Morris Fair
Morris Fair was born in Dallas in 1899, the first child born into his family in this country. His father fled the Russian army in 1894, crossing the border and eventually arriving through the port of Galveston before settling in Dallas. In 1897 he brought over Morris's mother, a Reuben, along with Morris's oldest brother and Morris's grandmother, who would not leave Russia without her mother. Morris's father was originally a tailor and later ran a clothing store and pawn shop on Elm Street, where the family lived in rooms behind the shop. He was the first to bring the Reuben family to Dallas, and he was a prominent worker in the community, serving as treasurer of Shearith Israel and helping organize a local Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.
Morris attended the Oak Grove School and briefly Bryan High School before leaving to work in his father's store and, at sixteen, at Sears. He recalled a Dallas of wooden-block streets, newspaper extras, and horse-and-wagon fruit peddling, as well as darker memories including Ku Klux Klan marches and violence. He attended cheder daily at Shearith Israel, learning to read Hebrew and daven, and was bar mitzvahed there. He remembered vividly the 1908 Zionist Convention held at the Jackson Street synagogue, and could name many of the early Jewish families and merchants of the Deep Ellum area.
Morris was deeply involved in Dallas Jewish social and communal life, belonging to the T-double-O Club, the YMHA which grew out of the Parkview Club, and later the Jewish Community Center. He became interested in boxing at eighteen and refereed fights for decades, including world championship bouts. He was a lifelong member of Shearith Israel and was active in the Masons, Scottish Rite, and Eastern Star, receiving an honorary Masonic degree. Married for forty years to a wife who was not Jewish and who respected his faith while remaining active in her own church, Morris faithfully observed the High Holidays and kept the memory of his mother, father, and brothers through yahrzeit observances and visits to the cemetery.
Full Transcript
And it is November the 8th, 1982, and we're talking to Morris Fair on behalf of Dallas Jewish Archives. This is Ginger Jacobs, and Mr. Fair, how many years have you lived in Dallas? I've lived in Dallas, uh, 83 years. And in the Dallas area, well... I was born in Dallas. Were your parents from Europe? Yes. My father came here from Russia in 1894, and in 1897 he brought my mother and my oldest brother over. And I was born here in 1899. I was the first child born into the a fair family. What were the circumstances that your father left your... They put him in the army, and he had a wife and a child, and he could not support them.
And rather than serve in the army and not knowing what would happen to his wife and his son, he crossed the border. And the expression they used in those days about the border, they call it the Greenwich. And the town that they lived in was Laban the Greenwich, which is right at the border. When he crossed the border, he went into Poland and came to this country. What was his port of entry? Did he come? His port of entry was Galveston. Is there any reason he came to Texas? or he chose to come to Galveston? That I don't know other than they had heard about other Jewish people who came to Texas and were in business.
He came here with a man by the name of McGullis and they were partners at one time in the fruit business. And that's the original family of the McGullises in Dallas, Texas. How did he happen to come to Dallas? That is something I really never knew. He never mentioned any... No I never did hear my father talk about it other than telling me that he run away from the Russian army and he settled in Dallas Texas In fact my father was originally a tailor but after about two or three years in business then he went into a clothing store on Elm Street. We lived on Elm between Harwood and Pearl, and they had four rooms in the back of the store.
And I was born, the first child born into the family, born back from the store. Those days, the ladies didn't go to a hospital. They had a housewife. And the housewife's name, I'll never forget it as long as I live, and it's Mrs. Roth. As I grew older, I remembered her very well. Was she Jewish? Ma'am? Was she Jewish? Oh, yes. Mr. and Mrs. Roth were Jewish, and they were in the same block that we were in. I could name you every Jewish person that was in business in that block I say as far back as 1910 What businesses what type of businesses were they in who what type of businesses were they in on that block?
Oh, there was the Reitman's was in the ladies ready to wear there was Mrs. Iskowitz was in the ladies ready to wear the Feristein's when the ladies ready to wear it was Sam Dishda back on the corner. There was Yuddle Cohen, the shoemaker was on the other corner. Then there was a fellow named Cohen that had a saloon in that block. There was Meyer Coble that had a store in that block. And there was Morris Shutnitsky that had a store in that block. That block between, at that time that was the 400, our store number was 484L. They changed didn't they change the numbers later on a hundred and up a hundred to every block and I thought I knew everybody in that book about what year was that in what was the year oh I can say I can go I can go back to not to nineteen hundred and eight and that was the year of the Zionist Convention in in the city of Dallas.
And the original picture that is in the 50-year book that was put out by Sheriff Israel, I loaned them the picture that I had And that the picture that in the book today and you be surprised how many people I can name in that book that were Dallas people So many of them, they've passed away. In fact, the brother, the brother and the man who started Sharath Israel, and that was Charlie Goldstein, his brother Newman Goldstein is also in that picture. And there's so many people, I can name them to you. Well, the Mells from Fort Worth, they were big Zionists, the Mells and the Shanblams, and I remember them quite well.
And I knew Celia Toblosky, the Goldberg family. Well, there was three prominent Goldberg families. There was Wolf, the Goldberg, the tailor. He had the Enterprise Tailoring Company. His three daughters and his son, both of his sons, Ben and Abe were in that picture. I showed Stanley Kaufman a picture of his father when his father was a teenager. He had never seen the picture before. And there's so many people in the picture. There was Mrs. Gilbert and Mrs. Goldstein and Mrs. Goodstein. There was three families of Goodsteins in that picture that I remember quite well. One fellow, Aaron Can and his wife, of course at that time they were not married, But she was just standing about three feet away from him in this picture.
