Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982
The Family Business
Like uh, suffering...
Suffering.
...you know, but never got out of bed. But the old, the old man was fifty-two years old.
That's not old.
Well, it's like my mother was forty-seven.
When were you born?
What?
When?
Where, me?
The date.
The date. Why do I want to tell him this?
Husband: Tell him, tell him.
Well, come on. I told you never desert me!
Husband: Well, are you afraid...
Do I have to tell you this?
No.
No, we'll skip that part--that chapter. I don't want to tell you.
You can tell me later when no one's around!
I tell you without this.
Okay.
Unless you got a secret to tell me so we, we, we exchange.
Okay. What was your father's occupation?
Uh, businessman.
What kind of business?
If I should tell you--yes...
Husband: It's a clothes store.
No, it's more like a dry goods store. Here--there it was a beautiful store. But, but here it's like a corner of Hudson's. Because if I should tell an American girl that we had a store of dry goods and we were five children back home. And we lived nicely, we had fur coats and we had three rooms and a kitchen--which it's, was very nice, our own store, our own building. It's hard to believe from a little corner at Hudson's. But there it was nice. That's what it was. The whole family was preoccupied. Was your--we were going to school, we were young. My older sister was twenty-one years old. She married just when the war broke out, you know, between '38 and '40--and '38 and '39, a few months before the war broke out. And I was the fourth. And she was twenty-one when she got married.
How did uh, did your father--did your, did your own father start the business?
Yeah.
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