Tearing Toilet Paper for Shabbat
Written just before Shabbat on March 3, 2022.
I am writing out of order now. I have found that it is very difficult to keep a linear story line going in my head, let alone in the narrative I am trying to create. The family tree charts will have to suffice to be the linear story. Memories and stories come as they come. Tonight is Shabbat and just last night I was thinking about Grammanette tearing toilet paper for Shabbat. There is a lot in what she told me that is common in American Jewish immigrant lore. She told me once that they kept a “bacon pan” in the freezer for when the kids were sick because people felt that giving kids bacon helped them through colds etc. It is comical to imagine Hyman who wouldn’t let people get up from the seder when Ryfka died allowing a bacon pan in the house. Maybe he didn’t know about it. I have heard this before about bacon pans…an example of our story being part of the larger Jewish immigrant story.
I also heard, I believe in the interview of Teddy Bolnick from the 70’s, that Hyman was so observant that he wouldn’t smoke on Shabbat even though he did the rest of the week. I am sure he was cranky by Saturday night! In correspondence between Annette and her cousin Lenny Bolnick, Lenny recalled studying for his Bat Mitzvah with Hyman. From Lenny, “So you are 85 hopefully in good health, I'll be 90 in February. We go back a long way don't we Annette? Kedzie Ave, Lowell School, Little Orphan Annie, your Grandfather when smoking those Helmar cigarettes, I felt like passing out from the aroma, but duty bound he was preparing me for my Bar Mitzva, and then there was your grandma's milk and cookies. Later in years did you
know, brother Julie and I both worked in the Millinery Industry on South Water St. in Chicago.”
This afternoon, Emma called me from Madison and told me that a friend was helping another friend, who is orthodox, find some help on Shabbat for some things that would be forbidden for her because she is orthodox. Hard to believe people are still looking for a Shabbos Goy in 2022! Don’t get me started. Emma immediately remembered Grammanette and the toilet paper story.
Here are some photos from when Grammanette, Annette Lessman-Rubinger-Locketz, was a child.
Annette at 6 months
Annette at 1 year
Annette at 8.5 years - January 1932
Annette with her brother Julius in 1935
She was 50 when I was born. Almost 90 when she died. It is wonderfully disorienting to see the matriarch as a baby. As a small child. Many of the stories she told came from this part of her life when her mother was a widow and they lived with Annette’s grandparents, Hyman and Rebecca Bolnick in Chicago.
