One of the things I remember is that for a year or so, when I was around seven, my father found a women who would take a group of kids walking. We didn’t start school till we were eight so I must have been about six and a half. (I started school a year early). We would walk around – there were three or four of us – and she would only speak French to us. So at that time I learned a little French. My father was very upset that I was growing up not knowing more than one language – because he did.  He spoke French like a native. He could go from Russian to French without any difficulty.

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My parents enrolled me in school early because I already knew how to read and write and I was bored sitting at home. My first school was a Ukrainian school. My father wanted me to go to a Russian school because the Russian language was the language of the whole country and it was more important to know that grammatically. Because I was young I wasn’t accepted in a Russian school, but the Ukrainian school was willing to accept me.

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I don't remember this first school much. I remember the location (two trolley stops into the city) and the appearance of the building (like an old school anyplace in the world). Since I already knew how to read I helped with the slower students.

 

Later I was changed to a different school. If I went back I would know exactly which street I would have to take to go toward that school but I don’t remember the location as well as the first. I would know exactly where the first school was even though the building might not be standing. I have a very good visual memory of it. 

 

The new school was a long walk away and there were no school buses. I didn’t know what a school bus was till we moved to Matawan, New Jersey. On the way to school there was a grocery store and if there was a line outside I got on it. Soviet citizens did that automatically before knowing what was available for purchase. 

 

This must have been around 1939 and food was scarce. Due to the pact between Stalin and Hitler (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), the plentiful Ukrainian harvest was being sent to Germany. If you saw a line you got on even if you didn’t even know what was being sold. And then you would ask, “What are they giving?” – as though they were giving it way.  That was the expression,  “What are they giving?” And the next person might say, “I don’t know. I saw a line and I got on.”  

 

I was just a kid of eight years. I didn’t carry money, but soon my mother would pass on her way to her work, and she would replace me so I could go to school. Hopefully she would be able to buy whatever it was before she had to leave the line. This was a way of life at that time.  We had lean years and better years.

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