As Best I Can Remember: What's a nice Jewish girl from Philadelphia doing in a place like this?

By Kay Kind Bradley Anderson

An epic tale of love as told through the memories of a nice Jewish girl from Philadelphia breaking free from the restraints of the 50's and embracing the 60's in all their glory. Travels and travails from one coast to the other with a few excursions to Central America in between. Experience the "free love" phenomenon through the eyes of someone who truly lived it. Kay's detailed storytelling is infused with her zest for life and her fearlessness to embrace every experience. Hang on for the wild ride but believe that there is true redemption in the end. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781977272355

Kay Kind Bradley Anderson

Kay, with her husband Seneca Anderson, are the founders of Longevity Health Center in Roswell, Georgia. The Anderson’s have eight children, twenty-five grandchildren and six great grandchildren (at last count). They live in the Southern Appalachian mountains near Hayesville, North Carolina.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Mommy and Me

Me and Mommy

SO…AS I MENTIONED at first, my persona, almost from birth, was influenced by two main things: my rolls and rolls of baby fat and my beautiful, fantastic, NOT fat mother. Dotty Kind, my mom, was born Dorothy Evelyn Weinberger to Louis and Rose (Sherman) Weinberger on June 4th, 1920. Though she wasn’t quite as perfect in features as her younger sister Suzanne, she was very glamorous. She could do gymnastics and would perform at the drop of a hat.

Dorothy Weinberger as Aspiring Gymnast

Shyness was not a word in her vocabulary and has never been in mine either. My mom would speak to anyone and everyone, anywhere. If she saw a baby in a stroller at a checkout line at Macy’s, for instance, she would ask the mother if the child was a boy and, if so, was he promised to be married yet; since he wasn’t, she would ask, Is he rich? because she had a prospect for him: one of her own granddaughters. Most of the time people responded well to her outrageous behavior, though as a teenager, I was mortified. Now, I am just like her, and my sweet husband is mortified.

Speaking of Macy’s, Dotty loved to shop. She looked really good in everything as she had a petite figure and a lot of style. What she and my dad didn’t have a lot of was money. This fact made for problems when the department store bills arrived at the end of each month. I can hear my dad bellowing, For God’s sake, Dotty, what the hell is this for?

She would not deign to answer and just avoided the confrontation by disappearing behind a slammed door. He would eventually settle down and make the best payment he could afford, and things would be relatively peaceful until the next set of bills arrived. I think he was always worried about money and Dotty never gave it a thought. Her generous nature and flair for life just topped any cold hard reality. Secretly, Sammy was proud of how lovely she always looked when they went out, and they went out constantly.

When I was very young my parent’s social life was hard on me. I adored my mom and hated when they got gussied up for a night out. I can picture her at her organza-ruffled dressing table, carefully putting her long auburn hair up into a bun. She had this donut-looking hair thing that she would use along with about a million hairpins and bobby pins and it looked sensational. She never switched over to French twists, even when the styles did. The bun was her signature. An artist friend, Jeanette Kohn, even painted her and her elegant bun. My daughter Lisa inherited that painting and has it to this day. Mom’s beautiful Marilyn Monroe mirror sat upon the dressing table and it was at that mirror that she would preen for hours. Plucking eyebrows, curling lashes, applying red lipstick. (This was the 40’s and 50’s.) Often, I would plop down on her bed and watch Mommy. She was my world, and she was so pretty. I felt small and gross and very fat.

Don’t eat that, it’s fattening, mom would chide. Don’t bite your nails. No one will ever want you if you have ugly hands. My friend, Ruthie Scott bites her nails. It’s disgusting. Don’t play with yourself, it’s disgusting.

I began to think everything I did was disgusting. But, in spite of these admonitions, I did eat fattening food, bite my nails and oh yes, play with myself.

Ironically, after my mom died, I inherited that beautiful mirror as well as her gold filigreed perfume tray that had also rested upon her dressing table, complete with vials of her favorite fragrances: Safari, by Ralph Lauren, CHANEL N°5 etc. These treasures adorn my bedroom today. Every time I see them, I imagine mom becoming more gorgeous by the minute, with chubby little Kay looking on, in envy and awe.

When she was satisfied with her appearance, mommy and daddy would go out on the town to a dinner or dance or a cocktail party or to play golf or tennis, paying absolutely no attention to my begging and pleading for them to stay home with me. I was left with the maid, my little sister, and NO TV.

