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Mr. Sippelin, I'm going to build me a stone fence
Rabbit, rabbit. Tomorrow is Erev Rosh Hashanah and a week after that is my thirty-fifth birthday. I want a better year. A better life in general would also be all right.
I always thought my grey-green tweed flat cap—the one I had repaired by Salmagundi in the spring—belonged originally to my grandfather. At the time of his death it was being stored with the black lamb astrakhan that belonged to my great-grandfather Noah (nobody of my generation wears it, but I couldn't give it up) and and the enormous shedding wolfskin hat that was very definitely my grandfather's, because my mother remembers him wearing it through Midwestern winters. I inherited all of them and have worn the flat cap ever since. But my aunt and my uncle who are in town for the New Year saw me in it, looked at each other in amazement, and unanimously identified it as "Grandpa Bernie's!"
This is my grandmother's father, my brother's namesake, the Brooklyn pharmacist Israel Bernard Madinek. He died in 1964. (His funeral was the site of the legendary exchange between the sententious rabbi who kept declaring, "Life depends on the liver," and the infuriated widow who finally burst out, "But he died of a heart attack!") He is supposed to have been born on January 25th, 1894, somewhere Russian that came down to me as "Padolia," which I think now must have been Podolia. According to the one story I heard growing up, he came over alone at age sixteen, never sent for any of his family, never allowed Russian to be spoken in his house: his father was a rabbi who had abandoned the family. My grandmother grew up speaking English and "Yiddish you could break a leg on." About six years ago, sorting some family documents, my mother discovered photocopies of a passport issued by the Russian Empire in the name of Ilsinik I. Myatinek—I thought at the time that the date on it was 1914, but now I want to double-check. A year or so after that, my mother handed me a document in Fraktur to translate. It turned out to be an original contract for passage on the Hamburg-Amerika Linie: Srul Meydanik, aged nineteen, previous residence starting with P, sailing to New York on the Pretoria on December 5th, 1913. I don't expect ever to fill in these gaps or discrepancies, to know which version of his age was the right one, if either, or whether the story about his father was true. I only know the year he graduated from Columbia University's College of Pharmacy of the City of New York—1919—because Google digitized the relevant publications a couple of years ago. It was easier in those days to make your past disappear. He was a difficult parent, a better grandparent. My 1928 contraband copy of Joyce's Ulysses came originally from him. My grandmother remembered him giving her mercury to play with as a small child, all the small shivering drops rolling back and forth and running together in her palm. Even if it dates back no further than the 1950's and was manufactured somewhere in New Jersey, I like knowing that I am wearing his hat.
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derspatchel informs me that today Massachusetts' transgender anti-discrimination law finally goes into effect. Good start, October. Keep it up. I am off to a birthday party.
I always thought my grey-green tweed flat cap—the one I had repaired by Salmagundi in the spring—belonged originally to my grandfather. At the time of his death it was being stored with the black lamb astrakhan that belonged to my great-grandfather Noah (nobody of my generation wears it, but I couldn't give it up) and and the enormous shedding wolfskin hat that was very definitely my grandfather's, because my mother remembers him wearing it through Midwestern winters. I inherited all of them and have worn the flat cap ever since. But my aunt and my uncle who are in town for the New Year saw me in it, looked at each other in amazement, and unanimously identified it as "Grandpa Bernie's!"
This is my grandmother's father, my brother's namesake, the Brooklyn pharmacist Israel Bernard Madinek. He died in 1964. (His funeral was the site of the legendary exchange between the sententious rabbi who kept declaring, "Life depends on the liver," and the infuriated widow who finally burst out, "But he died of a heart attack!") He is supposed to have been born on January 25th, 1894, somewhere Russian that came down to me as "Padolia," which I think now must have been Podolia. According to the one story I heard growing up, he came over alone at age sixteen, never sent for any of his family, never allowed Russian to be spoken in his house: his father was a rabbi who had abandoned the family. My grandmother grew up speaking English and "Yiddish you could break a leg on." About six years ago, sorting some family documents, my mother discovered photocopies of a passport issued by the Russian Empire in the name of Ilsinik I. Myatinek—I thought at the time that the date on it was 1914, but now I want to double-check. A year or so after that, my mother handed me a document in Fraktur to translate. It turned out to be an original contract for passage on the Hamburg-Amerika Linie: Srul Meydanik, aged nineteen, previous residence starting with P, sailing to New York on the Pretoria on December 5th, 1913. I don't expect ever to fill in these gaps or discrepancies, to know which version of his age was the right one, if either, or whether the story about his father was true. I only know the year he graduated from Columbia University's College of Pharmacy of the City of New York—1919—because Google digitized the relevant publications a couple of years ago. It was easier in those days to make your past disappear. He was a difficult parent, a better grandparent. My 1928 contraband copy of Joyce's Ulysses came originally from him. My grandmother remembered him giving her mercury to play with as a small child, all the small shivering drops rolling back and forth and running together in her palm. Even if it dates back no further than the 1950's and was manufactured somewhere in New Jersey, I like knowing that I am wearing his hat.
derspatchel informs me that today Massachusetts' transgender anti-discrimination law finally goes into effect. Good start, October. Keep it up. I am off to a birthday party.
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That's wonderful! Thank you.
He was traveling steerage: the document is a Zwischendecksbeförderung-Vertrag, "between-decks passage contract." I'll see if I can get a photograph of it sometime. My mother knows where it is.