Tag #118559 - Interview #91238 (Judel Ronder)

do not know for sure at what time mother got up. At any rate it was long before the sunrise. She had to take are of livestock- chicken, turkeys, cows and horses. Besides, she took care of the husbandry. The family had equipage as well as dray horse. When I was a child, I got up very early, usually at 5-6 am and went in kitchen. By that time mother was by the stove baking bread and pies. Usually Yiddish was spoken at home. In the morning, mother used to speak Russian for me to have a good command of that language. She read me children’s verses about butterflies, moths and had me memorize them. The hardest thing was to feed me. I was a very feeble child. I most likely was afflicted with tuberculosis as later on the doctors found some lung scarring. Besides, I had constant toothaches. Thus, having meals was a real ordeal to me. Mother was running after me with a spoon of soup or porridge beseeching me to eat something and promising some presents for that. The only thing I was willing to eat were the cutlets made by mother. Then she found a funny way out- she paid me 10 cents for every plate of food I ate, but still it did not always work. I was such a poor eater that is hard for me to remember what my mother cooked every day. In summer Menachem hired some people to work in the garden as there was a lot to do. When I grew up, there was a job for me as well. I packed tomatoes for sale once, when there was a rich crop of cucumbers, mother asked me to sell some of them. I was standing on the road, heading to the town and sold cucumbers to the passersby and took 5 cents for one cupa (the container where 60 cucumbers could fit in). I turned out to be a bad salesman as cucumbers got rotten and I had to throw them away in the river.