The family loved going to Rosetta's brother's Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, Wisconsin

Camp Ojibwa  Meyer, his wife Bea, Al, Sam, Matilda, Jean and  Edna

One of the big delights for the family was an excursion to her brother Al's Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, Wisconsin.

It is amazing how well-known it became and how many celebrities acknowledged it. Even the Alan Sherman song, "Camp Granada" was inspired by Al's camp. You see, Sherman was one of his counselors, but how do you rhyme with Ojibwa?

At one time baseball's famous Leo Durocher left a game to spend two days at the camp, but the Chicago Tribune found out and did a cartoon with him wearing a Camp Ojibwa tee-shirt.
Here is a post about it from www.funtrivia.com

14. An incident occurred in late July (Saturday, July 26) involving Leo Durocher. Do you remember what he did?  Leo called Jack Brickhouse a mental midget on the "Tenth Inning" show  Leo left a game and went up to Camp Ojibwa  Leo punched home plate umpire Harry Wendelstedt while arguing balls and strikes  Leo won his 1000th career game as a manager

Rosetta's daughter Phyllice lived in Alaska many years, and lo and behold she mentioned Camp Ojibwa to a friend in Juneau and it turned out he was a former camper. As for me,  one of my ex-husband's business associates had an uncle who was an original investor in the camp. What a small world.

If the name Camp Ojibwa sounds familiar, please post a comment. Rosetta and her brother Al were very close and he watched out for his "little sister" her entire life. Here is an excerpt from Can We Come In and Laugh, Too? where Rosetta introduces her brother Al. This section in the book tells the story of how the camp came to be.

~Morgan St. James, Rosetta's daughter

EXCERPT:

Al was the most successful of my brothers. Still in his early teens, he was too young to enlist in World War I, but heard that a person could make lots of money by working in the shipyards and help the war effort at the same time. He traveled to Detroit by himself and got a job in the shipyards there. It was true. By the time he was ready to come back to Chicago, he had saved up a few thousand dollars which was a fortune in those days.

He returned home and told my parents to ask for anything they wanted. As it turned out, the only thing they wanted was a pair of tickets to the Jewish synagogue for the High Holy Days. With the money that was left, he bought a horse and cart and launched his first business—delivering ice for iceboxes. We didn’t have electric refrigerators back then. Big cakes of ice were placed in heavily insulated ice boxes to keep our food from spoiling.

My brother said that he learned at a very young age what he had a talent for—making money.

As I say in my main story, the business he loved the most was owning a boys’ camp. He opened Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, Wisconsin in 1928 and it became famous worldwide. For the rest of his life wherever he went it seemed someone recognized Al. Even in Europe. 

The book is available in paperback and Kindle. Get your own copy for inspiration and laughs.

Rosetta's oldest sister Jean was a cover girl in the early 1900s

This was not the cover with Jean's image,
 but hers would have appeared around this time

EXCERPT FROM
"CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?"

Note: Jean was the oldest of ten children, and Rosetta, her baby sister was the youngest. Here is Rosetta's memory of her sister Jean, beautiful both inside and outside.

My sister Jean was the oldest and she was almost more like a mother to me than a sister because of our age difference. 

When she finished grammar school, she got a job in a department store as a cashier. Kids from poor families went to work very early in those days. Her earnings were so minimal, that after staying on that job for a while, Jean found a job with the Saturday Evening Post. It was a very popular magazine in Chicago, and her job was going from door-to-door to get subscriptions for the magazine.

She was a very beautiful girl with jet black hair and pretty soon people at the company noticed her good looks and approached her. They wanted to make her a cover girl. She accepted and was on a magazine cover, but didn’t stay with the company very long. Jean wanted to better herself, and was offered a job with Cameron Dental Lab, a dental laboratory that manufactured all kinds of dental equipment.

Jean was not only pretty, she had beautiful teeth. Well, while she was working in the dental industry, it didn’t take long for the people in charge to notice how pretty she was and even more important what a wonderful smile she had. Sure enough, they asked if she would model their instruments.

So once again she became a model in addition to her job of working on the assembly line. They got away with highway robbery, because neither of those companies ever paid her an extra dime for being their model, but it was fun for her to see her photo in print.

She worked for Cameron a long time, assembling instruments and lending them her smile. When she finally left, they begged her to stay and even kept calling her and asking her to come back.

Eventually she met a man named Sam Heftel and they got married. Family members were surprised at her choice because many handsome, successful men had courted my sister and she had turned all of them down.

