My earliest memory was when I was three years old at Passover time when my father wasn't working. We went visiting in the community where we all lived, my folks, myself and Norman. And everywhere we had a glass of something and something to eat. I wound up with a terrible stomach for overeating, and ended up in the hospital having my appendix taken out. They didn't know what to look for, so while they had me open they removed my appendix.

I remember walking with my mother and visiting my Aunt, "Mima Alta", Joe Sirota's mother. I remember Mima Alta walked Norman and me into the bedroom where she had a little bureau and she opened up the top drawer and it was loaded with strudel.

Another time I remember my mother sending me out to get a stick for my spanking. She had a philosophy, "You hit a kid in the ass and it goes directly to the head." Mainline communication! If she was going to hit you, you didn't get slapped. You had to get reprimanded. She sent you out for a stick, and if it wasn't big enough, God help you.

I remember as a child there were times I didn't see my father from Sunday until Friday, because when I got up to go to school he was sleeping, and when I got home from school he was at work already. But weekends he was home. My mother ran the house. I went to cheder at five. Sol Schecter's father, my Uncle Moshe had the schule for the family. He had a four flat, and one of the flats was converted into a schule. On that street there were five schules. That is, there was a church at either corner, with five schules in between: the Galitzioner schule, the Polishe schule, my uncle's schule for our family, the Litvak schule. Although we lived a few blocks away, it was within walking distance.

I was five years old when we came to L.A. We lived on Central Avenue in Los Angeles and went to the schule there. My father would pay for a bench for the High Holidays and he as the second one there after the schule was opened in the mornings. He would take the seat on the aisle and no matter what time you came in you were already late. He would pat you on the fanny and give a little "zinger" like, "What's the matter, you couldn't sleep?" When the bench was full he was the richest man in the world. He would wait for each son to arrive and be very well aware of who was missing. One time it was an extremely hot Yom Kippur, and of course we al fasted. My dad wanted the "Hassen" (Cantor) to hurry it up, it was getting to the end of the service, and he made the motion to "move it along...stop singing so much." The man in the row in the back must have said something that conflicted with my dad, and he turned around (with his seven sons all sitting there) and in Yiddish asked, "Do you want to fight?"

The only time we all got together was Passover. Everybody had different hours and different working schedules. The kitchen was open 18 hours a day. My brothers were milkmen and laundrymen. When they came home they would sit down and there was something to eat form the pot on the stove. It started with my father who had his supper, his big meal, at 3 o'clock. After that, whoever came in helped himself and sat down to eat.

My earliest memory about my brother Joe goes back to Montreal. I had a hat and it was wintertime and I had it pulled down over my ears pushing my ears out. He came home and whacked me across the side of my head and my hat went flying. "I told you never to wear that hat down over your ears, you're going to wind up with ears sticking out like THAT!" (Showing wings....)

When Joe got married in 1924, I was eight years old. I remember the wedding. It was across the street from where Wrigley Field used to be on Avalon Blvd., upstairs in a Polish-American auditorium. It was a hoopla deal - an old-fashioned wedding with a band. In those days, every wedding had to have music of some sort.

I also remember in Los Angeles, when I learned to drive a car. You used to be able to get a license at the age of 14. When I was 13 1/2 I couldn’t wait to get my driver's license, so I went down to the office and put my age back one year. They let you drive around the block, and that was it. It didn't cost anything, and you got a driver's license. Joe had a delicatessen route and Saturday he didn't work. Sunday was a big day for him. When I wasn't working he would pick me up and I would take him down to the bakery and drop him off. He would give me a shopping list of things to do, errands to run, merchandise to pick up in various places...sour cream here, candy and tobacco there, to load up for the truck. He would sit in the bakery and play pinochle all day with his two brothers-in-law and the accountant that came on Saturday. At the end of the day he would drive me home. That was my experience with Joe.

Moe was the only one who never laid a hand on me. And Irv. Irv would bawl me out once in awhile. I got cracked by all the rest of them.

When I was eight years old, Irv would come home on Saturday night after a date, change clothes sometimes, wake me up about 4:30 in the morning, and I would go with him to "shag" milk. He wouldn't sleep. We'd stop at the Globe Dairy. He would have coffee and I would have a cup of hot chocolate and a snail. They had the best snails for a nickel - hot and fresh out of the oven. Then we would go pick up the milk from the dairy and go out and run the route. We would stop at Temple and Figueroa at about 8:30 for breakfast. By that time we had the load dropped off. So we'd stop for breakfast. But after we would finish breakfast, we would go next door to the pool hall. I would go out to the car, lay down on the seat and take a nap, and he would go into the pool hall and see if he could make money to pay for breakfast. Shoot a little pool with the guys and relax for an hour. Then we would go back to work and do the collecting. By 2:30 on Sunday afternoon we were through and would go home.