Our family lived just north of Philadelphia in a suburban community called Melrose Park. The homes were built in the late twenties and early thirties, so by the mid-forties when we moved in, the neighborhoods were well established. Melrose Park, Elkins Park, Wyncote, Jenkintown, Rydal, all thriving, post WWII little towns in Montgomery County, Pa. The demographics, when I was a child, were around fifty-fifty between Jews and Gentiles. There were some conservative Protestants and some Catholics, and, in the early fifties, a huge influx of liberal Jews. Wooded vacant lots, like the one at the bottom of my street, Windsor Avenue, were being developed right and left, and Jewish families were flooding in from New York as well as Philly, to take advantage of the great schools and other amenities offered in these more affluent neighborhoods.

We were the last family, of all my friends, to get our TV. We were also the LAST family in the neighborhood to get a refrigerator. Yes, you heard me correctly! We had an icebox when I was young. It was cooled by a rather large block of ice delivered by the proverbial iceman who cameth weekly. He would place the huge frozen boulder into the white porcelain armoire-type device in the kitchen and the frigid temperatures it emitted kept our food fresh for many days, until the ice melted away and a new cube was inserted. It was a magical day when we got our first real Frigidaire. (Or was it a Kelvinator?)

Another old-timey phenomenon I remember was the woodman. Like the gentleman who faithfully delivered our ice, we had an old wizened Black fellow, Noah, who drove through our neighborhood with a horse and wagon, delivering wood. The logs were split and ready for our fireplace and he would stack them in a pile in the back yard. One time our woodpile caught on fire and we had a mighty blaze to contend with before we were done. But back to the dilemma of the TV, or more accurately, the lack thereof…

I remember being in the third grade and still having to go to my friend’s houses to watch my favorite shows. Every weeknight at 5:30 to 6:00 we would watch Howdy Doody. In the winter months I would have to come right home after the Howdy show because supper was always at 6:00. But during daylight savings I could scoot back to Nina’s or Cindy’s home and watch TV until 8:00.

So, there was this really good show on TV every Friday evening at 8:00 PM. called I Remember Mama. The show was about an immigrant family, from Norway I think, who had a wise matriarch. Unlike my own slender and chic mother, this mama was robust and wore matronly dresses and aprons and had a somewhat severe hairstyle. She was kindly, good-natured and wise though, and always had a wonderful, compassionate solution to any and all of the problems her family ran into. Kind of a Norwegian Aunt Bea. I loved that program and had permission on Fridays to go up to Nina Fox’s house and watch it with her. Afterwards, I did seriously have to come home pronto. Sometimes I would bring my baby sister, Connie, along, which added a bit to my load, but she didn’t want to be left at home. I doubted she cared about TV like I did, as she was barely four years old. We must have been a sight: two chubby little curly-headed girls, wandering the neighborhood unattended. But the truth is, our parents really went out ALL the time.

One summer evening, after dinner, Connie and I trudged up to Nina’s to play and watch our favorite show. Mom and daddy had gone out for the evening again, as was the case almost every weekend and many weeknights, as well. I think they were off to a party at a country club, and Connie and I were being taken care of by our relatively new, black live-in maid. Her name was Hattie, and she was Old School strict. She was homely and no fun at all. Not like our earlier beloved maid, Ruby, who had moved on, I guess. Maybe she got married and her husband could support them. Back in those days many families lived on just one income.

I have distant memories of the years that Ruby worked for our little family. She was very pretty and nice and loved to listen to the radio as she worked. I can picture the scene in our basement where we had the electric washing machine and the ironing board set up. We had no drier. Ruby would carry the clean, wet load up the cellar stairs in an old-fashioned wicker basket and hang the dripping clothes out on the line with big wooden clothespins. She would grab the dry stuff off the line and fill that same basket and haul it back down the stairs to do the ironing. Her radio would be softly playing songs like I like my eggs over easy and my coffee black. I like my steak rare and juicy or my money back. I like my jam poured directly from a mason jar, but I like you, just the way you are. Sometimes she’d be listening to The Amos and Andy Show or a soap opera like The Guiding Light.

The cellar was cozy and warm and smelled wonderful when she ironed, with music and shows playing and I liked hanging out down there learning as the world turns from Ruby Johnson.

