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No Horns
My grandfather Jacobs used to peddle across the Ashley River. That time they had to catch a ferry boat across the river, before they build the first wooden bridge. One time it was getting too close to Shabbos and he couldn’t get home before Shabbos started so he stopped at a farmer’s house to find if he could spend the night there. He asked the man if he could put him up until Sunday morning. He told him why, he told him he was Jewish—“I don’t work on my Sabbath and I don’t work my animal.” The man told him, “You don’t look Jewish. You don’t have horns.”
Close Call
[My father] became a peddler, walking, pack on his back, customers mostly blacks, buying on the installment plan, paying thirty-five cents this week, thirty-five next week. He was a typical Southern Jewish peddler. Interestingly, he had an indentation in his skull that came about because he once went out to collect and was told by neighbors that the man who owed him was not there. He'd been putting my dad off for weeks. As my dad turned to leave, the man, who indeed was there, brought down a hatchet on my father's head. Fortunately, just at that moment, my father needed to scratch his head. It saved his life! His arm was broken in about four places, but the edge of the hatchet tipped over and made this indentation which as a kid I used to feel from time to time. It wasn't exactly a talisman but I used to feel it. He worked hard. He eventually had a horse and buggy, then in time, got into the retail business, and some years later into the wholesale shoe business. He and his brother became the largest shoe wholesalers in the Carolinas.
Peddling
At sixteen years old my father was teaching Hebrew—that’s over in Europe, of course. He come over here and he started out peddling. He bought this cow and made the five dollars. He felt that was a good way to make money and he started dealing in livestock, then he took over the slaughterhouse and became very successful. And then we had a mule business there [in Anderson, South Carolina]. My father, he bought it and put my brother-in-law in it. He bought the mule business, he used to hang around there a lot, and then later I went in with my brother-in-law—before I came to Walterboro I was partner with my brother-in-law. My whole family was in livestock. I was the first one to get into this kind of [retail, dry goods] business.
Getting Started
Anyway, Papa went to Hornik to get some goods on credit and they asked him some questions. They asked him what kind of collateral [he had]. “I have nothing, I have absolutely nothing.” They were so impressed with his being so candid and honest, Papa said, that by the time he got home the cartons of merchandise were already there waiting for him. They’d already sent it to the house. He was very impressed by that.
The Thing to Do
Typically in those days, you know, the Jews were unskilled, didn’t have any degrees or any professional life. They’d open a store, either a grocery store or dry goods or furniture or general merchandise. The thing to do was to open a store. My father had several stores. Looking back on his career, he should never have been in business. He was more of a scholar. He was more interested in reading and writing. He had several businesses. He had a fish market, couple or three grocery stores, and finally in his later years he just gave it all up and became an inspector for the health department. But that was—he was forced into doing things that he really was not qualified to do and yet he didn’t have any professional training to do anything else. You don’t have to be particularly trained to open a grocery store in those days. There were no supermarkets and the competition was corner groceries. So it was very simple if you knew how to manage money, and he apparently didn’t know how, so he never survived any long-term business.
My mother was a professional caterer for years and years. She did weddings and the bar mitzvahs and things of that nature. So between the two of them, they raised seven children. But none of us ever went to college. None of the seven ever went to college. Probably a financial thing. We all went to work early so we could contribute to the household expense. My first job was earning twelve dollars a week and I was required to give five dollars to my mother. And all the other members of the family did likewise.My father had a scale that hung from the ceiling and the container was shaped like kind of a bucket or shovel and that’s where he would weigh the fish. The store was located just across the street from Mr. Robinson’s pawn shop and bicycle shop. Klyde [Robinson] and his family lived over that store. Maybe not on a daily basis but certainly on a regular basis his maid would bring over Klyde to the fish market and my father would put him in the scale and weigh him. That became kind of a routine thing for my father and Klyde. And Klyde remembers that. Somebody must have told him of course.
The Head Salesman
In those days, you know, no automobiles and no transportation, McClellanville to Charleston was maybe a two-day trip by horse and buggy, or an all-day trip by horse and buggy. They [peddlers] would take orders for merchandise, blankets, spreads, and any household goods—pots, pans—and next trip they would bring it to them. I think one of the interesting things—there was a store here called Solomon’s, Sam Solomon. They were on King Street, almost across the street from where Fox Music House used to be. Next to it was a big Jewish delicatessen called Mazo’s Delicatessen. Sam Solomon would give the merchandise to all the peddlers, Jewish peddlers, on consignment, to go out and sell.
He had a black man working for them in the store whose name was Isaac, and Isaac spoke Yiddish like you’ve never heard in your life. I mean, you could not tell he wasn’t European. He would converse with all the refugees—immigrants, rather, in those days—in Yiddish. I remember him as a kid as a nice—coal-black, but one of the nicest fellows you ever met, and he was the head salesman for Solomon’s with the immigrants.
