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LUCKY How a Child of Immigrants Made Her Way in the World

lUCKy How a Child of Immigrants Made Her Way in the World Sherlee Gloria Primack

Copyright 2016 by Sherlee Primack Shubert All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical or electronic including photocopying recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the copyright holder Produced by Remarkable Life Memoirs based on interviews with Sherlee Primack Shubert www remarkablelifememoirs com

Contents FOReWORd iX Chapter 1 Family Old Style 1 Chapter 2 liFe ON ReVeRe BeaCH 0 Chapter 3 leaRNiNG tHe HaRd Way 00 Chapter 4 tHe GOldeN State 00 Chapter 5 HOW tO SUCCeed iN BUSiNeSS 00 Chapter 6 tHe laSt maN i WOUld eVeR maRRy 00 Chapter 7 Family NeW Style 00 Chapter 8 PaRadiSe lOSt 00 Chapter 9 COme Hell OR HiGH WateR 000 Chapter 10 OPeN HOUSe 000 Chapter 11 tHe BiG mOVe 000 Chapter 12 BaCK tO tHe FUtURe 000 Chapter 13 tHiS iS yOUR liFe 000 v

For my family

Foreword She was born on the eve of the great depression She celebrated v J day among the revelers at an amusement park She was a member of the young Communist league She smiled at frank Sinatra and he smiled back The great themes of the twentieth century can be found in history books and for one generation they were the stuff of everyday life immigration a world war civil rights and the changing role of women Sherlee gloria primack had a front row seat to all of it The child of Jewish immigrants born in revere massachusetts just outside boston she became in some ways the quintessential american idealistic outgoing and eager to be her own boss She jumped in her car and drove overnight to New york City She jetted off to los angeles for six months with no particular plan in mind She started her own business She married and had a child in her thirties old in the parlance of the times and when she was actually old at the age when most people retire she got bored and decided to go back to work independent yes but never selfish and never alone her social life ix

x Lucky has always revolved around family And the definition is generous She treats neighbors like cousins friends like sisters and co workers like kin The human connection is key Having moved to New York City she s in her element when chatting with cabbies and complimenting passersby on their style sense She has triumphs she has regrets She learned to use the internet and she learned to be on time She boasts friends on several continents Her advice on maintaining a happy marriage is spot on She has a story for every occasion Lucky us the family and friends of Sherlee Gloria Primack to get a peek into the highlights of her life so far anyway Remember she s only in Year Seven of her twenty year plan

lUCKy xi

Elizabeth Esther Rubin with her high school diploma By the time Bessie earned her diploma she had come far both geographically and intellectually Born circa 1893 she emigrated from Kamenka a then Russian town near Lvov that had known Jewish inhabitants since the fifteenth century

Chapter 1 Family Old Style My parents came to this country as two youngsters from two strange families My mother had a mother who must have been a genius She was evidently a well to do woman who came to marry this little rabbi who had nothing The story was that everyone knew she must be a classy woman because she arrived at her wedding wearing gloves She had six or seven children with him She taught Hebrew she baked the challah every Friday for the whole community She was into so many different things My mother s mother came here in her fifties worn out worried about one of her sons who was very sick in New York He had his appendix taken out on a table And she brought everybody across the country with a couple of kids to land in England and go from England to New York And my grandmother died at fifty three As a child my mother slept alongside her mother And then all of a sudden she had nothing She had her sister who we called Tante and she slept between Tante and her husband for like a year I mean they had a hard life in many ways They had a lot of kids little money And I guess my line has always been They did the best they could for all of us as much as they could as much as they knew 1

Rebecca Tante and Samuel Greenberg Tante was Bessie s older sister and surrogate mother after their own mother died at the age of fifty three Louis Primack s parents Shana Gittel and Nachman Primack The couple left Russia and settled in the Boston area My father s family they were butchers I guess which was outcasts There must have been like five brothers who came They must have looked like laughs like Cossacks because they were huge men My father was a big man and a hearty man He could lift half a ton of meat at one time He did that in his eighties But they had a different life My mother s life was a little bit more serene Her mother was much more genteel and my father s family was strictly outcasts They met at a dance hall and they never let go He and my mother evidently met on the dance floor They swam half the ocean together they were both great swimmers They just liked each other I think You