And of course, Eric Canne was a very popular man, a very big worker in Sheriff Israel. There was a time that my father was the treasurer of Sheriff Israel. Philip Gronsick was treasurer, and something happened, and he resigned about the, elected my father treasurer. and then he was treasurer for about three years. And I remember a funny incident. Rabbi Fromm used to come to my father's store every month and get his check. That's the way they paid him. And that's... I think my daddy was treasurer about three years. And that was in the teens, about 1913 14 15 about that time How was it that the Zionist Convention group was taken in front of the Sheriff Israel building It was taken in front of the Sheriff Israel synagogue on Jackson Street, because that was the headquarters during the convention.
and there's one man in particular and all the old timers would remember him and that was Mr. Labo who was a big Zionist worker and he's from Terrell, Texas of course he passed away quite a number of years ago and there was a big crowd from Fort Worth over here for that Zionist convention and I'll never forget an interesting thing that happened in those days down at the Commerce Street Bridge which crossed the Trinity River. There was boats on there at that time, and there was one big boat that would go down to what they called Lock and Dam No. 1. A lot of the people bought tickets.
It was 50 cents for grown-ups and 25 cents for children to go down and get on the boat. Go down to Lock and Dam No. 1, the boat would turn around and come back, or the people could get off of the boat for 10 or 15 minutes. And I remember the last name of the boat was Harvey. and when they got to Lock and Dan No. 1, the time that I made the trip, they took a gangplank and put it from the boat to the shore, and luckily it wasn't too deep right there, but about 10 feet out it was about 20 feet deep, and as a lot of people started going over the gangplank, it turned over, and about seven or eight fell into the water, and they were all scrambling around there throwing ropes to grab it.
There were no lifesavers on the boat, but luckily all they did was just get soaking wet from the water but that was the big first big Jewish convention that was ever held in the city of Dallas I can tell you another thing of interest you see my mother her maiden name was Reuben and my grandmother who was buried in Sheriff Hills cemetery here in 1913 1914, rather, is buried at Chetherill, and she came from a town called Bazalia that was in Russia. And I think it's the first monument in that cemetery It showed somebody that was, showed the name of the town that they were born in, in Russia.
My mother, being a Reuben, my grandmother was a Reuben, my father brought the first Reubens to the city of Dallas. See, my mother would not leave Russia without her mother. So when she came here in 1897 with my oldest brother, Hai, who passed away, and her, my mother, and my grandmother. And my grandmother, I've seen her, I remember when I was a kid, when I was bar mitzvahed, my grandmother walked to the synagogue, regular as a clock, because we didn't live at about three blocks in the synagogue at that time. Did she live with you? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. My grandmother lived with my mother until the day she died.
Was your grandfather already born? My grandfather passed away in Europe. And my father, the first one that he brought over in the Rubin family, he brought his brother over here, Meyer Fair, and he brought Nathan Rubin over. And then he brought Frank Rubin over and brought Meyer Rubin over. and he was the first one that brought the Reubens to the city of Dallas. And the exact year they came here, it's hard for me to tell, but I remember one thing. When Nathan Reubens came to Dallas, the first thing he needed was a horse and wagon. So Papa got him a horse and wagon, and on Friday night, they would load the wagon up with bananas and this is hard to believe but it's true my cousin Nathan Rubin drove that horse and wagon from Dallas to Ennis all night 26 miles away on Saturday morning he would sell all of his fruit and drive back to Dallas get back to his Saturday evening I've got up many a night when he would come in early in the morning, early Sunday morning, he'd come back to Dallas.
That when Nathan Rubin was the first business he was in here Then Frank Meyer Frank and Meyer came over later on How did he handle learning English? When he came, did he go right into the banana business? Or, you know, did he? No, my father told him what to do. There was not a lot of talking. All you had to do is 10 cents a dozen or 20 cents a dozen. That's all. and they'd cut the bananas off of the stalks. See, when they would start out, the bananas were nearly green. They were green, but they would ripen up partially during the night. And he used to make that trip.
That's interesting. What was Jewish education like when you were growing up? When I was growing up, I went to Cheder. and went to Chedra every day. At Sheriff Israel? Yes, ma'am. The sheriff was down in the basement. And what type of school was it? What did you learn? Well, I learned how to read Hebrew. Okay. I can read Hebrew today. I'll say one thing, that my translation of it to English is not good, but I could daven, I could read Hebrew. I never could write. Yiddish, I could never write Hebrew at all. But I could read it. Did they just teach you how to read?
Did they teach you how to understand? Did they translate? In those days, I remember some of them. We had a teacher named Greenstein. We had Mr. Holden. We had Mr. Margulis. Those were the three names that I remember when I was about nine, ten years old. See, I was Bar Mitzvahed, and I'll never forget when I made a speech. The rabbi wrote a speech for me, and my mother got mad at me because I wouldn't memorize the speech. And I held the speech in my hand behind my back, and occasionally I'd bring it out in front of me, and I knew where I was, and I'd finish my speech.
I said that speech in the shul that morning on Saturday morning and I also said it at home because in those days everybody cooked for one another. You didn't have to worry about food, the people brought it. When my brother High got married he married Pearl Lipman in the wedding they were married in sheriff Israel someplace I got their wedding pictures and I know they're in Dallas I know who's got some and they got married 1914 and when When Pearl and High got married, the wedding was at Sheriff Israel. Then they had the dance, and the dinner was at the Woodman Hall on Harwood Street, right north of Live Oak.