“I’m not cut out for selling shoes.”
I came home [from the service] and Mama said take a month off and I did and Alex Karesh asked me one—it was Christmas weekend—he offered me a job. I worked for him for about six months. I knew this was not going to be my future. Then I told Alex Karesh in May, “I’m not cut out for selling shoes.” He said, “But I’m happy with you.” I said, “I feel morally obligated to stay with you till you get a respectable replacement. I’ll give you till the first of the year to find one, seven months.” In about two months, he came back to me and he said, “I do have someone who wants your job, but I still want you.” I appreciate that, but you know this wasn’t—and then I went out in my car and I went out and peddled and knocked on doors.
I remember I went to the C&S Bank right opposite Cannon Street—the bank still exists but in a different name—and wanted to borrow a thousand dollars and the guy tells me, “You never had any credit.” I said, “No, but I got to get started.” He gave me a note and he said, “Take this down to your Uncle Abe and tell him to sign right under your name.” I had never, ever had anyone endorse anything for me. I wouldn’t do it. So I went to my advisor who is the best financial man to this day, Melvin Solomon. “Melvin, what do I do?” He said, “You go to South Carolina National on Broad Street.” He said, “You go see David Verner and don’t ask for a thousand. You ask for two thousand. He’ll turn you down and he’ll only give you a thousand.” I went to Mr. Verner and I went through the story and I showed him my statement. He saw something on the statement the other banks didn’t. I had an insurance policy from Arthur Williams’ father and the cash value was nine hundred and some-odd dollars. He said, “You want two thousand, you’ve got to do two things. Number one, transfer your account here.” I said, “That’s easy to do.” “Number two, I want you to make us the beneficiaries of your policy for whatever interest that may appear and the balance will go to your estate.” Which I did, and that was probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me because I was with the bank for years until Mr. Verner died.
From Peddler to Pawnbroker
When [my father] first came here he peddled from Charleston to Columbia. With all the little merchandise that he had he would stop at the various little towns like North and Denmark, those little towns from Charleston to Columbia. Because you know they didn’t have the interstate.
He had an old car in those days. I don’t know what kind of car or how he got around that well. As I say I’m very sorry I never asked more questions. But when he came here he had his meals at Rabbi Karesh’s. [David Karesh, rabbi of Beth Shalom in Columbia, S.C.] Most of the peddlers would manage to spend the the night there or wherever they could find a Jewish home and keep kosher meals and eat kosher. And then he opened up a ladies ready-to-wear on Gervais Street—I am going to say where the AT&T building is now. Across from the capitol. But he didn’t stay in that long. That wasn’t his forte. He opened a pawn shop on Main Street. And then later moved it to Washington right off of Main Street and he stayed there until he died.
I started working for my father when I was about fifteen. I was going to Columbia High School and his store was only about two blocks down. And I used to walk down there and help them in the afternoons when I got out of high school. Being a pawn shop, we used to take in everything. Saws, hammers, it didn’t make any difference. We took in men’s clothing, jewelry, of course, and luggage. Anything like that.
The Promise of King StreetI think that that is what the appeal was for many Jews—King Street was what was unique about this Jewish community. King Street offered that kind of Jewish person the opportunity to have that kind of store, that small business. Put something in it and you could make a living.
The War Changed Everything
The Mazos was three or four doors up. Zucker had a furniture store a couple of doors next to us. Star Furniture Company was Max Zucker’s father and that’s Bubba Zucker’s father also. I’m trying to think who else. Across the street—I remember when they came to Charleston—was the Siegels. They had a shoe repair shop. They were cousins to the Oxlers who had a shoe repair shop further up the street. Across the street from us, directly across the street, was a candy store. All the merchants on King Street, I’d say 99 percent, were Jewish, either clothing stores or shoe stores. Robinson had a bicycle shop up at the corner. Solomon had a bicycle shop halfway, next door to the Mazos.
They had Mike, Sam and Jake’s, men’s clothing. All the brothers were in the store. Oh, yeah, I remember them well. And across the street from them was Edward Kronsberg who had the five and dime store, Edward’s. Most of them were Jewish merchants. On Saturday you couldn’t buy a piece of furniture; you couldn’t buy clothing. The stores were closed in Charleston. You couldn’t buy anything on Saturdays. Of course, later on you could, but I’m talking about in the early ’30s and late ’30s. Seems like the war changed everything in Charleston.
The Bicycle Business
Bicycle businesses as most businesses in Charleston, particularly in those days, they handled bicycles and toys. You’re familiar with Toys-R-Us today? Well, that’s how the bicycle shop was. Various toys and dolls and so forth were stacked from the ground to the ceiling. In the months of November and December they did a bigger business than the rest of the ten months of the year. Everybody in the family worked at the store in December. Even when I became the United States District Attorney, and I became a Circuit Court Judge, come December 15th, I would take leave, vacation time, from those positions, and go down to the store and work.