During those years, in the 40’s and early 50’s, most of our maids were Black ladies from somewhere in the city who were either single or who had it set up so they could live-in with a white (Jewish) family several nights a week. Ruby always had Thursday off and every other Sunday. My mom would cook on Thursdays (since the maid was off), but on those alternating Sunday evenings, when Mommy had no helper, we would go out for Chinese. (We always ordered the same dishes, too. Connie and I would get Chop Suey, my mom would order Chicken Chow Mein and Daddy would never fail to have Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, two egg rolls and Won Ton Soup all around).

There once had been a white maid. Her name was Pat, and she came when my little sister, Connie, was a newborn, to assist my mom in caring for her second child. I was barely four years old at the time, so my memories of Nursemaid Pat are really sketchy, but the story goes that she actually was a nurse.

She wore a nurses’ uniform, after all, and a white cap and sensible shoes, unlike Ruby, who only wore a regular maid’s uniform and her own adorable pumps.

According to my mother, my Uncle Lou, Aunt Lil’s husband, had made a serious pass at Pat, and she accused him of attempting to force his affections upon her, unsolicited. Anyway, I don’t know if she left in distress or was fired, but Uncle Lou was watched more carefully after that.

Poor Uncle Lou. He was married to my grandmother Rose’s sister Lillian. They had little money, and as I remember, Uncle Lou sold suitcases for a living which never amounted to anything much. This little couple, Aunt Lil and Uncle Lou, did live in Philly near my family, though, and we had a close relationship. I remember we went to their tiny apartment on Sunday afternoons. Connie and I ate candy that Aunt Lil offered, and listened to the radio, while the grown-ups talked.

Lillian was always both proud and jealous of her sister, Rose, my grandmother, who had a notably successful marriage and four kids, whereas she had none.

There was a third sister, Aunt Minerva, and two brothers, Uncle Al and Uncle Sam. They lived in other states and except for rare occasions didn’t really impact on my young psyche. My dad used to refer to Aunt Minerva, a divorcée and childless, as Aunt Minervous. I guess it was true. Aunt Minerva suffered from a lot of anxiety. Her divorce was deemed shameful back in those days and I suspect she, as well as Lilian, felt grossly inadequate compared to their highly accomplished older sister, Rose. I don’t know the story behind why these two sisters were childless and no one who is alive at this time can shed any light upon that mystery.

As a footnote, just recently, like within the last few months, I heard from a cousin, Diane, who is the granddaughter of Great Uncle Al Sherman. I never knew she even existed until now. Evidently when Uncle Al and his first wife, her grandma, divorced, there was very little shared with the son, Diane’s dad, regarding the Sherman side of the family. My newly discovered cousin said she only met her grandpa, Al, once, many years ago, and with his second wife. Apparently, it was an awkward and somewhat unpleasant visit. My own mother never elaborated on that side of the family, either, except to say that she, herself, hadn’t cared much for her Uncle Al’s second wife, Sue Sherman. Too Jewey my mother would say of her aunt. I don’t like all that New York Yiddish crap. Consequently, when my cousin and I got in touch, through Facebook, we both were clueless as to any further details. As I lamented earlier, all the ones who might fill in the blanks now are deceased, so once again family histories can be hard to acquire.

But I digress. Back to the story of Hattie, our newly hired and definitively unattractive maid, and little Kay. That particular Friday night was NOT the maid’s day off, by any stretch. She, Hattie, was very much on duty, and as far as I could tell, didn’t like me or Connie particularly. At any rate and for whatever reason, Hattie refused to allow us to stay at Nina Fox’s to watch I Remember Mama. She insisted that we come home by 8:00 p.m. sharp.

Can you imagine how totally incomprehensible this ruling was?

I summarily, threw a fit. I lost it completely. I told Hattie that she was the meanest, most unkind person in the world and that I hated her. My wrath was palpable. I was totally consumed by the injustice of having to come back before the show even began. And I refused to obey. I believe this was my first act of outright rebellion, insurrection or whatever you could call it. I exploded with my entire eight-year-old being at poor Miss Hattie. She was shaken to the core and went into her room and began packing her clothes.