And this is true. The ladies all helped. They cooked. I mean, you wanted goose, they had goose. They wanted chicken, they had chicken. they didn't have any meat they had goose, chicken and ducks and they prepared all the food and I remember the ladies cooking up a storm some of them went down to a bakery there called Goodman's Bakery on Elm Street which is where the Thanksgiving Tower is today that's the bakery that Ben Blatt worked in and I knew Ben Blatt when he worked for Mr. Goodman as a baker that's about 1910 and they did they baked a lot of the hens hens and the turkeys in the in the bakery there who was the shepherd?
the shepherd in those days the shepherd at that time was Mr. was Mr. McGullis did he come to the bakery where they got all of the fowls Everything was kosher. And chef the, uh, It was all kosher, the strictly, uh, koshered meal. That's one thing. My mother kept the strictly kosher home. She wouldn't have it in. My mother had four sets of dishes. She had two for every day and she had two for Pesach. And my wife, my wife knew, she knew all the dishes and she kept the strictly kosher house. all the time. She would never betray my mother's confidence and use any other dishes, the ones that my mother showed how to cook My mother taught my wife how to cook Jewish food and things like that You take right today two of her favorite dishes One is kashi, the way that my mother used to prepare it, and the other is kishka.
She loves it. I was trying to buy some kishka yesterday. A little hard to do now, isn't it? He couldn't. There is some over Tom Thumb, but I went to another place that didn't have it. Yeah. Now, you said you went to Hebrew school. Was there a Sunday school, religious school type set up also, or did you just learn Hebrew as part of your Jewish education? That's part of my Jewish education. The Sunday school was started by Rabbi Epstein. And it started in about 1916. I don't think I'll miss it. It was 1916. And to the best of my knowledge, unless I can look at a picture again, I'd have to look at the golden book.
Everybody in that picture has passed away, but I think there's two of us that are still living. and that's uh Bertha Newman at that time we were in the Sunday school class her name was Bertha Glick and her family was one of the old Jewish families in Dallas now what were some of the things you learned in your religious education And what we would call, was it on, were the classes on Sunday, plus the Hebrew classes during the, uh, week? Oh, yeah. Yes, ma'am. We had, uh, we went to Hebrew school every day except Saturday. Mm-hmm. I mean, you got out of school at 2.30 and you run right down Jackson Street and you went to, uh, to Hebrew school.
And it's a lot rougher than it is today, because kids like to have time to play and this and that, but in those days we didn't get home until 5.30 when we left Hebrew School. How'd you get home? Walked. Walked? Yeah, we just lived two blocks, three blocks from the shul. Do you have any idea about how many students were at Hebrew School in those days? And did everybody go to Hebrew School? All the kids from the city, yeah. Girls and boys. Well, some of them did not. I won't mention their name, but I know some of the Jewish boys that were in our block.
And their parents had stories and they went to Hebrew school one day. They couldn't read one word of Hebrew. One whole Jewish family had about seven boys. I think seven boys and two girls. And not a one, and this is the truth, not one of them went to Hebrew school. But you learned to pray. You learned to daven. You learned to read Hebrew. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And that was all. Was there anything else you learned in Hebrew training? That was about all, and of course I always respect the holidays. We'd go to Shiloh Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and go to Friday services. From the time of Rabbi Megullis, I knew every rabbi.
They knew us. My father was very prominent among the Jewish people in Dallas. He was a big worker. My father started an organization in Dallas many years ago. We had what they called the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, and we had people coming through here from New York. They would stop in Dallas and say, where are you going? I'm on my way to California, and I need a few dollars to help me get along. Well this went on for a long time, and I'll never forget this. I heard Papa call several people into the store one evening. said why should we let these fellows they call them snorers come in from New York and they go all the way down Elm Street if you take Elm Street from Harwood Street to Central Avenue there must have been 40 or 50 Jewish merchants and you know if they only got a quarter from each one they get ten dollars on those days ten dollars is a lot of money and they stopped all that and And they would go into Meyer Coble's store.
And Meyer Coble would take them into my daddy. My daddy always had the money on hand there. These people give. They used to give, I think, everybody gave $2. It was either a dollar or $2 a month. And when they gave that money my daddy kept it And Meyer Coble would talk to them and find out where they going where they from Some have been to California they going back to New York And the funny thing was California and New York. And we'd buy them a ticket to Fort Worth and give them a couple of dollars, take them up at a hotel on Irvey Street and Marilla.
Irby and Marilla, and put them up there for the night. And there was a delicatessen on Irby Street. You tell them, give this fellow two meals today because he's leaving town. And that's what we did all of them. And they stopped these people from coming through Dallas, Texas. And they would end up with a lot of money. Well, now, you said that they would come through and collect money for HIAS? No, they collected money for themselves. Supposedly, what did they collect money from? You said the schnoros that came in, you're saying they collected money just to go on to the next stop. Just to go on.
And he organized the HIAS in order to do it as an organization. Yes, that was organized right here. Did they affiliate with the National Hiest? No, absolutely not. It was local. These people had no affiliation. You didn't get a receipt for your money. No, when your father organized the group to... That was local. That was a local and they called it Hiest. Yeah, that was strictly a local organization. Because there is a National Hiest. Yes, I know it. I know it. See, my father, and this is something that happened just recently. Oh, I wish I could think of the man's name right now. My mind is working 70 years ago.
He's done great. The gentleman that used to come here from Denver, from the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society there, and he would always come to Papa. But Papa would go around with him. Meyer Coble would go around with him to collect money for the JCRS. And Papa was made a director. Now, if a man had to go to the home, he would have the director would be the one that would get him in there if he worthy of it and I never forget a boy by the name of Hyman Reiter was in my daddy pawn shop one time and he started playing a trumpet and then he said came to the door and I was standing there and he said you know what he said I've been spitting blood you better call a doctor we had a doctor here in Dallas at that time a Dr.