Everybody worked in the store. Nobody got paid a salary or anything of that nature. Whatever we needed, we went to the register and took, no questions asked. No accounting had to be given. We’d go on a trip, we took some money, Dad gave us some money. That’s what we did.
He Could Never Be a Peddler
When we got to Charleston my father had already established a lovely home for us—my brother was there too—and beautiful clothes and everything, and we did not suffer. But my father was never a happy man in Charleston, because he was very snooty. He had a tremendous ego, and you can’t have that and get along in this country.
My father thought if you couldn’t speak two, three languages, you were not educated. He could never be a peddler, like most of them became, because that was beneath him. He had a grocery store, and he was as poor a businessman as one could be—I mean, he just didn’t understand the rudiments of business. But they had Jewish jobbers there, like the Hirshmans and the Pearlstines, and they all gave him an open credit, and he put in light clothes too. But to say he was a success—he was not.
A Curse
My mother was not a businesswoman. My mother always used to say God put a curse on her because her two daughters were businesswomen. She thought it was horrible for a woman to work in a store. She would cry about it.
The First Sale
The oldest department store in Charleston, Jewish, was Furchgott’s. They were Reform Jews. He opened up a very fine ladies’ ready-to-wear store in Charleston. It was called Herbert’s, downtown. Right after I quit my job—I only worked a few weeks because I could not walk three miles—there was an ad in the paper: a woman was going off for two months, the secretary took off for two months, and they were looking for somebody, so I went. He thought I was a little bit young, and I showed him what I could do, and he hired me for just the two months. I didn’t have to work on Saturday.
When he hired me, the office was in the center of the store—that’s the way Charleston used to be, they don’t have that now. So this girl came in [to Herbert’s]. She was a friend of my sister Annie’s, her name was Goodman. She was Theresa Livingstain’s first cousin, and she was fat, she wore about an eighteen dress. And this clerk—her name was Maybelle Kennedy, I can still remember—she was trying to keep on telling her, “Buy a black dress or a navy ’cause you’re stout, it will make you look thinner,” and she didn’t like it. I called over my boss and I said, “Mr. Benjamin, if you let me go over there and help that girl”—and that’s the first time I ever sold in my life—“I can sell her a dress.” And they had expensive clothes, in that time, like 150 dollar dresses. He says, “Well, go ahead and try, I’ll tell Maybelle you’ll give her the commission because you don’t work on the floor.” And I did sell her a beautiful dress, I sold her a pretty printed silk dress. He said to me, “I want you to work on the floor when the cashier comes back.” He says, “You know human nature.” I said, “No, I don’t know human nature, but I know her nature, she didn’t want a black or a navy dress.”
A Stylish Lady
My mother was quite a stylish lady and very tall, slim, good looking. And people liked the way she looked and so they used to buy. They sold very inexpensive clothes but it was during the Depression. People didn’t have any money. My mother could put on a $5.95 Bamberg sheer dress and look great in it. So they wanted to look like she did so they would come there. But that was the price of clothes—$5.95, $6.95. A formal dress was $10.95, $12.95. They were very successful in that business. But my father had been in business since he was about nineteen years old. He only went through the eighth grade at Bennett’s school and he worked. He went to work.
Appearances
And my father, always appearances were very important to him, very important. You were a lady. You acted like a lady. You acted like a gentleman. You weren’t loud. I can remember the kids used to shoot marbles on the sidewalk. It was always a little dirt place and the kids used to shoot marbles and would draw the little circle outside the theater on George Street. I think my father thought it was his sole responsibility to come home every afternoon and run the kids off the street and tell ’em to go inside the building. Children didn’t play in the street. He did not like that. He didn’t like all the little Jewish boys congregating in the street shooting marbles. He thought they ought to be inside.
A Very Large Shoe Store
My father had at one time a very large shoe store. As big as Morris Sokol Furniture Company—it was forty feet wide with two front double doors, one hundred feet back. It belonged to the Hughes family who owned Hughes Lumber Company, the property. They wouldn’t sell it to him. He had an interesting store—he had three showcases, beautiful showcases, in front. One was a long one that faced the door and one on each side of that. The big one had curves around the front. He also had ladders attached to the ceiling on a rail on the right hand and left hand side that were attached to the ceiling. He had a high shelf; when you wanted to reach to the top shelf you had to climb that ladder. In the back of the store, he had a circular bench made of black leather which he finally gave to The Charleston Museum. It was round and circular and he kept that in the back for people coming back for rubber shoes or children’s shoes to try on.