I can recall, even to this very day, the terrifying image of grumpy old Hattie, removing her underwear systematically from her bureau drawer. I watched, in horror, as she rolled-up her long brown stockings and placed them in her somewhat battered tan suitcase. You’re mean! I hate you, I screamed and cried. She said she was leaving. She intended to go home and desert me and Connie. To abandon us! I guess this was more than my brain could fathom. I just wanted my way, not to start a race war. Why would she leave us alone? She was cruel and vindictive, and I was terrified she would truly walkout before my mom and dad returned.

Hattie stayed and the next day, my mom read me the riot act. She, of course, had only heard Hattie’s side of the story (I presume Hattie waited till my folks got home to rat me out) and had no idea how frightened and unhinged the whole ordeal had rendered me. I felt the absolute injustice of the whole episode. I was totally entitled to watch my show and that was all I wanted, not be labeled as a hate-mongering brat. Obviously, my mother had taken Hattie’s side.

As soon as my parents left the house, I took off. I went to Nina’s and convinced her that we should run away together. I kind of wanted to go to the country club where my mom and dad were playing golf. We headed out on foot, up the street and through the neighborhood and into a different section of town. We probably walked about five miles. It seemed like a hundred. When we were exhausted both physically and emotionally and unable to continue, having no idea how to get from Melrose Park to the Rydal Country Club, we, Nina Fox and I, were deflated and scared. We knocked on the front door of a house that belonged to a family we vaguely knew. The owners, who were friends of our folks, called our parents, and we got home.

After a trying cross examination the issue eventually was dropped. However, after that incident, I was labeled as a rebellious troublemaker and a hateful child. My relatives, hearing the tale from Mom, looked at me differently. No one trusted me. My evil underlying nature had been exposed when I lost my shit with Hattie. That marked me for life.

CHAPTER 2

I Loved Lucy…who didn’t?

Kay and Connie Kind

SHORTLY AFTER THE events above, we did buy our very own TV. Very small, black and white. Now that TV was in our home, we didn’t have to tread the neighborhood hoping one of our friends would let us park for hours in their family room.

I recall, vividly, coming home from school around 3:15 and Mom would be watching the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. She would be livid, railing against Senator Joseph McCarthy for his ignorance and bigoted ways.

I didn’t fully grasp what was happening, but I knew it must be bad. Evidently, McCarthy was insisting that hundreds of people were somehow affiliated with the Communist Party. His accusations were largely unfounded yet had devastating effects on many folks who were just liberals, not socialists or commies.

Celebrities in Hollywood and New York found themselves blacklisted; for years after that no one would hire them. Eventually McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate and lost influence and power. I was glad that Mom wasn’t shouting at the TV anymore, and that the atmosphere in our house returned to normal.

Monday nights was I Love Lucy. That was the only night we could stay up late on a school night. Another show I would have liked to see aired on Thursdays: dum da dum dum, Dragnet with Jack London as Sargent Friday. But we were absolutely forbidden to watch this crime drama, whether or not our parents were home. I will say, they really did try to shield us from any scary visuals. I didn’t fight it. I was pretty timid about shows with violence or killing anyway and no shows in the 1950’s had ANY sexual content, so that was a non- issue. Even Lucy and Desi slept in separate, but equal, twin beds. Not even pushed together. How the hell they got little Ricky we still don’t know.

However, I did love a program that came on every Sunday afternoon around lunchtime. It was the Horn and Hardart’s Children’s Hour. Shot, I think, in Philly, children with a variety of talents competed for the first prize. An applause meter was used to determine the winner. A schoolmate of mine, Erwin Hertzfelder, got on and played his accordion. I wanted to be on this show with all my heart. I would sing and dance to show tunes and try to put together fantastic performances around the house and with my friends in the neighborhood.

I clearly remember delighting my next-door neighbor, Bobbie Barrisch, who was a couple of years younger than me, with an enthusiastic rendition of Mockingbird Hill, sung outside on my back patio with Nina. I thought our duet was charming and we choreographed the number, dancing and singing like authentic country western gals. Move over Patsy Cline!

Unfortunately, both then and now, I had ZERO talent. Not only could I not carry a tune, I also couldn’t dance a lick. My feet are totally flat, and no amount of ballet lessons could help. Chubby, tone-deaf, and flat footed. That was me. And oh yes: an evil-natured child who obviously felt superior to the nice colored folks. No one got me. The truth is, I loved the maids, just not Hattie, and singing and dancing and performing were all I ever wanted to do. LASTIMA! It was not going to be my fate.