Familly Old Style 3 Louis Primack Sherlee s father as a young man He came from a family of butchers and eventually owned his own business Fa r l e f t Bessie and Louis Primack were excellent swimmers They regularly swam to the breakers off Revere Beach L e f t know right from the beginning you can just see that they had that right from the beginning And he was a nice looking guy And he had a business though it failed several times They would fight over a card game but it was a fun card game My mother always said her sister wanted this kind of a wedding and his sister wanted that kind of a wedding Nobody offered any money and so they eloped And one day Tante was looking through her drawer putting some underwear away or something and found a ring And she said What s this And my mother instead of saying I m waiting to get married so I ve got the ring put away instead she said All right so now you know Oh I hoped that I d have a marriage like that No matter who I went out with it was Where do you find another guy like this and a

6 Lucky And it wasn t that we didn t go out for dinners on Sundays and to the movies We did even when I was a little kid We went to the midday show on Sundays The early show was for kids and the late show was for adults but they had a middle show on Sundays So we would have dinner on the street in the Jewish restaurant and then we would go down to the movies They were permissive in the new style But the old style was still there Old style was the latch that they had on their children You know they were afraid to let go and they knew they had to So there was always the fight you know to let go First of all you couldn t kiss my father If you tried to kiss him it was on the run because if you tried to kiss him he did this turns aside so you had to sneak under him But I knew why He was a man Women you know But they eloped They had a hot love affair and they forgot about that When my mother was in the nursing home she was probably in her nineties I said something to her Ma did you ever really love me And she said Would I have taken care of you if I didn t love you She was saying to me Of course I loved you It s just I couldn t show it She couldn t show it Well she had a son Sidney who was gorgeous number one Tall and handsome and smart and musical She had a daughter Vivian who was absolutely gorgeous that everybody adored And then she had me and I was fat And my mother was obsessive with it and so was I She had lost Vivian in front of her eyes And she wasn t going to worry about any more I think she must have had all the damage to her mind with that scenario It was a child that everybody adored I was the fat little kid that grew up and so what That was the way I felt And that wasn t really the way she felt But that was the way I thought she felt I m sure it was very hard for her She didn t want another child to begin with She could not deal with another baby And she did And she

Vivian and Sidney Primack Vivian s death in an accident was a tragedy their mother struggled with for the rest of her life to p l e f t Vivian Primack Sherlee s younger sibling died in an accident at the age of seven a b ov e As a baby on the porch of the Primack family s apartment in a triple decker a Boston area housing staple l e f t

The Primack family on the occasion of a family wedding Asian neighborhood Always an immigrant neighborhood Even now the Jewish area is all Asian and doing very well In August there was Nickel Day You got tickets in the newspaper you d ride everything and buy everything for a nickel A hot dog was a nickel On Nickel Day you could go with a handful of coupons from the papers and everyplace The movies were cheaper also yeah on Nickel Day oh my goodness And Fourth of July you sat on the beach with the sand bugs They would say fireworks at midnight but they wouldn t go on til one two

Familly Old Style 13 three o clock in the morning and they went on for only fifteen minutes but you sat with the bugs and lived with them because you couldn t miss it You could see fireworks from our back porch but it wasn t the same as being at the beach You lived on the beach It was hot You went down the beach If it was low tide you swam in the water as best you could Slept with the sand bugs til midnight til they got impossible and you finally went home if you were lucky enough to cool off My folks swam every weekend They swam to the breakers they were great swimmers my mother and father They would chase each other across the water They were great and I didn t live up to their promise My mother was wonderful teaching me to swim I would get in the water and she would say Lay down and she d have one hand under my belly and one on my bathing suit straps and I would paddle in front of her face to face And she would never let me go One day I was doing very well I was afraid to float because I was chubby and I sank and one day my father decided he would take me Revere Massachusetts is famous for being the home of the first public beach in the U S But it was also the home to a huge population of immigrants in the years bridging the 19th and 20th centuries