Sam was into real estate, and although Jean assumed he was a fairly good salesman, he never seemed to be able to close a deal. They were married many years and lived in a small efficiency apartment with a pull down bed and what was called a Pullman kitchen. It was so small and so compact, it was built into an alcove. They never had any children, and to tell the truth, Sam always had to scrape out a living so her life wasn’t very exciting. Not only that, but he loved to smoke the smelliest cigars you can imagine, and that little apartment always smelled putrid no matter how much Lysol she used to clean it. She could have married so much better.

Thousands of people have enjoyed Rosetta's stories since the release of this book in May 2012.  Now you can, too.

Surprise 78th Birthday Trip

We flew to San Francisco for Lunch

Although she loved geography,  my mother hadn't traveled much until I began to take her on trips whenever I could in the 1980s. I wanted every birthday to be special for her.

~Daughter, Morgan St. James

On her 78th birthday I told her I was taking her to lunch, but we had to leave early.

She questioned why that was necessary, and I came up with some BS excuse because I had a very special lunch planned for her. Little did she know that we were flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco for lunch at Fisherman's Wharf. I knew she loved Chinatown, too, so after that I planned to go from the Wharf to Chinatown, do some shopping,  finish with and early sushi dinner at Yamato's Restaurant on California Street in Chinatown, then fly back to L.A. 

Yes, I know sushi and Yamato's are Japanese, but the restaurant actually was in Chinatown right across from a McDonald's restaurant I'd decorated. Because I made several trips to San Francisco related to decorating McDonald's restaurants back then, I'd become friends with the sushi chef. No matter how much time went by between visits, he always greeted me as "Decorator Lady from McDonald's" and made special dishes for me. I thought she would enjoy that.

As we headed for LAX, she asked where we were going, and when I pulled into the airport she said, "Honey, are we going to the Theme Restaurant?" That was a big Space Age looking restaurant at the entrance to LAX.

I shook my head and said, "Good guess, but no. I know you've only been to San Francisco a few times and loved it, so I thought it would be the perfect place to have lunch."

Her eyes widened. "Lunch? We're going to fly to San Francisco for lunch? I can't believe it."

"Believe it!"

In her circle of friends it would have been a rare occurrence for someone to fly to San Francisco just for lunch and I knew she'd really have something to talk about at the Senior Center. Tears filled her eyes and she told me how special I'd made her birthdays. Her 75th was a weekend spent in Las Vegas with VIP treatment from the general manager of the Flamingo Hotel, 76 was New Orleans where she was up on stage dancing with the club owner (see the chapter in "Can We Come In and Laugh, Too?" for that story).

We caught a cab to the Wharf and  walked around, watched the seals and walruses on their platform in the bay, peeked in shops and generally had a great time. Then it was time for our Crab Louis at Alioto's on the world renowned Fisherman's Wharf. I joked that the restaurant was almost as old as she was--not quite, but almost. Mom was born in 1909 and  Alioto's had opened in 1925. She was in "seventh heaven." With lunch finished, we walked to the cablecar stop and I helped her hop on a cablecar, Destination: Chinatown.

After an afternoon of walking around--she was a great walker, better at 78 than me at 48--we went to Yamato's where I hoped my friend the chef would offer his normal greeting. The minute we appeared in the entrance he called out, "Greetings pretty decorator lady from McDonalds. And, who this beautiful lady?" (referring to Rosetta). I introduced her as my mother and he raved about how much he liked making special dishes for me. Mom was beaming.

She'd never had sushi but was ready to try it and he prepared a feast. After that day she asked if we could have sushi on several occasions. It didn't matter how old Rosetta got, she was always game to try something new. Maybe that's where I get the spirit of always being willing to  try new things. However, if she didn't like something, she didn't forget, either. Once I recommended a restaurant and she said she'd eaten there twenty years before and wouldn't go back because the service was awful. 

After being catered to by my friend, the sushi chef, we took a cab to the airport, and that's when I got a big surprise. Our return tickets were gone! I dumped the contents of my purse on a counter, but there were no tickets and the flight we'd planned to take was sold out. I told them we had reservations, and the agent actually saw the bookings, but without the tickets we were out of luck. I had no idea what had happened, unless I'd somehow dropped them and perhaps two people were enjoying a free flight to L.A.

We had the agent check other airlines and found we could buy tickets for a flight that was leaving shortly on the old commuter airline Air Cal. Mom and I hustled to their terminal only to discover a long line waiting to check in or buy tickets. We begged people to let us through the line so we could buy tickets for the flight in time to board it. Mom smiled sweetly as I pleaded.

