Category: Family

Growing up in upstate New York in the 1950s, what I remember most clearly about Father’s Day are the homemade gifts that we worked on for weeks in advance in shop class, before school closed for the summer. One year I labored over the construction of a tie rack, designed like a cowboy holding a long stick, over which the ties would drape in a row.  Like my father even wore ties?  Anyway, that was the task for all of us kids, to come up with something that showed great effort for our fathers.  By the time I was in high school, shop class long behind me, my mother would choose a Father’s Day gift from the family.  Despite her frugality, a week before Father’s Day my mother and I would take the bus downtown to buy dad a gift—usually something he could wear to work, like winter gloves or a flannel shirt—all on sale during the summer.  Afterward, we would walk over to dad’s parking lot and wait for him to close up. Then we would all ride home together, his present hidden in mom’s shopping bag.  

My mother’s gift to my dad on Father’s Day was to cook his favorite meal for dinner- beef brisket with sides of baked potatoes and roasted carrots, followed by chocolate cake.  Before sitting down to eat, my dad downed a shot of whiskey.  Then he dug into mom’s dinner like it was his last supper.  No restaurant could offer the same level of satisfaction and happiness as his favorite meal homecooked by my mom.   Whether the children attended this sumptuous meal on Father’s Day was beside the point with dad.  My sister usually found a reason to drop off a present and skipped out on the dinner.  My brother always seemed to be somewhere else—college, law school or selling something.  With mom in the kitchen, I was usually my dad’s sole companion and of course I watched what I said and how I responded to any questions he threw at me.  “Yes, school was fine.” “No I was not looking forward to summer because I am not going to camp.”  That one was my attempt to get him to agree with mom that I have two weeks away at Camp Seneca.  Usually between the first and second helping dad would be amenable to discussing the camp request which usually was about the cost. 

During my teens dad wanted me working the parking lot during the summer to cut down on his payroll.  I learned my negotiating skills by trading off hours at the lot for two weeks at Camp Seneca.  I was being paid, ha ha, and the salary was to be applied to camp fees.  Years later, when I got married and headed to law school, my mother presented me with a passbook to a savings account in my name with the notation, “Parking Lot Money.” My gosh my dad had kept his word.  I think there was $2,500 in that account.  My folks were real savers. I can almost hear my folks today, seeing the presents kids lavish on their father for Father’s Day: “Save for a rainy day, Lenny.”

May 2022

I think back to my last Mother’s Day with my mom, Rebecca Ackerman. I did not realize the significance of that Mother’s Day outing in 1958 until many years later. I was off to college in August, and after that graduate school, then marriage, starting my own family in New York City and then my parents moved to Florida for retirement. It would be our last Mother’s Day, with all of us together, to celebrate it with her, before she passed away in Rochester, New York in 1997.

Growing up, I looked forward to Mother’s Day. It was the one day of the year my family went out to dine at a restaurant. My parents were Orthodox and would not eat out unless the restaurant was kosher and the only kosher restaurants in town were delicatessens. Hence, they rarely dined out or travelled. The one vacation trip we took as a family, with my sister and her husband, was to Atlantic City in 1949, when I was still small enough to share a room with my parents. Every night of the trip we went to the same, possibly the only kosher restaurant in Atlantic City. Dinner always started with half a cantaloupe, followed by a typical heavy kosher meal of pot roast, potatoes and hearty soup, and it was summer, probably 87 degrees outside.

But on Mother’s Day, the rule was broken, and we would dine out at a non-kosher fish restaurant called Spring House, which is still in business all these years later. It was a momentous occasion for the family. My parents would dress in their formal High Holiday clothes, I would be in a starched white shirt and long pants. Despite all the excitement and preparation, my parents were not
very comfortable eating in a restaurant. Dad could not read the menu in English and relied on Mom to choose his food. Mom, being the chef at home, knew what she wanted before she sat down. They would start with coffee and then order a fish course, usually cod. She was always conscious of cost and knew Dad would question her later about the price of everything that was ordered. She would caution my sister and her husband, both of whom dined out a great deal, to be prudent in their meal choices, knowing that she would have to account to my father for any extravagances. Alcohol was never ordered. Jt was coffee start to finish. I knew to be careful when ordering. I did not like fish as a child and chose the least expensive one. I would eat a few bites, saving my appetite for the ice cream dessert.