16 Lucky You have to understand when you worked in the summer as a teenager you started at twelve o clock and worked til two or three in the morning except on Saturdays You couldn t work after midnight on Saturdays everything closed down til one o clock on Sunday that was the Blue Laws I could go out with anybody As long as I brought them home and my mother knew who they were My mother had her problems And I think she never forgave herself for whatever happened to Vivian And so she was never going to tie me down She was never going to check me I could be out til midnight as long as she knew where I was and who I was with And that was a dangerous thing really We just never thought of it I could be in danger for all she knew But she didn t think She already had been through one disaster She wasn t going to worry about a future thing And during the war I worked I was thirteen and worked at the beach I was hired oh God to work at 13 Spook Street I was the cashier When people when to lunch I went to the Bubble Bounce or the Tilt aWhirl and then finally I went to the Dodgems where the owner worked with this older woman who had been there with him forever I took second chair behind her so that when people would go in they would buy a ticket And if they stayed for more than one ride they would punch the ticket and when they came out they came to the second window and she would see how many punches they had and tell them how much money they owed And I was there maybe a day or two and I went home and wrote a little scratch pad one ride equals this amount two rides equal that and I had it down to like ten rides and I brought it to work and I had it on my shelf And there they said to me the woman said What s that They would stand in line to get out and when it was busy on weekends it was horrendous because people were trying to get out and they couldn t get past the cars that were going the Dodgems And I said Well I figured

mountains of sweets i never made anything that my mother made She was a baker who could just bake from her head I used a box cake and added things to it That was it I had no recipes of my own She made doughnuts in oil She made pittibulkies yeasted cinnamon rolls She didn t make challah very often but she did make it And she made all kinds of cookies Sheet cookies where she cut the dough on an angle thin and light like sugar cookies to dunk in your tea Mandelbrot all the time oh yeah You cut it up and bake it again Her mandelbrot was wonderful maybe with raisins and walnuts The other thing that she always made was taiglach and my cousin Eadie said Your mother s taiglach were always better than my mother s Taiglach are a little piece of dough it was a soft dough and she would put raisins and nuts in the middle and roll them in balls and cook them in honey mixed with water And then she would roll

r i g h t The formal high school portrait With her mother in a rare smiling shot at high school graduation Below B ot to m 1947 Revere High School graduation

Familly Old Style 25 much i thought i was wonderful but i really wasn t i was not a musician but i loved playing i loved fooling around with the piano bess levine was one of my oldest friends and she was not an accomplished pianist but she practiced her whole life She was older than i was She was my friend for years afterward She helped me remember what i had to learn to get into the elson Club at this secret meeting we had to learn what was on the plaque of louis elson who was a music teacher there and you had to learn this whole thing i had never looked at it but she had written it down so that when we went in that night twenty five of us were entered into the elson Club it was a Jewish club l e F t The program from this New England Conservatory recital shows Sherlee playing Bach Schumann and the theatrical Malaguena by Lecuona b ot to m Sherlee won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied piano

26 Lucky We had one girl who was not Jewish and we had during my year there year and a half probably three Jewish boys and twenty boys who were usually Italian It was fun but I did not accomplish much as a musician sad to say Then I went to the Burroughs Company school I went for six weeks My friend and I went to school And I remember going there the first time when they showed us the billing machines she said Which finger do I start with You know you only have four on each hand But I learned very quickly And my first job was a billing clerk I was there for a couple of years and when the boss wanted to hire somebody new for bookkeeping I was doing the billing My boss God this wonderful woman said to him No Sherlee s going to do the bookkeeping and Sherlee left with Bess Levine at Tanglewood They met at the New England Conservatory where Bess had become a friend by coaching Sherlee through the initiation into the Elson Club

Familly Old Style 27 we re going to train a new billing clerk So I knew I was doing well And when I first started on the bookkeeping machine if I had a problem she would always come and help with it She was the head bookkeeper of everything and it was Sagamoc Shoes They made shoes up in Maine and they had the bookkeeping in Boston When Sagamoc closed I went to get another job on Lincoln Street in Boston It was a shoe place and they hired me for billing And I was there for three days And the office manager the woman every piece of paper had had to go through her hand when you finished Sherlee in LA Sherlee on the shores of Lake Pearl