My mother, unless she helped her mother in Branchville, never helped in a store in her life. I don’t know what year she left Branchville, maybe seven or eight years old. But, my father also had a clock in the front window of the women’s side. See, in the front, on the right hand side were the men’s shoes on display in front facing the street and on the left were the ladies shoes. Well, I remember a glass clock that hung down by a chain from the top and had one hour hand and one minute hand and on the front of the clock it says: “How does this clock work?” Well, the works were actually in the round part of the hour hand. They had to wind it regular; they didn’t have electric clocks those days. He also had an old time cash register—today it would be worth a fortune—made out of a silver-looking metal. You punched a button with the amount of the sale in the front and the drawer was in back. He even had a cashier on busy days who would give change. It used to work by electricity or by a crank handle.
He also had a mechanical adding machine. The funny part of that adding machine—I think it was before 1910—he had a bookkeeper who was filling out a deposit slip. He asked my father to check his addition of the checks he was depositing and my father checked it, got a different figure than the bookkeeper. They both checked it again and finally agreed to a figure. My father says, “You know, I’ve heard of such a thing as a mechanical adding machine. I ought to try to buy one.” It wasn’t two minutes later, they tell me, a young man came in from the corner. His father ran a grocery store on the corner named Knobloch. He comes to my father and told him who he was and said, “I’m selling adding machines. I’m taking orders and shipping from the factory.” My father said, “Let me see a sample.” He said, “All I’ve got is a catalogue, prices.”
“Let me see it.”
He showed him. He showed him a drawing of a Wales adding machine. Must have been from England, I don’t know. It was on a stand, thirty inches high. He asked how much it was. He told him.
My father said, “I’ll take it.” Mr. Knobloch told my father, he says, “You’re going to take it? Just like that? You know, you are the first person I’ve called on to try to sell these adding machines and you buy one in less than two minutes. I don’t know whether I ought to continue this work or not. It’s just too easy! You know, I ought to quit while I’m ahead.”
[My father] sold out to these people from Savannah called Sterling Shoe Stores. They still have a store in Savannah called Globe Shoe Store. They had about a half a dozen shoe stores in Georgia and this one in Charleston. They used this one for an outlet store.
He didn’t have enough money to stock the business right. That was in l930. A man named Joseph came down with a carload of socks which weren’t seconds or even thirds—they were what was called misplates. That time men wore socks almost up to the knee made out of acetate rayon; they also made cotton socks.
Nylon wasn’t invented until the late ’30s. These socks, as they were being made sometimes a thread would pop and some of the pattern would be left out of the sock. Any time that would happen they would throw them out into baskets and they would sell those socks off by the pound. Joseph, and people like him, used to go about and buy those socks by the pound and had women match them up the best they can. The ones that almost matched, they would get eighty-five cents a dozen. The ones that were really mismatched badly, the threads popped badly, Mr. Joseph would sell for forty-five cents a dozen. The stores sold them for ten cents a pair and five cents a pair. A lot of men used to buy one pair a week. I don’t know if they washed them. They threw them away.
That August, Mr. Joseph came into my father’s shoe store and sold him twenty dozen of those socks at eighty-five cents a dozen which my father put in the shelf and put a few of them in the showcase and put a sign on them “ten cents a pair.” He came back in September and he still had fifteen, sixteen dozen left and he didn’t buy any more. He came back in October, he had sold them all. Word was getting around. Edwards was near the corner selling cheap socks like that and better socks. He bought twenty dozen more in October and he came back in November just before Thanksgiving and he sold him twenty dozen more. He said, “I notice you are dressing the window right now”—the men’s shoe window. “You have ledges in there, why not put socks on them?” And they did. They sold over one hundred fifty dozen retail between then and Christmas.
Well, after Christmas my brother had a half year more in college and he and my father said, “Maybe we ought to buy some of these socks from Joseph and resell them and job them.” That’s how they got in the wholesale business. He had to give Mr. Joseph a check to give to one of the factories in North Carolina to pay for the goods right away because Mr. Joseph couldn’t carry them financially. In fact, he might have had maybe fifty dollars in the bank and Melvin and I went out that Monday afternoon and we sold enough socks along Meeting Street and North Charleston area to pay for the check. Mr. Joseph was a Syrian. Well, finally a man named Charles Cohen came to Charleston with a big variety of socks and they began buying —Mr. Joseph quit coming because he was old—that was in ’3l.
By that time, Melvin was traveling these country towns 50 to l50 miles from Charleston with a carload of socks. During ’3l my father still had the retail shoe store but then he was bought out by the Sterling Shoe Stores of Savannah.
Hog Heaven
Everybody lived over their stores, practically. ’Cause, you know, in those days it was almost a seven-day work week.