The realization of my lack of musical gifts came swiftly one summer day when I entered a talent show at our country club. It was the Fourth of July and there were about ten or eleven youngsters in various costumes, eager to show off their vocal abilities. My song, which I had rehearsed for weeks, was I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy from Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. You remember… ..I’m as corny as Kansas in August, I’m as normal as Blueberry pie….. When my turn came to perform, my voice just cracked. It was awful. I was completely flat and everyone laughed me off the stage. I was utterly humiliated.

Then I discovered that I had a flair for the dramatic. This didn’t require a good singing voice and theater became my passion. I wanted to be hilarious, like Lucille Ball. My sense of humor was well-developed and comedic and dramatic roles in school plays were usually mine. I mentioned earlier that there is very little reticence in my nature. I am very extroverted with little to no shyness. I can Sing out, Louise, with the best of them, (just off key). I think I was going along pretty well until the beginning of sixth grade. That is when I had a rude awakening. I discovered being outgoing, witty and funny alone was not going to get ‘er done.

CHAPTER 3

End of Innocence

TO TELL THIS story cohesively, I need to go back to the start of school in my fourth-grade year. Several things began to change in my normal everyday life. First, my best friend Nina Fox, developed some kind of psychosomatic illness. Almost every day for the first half of the new school year, she suffered from terrible stomach aches. I customarily would arrive at her house, 103 Windsor Avenue, from my house four doors down at 114, at 8:30 or 8:40 a.m. to pick her up so we could walk the one and a half blocks to BR Myers Elementary School. But early in the fall, she would, flat-out, refuse to emerge from her home, claiming all manner of ill health. For a 9-year-old, this was strange behavior and had her parents in a total state of panic.

What could be wrong with Little Nina? She was an only child and the absolute center of Pearl and Bill Fox’s world. Nina’s dad owned a woman’s shoe company called Foxy Steppers. His premier model was a Capezio- type flat which he called The Ninette. I was majorly impressed that my best friend had shoes named after her.

I think that after much worry and investigation, they discovered that Nina was petrified of her fourth-grade teacher, Miss Knopf. I was in the other fourth grade with Miss Hayes, whom everyone loved, but Miss Knopf was a horror to be sure. She was the quintessential mean school marm and her demeanor was so severe that she had dear Nina in a state of perpetual anxiety. I cannot remember how that problem got resolved. I know there were several hush-hush parent teacher meets with Pearl and Bill, but by the next school year, we had all moved up to the fifth grade and had a different batch of teachers, and a whole new batch of challenges.

Nina’s next teacher was Miss Crumb, and she was young and pretty. Miss Crumb played her cards close to her chest, though, and none of us knew her personal story, though we were intrigued by the tiny silver cross she wore on a chain around her neck. Nina and Ellen B, and one other girl in their fifth-grade class, began to assign secret meaning to that enigmatic necklace. We, being raised in fairly secular, but nonetheless Jewish homes, had literally NO idea what a cross was supposed to be about and none of our Jewish parents bothered to solve the mystery for us.

We were left with our ten-year-old imaginations and we thought, at least I know I did, that the unspoken secret was somehow mixed up with something naughty, like sex and boyfriends.

The problem with not being open about such topics with your children is that they will come up with some pretty ridiculous ideas of their own. Remember, the birds and the bees were never discussed, and neither were crosses. We girls were clueless. Nina and her buddies created a little clique, a club, centered around the mystery of the cross, and since I was in the other fifth-grade class, not in the homeroom of the lovely Miss Crumb, I was excluded from the inner circle. My feelings were more than hurt, as Nina and Ellen B. had been my two closest friends and I was reduced to tears as I bore the weight of their rejection. I could not have known then that eventually the breach would be healed and our close friendship would resume a few years later.

For at the time, all I knew for certain was that I had to make some new friends, and quick, so I began to expand my social circle. Laurie Wachtel, whose parents were divorced, and whose mother was very sick, probably cancer, (though no one said that word out loud in those days), became my good friend.

We both loved to read The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories and we co-authored our own mystery stories as well. Our best was entitled The Mystery of Code Mansion. Laurie’s dad’s secretary typed it up for us and made carbon copies for everyone. I guess that should have been a hint that I had a future in storytelling.

