One Thousand Words, Part 6

My grandparents are in the center of this picture. It's the summer of 1977 on the day they first saw my sweetie. That's what the flowers were about. I'm standing next to my sweetie, the guy with the Jewfro. My mother is on the far left. My father took the picture.

My grandfather was a capitalist through and through, and he was amused about my living arrangements, sharing a house with my sweetie and two others. In his youth he'd seen the rise of socialism and communes. People in the 1960s thought they invented "free love." But it was in Eastern Europe in the 1910s and 1920s. Everything old is new again it seems. Anyhow, he smiled at me and said to me in Yiddish, "So you're living in a commune now I understand."

"It's not a commune, I'm just sharing a house," I tried to explain. He just laughed. My mother was worried about his response to my sweetie and I living together. He'd seen it all before. "As long as she's Jewish, it's fine with me," was what he said to her.

My uncle (on the far right) used to always greet me by asking, "How's my little glue sniffer?" But with the arrival of my sweetie on the scene, he changed greetings. Instead he would ask, "How's your hot honey?" He kept that line up for several years. My grandmother - who was certifiable for all my days - took to my sweetie instantly. "She's a tiny one just like me," she said to me. The Yiddish word she used to describe her was pitzeleh.

The office to my grandfather's junkyard is in the background, Waukesha Auto Parts. Waukesha is a small town, now a suburb, 20 miles away from Milwaukee proper. Back then it was a typical anti-Semitic German Catholic community. The junkyard was on the main drag at the eastern end of town. My grandfather lived in the back of the junkyard and of course had a mean as anything junkyard dog. My uncle and his family lived across the street.

This wasn't at all a residential area. I thought it was kind of nuts for them to be living where they were, surrounded by industry, far from any neighbors, and a good forty five minutes away from any Jewish community where they might fit in. But I never said anything except to my mom, who agreed. I'm know she lobbied for my uncle to move; I'm sure she did the same with her father.

In Waukesha, my grandfather was simply known as "The Jew." I don't think most people knew his actual name. Occasionally people would come up to me when I was a kid - I'd spend weekends there quite a bit - and say, "you're The Jew's grandkid, aren't ya," in that Germanic kind of sing song accent people in Southeastern Wisconsin have. They didn't mean anything by it, but I would cringe when it happened.

My grandfather and grandmother lived there until my grandfather was about 85 or so. Then he retired and they moved to a condo full of Jewish seniors, walking distance to some apartments my parents owned. My uncle continued to run the business. The little guy in the picture runs it now, my cousin.

My grandfather had an incredible constitution. When he was 75 or so, the magnet on the junkyard crane malfunctioned and dumped I don't know how many hundreds of pounds of scrap onto the ground where he was standing. His leg was shattered. Doctors told him he would never walk again. A year and a half later, he threw his cane away.

When he was about 80, his doctor told him he would soon contract diabetes. Upon hearing the news, he dropped 20 pounds in a month and drastically changed his diet for the rest of his days. This delayed the onset of his diabetes for several years. Then he'd inject himself with insulin even though his hands were by then horribly arthritic. His mind was sharp until the day he died. He was 92. My grandmother died three months later.