Madame W

By Leila Israel Weisberg

Madame W is Leila Israel Weisbergs collection of family stories spanning more than a century.

Early in the 20th Century her parents came to America as children from Eastern Europe. This book of memories begins with the story of their courageous journey across a continent and an ocean to a new beginning.

It then takes us through her childhood, growing up in Brooklyn, New York during the depression and the impact of World War II. Graduation from Brooklyn College was an important milestone. Then marriage and raising a family of six children. The final sections concern retirement, her life in Atlanta, and adventures with all the grandchildren.

Leila has been collecting stories for seventy-nine years but it wasnt until she retired that she started writing them down. This collection began as an annual letter of stories and reminiscences sent to her children and grandchildren. It soon became apparent that the stories needed to be collected and published.

What she considered her ordinary life is perhaps more extraordinary than she thought. This work has been a labor of love and there are many stories yet to be written. Volume two must be on the way because we still dont know the logic behind Davids request for Spanish Pie for his birthday cake, or about the day Ilene played hooky from school, or when Wendy was left behind in the Capitol in Washington, DC, or the story of how Quanky, Marcies toy duck, went flying out the car window..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 27, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469107998

Leila Israel Weisberg

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1926 of immigrant parents, Leila Israel Weisberg made the improbable journey south to Decatur, Georgia with stops along the way in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. Leila has been collecting stories for seventy-nine years but it wasn’t until she retired that she started writing them down. Married in 1951 and widowed in 1973, her six children, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild have provided much of the material and incentive for her writing. It is for them that she has compiled this book.

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Copyright © 2006 by Leila Israel Weisberg.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2005907873

ISBN :      Hardcover   978-1-5992-6582-7

                Softcover      978-1-5992-6581-0

                eBook           978-1-4691-0799-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 02/11/2014

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www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

IN THE BEGINNING

My Father’s Story

My Mother’s Story

GROWING UP

Brighton Beach Memoirs

The Depression

Bubbie

The Brooklyn Paramount and Horn & Hardart

The Small Square Box

Opera, Anyone?

Chairman of the Corporation

The 1939 New York World’s Fair

A Love Affair With Hats

It’s What’s Up Front That Counts

Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins

How To Become A Millionaire

A Time Before Kleenex

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Chutzpah

The Way to Go

What Did You do in the War, Grandma?

I’M THE MOTHER OF… . 

Mother’s Day

Aunt Roslyn’s Blanket

The Mimosa Tree

Are We There Yet?

Leila The Cookie MOMster

Turkey Tetrazzini

Naming the Children

Queen Ilene

Suppertime

I’m The Mother of the Tooter

TO THE END

OF THE CENTURY

Bornaklutz

Keeping Up

We All Have Dreams

MOM—Master of Motherhood

Food

Welcome to Atlanta

Retirement

Breast Cancer

Olympic Update

Olympic Update II

Hands

Choices

Memory

Ladybug Ladybug

When Life Was Simpler

A Visit To A Sports Bar

Do You Remember?

The Socks Off My Feet

Leila***NMI

Friendship Force Trips

INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

September 11, 2001

Typing 101

Filene’s Basement

Brooklyn, Do They Speak English There?

The Lone Arranger

I could have been…

Nuclear

Presidential Names

Snow

My Little Piece of Heaven

The Nobel Prize

The State of My Mind, Body and Antique Furniture

Sixty-Five Years

The Eye Patch Syndrome

Criss-Crossed Memories

Google

My 1986 Red Nissan Sentra

Who Was Deep Throat?

In Conclusion

My grandma has a gift for telling stories. She has written books and books of stories, most of them true ones. While I am writing this, I have a book of her stories here on the desk beside me. Bound in a plain red folder, you would never guess what amazing stories are hidden within the covers. Almost as amazing as her stories is her own life.

To begin with, she survived cancer. This in itself is a pretty cool thing. She wrote a story about her experience with cancer, and it got published! She signed autographs too! Not every kid is lucky enough to have a famous grandma! Well, somewhat famous anyway. The time when she went to sign the book is known throughout the family as her 15 minutes of fame.

As a child, Grandma Leila lived with her family in Brooklyn. It was in the middle of the depression, so money was tight. There were simpler forms of amusement open to my grandma then. She played kick the can, stickball, and jump rope to pass the free time. Also, she lived right by the beach, so there was plenty of swimming. She devoured books, and ended up being Salutatorian of her eighth grade graduating class.

After high school, Grandma Leila pushed herself through college and earned a degree in biochemistry. She eventually married Harold Weisberg, and had many children. Sadly, Harold died when their oldest child was 20. Now at the age of 79, my grandma is as active as ever. She invites me down to Georgia for the summer and hikes all over Atlanta with me. And, sure enough, she is still passing down the memories through the magic of her pen and paper.

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2005

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15 Minutes of Fame

Acknowledgements

They laughed and they cried in all of the right places and they encouraged me to continue: Grace Hawthorne, Audrey Galex and Barbara Gifford.

My daughter, Amy, took on the job of making sure

that all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s crossed and

got the entire manuscript ready for printing.

I couldn’t have done it without them.

Introduction

Who was Madame W? Ah, there lies the tale. Many know her by another name so how did she come by this one? She grew up in a time when women were trained to be daughters, sisters, wives, mothers and grandmothers.

Her first battle was to get an education that might take her beyond this and into what was referred to then as a man’s world. She struggled to complete her college degree and did so by taking classes at night while holding down a full time job during the day. She was the first woman in her extended family to graduate from college.

Love conquers all, and she succumbed to marriage and children. For eighteen years she devoted herself to husband, home, and family but always there was the fantasy world just beyond her reach. Then one day she dared to get employment outside of her home. Her family adjusted well to this new arrangement and she was on her way in a man’s world.

