It’s Snowing Again

It’s easy to like snow in the abstract. When it impacts every facet of your life it starts losing its luster.

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At the moment the richest man in Hamden has to be Frank who plows our driveway and loads of others. He is as busy as can be. He’s hit our place twice in the last 24 hours! As soon as he left it started to snow again.

It’s easy to like snow in the abstract. When it impacts every facet of your life it starts losing its luster.

Stef wants to go to the mall this evening. She has never driven in snow. I’ve given her the option of having me as her chauffeur.

Along with the snow we’ve been blessed with frigid temperatures. The last week has seen two night below zero. It looks like there’s more of that toward the weekend. Oh boy.

Link With My Past

I found a link earlier tonight to Ancestry.com. I don’t know anything about the site, except it’s a commercial outfit, but it did offer a three day trial to look at the 1930 US Census.

First I went and looked for my mom’s family. Nothing. I’ll try again later. Next, my dad’s family.

Goose bumps ran down my spine as I looked and saw their handwritten names: Jacob, Sarah, Anna, Harold and Murray.

There’s nothing earth shattering here. A tiny insight into their lives in Depression era Brooklyn.

My grandfather was 35 and from Austria. He was listed as being a chauffeur. I seem to remember stories that he was once a trolley car driver. Maybe that’s what was meant?

Grandma Sarah was 30 and from Russia. Both she and grandpa could read. Aunt Anna was 10, my dad 4&#189 and Uncle Murray 2 years, 10 months.

They rented their apartment for $25 a month at 80 Middleton Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There were two other families in the building – one of whom was headed by someone also named Fox. He owned the building, worth $4100. If he’s a relative, this is the first I’m hearing it.

The other Fox family spanned a few generations with a grandfather, grown daughter and her husband living there.

The third family was headed by a divorced woman. She had a four year old daughter and a boarder, named Minnie Shonda.

Where listed, each of the adults in the building came from a home where Yiddish was spoken as the first language.&#185

It’s amazing. All of this carefully hidden away for 76 years, waiting for the Internet to set it free.

When I speak with my dad, I’ll see what, if any of this, he remembers.

&#185 – Many people confuse Yiddish with Hebrew. Yiddish is an amalgam of Eastern European languages, spoken primarily by Jews (and so the story goes, Colin Powell). It is a dead language, no longer spoken anywhere in the world as a primary language. My parent’s generation is the last to have Yiddish regularly spoken at home.