1965

Our summer in Massapequa in 1965 was again very pleasant. We had rented a different house, a much bigger and nicer one, with larger grounds, a bigger motorboat, and a vide canal, nice for swimming. We had again Nancy with us and Johanna came out on weekends, also sometimes Francis, Vicki, and Jordan. We had in general more visitors there. Once Hansi, Ita, and Kurt Louda, a few times the members of Hedy’s garden club, and once also members of our physician’s club, Dr. and Mrs. Herzfeld and her mother, Dr. and Mrs. Sternberg, Dr. and Mrs. Baruch, and Dr. and Mrs. Zwerling, came and Selma Freudenthal joined us too. Walter, Fanny, and Hugo were also frequently our guests. Saturday and Sunday I stayed out there and used one day of the weekends often for a fishing trip, went usually out to the Captree Island and from there on a so-called party boat out to the Fire Island inlet and further out into the ocean. Once a year I went to Montauk Point and from there with a group of 4 or 5 people on a deep-sea fishing boat. Once we caught on such a trip about 100 tuna fish and I brought 20 of them, each weighing about 14 pounds, with me. I cleaned them all on the same evening and put them, each separately wrapped in aluminum foil, in a big freezer, gave many of them away to friends.

We come now to the year 1966, when Francis bought a house in Usonia in Westchester and moved there on May 26th, 1966. We saw the house, when the owners, Dr, and Mrs, Bier, still lived there. We liked it very much, liked very much the area, where the house was, deep in the woods, far enough from the city, where the air is cleaner. It was a very unusual house, built by a Japanese architect on the slope of a hill, the inside on three levels, with not too many stairs, with glass walls and windows, wherever one looked, with an enormous living room, the kitchen like on a balcony, overlooking the living room, with many acres of ground around it, and down below, many high trees and also some fruit trees and a large grass area. Francis and Vicki had reasons to feel very happy there.

We went again to our summer-home in Massapequa, and it was again the same routine as the years before, and we had a nice summer. In that year Linda was born, on September 6th. In Oc­tober of 1966, we had a guest, Edith Steiner, for a week or two. We had the job of taking her out, showing her New York, and we also took her once out to Francis’ and Vicki’s home in Usonia. She then left for Los Angeles, where she stayed with her aunt Hella Leinkauf for about half a year or perhaps longer. She was the only one of the Goldschmied’s, who survived; her parents and her older sister Anny were killed by the Germans.

In spring of 1967, we went on a three-week vacation to California, mainly to Los Angeles, stayed in the Ambassador Hotel. We were there within walking distance from Hella and Edith. I had rented a car and we went daily on excursions to museums, the City Center, the Griffith Observatory, and also to the outskirts, also for 2 or 3 days to Ella in Santa Ynez and with her on smaller excursions, to a mission and to Lompoc, where we walked through an enormous area, where flowers were grown by commercial growers in enormous flower beds. Lompoc is situated near the Vandenberg air base. We saw in Los Angeles also Maurice and Jean Ziegler in their beautiful home, also visited our good friends Harry and Sala Stern and her sister Genia Drutt. We went with Edith on an extensive auto tour, which took us first to Palm Springs. There we went by cable car up Mount San Jacinto, had a beautiful view from there. There was, of course, plenty of snow there, which is there all year round, since it is over 9000 feet high. Our next aim was San Diego, where we had to go through a mountainous area, the San Jacinto mountain range, and then through difficult minor roads, till we reached San Diego late in the afternoon. We visited there our good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Zoller, spent a pleasant evening with them. The next day, we went to the fa­mous San Diego Zoo, spent many hours there. On the way back to Los Angeles, we wanted to see the Walt Disney Park, but had great difficulties on account of heavy traffic and got there only one hour before closing time, but still went there on a kind of a train ride anyway. We arrived late in the evening in Los Angeles.

Edith was insatiable, wanted to see more and more and we finally went with her by air to Las Vegas, where we stayed in Caesar’s Palace. She was fascinated by the gambling there. I wanted to risk only $20 at the roulette table, bought four chips of $5 each, and started small. Within a short time I had already won $50. But then Edith started to put down some of my chips and my gains dwindled. I got up with a net gain of $20. In the evening, we went to a show in the enormous theatre they have there. The next day, we went back to Los Angeles and a few days later we left for New York.
Edith came then again to New York, on her way back to Pressburg in Tchechoslovakia. A few years later, she died from cancer.

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