Albert Newman, Dr. Newman, and I said, you better go over and see Dr. Newman and find out what it is. Found out that he was a tubercular. Papa got him into the home immediately, and he went to Denver, and I'll never forget, in 1923, I did some work in Walsenburg, Colorado, and I thought, I'm going to go to Denver, see if I can find Jaime, see if he's still in the home. I went to the JCRS. Jaime was a part-time patient, part of the day. He worked in a clothing store in downtown Denver in the morning or the afternoon, I forget which, and the other part of the time he was there.
I met, while I went through the hospital, I met a boy who was an Italian who was a lifeguard at the old Gilwell Bath House here in Dallas, Texas. And his name was Mealy Cosman. I knew him quite well. And Mealy was in the home. We're about to see him. Then, I never did hear from Jaime after that. That was in 1923. Would you believe that about four weeks ago, or five weeks ago, I got my bulletin from the Scottish Rite bodies. and Jaime had taken to his 14th degree in masonry. That's as far as he went. And he just passed away. Now, Jaime had to be my age.
I knew him quite well. See, his sister-in-law was Sophie Hyman. Okay. His... It was Jaime Ryder and Julius Ryder. And that was well my father was director for a while and I tell you who followed him as a director for the JCRS was Harry Siegel Harry Siegel was a director in the JCRS for many years after that. Were they organized as a group as well? Yes. Yes. You see, in those days... Give me a time frame. Ma'am? Give me a year. When they were organized. When they were organized. Oh, I would say they were organized in 1914, 15, 16, 17. Okay. See, we had two Jewish organizations here called the T-double-O Club and the Jonathan Club.
The Jonathan Club did a lot of work for Sheriff Israel. Did an awful lot. Like what? What were some of the things? All the social activities, dances and things like that. And the T-double-O club was all Jewish fellas here in Dallas. I've got pictures of the entire club, but I don't have them here. I've got those down at my office. And they, it was strictly a social club. I'll never forget when Max Glazier got married. we chartered a car a sleeper and we all went down to the gallows into Max's wedding we stayed down there two or three days and all the Jewish fellows that belonged to this club Max was a member Sidney Rusev was a member Morris Ablin was a member I could go through about 35 or 40.
About what year Oh, we, uh, that was about 19, 19, 19, 20. And we lasted a long time. But when I look at the picture now, and I look at the members who have passed away, people like Dave Friedman, Jake Ramotsky, uh, Isidore, not Isidore Sarovitz, Morris Sarovitz, and Morris Ablin, Max Glazier, Sidney Rubenstein, Arthur and Harry Ute, so many of them. I'm just picturing, I'm looking at this picture right now, trying to pick the boys out. It There, we had a lot of big dances in Dallas. We used to go out to various country clubs. We had dances out to Lakewood Country Club two or three times.
We had a YMHA here at one time, and that's the one that they opened up out there on Park Avenue in Aiken. Yes. That was originally the Orthodox Country Club. It was called the Parkview Club. So you had another one, the Columbian Club, which belonged to people from Temple Emanuel. And then we bought... I'd say... Yes. I don't want to start. You bought... You started to say you bought what? Well, when they, this Parkview Club was started by a group of people, and one of the leaders of the group was Herman Klaar. He was the leader. And there was Herman Klaar, and there was Abe Goldstein, there was my father, there was Louis Rosenberg and Mr.
Winterman, Mr. Tobias, Aaron Can-Louis Sachs, Barney Aronoff. Those are some of the names I remembered from the Parkview Club. Then they wanted activity in there they brought in a lot of younger people and when they brought the younger people in there the first thing they wanted to have was a gymnasium but right in the back of the club we raised fifteen thousand dollars well that was a lot of money in those days and we had a minstrel show at a minstrel show we raised fifteen thousand dollars and they built the uh gymnasium in the back there about what year was that that they started with the parking uh that was in That was in the 20s.
The Parkview Club? Yeah. When did the YMHA come in then? After the Parkview Club it had been maybe probably six months old Ah okay Why did they happen to start the Parkview Club Well they had no place for social gatherings in those days The Orthodox, you see, at that time, Sheriff Israel was strictly an Orthodox shul. And they went conservative later on. And they wanted a club of their own, and they got it. There was the Sons of Herman way out on Elm Street. The people from Temple Emanuel had their club, which was the Columbian Club. And of course out in North Dallas, there was a shill in North Dallas, and they were the type of people who didn't care about a country club.
Or it wasn't a country club, it was right downtown. Park Avenue in Aiken was only about a ten minute walk from downtown Dallas. The North Dallas Shul, is that Tepharith Israel that you're talking about? Yeah, it was the old original Tepharith Israel Shul. There was a time when we did not have a teacher. And I went there for about six or eight months to Hebrew school. And my folks wanted me to learn Hebrew. And I used to ride my bicycle out there. there that was in North Dallas on Caroline Street let's talk about the Parkview Club and then the YMHA how did the group of people decide on a YMHA when they had the Parkview Club what was it what were the factors well they wanted something for the younger people and of course I'll tell you this it's it's like Like any country club, if you've got a country club or any club like that, the men are going to-there was no-there was nothing like dice shooting and stuff like that.
But there was a certain group that used to play poker. They always had a poker game. You go there every Sunday, you'll find a poker game going on. Of course they had pool tables. It was a good place for eating. They had their own kitchen. during the war in the in the 40s back in the 40s we entertained a lot of the soldiers there my own club the T double O Club we had a certain time allotted to us and we would invite all the soldiers from Camp MacArthur Camp Dix Mounted Love Field of course it wasn Love Field at that time the Aviation Repair Depot and we also had fellows from Camp Bowie, the Jewish boys would come over here.
