three times daily by Jewish men over the age of thirteen.
The following month was spent in continuous, though abbreviated, mourning and prayer, followed by eleven months of lessened activity, which precluded any joyous or otherwise happy celebrations. At the end of the eleventh month, an unveiling ceremony of the carved tombstone marked the end of the mourning ritual and took place at the cemetery.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Caution: You're About to Be Prolerized by Alan B. Berkowitz Copyright © 2011 by Alan B. Berkowitz. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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