Chapter 49 – Pleasant Memories

1951

It was in the year 1948, that Francis had entered Columbia University, in September of that year. Johanna had started in Erasmus High School in 1950.

And it was in the year 1951, that we went on a bigger va­cation trip. Up till now. I have never had a real vacation, I always want to join my family in the country for the weekend for 2 or 3 days. But this time I went on a longer trip. I had just bought a movie camera, and I filmed the whole trip, a new experience for me. Johanna came along on that excursion. We first went to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, a recon­structed village, which looked more or less like it looked in the year 1790, and the people were dressed accordingly in old costumes of that time I don’t know anymore the exact route we took. While writing this, I am letting the film run, and that will help me to remember, which route we took. From Old Sturbridge Village we went north to Lake George, and then, af­ter a swim, visited an animal farm, and went then to the Ausable Chasm and from there to Lake Placid. Then, after crossing Lake Champlain by boat, we went through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, and along the coast south to Boston, and from there to Rockport. It was the 4th of July, when we arrived there and we had great difficulties to find a place for the night there, but finally found one in a tourist home in Cape Anne. Rockport was highly interesting and we went there also for a swim. All together, we must have been away from New York for three weeks. Francis was during that time in a camp. Back in Brooklyn, I got soon again busy in the office, and the practice developed very well.

I found it now somewhat difficult to continue with the writing of the biography, as I don’t remember many details. I needed help and asked Francis to find Johanna to help in the form of interviews about their personal experiences, and they agreed, so that I will be greatly relieved and could concentra­te on the description of my and Hedy’s lives, and, wherever necessary, of other members of the family. This will enhance my work, since they will add many interesting details, about which I don’t have any or only little knowledge.

To continue the biography, I am using again movie pictures, which I have taken at that time often, more often than regular photos. This will help me a lot, since I can not remember too well all that happened in the next few years. It brings back details, which I would not be able to describe, but are very interesting, describing our activities and our family and social life. I have the movie pictures in chronological order, and for the year 1952 I will describe what I see on the screen. There is at first my birthday party on March 14, and there were presents, besides our family of four, Lisa, Paul, and little Ginnie, 6 years old. Hansi Hilkowicz, Ita, with Vicki on her arm, about two years old, Mr. and Mrs. Glueck, Mrs. Tini Wolf, who was Mr. Gluecks niece, Gertrude Reisberg, and Felix and Hedy Glueckselig. Everybody is in a very good mood. There follow­ed a strip of film, with the title: “Before leaving for the Erasmus Senior Prom, June 4, 1952” showing Johanna beautifully dressed and then Mr. Gerbs coming to pick her up. Then Roberta Siegmann came, and Ethel Cantor with her boyfriend Steve, whom Johanna described in her interview, who died a few weeks later from polio. Then another young man came, the boy friend of Roberta. All boys finely dressed with white jackets. Francis joined the young people also, in a black suit with a black tie, but he went out with another party. The next film strip shoved Francis’s graduation at Columbia University on the next day, June 5th. Then followed a film strip with the title: “Camp Ellis in Pennsylvania, summer 1952”, in which we can see besides us and Johanna, Marianne Oesterreicher and her parents, who had come along with us from New York in our car. Then follows a vacation trip to Haines Falls in the Catskills, and the Gluecks, Mrs. Tini Wolf, Felix and Hedy Glueckselig and some of their friends, Martin and Else Ullmann, can be seen. Also an excur­sion to the North Lake nearby with the Gluecks, Francis, and Johanna, where we had a picnic with a lot of food on a table. Then followed an excursion to a game farm, where we were feed­ing many dogs, stags, goats, and other animals and had a lot of fun. Among other animals they had there also in cages a sloth and an albino rhesus monkey. On another trip to the North Lake, I was trying to fish, but did not catch anything, and in a moment, when Mr. Gluck tried his luck, he caught one, but it was not a fish, but a turtle. We had a lot of fun with it, threw it, of course back into the lake. Francis painted a picture there.

