TULKOPS

Any writer or storyteller, especially the ones that attempt to recall memories, must be aware that the mind plays tricks – sometimes mixes up some facts with fiction.  I truly believe that every fiction writer falls back on his own life and uses true facts for his storytelling, and every biographer/scribe uses, perhaps involuntarily, a degree of fiction and imaginary images as facts.

Names; names that float up from the subconscious, hardly remembered, they are very rare and almost forgotten.

The Goldbergs, Greenbergs, Cohens, Levins, and similar ones are well known and easier to come to mind, but the others making up my life’s environment are not so common - like the Bibels, the Bagliebters, and the Tulkops.  These are the rare ones – how many besides members of my clan know these names?

The Tulkops little group faded from my memory in the comings and goings of my own daily life.  One day, having lunch in a restaurant,  I reached out to pick up a jar of pickles, and looking at the unfamiliar label, I read that it was pickled and packed by the Tulkop Company.

Strange, I thought.  Then that name from my childhood floated up and planted some recollections - facts? fiction?

But then I forgot about the pickles, and the name, until one day I received a short letter from a man living in an obscure place in the state of New York – Bohemia.  The letter stated that my name somehow appeared on a search screen on the internet, and that it showed my place of birth as Poland; right down to the town I was born in.  The letter went on to request that since his father and grandparents came from this same obscure little shtetel,  perhaps I could tell him something about them.  The letter’s author said that so far as he knew, all knowledge of them had been wiped out, and he was looking for his roots.

I don’t think that anybody reading this narrative could ever imagine what life really was like in the small villages in Poland, during, and between, the two world wars.

First, imagine no running water, no electricity, and no outside income.  It was the most primitive existence.  There were virtually no connections to the outside world.  Knowledge about the world, throughout the entire community, was a mixture of the common faith, readings from the Talmed and Torah, woman’s teachings, and "Baba Maises" (grandmother’s tales).  Facts, lore, magic, and mysteries were all churned into a body of shared understanding we regarded as "knowledge."

We were a large family.  A big house, and several smaller dwellings kept our closely-knit unit in contact all the time.  By local standards we were considered well off.

Many times there were shortages of good food, but we were never in threat of starving.  The invading armies always confiscated the cows, the horses, the poultry, and any stashed away food that they discovered, but in some way we always managed.

We ate mostly black bread, cabbage and beets.  We seldom had milk or meat, and unfortunately our children were unable to have all the vital nutrients necessary for good health and growth.

The hardest hit by these periodic raids and shortages was my grandfather’s sister, Shosha Tulkop, and her brood of two daughters and four sons.

I can still see exactly how their home looked.  Their dwelling was located  at the end of our big house – an unfinished section of the old main home, perhaps 200 years old at that time.

I remember the earthen floor – no planked wood or other materials covering the ground. When the rains came, the earth turned to mud.  One bedroom served the whole family, a small kitchen, where under the wood burning stove there was a hole dug in the earth.  In good times this hole held a goose to be fattened up for some holiday or another.

When I stretch my memory (I was only three or four years old at the time), I see the husband, Moishe Aaron, the tailor, near an old sewing machine. I see a smiling bearded man.

There is a story I heard many times about him.  When a huge Polish pig, and they used to be numerous, looked into his open window and bothered Moise, the tailor threw his big scissors at the beast to chase it away.  The point got stuck in the pig’s hide, and it ran away squealing.  The tailor and his children ran in pursuit, and finally the scissors were retrieved -quite bloody.  This pig, at least, never again ventured close to the tailors window.

Moishe Aaron left for America.  The details of this I don’t remember.  I do recall that my mother’s aunt and the six children, without any income, became my family’s responsibility.

Whatever we had was shared with this destitute group.  Later, the oldest girl, Esther, started learning the dressmaking trade, and she was able to earn some money as a seamstress.  The other girl, Faiga, went to work as a domestic for a rich family in a nearby town, Zamorcy.  We heard very little from her.

The oldest son, Hersh (Harry) started to work in our woodworking shop for food, not salary.  The others, Berish (Benny), Yacov (Jacob), and Gershon (George) were too young to work yet.  This family never ventured far out of the confines of their dwelling. The children didn’t attend the public schools, but my father taught them to read and write.

Right after the first World War ended, Harry disappeared.  We were to learn that he was able to get to America.  It seems that Moishe Aaron had saved up only enough money for one family member's passage to the United States.