Besides Laurie, another new friend was Rhonda Weatherby. Rhonda arrived in our community in the fourth grade from somewhere, heaven, I suppose. She was perfect. Long blonde tresses, which she pulled up into a ponytail, blue eyes and NOT Jewish. In fact, her daddy was a minister at the nearby Presbyterian church.

Of course, none of us had ever set a foot into a church and I was convinced that SOMETHING HORRENDOUS would happen if I did. But Rhonda’s mom was very friendly and wanted her little daughter to be popular with everyone, even the Jewish kids. I was invited to play with Rhonda often at her house during that fourth-grade year. Finally, the offer came for me to sleep over.

I arrived at Rhonda’s house in the afternoon and she showed me around. I had never visited the home of a Christian before, at least not to spend all night. But I had visited the home of an Italian Catholic family who lived behind us and their house had strong garlicky smells and scary icons and crucifixes all around. A bit off- putting to a little Jewish princess such as myself. But the Weatherby home was nice, no weird statues or strange foreign smells.

Then the question, did I want to see the inside of the church? Their home was actually some sort of parsonage, I guess, that was just behind the church building. We walked across the yard and into the sanctuary. There was a fairly big picture of a nice-looking blond-haired, blue-eyed, definitely NOT Jewish, Jesus, and a few crosses. The air was musty and different, but not nearly as frightening as I had expected. The crosses didn’t have Jesus crucified on them either. Just plain crosses. I could handle that!

A year or two later, when my grandmother, Nanny Bess, took me to the Johnson Wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, that was NOT the case. Blood and guts Jesus’s everywhere. Baroque, Religious, Terrifying! In my young mind, I associated these images with the Nazi Holocaust and photos that I had glimpsed of concentration camp victims. Man’s inhumanity and cruelty was too much for my brain to wrap around. It is still the case, though I can bear up better now, than I could as a little girl.

But with Rhonda Weatherby I felt safe and honored. That night, snug in one of Rhonda’s twin beds, in her very girly bedroom, I was educated concerning a few things. Number one, I learned that that guy, Jesus, died for my sins. What sin was I had no idea since that precise term was seldom, if ever, used in a non-religious Jewish home, at least not in mine. However, Rhonda explained the concept of bad behavior, which I readily understood and felt horribly guilty for. She then proceeded to explain that playing with oneself was called masturbation (she actually knew that word) and was decidedly a SIN. Well that messed me up even more. Now, I was not just disgusting, but sinful as well. All my mother’s admonitions to Stop that came flooding into my pre-adolescent brain and I was majorly convicted.

The rest of the sleepover went well, though, with no further revelations or illuminations.

The friendship with my non-Jewish friend continued all the way through the next school year. At Halloween time, early in sixth grade, Mrs. Weatherby threw a costume party for Rhonda and all her friends, boy/girl. It was the first co-ed party since we were small, and it was much anticipated. I remember my good friend Ellen B. came as a cute Kitty Cat. I, myself, masqueraded as a head-to-toe Zebra. My costume was a one-piece black and white striped jumpsuit with a Zebra hood and mask et al. I came to the party as an innocent little chubby zebra but left with another Rhonda Weatherby revelation that radically changed my life.

I entered the room and there SHE (Rhonda) was, in white ambrosia glory. A satin bridal gown with a full crinoline skirt, strapless bra, and tiara, no less. A total fairy princess. Carrie Underwood had nothing on Rhonda Weatherby that cool October afternoon. My mouth wouldn’t shut, and I am sure I cried myself to sleep that night. Childhood was over. The zebra costume went into the burning trash and out of the ashes (so to speak) emerged a new, smarter, enlightened Kay who made up her mind never to be humiliated like that again. For the rest of that year and most of the next as well, I, for all intents and purposes, quit eating. I made my parents buy me a fairy princess dress and by Purim, I too was a princess. Or, more accurately, a gorgeous, skinny Queen Esther.

Queen Esther

However, by the middle of that year my parents were really worried about my onset of anorexia. But I knew I wasn’t emotionally ill. I was right! Skinny was the way to go and no amount of delectable food would tempt me to eat EVER AGAIN. They sent me to a child psychiatrist who tried to determine the source of my self-induced starvation. It was simple with no hidden agenda. I wanted to be as pretty as Rhonda Weatherby and Marilyn Monroe and Mommy.