And I'll tell you a humorous thing, and this is on my wife. We would always prepare a Jewish meal on Friday night or Saturday night for all the Jewish boys that came in. Now, they used to come in on Saturday and we had prepared a great big must have been about five gallons of tzimus and the various ladies were serving the soldiers they came by give all they wanted to eat and there was a Jewish boy who was over there Dabini, Dabini, Menchir Maru. When he got through, he came and got in the line, and my wife was serving with Shemes. So this boy came up, he said, you know, he said, this must be Purim.
She said, no, no, she said, this is Shemes. That's a true story, and my wife remembers that. But we did feed the soldiers. Well, let's go back now. Well, it was the Parkview Club, and then the group decided, I'm not sure who, well, somewhere along the line they decided to make it a YMHA. That's what they did. They gave it to the YMHA. They gave it to them? Yes, they sure did. What were the circumstances? I mean, there was a good building. The circumstances that it was too much gambling among themselves, and a lot of the wives objected to it. And I'll say my father was one of them, and I can name you right now, twenty-five people used to go there every Sunday and always had at least one or two poker games going.
But that was just among themselves. It wasn't anything like a professional poker game. Now the club, they had poker, they had gambling there all the time, among members. Yeah All right now then with the YMHA the people that organized the YMHA were they primarily from Sheriff Israel Oh yes. I would say quite a few of them were. Quite a few were. I have a picture taken and they got my name in there and it's not me. And they named the people who started the YMHA. and when they listed the name they listed the last man on a certain note Morris Fair well it wasn't Morris Fair it was Jules Hexter is who it was and everybody said to me I saw your picture that's not my picture that's Jules Hexter and there were people in there that I remember quite with Sam Roback was one Mr.
Levine was one there was Emma Carmry there was Harry Sussman and I wish I I can picture all of them right now. I know everybody was in that picture. And Al Butler, Al Butler was one. I can't think of some of the other fellows. I know everybody in the picture. Sewells. But they were the organizers of the YMHA. All right. Now, as long as we're talking, or since we're talking about the YMHA, there were a lot of activities there. Yeah. Would you tell us about some of the activities that were there and the groups that met there? Oh, we had a world of dancers. Always had dancers there.
I'll tell you who managed the club, Abe Sewell. He's one of the brothers of the Sewell brothers here in Dallas. Abe was our manager there for a while. He run the club, and it was strictly a membership deal. He had to be a member. It didn't cost a lot. but we had a lot of activities we had minstrel shows I was in two of the minstrel shows I remember I was standing in the chorus and one of the fellas standing right next to me was I.G. Eli and we were singing some song I forget the name of it and I.G. Eli punched me and says you're off key I said you're crazy you're the one that's off key I'm sick and all these.
That's Ben Eli's brother. How did they support it? You said there were memberships. Was there enough money that was coming to support that building with all of the utilities and everything? We never did lose any money. We had dances. Everybody paid to go to dances. And the various clubs would rent it too and give dances. They would meet there. Oh yeah. Did they pay a fee for meeting there? Yes. I don't know how much the fee was, but they did pay a fee for meeting there at the YMHA. Now, I understand that eventually they ran into problems and then it was taken over by the Federation.
That is correct. That's right. Yes. Now, during the period of the late 20s and the 30s, what type of activities were there and was the... when did it come to the Jewish Community Center? Well, yes, it would be comparable to what you have out here now, but on a much smaller scale. And they took part in meeting. There was no, outside of a synagogue, it was the only Jewish place that people could meet, the Orthodox and conservative. You see, about that time, Seraph Israel was beginning to be conservative. Give me a time frame, a year frame. I would say in the 20s, late 20s. Okay.
Yeah. I remember, tell you how far back I can go, I remember it's Sheriff Israel on Jackson Street where the women sat on one side and the men sat on the other. But they broke that up, I think, you know, about somewhere around 12, 13 or 14, something about that time. Everybody sat together. So they were sitting together on Jackson Street still then. And there, at that synagogue, the Torah was set in the east. Okay. Yeah. And the rabbi was in the middle of the synagogue. The bimah was in the middle? Yeah. The rabbi and the, and was in the, they had a, it was a space with one step, two steps up and that where he was Now when they got the Torah out they go get the Torah bring it back put it on the pulpit and that was right in the middle My father was very lucky because we had our seats quite even We didn have any loudspeakers in those days We had no air conditioning in those days I'll never forget when I...
I don't know whether you want to record this or not, but I never knew what a mikvah was. was. And there was a room in the left hand, back left hand corner that nobody ever went into. None of the kids. We'd go to Keder, we'd never, wouldn't be, they'd see, they saw any going towards that room, it stopped you. Don't go in there. You'd hear somebody say, they wouldn't let anybody get close to that. I didn't learn that till I was about Oh, 17, 18 years old, what that room was. Did anyone ever talk about going to the mitzvah before they were married? Well, I didn't hear about that until I was, oh, probably close to 20.
They didn't discuss things in those days like they do today. Today you buy a book for $2 and it tells you everything. You read about everything that happened. Right, right. You were talking about the YMHA, though, and the activities and the transition period, and the period of the 30s. Was it called the Jewish Community Center at that point in time? Do you remember? No, it was later. It was later when it was called the Jewish Community Center. They took away, they did away with the YMHA. What year? Do you remember? That is hard for me to say because I tell you, I did a little traveling along about 32, 33.