Other than on Mother’s Days, my dine out experience in Rochester was limited to Eddie’s Corner, a luncheonette across from Ben Franklin High School, and to Critic’s, near the Paramount Theatre where my mother took me as a youngster to the movies on Saturdays. Mom did not drive, so we took the bus downtown. After the movie we waited for Dad to close his parking lot for the ride home. My parents were not always strict about my kosher diet and occasionally took me after school for a hamburger at a local barbeque, Don and Bob’s, though it had to be surreptitious, my father always parking away from the entrance to avoid being spotted at a non-kosher burger stand. As a teenager, where to go on a date was limited. None of us, my friends or I, had the resources for anything elaborate. After a high school ballgame, we might go to Bay-Goodman’s for pizza and Orange Crush. It wasn’t until I left home that I became an experienced restaurant-goer. When I married and moved to New York City, it opened up a new world, one I never could have imagined as a child sipping my soda at the counter at Eddie’s.

When I remember Mom on Mother’s Day, I think back to those once-a-year lunches at Spring House and how much they meant to her, despite breaking the kosher rule and the money pressure from my father. On that morning in 1958, my high school fraternity brothers delivered a red rose to each of the mothers of current members and to those whose sons had graduated the previous year. After that, our house descended into the usual chaos, with five people trying to get ready and only one bathroom. Dad of course got to go first, even on Mother’s Day, and I, the youngest, was last. It was sign up and soap up quickly. Nothing was ever easy growing up at 144 Navarre Road in Rochester, New York. My warmest memories are of Mom. I remember, before we left the house to go to the restaurant, my mother clipped the stem and pinned the rose to her dress, above her heart.

March 2022

Recently I started watching an excellent television series called “1883”. Set in Montana during frontier days, the show called to mind a trip I took almost 40 years ago with my youngest daughter, Brooke, then 13 years old. It was summer of 1985. We ventured out west to Choteau, Montana, for a stay at Circle 8 Ranch, a Nature Conservancy property at the entrance to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. Brooke, the youngest of my children, was easy to coax into a 10-day camping trek on horseback, with a group of strangers who, like me, were looking for adventure. She was as dauntless at 13 as she is now in her S0s. We were a great father-daughter team for this type of excursion. My late wife, Judie, and my oldest daughter, Kara, would have nothing to do with such a trip. Their outdoor adventure during that time would be a stay at the Westbury Hotel in New York City with shopping outings on
Madison Avenue. I had learned of the Montana trip through my board membership at the Nature Conservancy in East Hampton, New York. At the time, I knew little of that part of the country, but the trip seemed like a terrific, once in a lifetime opportunity for us to learn about it.

The flight out to Great Falls, Montana was uneventful. We were met at the airport by a Circle 8 Ranch van for the three-hour ride to Choteau. During the drive, we chatted with the other passengers who were some our camping companions to be: an older couple in their 80s from California, retired but still active outdoorspeople, and a young family with two children-the father was an investment banker and fly fisherman. There would be ten total in our group, a mixture of city folk, suburbanites and country dwellers, all with one thing in common: the desire to experience and be tested by nature and the elements in some of the most beautiful country in America.

Orientation began almost immediately on arrival at the ranch because we were setting out on horseback the next morning. The planned trek was five days out and five days back through the magnificent Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. We would pitch tents at day’s end and cook our meals by Bunsen burner. One of the cowboy guides advised us not to unpack all our luggage, as there was only room for the bare necessities. Brooke and I went through our suitcase and left behind most of our clothes, keeping only underwear, socks, jeans, shirts, rain gear and dop kits. Pack horses and mules were already loaded on to the trailers for the ride to the entrance to the reserve. They would carry the tents, food, medical kits and cooking utensils.

In the morning, we had a quick breakfast and met up with our group and the guides, then were transported to where the horses were waiting for us, ready to go. Once everyone was settled into their saddles, we ventured off, into the wild. We had no phones as cell phones didn’t exist then, and though we were as prepared as we could be with rations and supplies, we were, nevertheless, truly alone in the ever-deepening wilderness. The cowboy guides all carried revolvers and rifles to ward off predators and grisly bears. There was no venturing off alone, even to the “latrines” off the campsite. This was no casual walk in the woods, but a total immersion experience in nature.

After the first day on horseback, I was unable to stand up. That evening I took a “bath” in bengay, which only helped a bit. Brooke was a trooper on her horse, Cody, who was excitable but steady on the tough trails up and down the mountains. She only cried once, and it was during a hailstorm that tested all the adults as well. After a few nights of camping, we became accustomed to the routine but when the cowboy guides asked if we wanted to spend a couple of nights in one place to relax from the riding we ALL said yes.