The boys began to notice me and my social life really picked up. One of the boys who liked me was an Irish Catholic chap named Matthew Roach. He had flaming red hair and freckles. I walked with him a few times after school and he said he loved me and wanted to be my boyfriend. He also mentioned that I was a Christ killer (when I said I didn’t want to be his girlfriend.)

What the hell was a Christ killer? Had I killed someone without my own knowledge? This was NEVER explained to me until I was about 35 years old. (more on this subject later). But I instinctively knew something was askew. After all, I didn’t know anyone named Christ and I sure never killed him. My mother did shout Christ when she broke a nail or dropped something, and in the early years, when we were still allowed to celebrate Christmas in the public schools, we sang Oh come all ye faithful…Chri-ist, the Lord so I surely had heard the word before. It was NEVER, however, in the context of me having killed him. That is where the confusion arose.

But murder accusations aside, Matt Roach never stood a chance. I was already deeply in love with Mark Bronstein. Mark and I had known each other since kindergarten, way before my zebra fiasco and, even though my appearance had radically changed, Mark never took the slightest notice. So I decided to have a Valentine’s boy-girl party to create a romantic occasion that would change Mark’s perspective. I invited Mark and a few others, to my party on a Friday night in February. I decorated my parents’ living room with cut-out red hearts glued onto white doilies. I even got some snacks out to serve my guests. Hershey kisses and some kind of cookies. My parents, of course, were nowhere to be seen that evening. After all, it was a holiday weekend and their social calendar was, as I have mentioned, always full.

As night fell, I bathed and then dressed in what I thought to be a fetching outfit, ready to win Mark’s heart. My mom’s little loveseat, arrayed with the doilies, paper hearts and pillows, is where I imagined a great seduction scene would shortly occur. My sister, Connie, is now the proud owner of that almost infamous loveseat and it has a home in her bedroom in Haifa, Israel. She uses it to set out her clothes and stuff for the next day. Little does she know my once intended purpose for this miniature sofa. Of course, the seduction would be limited to kissing and hugging but laced, in my mind and heart, with fabulous words of love and devotion that I hoped would be exchanged between me and the handsome Mr. Bronstein. I was very naive sexually. After all, the TV shows were all wholesome…G-rated, and for sure no one talked about the facts of life. Sex was very hush-hush.

Well, as fate would have it, Mark didn’t show. The weather was terrible that night and none of my sixth-grade friends were going anywhere. Especially NOT to the unchaperoned boy-girl make-out party I had longed for. Ah well, my dreams shattered again. I suppose I had no choice but to move on.

CHAPTER 4

Adventures in Dixie

STILL DREAMING OF Mark, I went to Fort Smith, Arkansas to visit with my Nanny Rose and Paca Louie. Actually, he probably should have been called Papa Louie, but I think my baby talk pronunciation turned Papa to Paca…and it stuck!

Nanny Rose and Paca Louie Weinberger

My grandparents in Arkansas were quite interesting. My Grandmother Rosie had been born to Sophia Shaeffer Sherman and David Sherman, in Harrisburg, Pa. The Sherman’s were Russian Jews who had emigrated and somehow made their way from Ellis Island to Harrisburg.

Paca Louie’s actual name was Louis Weinberger and he and his family were from Hungary. They too landed in Harrisburg, where Louie met his bride, Rose.

In those days, the garment industry was loaded with immigrant Jews who seemed to have a knack for success in that type of business. Paca Louie, and his brothers went into men’s clothing and set out to open stores for gentlemen in various cities around the country. Canton Ohio, Memphis Tennessee etc. I don’t know who had the idea of opening such a store in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but it was completely BRILLIANT. There was a thriving Army Base just outside of Fort Smith, Camp Chaffee. Whenever the GI’s or officers had a day off or even a few hours off, they would hoof it into town to Paca Louie’s store for the latest in civies. Louie’s on the ball was the store’s theme or motto and everyone in Fort Smith knew it. My Grandpa Louie was a hoot. He always had a cigar in his mouth, a cocktail in his hand and a big smile for everyone. The army boys adored him, and his store was a huge success. My mom told me Paca Louie was good friends with Sam Walton in the old days. They were buddies from Arkansas. Two successful guys who were in the same clubs. I don’t know if this is a fact or just one of Mom’s tall tales, but