I did some traveling. But there were activities there. Oh, yeah. All the activities of Sheriff Israel were right there. Or any Jewish organization in Dallas. So even though the Federation had their offices there, there were meeting rooms and the gym was already built and they had a recreational program there is that correct Absolutely Had a good recreational program There a man oh if I could just think of his name a doctor He was a doctor He was not Jewish He was the athletic director and when he got when he finished college as a doctor he moved to Fort Worth I know that man. I know his name as well as I know more.
So help me, I can't think of it. I'll have to tell you about it. I've got it written down someplace. And he was our physical director. See, I became interested in boxing many, many years ago when I was 18 years old. I was working out with various fighters. I never was a fighter or anything like that. But then when I was about 20, I was refereeing fights. And I refereed fights there for, I guess, 25, 30 years. And I refereed three or four world championship fights. World championships for Curtis Cokes when he was champion of the world. When everybody wanted to referee that fight. But I had good friends.
I had a good reputation. I was considered a good referee. I never had any trouble, but I refereed four fights for Curtis Koch here in Dallas when he was lightweight champion of the world. What year was that? That was in the early 40s. I got stories right here in my scrapbook. I got a scrapbook, I guess, it's that thick. Now you said that there was a recreational director at the center. Who employed it? Who employed the recreational director? What was the... They paid for them for the money that was taken in. See, we all paid dues. Everybody that belonged to the YMHA and the recreation center paid dues.
You had to. All right. About what year? Oh, that's... It's hard for me to say. I just don't remember what year that was. I think it was in the 30s. There is some record of in the 1920s, I believe it was 1926, that the Federation was supposed to have assumed the debts of the center or paid off those debts as the YMHA at that point in time And then took over the responsibility for the building Now, what was... Harry Sussman was in Sheriff Israel. Sam Roback was in Sheriff Israel. Sam Biedemann was in Sheriff Israel. This is Joe Shapiro, not Shapiro, but Joe Barsha, who's now in Houston.
He's from Sheriff Israel. This is Abe Sewell. He was from Tepereth Israel. Joe Sewell, Tepereth Israel, Meyer Donosky, and that's Jules Hexter. These four, these three here were from North Dallas. That's Jules Hexter. This is Harry Sussman. this is Lou Mursky, this is Emma Carmouth, Morris Alvin, Harry Quist, and Harry Sussman. And we'll build Sussman. All right, that was a picture of the first board of directors of the YMHA when they started, well, when the YMHA took over in 1922. Yeah. Has that got the date on in here? Yeah, 1922 board of directors. But now after that, later, when Federation came in and the offices had their offices there, they still had activities there.
Honey, this is the building that that Jewish woman was killed in. That's correct. She was a Goldstein. Yeah. Yeah, she was a Goldstein. She was a social worker there. That's right, social worker. Her name was? And she was killed. That's the building right there. That's true. Her, uh, I've forgotten her name. It's May. I don't know if it's got... But, uh, there was a disgruntled client, I believe, that shot her, and there was a plaque on the wall. Well, I remember they, they hushed it up. See, I don't, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think anybody was ever prosecuted. for that murder. I remember one time, see we had a football team too, YMHA football team, and I was interested in the football team.
And down at the YMHA, a fella comes in, To my dad's store, that was it. He was wanting to get back to New York, a Jewish boy. And I said, well, we can't do anything today, might be able to do something. Monday, this is Sunday, this and that. So, uh, we saw the guy, oh, I'll tell you what they did, they picked him up, they had arrested him. Arrested him in the railroad yards, that was it. They arrested him in the railroad yards, and, uh, whenever they arrested anybody, they always called us, because we were right around the corner from the jail. So I went on down there, I talked to this fellow, he said, well, they picked me up down there, and he said, uh, I was, uh, trying to go back to New York and catch a ride on freight train.
So we took my husband to the hotel and got him a room that night, got him a room for a dollar. And I'll tell you what you do, I'll come by and pick you up in the morning. And I said, we have a football team. He said, I used to play football. And I said, okay. And he said, you play football. So he played football with us. This was on a Sunday, Sunday afternoon, played football with us. And I said, well, now, you can spend tomorrow night. And I said, we'll give you a few bucks and send you on your way Monday. Fine. So we gave him some money that evening after the game, and he played football.
So Abe Sewell was the manager of the YMHA at that time, and the office was there. and he must have seen Abe have a cash box. So the next morning, early, Abe called me. He said, Morris, we've got trouble. What's the trouble? Somebody broke into the YMHA and stole the money and the checks. We had no idea in the world who it was. Finally, a man by the name of Rothschild had a little clothing store right east of Harwood Street. And I saw him Monday morning about 10 or 10.30 or something like that. He says, I just sold a fellow that knows you. I just sold him a shirt, some underwear, and so forth.
I says, who was he describing him to me I said did he pay you He said yeah he had a bill and he paid me I said oh that the guy that stole the money So I tell Abe Sewell I called Abe I said I going to get this guy to stay with Lamar but when he comes to the YMHA call me Abe called me and said Morris he's down here right now I said don't say nothing to him I go to the city hall and I already told two of the detectives about what happened I said let's go down to the YMHA right now you guys talk to him I think he's one that broke into the YMHA last night they get the guy in the room they talk to him took off his shoe.
He had money in his shoe. And he had some checks in his shoe. The checks were made available to the YMHA. And let me see, oh yeah. And they took the clothes away from him that he bought. The next day we took them out on the highway going to Fort Worth. I think we gave him two or three dollars. He said, now you catch you a ride or you catch the bus going to Fort Worth, his brother, don't come back if you do, we're going to throw you in jail. Sure, we'll break in the Wyoming chain. He's the one that broke in the Wyoming chain.