Saturday night was the busy night. Saturday, actually, was the busy day. The blacks, who were mainly our customers, would come into Cannon Street and park their buses coming from the islands, or out in the country, go shopping up and down King Street. And from Spring almost, or from Line I would say, almost to Calhoun there would be a lot of people. It would be busy until one o’clock in the morning. You worked on Saturday. You went to work at eight-thirty and you worked till twelve o’clock and that was the nature of the beast. You either worked those hours or you didn’t work. Jobs were scarce in those days. After school, I was making four dollars a week. I was glad to get that. And then when I graduated, I was making ten dollars a week. When I went to work at the Navy Yard, my first paycheck was nineteen dollars and I thought I was in hog heaven.
The ones who wanted to close on Saturday were the ones that observed Shabbos. I remember, vividly, Sonny Goldberg telling me not long before he died that he use to love Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon he would get ready to leave the store and go home and get ready for Shabbos. Dress up, shower, get ready for Shabbos. It’s like he was reborn again. He didn’t care what happened to the business. He was just going to take it easy on Shabbos and he did.
Prystowskys were closed. Sam Solomon was closed. Quite a few were closed. A lot of the furniture stores were closed. They observed Shabbos. They opened up Sunday. Now we used to open Sunday, too. Alec Karesh would open Sunday morning at eight-thirty and stay open until one o’clock. And there were shoppers there, too. My father would open on Sunday morning for a while. You know, one thing about opening, you don’t know who’s going to walk in. I have the same theory there. You shut down, you’ve got nothing. You know you’re going to get nothing. You stay open, you don’t know what’s going to come in.
You had several Goldbergs [who closed for Shabbos]. There was Sonny’s family. There was his uncle and another uncle. There were at least four different Goldberg families that had stores. There were the Altmans that had a couple of stores. There were the Kirshteins that had a couple of stores. And you had Sam Solomon. Then you had the Prystowskys. Leo Livingstain had a hardware store, he was shut down. There were easily forty stores [closed on Saturdays]. Come Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, King Street was dead. I mean, everybody shut down. It was dead.
“Haven’t spoken English today.”
My father had a sense of humor that was really something else. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this story, but his favorite expressoin was—if you asked how business was, he would tell you in Yiddish, “Ich hab nicht der erster word in English gesprochen,”which means “I haven’t spoken the first word of English yet today.” He hadn’t had a customer.
Close-knit
Next door to my father’s store was the Fechters—they had a hardware store. Down the street from the Fechters, about two doors, was another Ellison. There was Haskell’s father, he had a shoe store. Across the street was the Read Brothers, Firetag, Mr. Goldberg or Geldbart, and then Mr. Alec Ellison, Shera Lee’s father. And then you got on the next block the Alperns. You had the Kareshes, and you had the Barshays, the Cohens, I mean, but they’re all gone. Oh, I hate to talk about that, but Ms. Laufer had her little restaurant and the Zalkins had the meat market. It was a close-knit community and people got along real well.
The Cash Register
I’ll tell you this much. I went to work, the first job I had, I went to work at eight o’clock Saturday morning, worked till one o’clock Sunday morning, took a short break for lunch, and a short break for supper. I had never rung up a register in my life. Customer came in, he bought a jar of Vaseline for a dime, he gave me a dime and I rang up a dime. He bought a jar of Vaseline for a dime and he gave me fifty cents and I had to give him forty cents change, I rang up fifty cents, I was putting a half dollar in the register, I wasn’t figuring I was taking out forty cents. They checked that register that night and it was nine dollars short. They went ballistic. They swore—I know they swore I stole the money. They paid me thirty-five cents. Worked there while I was going to high school, after school, and finally they decided to fire me. Then I got another job. And I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Second one made the first one look like an angel. I worked for that man for about two years. And I got sick, caught the flu. I worked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and by Wednesday I couldn’t stand on my feet. I went home. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. He came up to my house Wednesday night, gave me three days’ [pay] and told me he didn’t need me anymore.
Then, fortunately, my father asked Alex Karesh to give me a job. Alec said, “Send him down.” I went to work for Alex Karesh and he used to call me, he always called me Irving. He’d call me and I would jump. “What are you jumping for? Relax. I’m not going to knock your head off.” He was really a gentleman. As I told you, the story with the money, if I’d done that with any other boss, I’d have been history.Wrong End of the Business
Well, Arthur [Kahn] was repairing radios and I was repairing radios. I was way up on Meeting Street and Arthur was in town. I’d come downtown every morning around ten, ten-thirty, and we’d go across the street to Gainey’s and drink coffee. Then one day Arthur says, “Itchy, do you realize what kind of profit is in the wholesale end of the business?” I said, “No, how did you know?” He says, “I was in Radio Lab and I happened to see an invoice. They are making forty percent.” I said, “Arthur, we’re in the wrong end of this business. We’re struggling to make a dollar and this man is making hundreds of dollars.”