She rose rapidly, literally from the mailroom up, and finally attained the title of Deputy Director. The private non-profit organization she worked for was located in the inner city of Washington, D.C. The neighborhood was known for its houses of ill repute. Some were located directly across the street from the building she worked in. The human traffic in and out of this row of old brownstones was steady during all hours of the day and night.

The Executive Director of the organization was an older man who had retired from the telephone company and had been given this position by his cronies on the Board of Directors. He did nothing but talk on the phone all day leaving the running of the organization to her.

Above all else he was a true Southern gentleman! She couldn’t help but like him. Although she tried very hard to assure him that he could call her by her first name, he never could bring himself to do so. Instead he took to calling her Madame W which, considering what was going on across the street, drew many a snicker from anyone who heard.

By now surely you have guessed that I am Madame W, and I have tricked you into picking up my memoirs thinking that you would find stories of mischief, sex, and erotica. Alas, all I can promise you are Leila’s memories.

IN THE BEGINNING

• My Father’s Story

• My Mother’s Story

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My Father’s Story

My father, Benjamin Israel, loved to tell stories. The stories were a mix of fact and fiction. Names were changed but you could usually guess who the story was about.

This story, although some of the names are changed, is the story of how his family came to America. The end of the story is mine and it really happened that way.

As I listened to my father tell the story, I would imagine that I could hear his Momeh’s strident voice… . 

Tseh koshmor! What a nightmare! Sweep and dust and cook and bake, sew the clothes and get the house ready for the Sabbath, and who will help with no daughters in the house?

Over one hundred years ago, in Skvira, a town in the County of Kiev, in the Ukraine, there lived a fine family, the Esreals. The Tatteh made hats for a living. These were not just ordinary hats but the handsome fur hats that were worn by the Cossacks, the soldiers of the Tsar. Tatteh worked hard stitching the fur and steaming it into shape. He had a little workshop attached to the back of the house. As he stitched away he could hear Momeh droning on and on about all of the work she had to do.

There were three sons, Yankel, Beryl, and Binyamin. Yankel was the oldest. He was a very wise son and studied the Torah and the Talmud with his father and the other men of the village. He helped his father stitch the hats and his long fingers would make the needle fly through the tough skins.

Beryl, the middle son, had a voice like an angel. He learned to chant all of the prayers and to sing the songs of the Sabbath and the Passover Seder. Sometimes he hummed the tunes that he heard the soldiers sing as he helped Tatteh sew the hats.

Binyamin, the youngest was always getting into trouble. If he wasn’t overturning a pail of milk, he was letting loose the bag of feathers that Momeh had collected as she plucked the chickens for Friday night supper. He would often lie on his back in a field of tall grass near the house looking up at the sky, just as the sun was about to set and the Sabbath begin. Then he would make a mad dash back to the house as Momeh, her head covered by a babushka was placing the candles into the menorah getting ready to light them for the beginning of the Sabbath. The tea would be brewing in the Samovar, sending off a thin stream of steam and the smell of roasting chicken filled the air.

Binyamin too, soon learned to stitch the hats, for when the soldiers rode into town, the hats must be ready. Because the soldiers were so pleased with the hats, the family did not suffer some of the violent attacks that were made against the other villagers.

Momeh was in charge of the gold that the soldiers paid for the hats. There was an iron box kept under a loose floorboard. A braided rug made from left over scraps of fur covered the board.

The house, an izba, was very proper for the time. It was made of wood and it had a large brick and clay fireplace in the main room. There was a contraption in the front and to one side of the oven, a pripichuck, that was used for cooking over the open fire. The workshop and two bedrooms were attached in the back. Huge feather quilts, soft and warm, covered the beds though their covers were hand woven and course.

There was a long low chest in the main room of the house and on it, in the place of honor, stood the silver menorah and copper samovar. These had belonged to Momeh’s mother and her mother before her and had been carried with them on their travels from place to place. There were in those days many places where Jews were not allowed to live and so they moved often.

Recent years had been good for the little family, though it troubled them when their neighbors suffered at the hands of the Cossacks. People traveling from afar would often stop at the little village and bring them news of wars and revolutions and the wonders and opportunities in America. Binyamin would listen avidly to these stories.

And so the family worked through the summer heat and winter cold. Yankel and Beryl were now in their teens. Every night Binyamin would lie awake in his bed and listen to Momeh and Tatteh whispering. He heard them say that Yankel and Beryl might be conscripted into the Russian Army. They would go away and maybe never come home again. Tatteh heard about a mysterious man in Kiev who could arrange for Yankel and Beryl to go to America. The iron box was pulled from its hiding place and the gold pieces carefully counted. The next time the mysterious man came to Skvira, he was paid to arrange the trip for the two brothers.

The day came when Yankel and Beryl, dressed in their best homespun suits, and each carrying a bulky bundle, climbed into a droshsky, a horse drawn carriage, for the ride to Kiev and the train west to a ship and adventures unknown in America.

Binyamin could not hold back his tears as his brothers left. I am old enough to go too, he argued. But no, he must stay behind with Momeh and Tatteh.

Two years went by. Binyamin was still a dreamer, but now he dreamed only of America and Yankel and Beryl. Yankel and Beryl had done well in America. They were working in a factory that made hats. Not the Cossack fur hats, but American style hats for a company called Stetson. It is time, they wrote, for Momeh and Tatteh and Binyamin to come to America.

The preparations began. Momeh packed bundle after bundle. She sewed silver spoons and forks and jewelry and gold pieces into the lining of their clothes so the valuables would not be stolen during the long trip. The day of departure was getting closer and closer but still the silver menorah and the copper samovar sat