Maybe it was her snow white hair or her captivating smile, but whatever it was, everyone let us get in front of them until we reached the front of the line. We just made it onto the flight and when we landed in L.A. she gave me a hug and said, "I can always count on you for something unexpected for my birthday. I love you, honey." That was worth everything! 

CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? is filled with humor and inspiration -- stories covering everything from growing up in as the youngest of ten children in a zany, early 1900s family to using laughter to get through some of the curves life threw her way. Thousands of copies have delighted people all over the globe. Why not get your own copy or give it as a gift. Available in Kindle and paperback. Amazon Select members borrow it FREE.

Family dinners were like a scene from a comedy

Throughout the time Rosetta lived in Chicago the family dinners were huge affairs. With most of her 9 siblings living in Chicago, plus their kids, imagine up to 40 people crowding into a relatively small apartment. Then add to that the fact that most of them were absolutely zany and you had the recipe for hilarity.


Rosetta, Edna and Jean were known as the "Three Graces." They worked together to serve all of these people like a finely oiled machine--each with their specific chore. From preparation through the dishes, they never allowed other family members to help. Even after Rosetta, Edna and Jean moved to California, the routine for family dinners, although smaller now--maybe around 20 people--persisted. This continued until the trio ranged in age from Rosetta (about 75 at the time) to Edna (around 79) and Jean approaching 90. The younger family members were always told to "sit and enjoy."


From the time the dinner guests arrived it was non-stop fun, with jokes and pranks bantered around like tennis balls. Each tried to top the other. One time they decided to stage a mock rendition of the old TV show "This is Your Life," with MC Ralph Edwards. Edna put on one of her husband's suits, a fedora and drew a mustache with eyebrow pencil. Rosetta made what was supposed to be the "book of life" for their mother, Mathilda. They sat Mathilda in an armchair and one-by-one Edna read the names of her brothers from the book.


In turn, they stood in front of Mathilda and related some funny incident from her life. Poor Mathilda was completely bewildered by this and sat there saying, "What's going on?" in Yiddish as she didn't speak much English. 


I was a kid at the time--maybe eleven years old--but I can remember that particular dinner as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was the epitome of the constant fun that prevailed in the Schwartz family and inspired all of the offspring to find the laughter in any situation.


Enjoy Rosetta's stories, both funny and inspirational in CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? Thousands of copies have been downloaded so why not get your own copy?

E


Morgan St. James, Rosetta's daughter

ROSETTA LOVED SINGING THE FUNNY SONG "I'M AN INDIAN"

Rosetta at 93

Rosetta loved to sing and she had a very good voice. Combine that with her sterling sense of humor and imagine her performing in a show at the local Senior Center.


She was about 82 or 83 when her neighbor Jean Williams, a flamboyant woman of about the same age who ran gambling junkets to Las Vegas, invited her to do a number in one of the shows put on at the Center. Despite her age, Rosetta was always game for most things. She decided to do a funny number, but what could it be? 


Then she remembered one of her favorites--an old Fannie Brice number called, "I'm An Indian." It was a lesser known song that told the story of little Rosie Rosenstein, a Jewish woman who fell in love with an Indian chief and became a squaw. What could be better? Not only was it a funny song, but it lent itself to a great costume. My sister and I had loved to hear her sing it through the years, and now she was to perform it on stage accompanied by another senior playing the tune on the piano.


Rosetta dug out a blanket that sort of looked like an Indian pattern and made herself a headband with a feather, then practiced her dance moves. Even though she was in her eighties, Rosetta had some good moves left in her. Hours were spent rehearsing in front of a full-length mirror, singing: "Look at me, just look at me, I'm what you call an Indian, that's something that I never was before. One day I met an Indian chief named (she called him Itchka Mahogna) and right away he took me for his squaw. He wrapped me up in blankets, put feathers in my head. Between the blankets and the feathers, I feel just like a bed."


Click HERE and you can hear the original Fannie Brice rendition of the entire song.


Finally she was ready to do a test run for Jean and me. She nailed it, Jean gave it thumbs up and the audience loved it. Rosetta was in her glory. She smiled and said, "Now I know what it feels like to be a star."
                                             Morgan St. James, daughter


Enjoy Rosetta's stories in CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? She takes you from being the youngest of ten children, born in 1909, through 1989 when she wrote her memoir. Even when life got rough, her laughter and spirit carried her through. The book has been call funny, inspirational and delightful. A book by an ordinary woman with the extraordinary gift of making people believe in themselves. REMEMBER, Amazon Prime members can borrow the Kindle edition free.