Saturdays at Read Bros.
It was a peculiar business. We did as much business on a Saturday as the rest of the week. All the rest put together. It was a nice business. We were very crowded. Right now our trades are at their smallest. In those days you wouldn’t know it. On a Saturday, we would have maybe thirty or forty people in the store at one time, buying twenty-five cent stocking, fifty cent blouses, two dollars and ninety-five cent overalls. Prices like that. Twenty-five cent cloth. We had lots of cloths for twenty-five cents. Yellow homespun was ten cents, and a good quality, four-yard sheeting.
The hours were long. On Saturday we would close at twelve midnight. Open at eight in the morning. During the week, we’d be eight until nine.
We never lived over the store until [Dad] went broke and had to sell that house and we moved up over the store on the third floor. We had an elevator, a freight elevator that took us up and down. I used to enjoy doing that.
“You’ll never have enough”
My father kept his store closed on Saturday until around l9l0. He used to go to synagogue with his father every Saturday. One Saturday he decided to have Mr. Greenberg open the store on Saturday while he was going to synagogue—shul. Whether he worked that afternoon or not I don’t know.
My grandfather, on Saturday afternoon, instead of going a few blocks to synagogue, there was a minyan across the street above one of the stores, a daily minyan and Saturday afternoon. The first Saturday afternoon he didn’t notice that the store was open. The second Saturday, as he was crossing the street, from the corner of his eye he saw the door open—wide open. Well, he had been working in the store as a cashier for a number of years and went back into the store, walked all the way to the back and came out the front and never put his foot in that store again. He had to be about seventy-two years of age.
The next morning he asked my father, “Why have you got your store open?”
He said, “Well, I have been losing business and I can use the money.”
So [my grandfather] answered him, “I don’t care how much money you have, you’ll never have enough.” He still didn’t go back to the store.
The Most Interesting Life
[My father] had a general merchandise store. We had every bit of clothing for men and women and children except shoes. But everything else was available. And in those days you kept open from seven in the morning until eleven or twelve at night. As long as the customer came you were open. And that was the end of that business. But the Fox Music House was my pet. I loved working in there. You meet such a wonderful line of people. From the poorest to the roughest. We had people that Otto peddled with before we opened up the business and he would get paid with a chicken, vegetables. If they didn’t have the money, Otto Fox would leave a few dollars. They were sick. He’d help them get the medicine, put out the money for the medicine. The people have never forgotten that name. Right now wherever I go, “Mr. Fox was such a fine man. You know, he did so and so for us. He helped us with the medicine. He helped us with the sick.” And he peddled. He used to get a dollar payment and if they couldn’t pay that they paid him a watermelon. See. We worked together. They didn’t have the money so how could they pay us. This is the most interesting life.
We finally went into the music business. We had a complete record stock. Anything you wanted to hear you had in our store. And if we didn’t have it, we ordered it for the people. And that was the part that built us up. We worked so hard to please the people. At first we had a hand winding machine with two records. I was the only one in the business then. People would hear the music outside, especially church music for the colored people. They would come in and pay ten cents on a thirty-five-cent record. And we put one aside for them and when the other one came in, we called the people or wrote them a card if they didn’t have a phone and they came and took the record out.
Laufer’s Kosher Restaurant
There were—it might have been different times—two Jewish restaurants that I remember. Going back as far as I can remember, there was a Jewish restaurant I would say at about 529, or 531 King Street. Somewhere in that area. And that was first run, that I can recall, by a lady called Mrs. Greenberg. I believe her name was Molly Greenberg, a rather stout lady. She ran a restaurant, a kosher restaurant, and we would frequent it. Then Mrs. Laufer, even while Mrs. Greenberg was there, opened up a little restaurant above where they had a store at 535. And we would go upstairs there and she would serve meals in her kitchen or in a little room the size of this room we’re in, fourteen by fourteen, twelve by twelve, something. And we’d eat occasionally there or we’d eat at the Greenberg’s. My mother was an excellent cook and she’d like to cook, but frequently on Sunday my father and mother and I would go into the kosher restaurant and eat.
Thereafter, I think, Mrs. Greenberg wanted to retire. As a matter of fact, Helen Berle—she was a Laufer, her mother [was] Sadie [Tillie?] Laufer. They had a brother called Jakie, Jake. I talked to Helen recently, recalling things. Helen married somebody by the name of Dwork. She had two daughters. She is presently married to Maurice Berle, Berlinsky. She said that Mrs. Greenberg used to occasionally come up and eat at her mother’s restaurant, she enjoyed it, but finally Mrs. Laufer bought Mrs. Greenberg out. Helen’s father ran a little men’s store, some new merchandise, some used merchandise. They gave that store up when they took over the restaurant. Mrs. Laufer was a large woman, heavy woman, but delightful, very generous. I think you could get a steak dinner for thirty-five cents or maybe sixty five cents—appetizer, soup, meat, three vegetables, all the bread you want, tea, and dessert. Everything was ample sizes, too.