It was a Jewish boy, and they were trying to help him. Here's an interesting letter. I tried to follow up as late as five years ago. This is addressed to me, 2018 South Boulevard, Dallas, Texas. It's from Consul Oscar Weinschel in Stuttgart, Germany. I'll show you something. here is a letter that came to me in 1936 dear Mr. Fair after a long trip I read now your letter of June and I'm very sure to hear that your lovely father is dead I regret very much the death of my good friend and relation and I send you my best feelings. I hope you are fine and this letter finds you and the family enjoying good health Many greetings Be Wineshaw oh Wineshaw Do you know that I tried to find that man I wrote him after 1936 couldn't ever get a letter to him, couldn't find anything about him, he was in Germany.
Then, Mama said something to me, she says, I know Papa knew a fellow one time I don't know whether he was a relative or not but his right name here in this country is Winchell. Now I wrote a letter to Walter Winchell and asked him if he had a relative in Germany by the name of Oscar Weinschel. Winchell never answered the letter. Now I found out that he, this man, had a son in Corsicana. And I wrote him a letter to ask him, and I told him about this. I also found out that he had a daughter that lived in Washington, D.C. and tried to find out if this man was related to Walter Winchell, and I could get no information.
This girl wrote me a letter, and she said, well if my father was related to walter went so we know nothing nothing about it but i did hear from his daughter i heard from the son but in the conversation i called his daughter one time and i found out that the son gave up his religion his daughter did not give up her religion and that he was an outcat that had nothing to do with it. He worked for some oil company, of course, in Canada. And I've had this letter since 36. I don't know what I'll keep it for. I'll try to find if I haven't got another picture in here.
Well, what were some of the teams and some of the activities that went on at the center? Besides the social activities, you said they had football teams. What if it were just social activities? Now here's a picture right here. This is another picture of the T-double-O club. This thing is so old. But I show you who are some of the later members of that The front row is Jake Ute Bill Sussman Cy Wartelski Hyman Sewell that him uh Charging of Hyman Donosky Abe Sewell Cy Golden and Lee Ute this is Lee Ute here Middle Rose, Joe Hurst Sam Ackerman Sam Biederman Lou Goldberg, Morris Aplin Morris was president Marvin Byer, that's Sleepy Byer Jack Jack Lazarus, that's my brother-in-law, Easter Ablin, Bobby Friedman, Morris Fair, I was secretary.
There you can be right there. I was secretary. Joe Herman, that's a new member. Charlie Wendell, I used to be Charlie Iskowitz. He was married to the Lazarus girl of Waco. Max Glazer, Harry Kaplan, Abe Goldman, Archie Schindler in California. Members not in the picture are George Sheff, Julius Goldman, Howard Fink, Jake Gramotsky, Sidney Rubenstein, Dave Freeman, Lou Murtsky, and Mr. Dorfman. About what year was it? Now this is an old picture right here. It'd be about 36 seconds. I lived in Oklahoma City for a while. This is Bob Elfra, it's the manager of the Adoles Hotel, and I'll tell you who that is. That's, uh, Miss Berner.
You know the Berner boys? Mike Berner, and, yeah, they're here in Dallas right now. This is, uh, They gave her name. We sold some tickets to Mrs. Schuber at the Dalvis Hotel. I did have some other pictures out of where in the world they are. I couldn't tell you. Oh, this is the old dispatch. We have a meeting every year. People that sold the Dallas dispatch years ago. Oh, let me see if there's anything on this one. No, that's taken in the 30s. Oh, here. This is one of our activities right here. Now that's old. Well, now this looks like it was a picnic. Yeah.
That was taken out at Kirkland Park, I think, between Dallas and Vickery. Now, about what year was this? Was this D.W.O.A.? This right here, this was in the 40s. This was in the 40s, the whole crowd. But you know, when you look through here, it makes you sick. They say, how many of them have passed away? Did you still meet at the center then? Hmm? Did you still meet at the Jewish Community Center then? Yeah. During the forties, do you always have met at the center? We always did. See, this is the last one that passed away was, uh, Marshaverin's wife. And there's so many, Lottie Glazier in there, so many of them.
This is an unusual picture. This is a fellow I had working for me and we were running a sale in El Paso one time. I mean, it's the meeting the other morning. I showed them a picture of the Heracadisha. And I showed them Rosie Cam's picture. I said, this is the lady who died and her husband got everything. They had no children. She was originally a Michelson. And they gave the money to buy the land that Cherokee was on today. Tell me that story. How did that happen? How did that come about? I'll tell you how it came about. What was the year of the service to Dishadvank that you were talking about?
Well, there was everything. I got a picture of that service. It said, Michael, let's go help me. God, I don't know where it is. How did it happen? Well, Ray, Ray can, Ray can, her husband, Aaron can, I mean, I can't think of the person, he had a store up at Elman Preston And Elman Preston Elman Preston where Joe Berman had his palm shop That used to be Mr Cannes store had a man store there Isn't that where the expressway is? Yeah, very north, right there. Okay. And he had that corner location. Well, Mr. Cannes, Rosie Cannes died first. Okay. Now, Rosie Cannes was a Microsoft.
She was from the original family, Michael's family here in Dallas. And then Aaron Chan died. When Aaron Chan died, he left a will. Everything he had went to Sheriff's Israel's congregation. They never gave it to the one that was living, but they gave it after he died. It was in his will. They took the money that they sold a couple of houses he had, and I don't remember exactly how much it was, but they bought all that land that I think was about 12 acres there. And that's where they got the money to build Sheriff's Long. How did they decide on that particular lot? Do you know?