WHEN ROSETTA WAS IN HER MID-80s, SHE REJECTED A SUITOR WHO WAS "TOO OLD"

He was too old for her!

Up until the mid 90s Rosetta was a familiar face in the Pico/Robertson area of Los Angeles. She never learned to drive and went everywhere by foot or bus. Occasionally, she would spring for a taxi. Until she was nearly 89, most mornings she  walked from her apartment at Sherbourne near Olympic to the shopping area on Pico--about a mile walk each way. It was good aerobic exercise, and probably contributed to her good health and youthful attitude.

As Rosetta took her daily walk, always with that great smile lighting her face, she frequently stopped to chat with some of the many friends she'd made along the way. By the time she was 86, it seemed as though one older gentleman waited  in the same spot every morning until she passed 


Finally one morning he struck up a conversation, then walked along with her. After several mornings he asked her out for dinner, but made the mistake of calling it a "date." Much to his dismay, she said she just wanted to be friends. Undaunted, he still waited for her every day. At last she agreed and they had their "date."

It was hard to hold back my chuckles after I asked, "Mom, you said he's a nice guy. I never hear you talk about him anymore."

"Well, honey, he's just too old for me. During dinner he me told he's ninety. Okay he still drives, goes to the gym every day and is a fine-looking fellow--tall and erect with a good head of silver hair, and he's really funny, but what do I want with an old man? She lowered her voice, "Besides, I think he's looking for a sex partner. So, it was a dilemma. You see, I'm too young for him, but I'm too old to be anyone's sex toy."

The poor old gent continued to hound her to no avail. That's all for today. Thanks for following this blog. ROSETTA'S DAUGHTER, MORGAN ST. JAMES

 Love Rosetta? Read her funny and touching memoir. CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?

Excerpt from CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?

Via Photoshop Rosetta was the model for Flossie Silver
 and her own father (at about the same age) the model for Sterling Silver
 in the Silver Sisters Mysteries

CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?

Our household was strictly Orthodox Jewish, which included several traditions. I learned to read Hebrew at a very young age and my father would settle back in his favorite chair while I read the Hebrew newspaper to him. Now that I’m old, I can’t read a word of Hebrew. I can’t explain why that is, but as an adult I definitely didn’t get involved in religion much. Maybe that’s why I’ve forgotten Hebrew, but I can still speak Yiddish.  When I do go to temple, it is either Conservative or Reform and I usually only go on the Jewish High Holidays. After my sister Jean and my brothers got married, my sister Edna and I were the only ones still at home and we knew we wanted to be part of the modern world.

My father was a very kind, gentle person and had a great sense of humor. Mama loved to laugh, but not like my father. She was much quieter. He did all the grocery shopping because my mother never had a chance to get out of the kitchen. Cooking for at least twelve people every day was a full-time job. 

ROSETTA SHARED HER BIRTHDAY YEAR WITH BUCHART GARDENS IN VICTORIA, CANADA

Buchart Gardens - Sunken Garden

Rosetta loved to travel, and in 1989 my sister Phyllice and I decided to meet in Vancouver, Canada. Phyllice traveled there from Juneau, Alaska with her young son so Mom could see her grandson and Rosetta and I flew to Vancouver from Los Angeles. 


We decided to take the hydrofoil to Victoria and stay for a few days. Going to Victoria is like being in a "mini-England" complete with a Parliament building and many British traditions including the famous high-tea at the Empress Hotel. 


The highlight of the trip was a visit to Buchart Gardens--the second most beautiful public gardens I've ever seen. The first for me will always remain Keukenhof in Holland.


We had a rental car and as we stopped at the kiosk and paid for our admissions, Phyllice spotted a sign that said, "Tell us if you were born in 1909."


Rosetta immediately said to the ticket taker, "I was born in 1909"


It was as though all of the bells and whistles in Victoria went off. The ticket taker said, "This is the 80th anniversary of Buchart Gardens. It was founded in 1909 and we are celebrating with anyone born in that year." The first thing she did was to refund our admission fees, saying, "You are our honored guests."


Then she said, "You will be treated to high tea in the teahouse and we would like to take your photo for our gallery."


The day was magical. They met us at the teahouse and Mom was treated like a celebrity. The servers catered to us and she sat there beaming. The photographer came and snapped several images and told us the best one would be hung in their gallery. 


As we finished our walk through the acres and acres of amazing gardens, Rosetta said, "It sure felt good to be Queen for a Day. Thanks so much for bringing me here."