After we came back to New York, I went with Francis on a trip. We went first to Rockport near Boston, where Francis painted a big beautiful picture of the seashore. I had that painting hanging in my waiting room for 23 years. From there we went to Bar Harbor in Mains, where he painted again a beau­tiful picture on Eagle-Lake, We went in Bar Harbor out on a boat for deep-sea fishing. We then went to New Hampshire and up to the top of Mount Washington via cog-railway. There Francis painted again a very big picture from our room in the Mount Washington Summit House, out through the window, a panorama of the so-called presidents range in the White Mountains National Park in New Hampshire. From there we went south through New Hampshire and Vermont, where we stayed overnight in Brattleboro, and then through Massachusetts and Connecticut home.

Then we see a sequence of pictures of a trip to Eastern Long Island with Mundy and Maryla Frisch, old friends of ours from the time Hedy studied chemistry in Vienna. Maryla, nee Schwanenfeld, was then a young girl, not married yet, and we made often trips together with her and other friends to the Alps. When we came to the United States, we met Maryla again with her husband, and we are good friends ever since. They are living now in Lancaster in Pennsylvania for many years, and we went often to their home there as guests. They are two extremely nice people, and there is a real friendship between us. The next strip of film shows a birthday party for Hedy on November l5th, 1952, with Lisa, Paul, and Ginnie, Felix and Hedy Glueckselig, the Gluecks, Mundy and Maryla Prisch, Marianne Oesterreicher and her parents present, all in a very good mood. We see Johanna, now 16 years old, getting prettier as time goes by. Then we see Mrs. Martha Honig, a cousin of Hedy’s, visiting with us, at that time a very good-looking lady, also present the Gluecks and Mrs. Zoller (without her husband). They were also good friends of ours.

We come now to the year 1953 and a birthday party for Fran­cis on May 1st, when he was 22. We see first at the table Harry and Sala Stern, very good friends of ours, then the Roseggs, the Gluecks, some other people, whom I don’t recognize. The next part of the film shows us in Massapequa in Long Island, where we had rented a house for the summer, together with the Sterns. The house was on a canal and we had a motorboat, which allowed us to drive out into the Great South Bay. It was quite a nice vacation for us. Our friends, the Freudenthals, had their house, newly built, in Massapequa, and we had a nice time together there. I had to be in my office every day, had to leave at 3 o’clock, to start in Brooklyn at 4, and came out back to Massapequa every evening at 6 or 9 o’clock. It was difficult, but I enjoyed it, especially the weekends. We see again Marianne Oesterreicher, who came out to be with Johanna, we see the Farmers Market, where we went shopping, often with the Freudenthals and David’s mother. We see Hedy, driving our car, we see Johanna, again a little prettier, with books on her arm, going by bus somewhere to a school. At that time she was also already driving a car. Once I had gone out with Harry Stern with the motorboat into the Great South Bay fishing and we had luck, caught 6 nice-sized flukes, and were quite proud. I had laid them out on the ground and taken pic­tures of them. There was also an eel, which we had caught. Next we see ourselves on a swimming excursion, probably not far from our house, and there was also Maryla Prisch, all in a haughty mood, then lying quietly in the sun on the beach. Then one can see me shoveling and cutting grass, showing off, followed by Harry Stern showing off also by cutting grass. Then again a boat trip and swimming, Hedy and Johanna are in an especially good mood in the water. We see Hugo and Peter Freudenthal, who came with their big motorboat, also David, steering the boat. Then there is dancing in the Freudenthal house, Hugo with Johanna, Peter with Ruth Sphraim, whom he married, later, Harry with Sala Stern. Then on another strip, Hugo, Johanna, Francis, and Hedy. Francis must have come out for a weekend, we spent two really nice months that summer in Massapequa.