One thing in particular that I remember, two things I remember about, three things I remember, four things—
if I can decide to talk. I remember that Mrs. Laufer had a reputation that she would never keep food from one day to the next. At the end of the day she would either throw it away or give it away. Everyday it was fresh vegetables, fresh meat. Two, Mr. Laufer was meticulous about cleaning the place. He had a little whisk broom and he would go around the tables and anybody [dropped a] bread crumb, he’d whisk it off and clean up the place. He would always grumble, but did that. Third thing I remember was that occasionally, people would come in the community who didn’t have any money. Somebody in the neighborhood would take up a collection, bring them into Mrs. Laufer and feed them. There was one particular person who was sort of the Sammy Ward of the community. His name was Jake Widelitz. You may run across his name somewhere, W-I-D-E-L-I-T-Z. He had relatives who live in St. George, but the community for awhile fed him when he didn’t work and I know that she would always give him extremely large portions. I remember one evening seeing him with flanken. Do you know what flanken is? Boiled flanken? It’s meat that they would boil and make soups with and she’d serve him a big [portion]. Delicious with horseradish. I don’t eat meat now because of cholesterol, but I remember she would serve him large portions.
Hot Tea
I remember that people would come in [to Laufer’s Restaurant] in the afternoon, they would get a cup of tea, like people go get Coca-Colas now. Some of the Jewish merchants would come into the store in the afternoon to get a cup of tea, just to refresh and think awhile. Get away from the business. I can see them drinking a cup of tea, holding the tea between their fingers, either holding them at the rim or holding it between their thumb and their lower finger at the edge. Drinking tea with a little sugar in their mouth. Hot glass of tea. Cube of sugar, yes. Put that in the mouth. Of course, I remember holding it primarily by the rim, but others have told me that it was between the top and the bottom, between the two fingers. And they would drink hot tea, scalding hot, with the sugar.
Schnorrers
On the outside of each building on King Street the schnorrers would come. You know what a schnorrer is? The men who came by begging, asking for charity for some institution in Russia or some little organization or some synagogue or something to do with very, very strict Orthodox. They would have the little pais and the big fedora hats and the coats on. And later on, they took off the big fedora hats and the coats and they would come and you would give them charity. They would go from store to store collecting. They had these stores marked off where they would stop, where they knew there would be help for them. The Banov store had a big brick taken out where they knew that was [where the money was]—one would pass it on to the other. They would come in on a bus or a train and they would stop at Banov’s first and they would go through the town collecting. Sam Banov did it and Mrs. Banov would give them a room to sleep at night over the store on King Street. They lived over the store, too. She would feed them and the next morning, they would put them on a bus. They would give them enough to carry them to another city.
A Very Orderly Individual
My father rented a piece of property at 543 King Street. He opened a store there and we lived above the store. In the back of the store we had a little tailor shop where my mother and father would make such repairs as they could. If you had to have a pair of pants shortened it would be shortened in fifteen minutes, you didn’t have to come back two weeks later. My father would custom-make suits—I see bolts of cloth here [in the photo]. But my father kept an immaculate store. He was a very orderly individual.Noah’s Ark
Yes, [my grandfather’s store] was called Noah’s Ark. I’d like to think of it as almost like a combination [of a] pawn shop and everything else. People in those days who had to sell something, he’d buy it and resell it, and he had some new merchandise—it was more or less a hardware store. I used to always help Grandma open up at the shop on Saturday and sit with her. My grandmother was artistic. I laughed—she used to buy these dishes from the dime store and she’d hand paint them herself with paint and the tourists would want to buy them. I think we have one left and my sister’s got it. I let her keep it, you know.
585 King Street. That was the building they owned, and they lost that about 1939, something like that. You know how everybody had run across [hard] times in those days. Then they moved—boy, if that wasn’t something, moving that daggone store to 586. It was a block away, but they changed one number. From 585 to 586.
Rent
[My grandmother] owned some property on the outskirts of the city limits where the cemetery is, the Brith Sholom Cemetery. As a kid, I used to go up there and become the rent collector with her. As a ten-year-old, write receipts, you know, and things like that.
Yes, she had black people [living there]. Like a little tenement, I guess, I forget how many—I call ’em shacks—how many were there. The streetcar used to run almost up to McCarthy’s, used to run right to there. We’d get off there and walk to her property and collect the rent and come back. That was a Sunday morning deal.