That was a wonderful memory and she held it close for many years. It was also the day my sister and I knew she was slowing down a bit. Rosetta normally walked miles without getting tired. Near the end of the day we had almost walked the entire gardens, stopping to OOH and AAH at the beautiful displays. There was one more left. Rosetta said, "Honey, I think I'll sit on this bench while you girls look at that one." As much as we didn't want to, we had to acknowledge that when you're 80 you probably do slow down a little.


Read Rosetta's humorous and inspiring memoir, CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? It has been enjoyed by thousands since it's release in May 2012.

ROSETTA'S SISTER JEAN - Excerpt from CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?

Jean & Husband Sam-Around 1910

Rosetta devoted space to each of her 9 brothers and sisters in the book. Jean, the oldest, was about 17 when Rosetta was born. She lived to 93 and was like a second mother to Rosetta.

Jean

My sister Jean was the oldest and she was almost more like a mother to me than a sister because of our age difference. When she finished grammar school, she got a job in a department store as a cashier. Kids from poor families went to work very early in those days. 

Her earnings were so minimal, that after staying on that job for a while, Jean found a job with the Saturday Evening Post.  It was a very popular magazine in Chicago, and her job was going from door-to-door to get subscriptions for the magazine.

She was a very beautiful girl with jet black hair and pretty soon people at the company noticed her good looks and approached her. They wanted to make her a cover girl. She accepted and was on a Saturday Evening Post magazine cover, but didn’t stay with the company very long. Jean wanted to better herself, and was offered a job with Cameron Dental Lab, a dental laboratory that manufactured all kinds of dental equipment.

Jean was not only pretty, she had beautiful teeth. Well, while she was working in the dental industry, it didn’t take long for the people in charge to notice how pretty she was and even more important what a wonderful smile she had. Sure enough, they asked if she would model their instruments.

So once again she became a model in addition to her job of working on the assembly line. They got away with highway robbery, because neither of those companies ever paid her an extra dime for being their model, but it was fun for her to see her photo in print.

 She worked for Cameron a long time, assembling instruments and lending them her smile. When she finally left, they begged her to stay and even kept calling her and asking her to come back.

Eventually she met a man named Sam Heftel and they got married. Family members were surprised at her choice because many handsome, successful men had courted my sister and she had turned all of them down.

Sam was into real estate, and although Jean assumed he was a fairly good salesman, he never seemed to be able to close a deal. They were married many years and lived in a small efficiency apartment with a pull down bed and what was called a Pullman kitchen.  It was so small and so compact, it was built into an alcove. They never had any children, and to tell the truth, Sam always had to scrape out a living so her life wasn’t very exciting. Not only that, but he loved to smoke the smelliest cigars you can imagine, and  that little apartment always smelled putrid no matter how much Lysol she used to clean it. She could have married so much better.


Read her stories in the popular memoir CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? Over 6,000 copies downloaded since May. Also available in paperback as a wonderful gift of laughter for someone you love.

 NOTE: When Jean was in her early thirties she had major surgery. The anesthetic caused her jet black hair to turn snow white overnight. She kept it long and rolled it into "sausage curls" which was a style of the times. To me it looked like strands of spun silver, and as a very young child one of my big treats was being able to brush Aunt Jean's beautiful hair.  ~MORGAN ST. JAMES

A FAMILY PARTY PACKED THE PEOPLE IN

THANK YOU TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BOUGHT "CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?"

In this photo Rosetta is sitting in the front row. Her mischief-maker brother Phil is right behind her, wearing the paper crown.


Back in 1920, there was a really large family in Chicago. It is amazing how they managed to fit all of those people into the apartment. Of Rosetta's seven brothers and two sisters, all but Jean (who is standing by the piano) were absolutely zany. Jean was reserved. Maybe that was because she was the oldest and had helped raise so many of them.

A family party was no small affair. The laughter resounded through the building, and the neighbors always hoped they'd be asked to join in.


Rosetta was eleven when this Halloween party photo was taken. To the right you can see the huge mirror where her brother Meyer  experimented with stage makeup day after day while he practiced different characters. His big desire was to be a stage actor. Her brother Charlie would probably be playing the drums in another part of the apartment, and Rosetta said she never knew what kind of character makeup Meyer would be wearing when she got home from school. 


Meyer didn't make it as an actor, but according to her brother Al, Meyer did wind up playing the coronet with one of John Phillips Sousa's bands for a year before going into sales. Many of the brothers played an instrument and  Rosetta shared the banjo with her sister Edna when they got older.

THE PAJAMA PARTY

They certainly weren't your typical "bevy of beauties."

A group of women who worked at Swartzchild & Company, a jewelry supply company in downtown Chicago, decided to get together and have a pajama party. Rosetta is the one  dead center in the third row. This photo was probably taken around 1927 when she was eighteen years old.