Back again at home, we had a big remodeling job done in our kitchen, which was too small and old-fashioned. By elimi­nation of a wall, it could be enlarged, requiring extensive work on the floor, ceiling, and the staircase down to the offi­ce. We had an excellent carpenter, Mr. Hinton, who figured everything out and the end-result was really good. We had new cabinets now, a built-in dishwasher, a modern sink, and range with an oven and a good place for a new refrigerator, also a new staircase to the office, also outside to the garden. Johanna got also a very big closet upstairs in her room, and everybody was satisfied. The summer of 1954 we spent again in Massapequa. It was again the house on 2 Cedar Lane off Alhambra Road, which we had rented. We see in the movie again the house and the canal, separated from each other by a wooden fence. Next a boat trip with Hedy, Johanna, Lisa, and Ginnie. It was a kind of fishing trip, since Hedy and Lisa as well as I are holding fishing rods, but at the end most of them went into the water for a swim. Next we see us on an excursion to the Arboretum in Islip. Fran­cis had come along too and he and Johanna were jumping around and having fun, and Mr. Glueck and Mrs. Tini Wolf were in the party too. Then we see David Freudenthal, who had come with Selma with their big boat into the canal and stopped at our house, to take us on a trip to the Great South Bay. There we met Hugo and Peter in their own boat. For a while, Johanna was at the steering wheel. Then there were other boat trips, fish­ing trips, then again trips for swimming and on one we see as participants Charles, Edith, and Johnny Gardner, when he was about 4 years old, an extremely lovely boy, all of us on a sand beach near our house, and the Freudenthals came again with their big boat, including Hugo and Peter, and this time little Johnny was allowed to steer the big boat. Then we had again Mundy and Maryla Frisch as guests and went together to the beach. We see then Maryla and Johanna playing tennis on the tennis grounds of a newly built high school in Massapequa, and we had a nice time together there. I was also swinging the tennis racket, just to make them laugh. We took them also to the Arboretum and then via Captree Highway home. The summer was over and we were back in Brooklyn and we see there Johanna, taking a paint­ing lesson from Mr. Lerner in our garden.We come now to 1955. The film starts with an excursion with Lisa, Paul, Ginnie, at first to Boston, where Paul Bruell joined us and showed us the city and Harvard University, the Charles River, etc., and we drove then to Rockport, where we went on a fishing boat out into the ocean. Even the ladies were fishing, and we caught a few nice fish. We continued our trip, going along the coast north to Maine and stopped at Yar­mouth, where we got rooms in a motel, and went then shopping, while the ladies prepared the fish we had caught for dinner. Continuing the trip the next day, we stopped at the Desert of Maine, astonishing for all of us, as we were for the first time in our lives in a real desert. We walked for quite a while in the sand, went then back to our car. We then went to Bar Har­bor, and the film shows us all picking berries there. I remem­ber that we went there on a deep-sea fishing trip, only Paul and I, and I was lucky to catch a 25-pound cod fish. We continued going north and went to Quebec, visited the city the next day, and went from there to St. Anne de Beauprais, then to Montreal, to the Montmorency Water Fall and the Glen Ennis Pall. It was a terribly hot summer, the temperature around 90 degrees, and we decided to go back to the United States and into the moun­tains. Going south, we went to the White Mountain National Park and to Mount Washington, and up by cog-railway to the sum­mit. Down again and going west, we came to Barre and visited the famous granite quarry, saw how they raised from deep down by crane an enormous block of granite up and deposited it on a railway car, saw great numbers of railway cars carrying these blocks. Then we crossed Lake Champlain by ferryboat and went to Lake Placid, visited there Mrs. Tini Wolf. We went then on one of the next days with her on a trip to the White Face Mountain, 4872 feet above sea level. Then down again to Lake Pla­cid. Going south, we stopped at a nice picnic place and had a nice meal. On another trip later on, we visited Camp Star­light, where Johanna was, and we were glad to see her. She looked gorgeous. There was also Hanna Mannheim, also very pretty. They both were counselors there and we saw also the children, whom they had to take care of. Next, on another trip, we went to Lake Minnewaska with Johanna, and there was also a boy friend of hers. I took beautiful pictures of them, swimm­ing and later playing at the shuffleboard. Finally, there is a strip of film from a trip to Lake Hopatcong, showing us and Felix and Hedy Glueckselig, Mr. Glueck, and Mrs. Tini Wolf. Ethel Glueck must have been up in the house and was therefore not in the picture.

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