Even though Papa Sam and Grandma Rose lived next door to us on Forbes Avenue, I can't say I got to know Papa very well until after he had a stroke in 1959. However, I do have a few memories of him when he was well which show his particular sense of humor. He was a practical joker, which as a child I didn't understand. For example, he would tell me he didn't want to have me sit on his lap - he wanted to sit on my lap, and he went ahead and did that. And he was heavy! He would show me snapdragons from his garden, and he would press one open and catch my nose in it. On birthdays, we would have picnics on the stone table in his backyard, and he would tell me not to put my nose in the cup when I drank lemonade. So, I listened to him and ended up spilling the lemonade all over my party dress.

As I got older, I would play gin rummy with him, and he would call me a "garbage picker" because I would always trade in my higher cards for low numbers, so that if he "knocked", I wouldn't be stuck with too many points in my hand. By this time, I understood his sense of humor, and enjoyed the attention he was giving me.

I can remember times when he showed pride in me as his granddaughter. He and Grandma would take their grandchildren out, two at a time, to what Aunt Netta told me was the Royal York, which later became the Park Schenley. They seemed to enjoy showing us off there to his friends. Another happy memory I had was when they both taught me to count to 100 in Yiddish. They seemed to get such a kick out of it, especially when I would exclaim "a hoondred" at the end.

There were all sorts of little things I remember about him. Someone told me that Papa was a blue baby and that he was born with his heart on the wrong side of his chest. I remember that even after his stroke he could recite the grocery list from when he was young and sold groceries on a motorcycle. I remember he always liked a special liquid mint sauce that came in a jar when he ate lamb, and couldn't understand how anyone could eat lamb without it. My Mom always told me he was good in math, which I know was passed down to my brother Harvey, and I know he loved gardening and photography. I have some movies of the World's Fair of 1939 that he took, and his love of life and fun come through them. I also remember that he would read on the screened-in porch outside, near our house, and we could hear him sneeze - he sneezed very loud. Also, Mom told me that Papa used to like to sleep late on Sundays and have breakfast and lunch together when he awoke, which is what Mom loved to do until the end of her life.

When Papa got a color TV, Grandma said he was the first one in the neighborhood to have one. He seemed to like gadgets and have good mechanical ability, which my brother Danny inherited. When I would go over there, I would see him in the "Rec room", sitting backwards on a chair, watching a boxing match, throwing punches at the screen, listening to a ball game, and working the crossword puzzle at the same time. Grandma said that he used to accompany her to the opera and as soon as the music started, he would fall asleep. If someone said "Sanka" to him, he would say "You're welcome. When he led the Pesach services, he would read the Hebrew as fast as he could, to get finished quickly.

Mom told me he used to help her with her gymnastic routines. She also liked to tell me the story of when she met my Dad and was immediately very taken with him. When my Dad came from Youngstown to see her, Papa was sitting in the driveway, and it was dark, and they couldn't see each other very well. My Dad was shy, and apparently didn't impress Papa. When he left, Papa said to my Mom, "What is it about these out of town fellows that makes you fall so hard? My Mother was so hurt, but she got over it because the two men grew into a relationship of mutual respect.

Papa loved his Mother, and was very close to her. Grandma Rose didn't tell him when she died, because he had already had a stroke, and she felt he didn't need to know and be upset. There was one time after he got sick that I was watching the Ed Sullivan Show over at their house and the Beatles came on and Grandma couldn't get over how all the girls were screaming in excitement. Papa turned to her and said, " If you were that age, you would be screaming too. I liked that one - Papa still had a wry sense of humor. When he was ill, I spent a lot of time in his home, when Fanella Rosen (Greenberg) would give him Physical Therapy, and I got to know him pretty well then. He used to pat his hand that was paralyzed and say "Ah, ah, baby" to it, and that was, I think, what his mother said to him.

I will end with a story that is one of my favorites. When I was dating Holmes, whom I met two years after Papa died, his Dad told me that he knew the Levinson family because his brother Bill had been a good friend of Papa Sam's. He said that when Holmes (Bunkie) was a little boy, he was walking with him on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and he saw Sam. Sam greeted him, and bent down and picked Bunkie up and said "What an adorable little boy! I would like to have a little boy like you someday! Look how things turn out!

Submitted 10/30/06

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