Rosetta's comment: "We all held our breath while the photographer got everything ready and prayed the bed wouldn't break!"


If some of the ladies look a little stoned, it's because without Photoshop or digital cameras back in those times, if the photo came out with some eyes closed, the photographer simply painted the eyes onto the eyelids.


Years later, this photo hung on her daughter Phyllice's wall, and Phyllice looks quite a bit like Rosetta. One of her friends squinted at the image and said, "Phyllice, when were you working in a cat house?"


Rosetta lived for laughter and shared it in her memoir. Since recently being published, thousands of Kindle copies of  Rosetta's heartwarming, funny book, CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?  have been downloaded . It is also available in paperback and makes a wonderful gift.


She passed on in 2006 nearing her 97th birthday, but her humor lives on.

RESPONSE TO KINDLE PROMOTION OVERWHELMING

Rosetta is on TOP-Again!

Rosetta Schwartz 1909-2006

That's her at the top of the heap back in in the 1920s during a day at the beach. Her sister Edna is the one on the left.


The response to the free Kindle edition of Rosetta's memoir on June 6-7 was overwhelming. In two days nearly 5,300 copies were downloaded followed by many more people buying copies from Amazon for only $2.99.


Rosetta almost made her 97th birthday, but If she had lived long enough to see this response and realized how many people will now read her stories and tell their friends and relatives about her book, she would have been ecstatic. After all, when she was approached and asked to write about her life, her answer was, "But I'm  not a writer, Honey."

Oh yes she was. The book came about because I turned one of her favorite phrases around and used it on her: "You can do it." And, she not only wrote Part I of the book, she did it with a flair for comedy in a tightly written memoir.    

                        Morgan St. James

From Part II: 

I remember when Aunt Rosetta walked into a room it was painted with sunshine.  Soon that room overflowed with laughter. Laughter is contagious and let me tell you Aunt Rosetta was the primary carrier.  Even though she is no longer with us, I know that she is spreading sunshine and laughter somewhere.  

Nephew Sandy Schwartz, her brother Charlie's son 

My brothers made my mother look like she was at "Heaven's Gate"

I'm sure this true story "WAR STORY" will make you laugh 
on Memorial Day.
 It is one of the stories in CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? and you'll find many more amusing stories between the covers. Kindle and paperback on Amazon.

Rosetta in 1932 - 23 years old

Let me look back for a moment. The year was 1918 and I was nine years old. That was the year World War I was declared. We were still living in the same apartment on Ogden Avenue. My brother Meyer was drafted into the army and was sent to France. He was an M.P. and was there about three years. He got really lonesome for home and wanted to get a furlough, so he invented an excuse and said that my mother was very sick and he wanted to see her before anything serious took place. He hinted that she could die.

It was a luxury to have a telephone back then and we knew they would send an inspector to check out his story in person. We didn't know when the inspector would come so we had to be ready to react at a moment’s notice to make sure our mother looked very sick.

One day the doorbell rang and sure enough it was the inspector. Thank God for the three flights of steps to climb. In the time it took him to make it to the top, we had enough time to prepare the scene.

My mother was in the kitchen cleaning a chicken. In my day when someone bought a chicken, it had to be cleaned from scratch, feathers and all, before you cut it up to cook. Now-a-days you go into the market and purchase a chicken, or parts of a chicken, and it's all ready for use. That’s progress.

The boys grabbed her just as she was, dress, apron, shoes and all, and dusted some flour on her face. Then they each grabbed one of her arms and hurried her down the hall to the bedroom.

They practically threw her in the bed, clothes, shoes and all, and told her to groan and moan—above all they prompted her to act like she was on Death’s doorway.  There was no electricity at that time and all of the fixtures were the gas light type. They turned the gas lights up and covered her right up to her neck so the inspector couldn't see she was fully dressed. The light from the fixtures cast a sickly greenish glow all over the whole room and between the flour and the green light she looked ghastly.

My brothers led the inspector into the room and said in hushed voices, “I hope Meyer can come home soon.” Hearing that, my mother took the cue and began to groan. She kept up a chant of "Oy Vey" the whole time the inspector was there. It was an award-winning performance, and I remember it to this day. The poor inspector took one look at Ma and said "Oh my, she is very sick, isn’t she?"  He gave her a comforting pat on the arm and said, “We’ll bring him home to you as soon as possible. Don’t worry, Mrs. Schwartz. Just hang on.”

After he left, my mother got up and went back into the kitchen to finish cleaning the chicken!

