Spoken at family reunion in honor of Aunt Mildred & Uncle Bob Eskeles (90th birthdays)
How I came to own so many Jewish books
Sometime in the late 1950s Uncle Bob gave me Volumes 1, 3 and 5 of a 5-volume work titled The History of the Jews by Heinrich Graetz, a famous German Jewish scholar. I asked him where were volumes 2 and 4. He said someone had given the books to him and that was all he had. I read books 1, 3 and 5, and was curious about what happened in books 2 and 4. From that time on I became interested in and began acquiring books of Jewish content. Uncle Bob, I have spent a fortune on books on account of you!
Shirley Temple curls
I cannot remember any time in my life when Aunt Mildred was not in it. My very earliest memory of our relationship is of Sundays after Buddy was born and I started going to Religious School kindergarten. On alternate Sundays my father would deposit me at my Radman grandparents on Clay Street near 11th St., or at Grandma Annie Meyer’s house on 19th Street where Aunt Mildred also lived. We had a routine. After Grandma Annie’s dinner, Aunt Mildred would wash my hair and roll it up in rags. When my hair was dry and the rags removed, the resulting look was vertical curls in the style known as Shirley Temple.
Here’s a picture of me at about 8, taken on 19th Street, with George, Buddy, Harriet and Miriam, still sporting that hair style. I guess by that year we were all getting dumped on Aunt Mildred on Sundays!
Mildred died 3 November 2000.
Bob died 15 June 2004.