The Floorwalker
[My dad] was the forerunner of what is today public relations, because he was very talented in making signs. You know, signs weren’t just printed in those days. They either were handmade or you just didn’t have one. And Dad did that real well. He did what we call—when you had an ad in the newspaper, he did the layouts on that- and he also trimmed the windows, you know, dressed the windows. He was very creative. Like I say, he was ahead of his time. He went into many businesses here in Charleston during the Depression years, always undercapitalized—had the right enthusiasm, but in those days it was tough and he happened not to be one of the lucky ones, that’s all that survived. He always ended working for somebody. His last real job was with Kerrison’s Department Store. He was [working with] the advertising and display. And he was what they call a floorwalker, you know. There was four stories there. He had two stories and another man had two floors.
The Barber Shop
Around the corner you can still see the store, the barber pole that was there, that red and white, circled barber pole. Everybody in the neighborhood went to have a date once a week to the barber shop. They got a shave and a haircut, five cents. Papa allowed one of his daughters, Edna, Flossie, or Lola, to go with him. We would vie for that trip to sit in that barber shop and watch it. It was two blocks away from where we lived. We would sit there and watch and we would listen to all the gossip, the talk about the barbers there.
The Grocery Store
We lived over the store on Hanover and America Street and we lived over the store on King Street. We went from one wholesale place, one building to another. King and Columbus Street and then a little further down we had another, Ginsberg Wholesale Tobacco. Papa traveled. He went from store to store selling wholesale candy instead of these grocery stores. He bought it and, in turn, he became a middle man. From there Papa went into his own business on King Street, two stores over there.
The store was a little store with wooden plank floors and it was on the corner. The merchants loaned you money, gave you merchandise to start. Everything was sold in big kegs. Lard, flour, sugar—not kegs but big barrels, you know. You see these big barrels cut in half now. And they stood on the floor.
This was the way our grocery store looked, with the huge big barrels of lard that my mother would have to dish up—she would hold her nose and open her mouth because it was treyf.
But in the store, we had a lot of friends. They were mostly Mexicans and they were mostly blacks, ethnic groups, that came down here and they lived. This was called “Little Mexico.” On America Street in those days, it was prevalent with crime, yet there were a lot of very decent [people]—our associates were mostly children who lived in that neighborhood.
Working Night and Day
[I was] born in the master bedroom up over the store. We lived there until 1924 when my father who had been quite successful decided that after years of planning, he was going to build a house up on Hampton Park Terrace, known as The Terrace. He had a property there, about an acre or thereabouts, half acre, opposite the park on Moultrie Street, 107 Moultrie Street. That marked a typical stage of development of the immigrant population, the Jewish immigrant population of Charleston, and I think of many other cities, which was to come over and work like holy heaven to get established. You get established by working night and day, sleeping in the back of the store sometimes or sleeping above the store as the family did, and it was a nice combination upstairs but he couldn’t wait to build this, what was then regarded as one of the very very lovely houses of Charleston up there. I don’t know how many rooms it was but it was a big brick place, it was quite elegant. I mention that because that is a stage in the progression of Jewish immigrants. And also today the same sort of thing is being duplicated by the Vietnamese and the Koreans, all doing the same thing. Up in New York we see it. They come in, they open little stores somewheres, they get a stake, somebody gives them a stake, they start a little business, they sleep in the back of the store, they work night and day and then the next thing you know they’re building a house out in the suburbs. And in those days Moultrie Street was the suburb, The Terrace. It was part of the city but it was out of the usual.
The Institution
Now, did anybody tell you about the pawn shop, the institution? My father had brothers-in-law whom he backed in business. One was a furniture store he had to take over and one was a pawn shop. Now, when the brother-in-law who took over the pawn shop married a wealthy woman from New York he went up to New York to live. The father-in-law was a competitor with the man who founded the American Tobacco Company. He went up to New York and Willie Banov, Uncle Willie, must have been just about at the right age, so they put him in to run the pawn shop.
So, here was my father stuck with a pawn shop and he had a thriving clothing business. He didn’t have any time to fool with it so he turned it over to Uncle Willie. Uncle Willie ran it and my father had virtually nothing to do with it. But he was identified as a pawnbroker because he owned this building in which he had a pawn shop which was operated by other people. They didn’t allow him in there because he would have given the damn place away, he was that kind of a guy. He would come in every once in a while and play loan man and drive my Uncle Willie crazy because he was unreasonably generous with it. He was that kind of a guy. But when he died they identified him as a pawnbroker. When they talked about the history of the store they identified him—it drove me up the wall because it wasn’t really right; he wasn’t a pawnbroker, he was a merchant.
People from downtown used to come in through the clothing store, there was a common door, they would come in through the clothing store as if they were going to enter the clothing store. They would go in and pawn jewelry and pawn flatware and all kinds of stuff to carry them over, especially during the Depression, but later, too.
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