And, as for Meyer? They granted him a two week furlough and he came home a week later.

EVEN IF IT IS FREE, GET THE FACTS

Excerpt from CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO?

 In 1949 the family moved to Miami, lured by her sister-in-law's offer of a free apartment for as long as they needed it.

It took almost a week for us to drive to Florida, and when Al pulled up in front of the address his sister Helen gave us, I thought he made a mistake. The building looked so small I couldn’t imagine how it could hold three apartments.

We quickly discovered what his sister hadn’t told us—her “apartments” were only efficiency units. In just one room the living space was combined with a kitchen space, if you can call it that. A sink with a drain board took up one wall. Under the drain board was a small refrigerator and a few cabinets overhead. We had a tiny bathroom, and as far as sleeping arrangements, closet doors on another wall in this room hid a bed on hinges known as a Murphy bed. It was built into the wall and at night you opened the doors and pulled down the bed. Once the bed was down, you barely had any space between the couch and the bed.


These efficiency units were furnished with a few sticks of furniture, and it just took one glance for us to realize they were only meant to accommodate a single person or a perhaps couple in a pinch, but certainly not four people. Al and I were pretty upset that Helen hadn’t explained what kind of apartments she had, but we couldn’t say anything to her. She meant well. With no children of her own, she probably didn’t have a clue what it would be like to live in that one room with two kids.


We tried to make it work, but it was just too tight. Since we didn’t have much money and Al didn’t have a job yet, we had to make the best of it until we could find better accommodations. Phyllice had to squeeze onto the Murphy Bed with Al and me and Morgan slept on the sofa. We felt like we were living in a sardine can.

The Thing in the Corner

Today I had lunch with my cousin Sandy (Rosetta's brother Charlie's son) and gave him his copy of Can We Come In and Laugh, Too?. I showed him where his contribution is in Part II and then we reminisced about Rosetta.


Somehow we began to talk about modern appliances. My mother Rosetta was certainly all for keeping up with modern technology although she never learned to use a computer and didn't embrace some of the things we use every day to make life easier.


That brings me to the "thing in the corner."


My sister and I had decided to buy her a portable microwave oven  in the late 1980s. We figured it would make it easier for her to heat things up quickly instead of waiting for the oven. We put a big bow on it and presented her with our wonderful gift.


She said, "Honey, let's put it right in the corner. See that space on the counter?" That's where it went, and she was right. It was a perfect space. However, when I'd visit her, I noticed that she still turned on the oven and the protective clear covering was still on the door of the microwave. Finally one day about a year after we'd given it to her, I said, "How do you like using the microwave?"


"Well, I haven't actually used it yet." 


"Why not, Mom? Look at all the time it will save you."


"Honey, why would I want to save time? At my age, (she was around 80 then) I've got lots and lots of time on my hands. In fact, sometimes I have to figure out things to fill the days. What would I do to fill the time the thing in the corner would save me? Maybe I'll try to use it one of these days, but not right now."


She never did use the thing in the corner, but from that day on, that's what she called it. Eventually, after she had mini-strokes and had to move to an assisted living residence, I inherited the thing in the corner. In fact, that old thing in the corner, now about 23 years old, has rarely been used and sits on a cabinet in one corner of my guest casita in Las Vegas. And it still works.



Her dishwasher was rarely used for anything more than keeping dirty dishes out of the way until she could fill the sink with soapy water, then wash and dry them. One time we had a big dinner at her apartment and after I loaded the dishes I said, "Where do you keep the dishwasher soap? We might as well just run the load now."


She looked at me for a minute, then said, "Why, I don't have any."


"Did you run out?"


"No, I've never had any and don't even know if the darned thing works."

Kindle edition of Rosetta's book FREE today and tomorrow at Amazon

1920s - Rosetta at the beach with her banjo

This is a great chance to download a FREE copy of the Kindle edition of CAN WE COME IN AND LAUGH, TOO? on April 19, 20 and 27. After that it goes back to $2.99. If you're an Amazon Prime Member, you can borrow it free at any time.

Don't have a Kindle? Just download the free Kindle ap on your computer or your SmartPhone and read bits of Rosetta's stories whenever you have time. It will bring a smile to your face.  She always found the humor in every situation. Here is an example that isn't in the book.

In 1983 when Rosetta was 74, she was the passenger in a car that was hit broadside in the passenger's door. She wound up in the hospital with gashes, bruises and a broken arm. Despite it all, there was a smile on her face. She pointed to the deep gash held together with stitches that had miraculously missed her eye. "See, honey, the guy upstairs was watching out for me. Otherwise I might have had to wear a patch and then I'd look like a pirate."