We later heard that Moishe Aaron followed his trade in New York.  Not only did he work six days a week, for ten hours a day, he also became the night watchman in this factory, and there he found a corner in which to sleep.  He spent almost all his time in this sweatshop.  He tried to save every penny to bring all his family out from Poland to New York.

At last some people helped the tailor to purchase tickets for the ship journey, and my grandfather arranged the rest of the money for them to be able to make this trip.

At the last moment before their departure, a hitch developed.  Esther, the oldest, was in love with a young man.  Since he did not have the necessary papers, he could not travel, and Esther didn’t want to leave without him.

Ultimatums were given.  Rationalism prevailed.  And the whole Tulkop family left intact. Esther felt she couldn’t live without her man, so once in the United States she took on two consecutive shifts in the factory where she worked, and she saved whatever she earned in order to bring him to America.

But fate had an unwelcome surprise for her.  Her boyfriend would not wait.  He fell in love with another woman, who was married.  A divorce followed, and he, feeling guilty, did not even answer Esther's mail.

Esther came back to our town.  She was worn out and sick.  She soon developed T.B., was bed-ridden for months, and then died in our home.

Years later, my mother, my brother, sister, and I finally rejoined my father in San Francisco, where we settled in to enjoy a good life.  Later I married the woman that I loved, and took her to New York to start our careers on the stage, and in writing.  Upon our arrival there we paid a visit to the Tulkop family.

Surprisingly, very little had changed.  Although they had lived all these years in the biggest city in the world, their life style remained much the same as when they lived in a tiny village in Poland.  Their family language was still Yiddish.  They lived in a small apartment, a "walk-up" on the fourth floor, with no elevator.  The toilets were downstairs in the main courtyard.

But the bright smiling faces, and the radiance in their eyes, brightened up our world.  My Great Aunt Shosha was neatly dressed, a blond pazik (wig) covered her nicely shaped head, and her expressive eyes told of happiness.  The tailor, Moishe Aaron, was tall; a dignified, and a proud man.  He looked me over, kissed us both, and could not stop pointing out to my wife what a lucky man I was.  But then I was always lucky - no wonder they called me the "little prince."

I was soon to realize that they never ventured far from the intersection of Rivington and Delancy streets.  Shosha never saw the tall buildings of Manhattan, or Times Square.  She had never even seen the Yiddish theaters a short distance away on 2^nd Ave.  According to them, they did not need to.

As I walked about in the neighborhood with them, and saw the street full of pushcarts filled with all the necessities of life, from fruits to baked bread and rolls, from shoes, shirts, and ties, to barrels of herring and pickles, from prayer books to water melons, when I heard them talk to all the merchants, I realized that they all knew each other. They called each other by their first names; perhaps many of them even came from the same shtetel. Seeing this I was pleased and happy for them

Moishe Aaron was the head of his own little shul (synagogue).  One Saturday I went with him to his shul.  He was the Cantor, the reader of the Torah.  He wore a silk top hat all the while there.  Jacob and George were there also.  Their children lived nearby.  Some were married and visited them often.

The youngest, Gerson (George), who was born with a clubfoot, and then had suffered from both ridicule and bad footwear in Poland, had had an operation in America, and now he wore regular shoes.

My uncle kept on reminding me what a great county America was, and that he thanked God for Tammany Hall; the political bosses of New York who looked after good party members like his family.  He told us that all of them were working now and waiting for the recession to be over, and:

"Since Roosevelt was now the new president, it will get even better."

Bassya and I enjoyed their brightness, their great hospitality, and their small town form of casual living.  A few times, after an enormous Polish/Jewish dinner where the chicken soup had to have "big eyes" (fat floating on the top was a sign of prosperity), we slept over on one of their feather filled beds.  On one occasion I really wanted to take a bath but I couldn’t (actually I changed my mind). The bathtub was already filled with water, and a huge fish (a carp) had taken up residence. The fish was kept alive for the Sabbath meal.

The time came for my wife and myself to return to San Francisco.  Not being able to achieve our dreams in New York, we came to say good-bye to these happy, wonderful people.  Most of their family showed up, and many brought their spouses.  All were very happy to see us, and my mother’s aunt baked and packed a large box of cookies for us to take back to my mother; to remind her of her youth.

Moishe Aaron put his hands on my head and blessed me.  He was sure that our life in California would be good.

"This is America – the best country in the world," he kept on reminding us. 

And he was right.