A Conversation with Samuel Levinson
Where are you from?
I was born in the small town called Lieben. In the Ukraine. In 1994 I went to the FIU library and looked in the atlas, and would you believe that my village is still on the map! Well I have a wonderful memory, a photo in my mind, of the village I was born in.
When did you come to America?
We landed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1913. But July 4th the customs are closed, so we got off the ship the next day, July the 5th. Before we got off the ship my mother gave the children special instructions: when you get off you kiss the ground and thank God that you are in America, the land of freedom. That's why I am putting, 'til 1991 I put, in 25 to 30 hours at the Ruben Dario Middle School as a volunteer to pay back, Uncle Sam for the freedom that I didn't have in the village that I was born in.
What do you remember about your childhood?
You know my grandson asked me a question that you won't believe the answer. What happened to me as a child happens to very few children in the world. When I was about five years old, it must have been during the spring or summer because we didn't have snow on the ground, as I was walking to my grandfather's house on an errand my mother gave me a note. As I was walking all of a sudden I was aware of life, as much as we now know about life. I remember I even pinched my flesh to get the feel of flesh. I took a course at UM in creative writing and I wrote an article about that.
Now I remember that in the summer time my mother took the clothes and the five children and we went to the river. She washed the clothes with a home made cake of soap, made out of chicken fat, Jewish people eat a lot of chicken on the weekend, and while she washed the clothes and thrashed the clothes against the rocks the children bathed in their birthday suits.
What do you mean by birthday suits?
One thing, we didn't know anything about bathing suits and if there would be such a thing as bathing suits we were so poor that we didn't have money to buy one. In the winter time when it was too cold to go to the river the women used to go to a bath house, something in the order of a sauna. The women went Thursday.
Why did they go on Thursday?
Because Friday morning they had to prepare the dinner for the Sabbath, for Friday night and Saturday. Orthodox Jews are not allowed to cook on Saturday. The men went on Friday and I remembered my grandfather, a great big man with a long white beard, and he took my two brothers and me to the bathhouse. He took a wooden bucket of hot water and he put the cake of soap in there and he had a brush made out of leaves and he would dunk that brush in the bucket and then he would thrash our bodies with that soap water. Then he would spill out the bucket of water and take the bucket of luke warm water and spill it over our head which cleansed our bodies.
Now when I say luke warm water I remember a little story: there were two old men in Miami Beach by the ocean late November and one man went in the water and about ten minutes later he came out so the second man says, "well if he went in I might as well go in." He said "how is the water?" The other man says "lukewarm." So he went out and the water was cold and he came and he said "you so and so, why did you tell me the water was lukewarm?" So the man said "lukewarm to me."
How far did you extend your education?
I finished the McEntire public school in Philadelphia, would you believe that was in 1921. I still have a photo of my graduation class. Now years ago, the parents chose the vocation for what the children should do. My father wanted me to be a pharmacist. Why did he want me to be a pharmacist? Because he figured he would get his medicine free or cheap. I was very good at math. When I was five people used to tell me I was very good at math. I should have taken a commercial course and I would have been a CPA in 1926 with two years of college. So taking the academic course I had to take Latin. Latin and I didn't love each other, I wasn't good in Latin so I dropped out as a sophomore.
What kind of jobs have you done?
I worked since I was able to work. I had two brothers, they are both dead. My two brothers and I, we had two places where we sold newspapers after school. One brother was in one place and the other brother was at the other place in Philadelphia. And I was sort of the messenger. If one ran out of papers I'd bring the other's papers.
There was a shoemaker in our neighborhood and he paid me to tutor his son when he was in the first or second grade because the shoemaker didn't know English. I used to carry heavy baskets of shoes a few squares from the shoemaker because he didn't have a machine that sewed the soles. And then one of my brothers opened a fruit store, about 1919, and I used to work after school and the weekends. I used to push a pushcart with produce and different things that the women used to buy. And this shoemaker used to give me money that once a month I would go downtown and pay the interest that he took a loan out. He used to pay me for that so I used to go to the movies and have a snack. I worked all my life.
Where have you lived?
I have such a memory that I remember everything. I lived at 4334 North Marshall Street, it was a two story house, three bedrooms, my father paid thirty-five dollars a month. I remember when we came here my father bought for 11 dollars a great big wash tub full of dishes, silverware, pots and stuff. So we lived, he paid 35 dollars for three floors. We had heat from a coal heater, but being poor we had the third floor closed up so we shouldn't heat the third floor. So we used only the first and second floor.
We lived there a couple of years and then there was a house at 420 E down the street. It was two floors, three bedrooms. It was only 28 dollars. From there we moved to 460 North Sixth street. We lived there a while and then we bought a house at 718 North 8th street and would you believe we had the elevated trains running in back of our house.
Then I had brother that died, his best friend kicked him in the lower spinal column, he died. My mother had to have some kind of operation. Of course if you ask your parents at that time they would tell you that you're too young to know. My mother was superstitious, she had to go to the hospital and we moved on the second floor of two floors at 429 North 7th street. Would you believe that we had furniture that served as a furniture, bedroom, and kitchen. It's unbelievable.
In the mean time we bought a house in Strawberry Mansion in Philadelphia at 2523 North Natrona street. And when my mother got out of the hospital that house was ready to move in, luckily, so we moved in there. My father was a tailor so he opened up a store at 3220 32nd avenue. We had a plumber that lived in that prior to us and we had a tile bathroom, at that time it was a thousand dollars for a tile bathroom. Then we moved 2553 North Douglas street, after that we moved to 2460 North 32nd street.
Then I got married and I moved to 3114 West Clifford street on the 2nd floor. We had an apartment, that was in 1934. Around 1936 my son was born, Edward. From there we moved to 2660 North Myrtlewood street. The neighborhood was mostly white Jewish.