Later, after she had been released from the hospital a few days later, her daughter suggested that it would be better for Rosetta to come to her house to convalesce. Well, Morgan lived about 30 miles from Rosetta's apartment which would take her away from her friends and beloved sisters Edna and Jean. "Thanks, honey, but I'll be fine here."

"But, Mom..."

Rosetta held up the arm enclosed in a big white plaster cast. "Look, if you're worried about anyone breaking in, I've got the best weapon possible. I'll just hit them over the head with this cast. It's really heavy, you know."

Rosetta was a "fountain of wisdom" - She just didn't know it

Rosetta considered herself an ordinary woman. Having begged to be allowed to go to high school and take a commercial course back in 1923 when most kids from poor families went to work as young as ten or twelve years old to help support the family, Rosetta and her sister Edna were the only ones of ten children who were able to convince their parents to allow them to continue their education.

That wasn't where her thirst for knowledge ended. She always was an avid reader and possessed a keen sense of what was obvious and what was right. 

Her grandson Scott said it best. When he enrolled in the engineering program at University of Alaska in Fairbanks he was definitely challenged. His preparation in math was beyond poor -- it was disastrous, so he had to work very hard to learn what he should have learned in high school. Many times he was ready to give up, but it was Rosetta to the rescue. Here is a small excerpt from what he wrote in Part II of Can We Come In and Laugh, Too?

"I always knew I could get re-energized by Grandma. The next year, I skipped the year of trigonometry and the year of geometry courses and went right into the full on three-semester Sequence Calculus course, My professors allowed me to make this quantum leap as I was already using some of the three untaken math courses in the engineering coursework.

Initially, I thought I was going to die. However, my twice per week calls to Grandma were just the right medicine for academic anxiety. She always found a way to remove my stress and replace it with hope and courage. It was a gift that she had, for which I am forever grateful. With her encouragement, I was able to hold my head above water in all those subjects and even got B and A grades in them."

As the years rolled by, Grandma was there just as she promised. The courses got a lot more difficult and I can assure you that she knew nothing about differential equations, fluid mechanics or properties of materials; however, she knew exactly what to say to point me in the right direction. With a loving dose of encouragement, I was recharged and ready to take on the world.

Even when Rosetta was an old woman, while her friends watched the "Soaps" on TV,  she loved to watch programs like Face the Nation and Meet the Press to keep up on what was happening in the world. She would tune to any geographical or historical program that caught her eye, and when a country or place was mentioned that she was unfamiliar with, Rosetta reached for the huge World Atlas on her coffee table and looked up every fact about it. She also treasured her National Geographic Magazines and kept many back issues handy to read and refer to.


Life wasn't always "smooth sailing" for her, but Rosetta managed to find the humor even when the situation was dire and went through life with a smile on her face. She was able to transfer the ability to overcome negativity to everyone she came in touch with.

Welcome to the new blog for Rosetta Schwartz's book Can We Come In and Laugh, Too

Rosetta can't write this blog herself, because she passed away in 2006 just before her 97th birthday. When her daughter, author Morgan St. James, convinced to write a memoir back in 1989, Rosetta had no idea that someday it would be a book to be enjoyed by the masses. 

With her normal modesty, she said, "But honey, you and your sister Phyllice are the writers in the family. What would I say?"

"Well, Mom, just write about your life. Lot's of people living now have no idea what it was like back then . You weathered some pretty stormy times and it seems laughter always got you through. By the way, you're wrong. You're a wonderful writer."

She thought for a moment, then said, "Well we always did have so much fun. With 9 brothers and sisters pulling crazy stunts and all the neighbors wanting to come in and laugh with us, I guess I do have pretty much to write about."

So Rosetta took out her spiral notebook and started to write. "Before I tell my stories, and I've got a lot of them, I want to talk about my brothers and sisters. People need to know what they were like to understand that our family was like living in the middle of a three-ring circus."

That was definitely the truth. The calmest one was Jean, the oldest of the brood. Beautiful Jean even graced the cover of an early Saturday Evening Post one time, but that's another story and you'll find it in the book. The others were like a troop of comedians 24/7.

As she takes you through her more than 90 years, future posts will give you more insight into Rosetta, a little silver-haired woman with the strength of steel and the understanding of Soloman. She had the gift of being able to make you feel so special and believe that you could accomplish anything.

Oh, yes, there will also be video of her dancing to rock and roll at age 90 and peeks into her amazing wisdom.

Thanks for visiting, and come back soon.