Despite the hail we encountered, the July weather in Montana had been very dry. The cowboy guides constantly reminded us about the risk of wildfires. The cloudless skies ensured our portable solar powered sun showers provided plenty of warm water when it was time to clean up. Most days the weather was clear with views for miles. The majesty of the mountain range along the Continental Divide is something I will never forget. We trekked in areas of such magnificent flora and fauna it was as if we were passing through an impressionist painting. I brought a fly rod along and at our campsites, always near a stream, Brooke and I would cast into the crystal-clear mountain water for trout. There were a few nibbles, then caught and released. Fishing in that idyllic environment instilled in me the sense of joy I feel every time I engage with the sport, no matter where I am casting my line.

Living apart from the civilized world for that brief time left lifelong impressions. Brooke and I strengthened our father-daughter bond, and for Brooke it was also a maturing experience. Her love of the outdoors that she always had, having grown up in East Hampton, deepened, as did her respect for nature. These days Brooke and I continue to share active, outdoors experiences, most often in Maine at my fishing camp, where she visits regularly with her own young family. Now we impart our love of nature to the next generation. For me, the trip to Montana was the beginning of what became my passion for flyfishing throughout the world, as well as for simple walks in the woods, always in search of fresh water and wild fish.

February 2022

The headlines in the New York Times today of the impending invasion of Ukraine by Russia opened up a flood of memories from my childhood: the radio playing melodic cantatorial music in Yiddish on Sunday mornings, my father listening intently while he read his Yiddish-language newspaper. It was the one day of the week he was not working his parking lot. I remember seeing him sitting there, listening to the music, his face wet with tears. I must have been five or six years old at the time and was shocked as he was not one to show emotion outside of his fiery temper. Cautiously, I asked why he was crying, and he responded, his voice twisted in pain: “You don’t know how lucky you are to have been born here!” He’was born in Ukraine, and it wasn’t until years later that I was able to piece together some of my father’s history. Few words were ever spoken in my family of the past. It was simply too painful. I learned that the letters so faithfully exchanged between my father and family members still in Ukraine – his father, mother, siblings, nieces, nephews–stopped after 1941, his entire family there having perished at the hands of the Nazis.

My father had grown up in a shtetl village called Kupel in Podolia. It was a region with a tumultuous history, and at various times in the first half of the last century was divided and claimed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Poland, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Axis Romania. In the chaos following the Russian Revolution in 1917, there were pogroms, during which Jews were targeted by the White Russian Army, and Jewish youths were kidnapped to use as cannon fodder. His older brother had gone to America before the pogroms, and was settled in New York. So in 1918, at the age of 12, my father concluded that if he were to survive, he would have to follow in his brother’s footsteps. He fled Ukraine on foot, hiding out and stealing food from farms along the way. He made his way to an unknown port and stowed away on a ship, ending up in Argentina, where he lived and worked for the next five years, all the while planning and saving to get to America. His immigration documents, preserved in the U.S. National Archives, show he listed himself as a “salesman” in Buenos Aires. At the age of 17, he went to the American consulate in Buenos Aires and applied for a visa to the United States, signing a document entitled “Declaration of Alien About to Depart for the United States.” This time he went as a “passenger” on a vessel called The Hamburg, as listed on his Alien Registration Form, which was completed upon his arrival at the Port of New York. From there, he made his way to Rochester, set up a business as a “proprietor of a parking station” and the rest is history.

Years later my father retired to Miami, exhausted after years of working outdoors during Rochester winters. I would visit with him and accompany him on his various errands. Jn the Cuban grocery he would negotiate over a cantaloupe in fluent Spanish. In the kosher butcher shop he would speak Russian or Polish, depending on who was working the counter that day. He was also fluent in Yiddish and English. I asked my dad how he knew so many languages and his unforgettable response was, “Lenny, when I would wake up in the morning as a child, I would hear my parents speaking and depending on who was in control of the border at the time determined the language of the day. Some days it was Russian, other days Polish or German. I learned to speak with the occupiers.” The only consistent language of the father’s youth was the one spoken in his home between family members, their language of comfort: Yiddish. The cantor singing Yiddish songs brought tears to my father’s eyes, as he sat in his favorite chair on a Sunday morning, as he recalled a youth long ago in a country far away.