Irv was the one who taught me how to drive. By that time he had the laundry route for Peerless in Alhambra, and hewould con me saying "I'll let you drive the truck if you come "swamp" with me." The old Reo Speedwagon had a steering wheel with the post straight up - it was like a tiller on a boat, with a flat wheel. It was a box on wheels. When we would leave 54^th and Central, and would turn the corner at Balley Blvd. and Soto, I would drive the car all the way to the first customer in Alhambra. Sometimes he would let me reverse it on the way home; that's how I learned to drive the car.

I did this for Irving from eight years old until I was twelve. At twelve I got my own job. It was after Lou graduated high school and got a job with the Board of Education. Before that he had a job after school at the Essex Market at 8^th St. and Hill. One day my mother was downtown. (She would go early on a Friday morning to the Grand Central Market and bring home two giant shopping bags full. Sometimes my father would go with her and they would take in a matinee.) When my mother was downtown she went to the Essex Market and told them, " I have another boy for you." So I wound up with the job that Uncle Lou had. It was a hard act to follow. I always had it brought up to me, "Jakie,you're a nice boy, but you're not like your brother Louie."

My birth certificate read JAKE. When I got my citizenship papers I had it changed to Jack. We moved from Adams to 54^th Street the summer I was going in the 3^rd grade, and just before school started in the fall, Joe said to me, "When you go to school you tell them you name is Jack. You're not going to be Jake anymore, but Jack. And don't let anybody tell you differently!" From then on I’ve been Jack. Joe was the Number One son and he was very influential.

Moe was very placid. He was working in this candy factory on Avalon Blvd., with this ex-pug by the name of Williams. Moe, of all of us, has the most natural rhythmic athletic ability...very fluid in his movements. This ex-pug saw him and the way he moved and wad going to make the next Lightweight Champion of the World out of him. He conned him into running away from home because he knew that he couldn't come home and say, "I want to be a fighter." That was out of the question.

My father would open a joint savings account, Moe and Chaim, Irv and Chaim, Nat and Chaim, and so on; and the boys would come home at the end of the week and they would "hang" their money, maybe take $5 out of it and the rest would be put in a joint account. Most of the time the fellows didn't know how much money they had. My father took what he needed for the household and the rest would go into the account. They were busy working. My father did the banking.

One day Moe came home early, took his bankbook and withdrew money, and the next we heard he was in Milwaukee. He was there ten months. My mother was terribly upset. "My son has run away to be a fighter. I didn't raise seven kids to be fighters." By he came down with pneumonia when he was back there and he decided he didn't want to be a fighter, and came home soon after that.

Many people said I resembled Irv more than any of the other brothers. In some ways we had the same temperament, "the shy-inhibited type". Actually Irv had a bad temper. It didn't take him long to get hot. But I had a marvelous relationship with him. We always had a good rapport. Because I used to "swamp" with him, he used to let me drive his car when I got my driver’s license, so I would come home after school and if I wasn’t working and he wasn’t going out, I would take the car..."I hafta to go to the library." You never say anyone go to more libraries more often in you life...I was out horsing around.

After Joe and Moe got married, Saturday night at our house was like the YMCA. It was the meeting place for the neighborhood for different age levels. Nat was the "natty" one, the "dapper Dan". The clothes horse always, the best dancer, the party boy. They would come into the kitchen, put a foot up onto the edge of the chair, and I would polish their shoes...a quick lick with the rag. Uncle Nat didn't have to go look for trouble, trouble found him. Lou got married before Nat and Irv, but the three of them got married within a nine-month period.

I wanted to be an accountant. I could always visualize "Lerner and Lerner Accountants" with gold-stained lettering on the door. I dreamt of this. But I took a bookkeeping course in high school and never made it. As I got older, Lou used to do my income tax, mine and Moe's. But he didn't have the time to do his own. His was too complicated.

When I worked for Simon Levi I would call at income tax time and he would tell me to come back Friday, after my sales meeting, and bring all of my materials, and he would take me to dinner at the Brown Derby on Wilshire Blvd., then go back to the office and he would map it all out. On Monday the secretary would type it up and mail it to me. I couldn’t even take him to dinner let alone pay him to do my tax work.

So Lou and I got closer in our adult years. For example, we were going to drive to Las Vegas (Bess and I) and when I mentioned this to Lou, he said, "Okay, you don't have air conditioning in your car...bring me your car over the weekend and we'll swap cars." "What the hell are you going to do with my Chevy?" "What's the matter, do you think I forgot how to drive a Chevy? You take my car and enjoy it. Whatever I needed he insisted on giving and would never accept payment.