At that time, I guess that was the only lot they could buy, but was it the right price? That land right there is worth a fortune. That's worth a fortune right now. But that's where they got the money to buy it. Do you know what year that was that they bought it? It wasn't... I don't think it was too long before they built the synagogue. That was in 1950. It wasn't too long before that. Could be, 1956 or 58? 56 or 58. See, Mr. Cann had no children. Mm-hmm. And to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Cann had no relatives. Mm-hmm. And he did not get along with the Michelson family.
Mm-hmm. And I'll never forget what happened at Park Avenue in Aiken. And when Rosie died, when Rosie died, Jaime and Max Michelson couldn understand why their sister didn leave them some money And as Cam was walking out he made a remark And the remark was, which case it came to the big gals? And do you know that Mr. Lackinson broke a leg off a chair and he canned the head with it in the synagogue? Now, you know that's a cardinal sin. They have a fight in the synagogue. Do you know that he was tried by the synagogue and was fined $2,000? That was in the synagogue.
You ask some of the old-timers that remember that fight. Who were the judges? That, I don't remember. Who judged that? I don't remember that. But I knew that it happened. So he never got along with the Michaels because when Cam died, he had an ironclad will. everything went to Sheriff Israel. In those days if you were worth $100,000 you were a millionaire. And you had nobody else to leave it to. That was his family. There was a building that was or rather the foundation of a building that was built next to Sheriff Israel. That is correct. Can you tell us a story of that foundation?
The story of that foundation was, that was another deal, and Harry Siegel was behind it, and they were going to put up a Hebrew school there. Was that to be the Hebrew school of Dallas building? Yeah. They built the foundation, and that was it. Why were they not able to finish it? I wish I could tell you. I don't know why, but there was a big argument about it. They couldn't raise the money. This was back in the 30s when the dollar was a dollar. They never could raise the money to finish that Hebrew school. And to the best of my knowledge, when they finally tore everything down, the foundation was still there.
What was the connection of the Hebrew School of Dallas and the Sheriff Israel Synagogue other than many of the children of the members having gone to the Hebrew School of Dallas Do you know Well you mean the connection Mm The only connection was the Hebrew school was run by Sheriff Israel But the Hebrew School of Dallas was a community Hebrew school It was a community Hebrew school, but it was originally put up by Sheriff Israel when it started the Hebrew school. You see, they still have a congregation out in North Dallas. A lot of the Jewish people didn't move away for a long time. They had a little framed building.
I can picture that building. Because I went to Hebrew school out there. Remember, I used to ride my little red bicycle out there. To go to Hebrew school. How is it that you went to Hebrew school out there when you had Hebrew classes? Because it was a little while we didn't have a rabbi. Okay. We didn't have a Hebrew teacher. Okay. Okay. I went there about six months. Okay. So. Okay. I see. What is, let's talk about public school now. Where did you go to public school? I went to public school at the corner of Harwood and Jackson called the Oak Grove School. I was one of the first schools in downtown Dallas.
Was that elementary school only? Elementary only, yes ma'am. At that time there was only one high school in Dallas, and that's called Dallas High School. They finally changed to Bryan High over on Bryan to Bryan and Lival. Was that later Tech High? Yeah. Was that later Tech High School? Yeah, Crozier Tech. Crozier Tech? That's right. Oak Grove School, now that was the grammar school then you went to? That was the grammar school and all the Jews from Deep Elm went to Oak Grove School. That was the only school in the vicinity. There was other school, but they were further out, grade school. But that was a great, big, stone building.
It was a two-story building. I remember the janitor, the name was Mr. Bazemore. I'll give you the school teachers' names. Mrs. Halley was the principal. The first grade teacher was Ms. Osmond. The second grade was Ms. Gray. The third grade was Ms. Cook. I knew all of them, every teacher in there. Now you said that all the Jewish children from Deep Elm went to school there. Did they all live behind the parents' door? That's about the only place they lived, yes ma'am. Now there was a street over right north of Pacific Avenue called Korah. Korah Street. There were several Jewish families that lived there. I remember one family, my Uncle Meyer lived there.
I know that the Jaffees, they were in the junk business, Jaffee lived on Korah Street. And I don't remember who else lived on Coral. All the rest of the Jewish people, they lived in houses. They lived in the back of the store. All of them is the Reitman, the Ytay's, the Michaels that lived on Cabell Street. Where was Cabell Street? Cabell Street is what is now, it's part of Young. About what year was that? At what time? Oh, honey, I'm going back to 1910, 1912. In the picture of the Jackson Street Synagogue from 1908, the street is not paved. No, ma'am. Jackson Street was not paved at that time.
What about the other streets? What about commerce? Well, at that time, Elm had wooden blocks. Okay. Had wooden blocks. Okay. What about Main? Main Street had wooden blocks. No, Main Street was brick. Main Street was brick. And, uh... But Common Street was brick. Common Street had brick. Elm Street had wooden blocks. They were blocks. I'll never forget it. Now, let's go back to the school. Then what high school did you go to? I started in the Biontree High School. They changed the name of it. Did you finish then at... I didn't finish, and George Sheps and I started the same day, and we both quit the same day.
What did you do when you quit, when you quit? And why did you quit? Didn't want to go to school. I went to work with my father in the store. That's where I worked. When I was 16 years old, I went to work for Sears Robots. Where did you do that? I was a I used to fill artists Sears Robots You can have you put on some skates and you fill audits and put it in the basket and take it back to the other end of the building That when Sears Roadbook was strictly a mail house Were they on Lamar then? On Lamar, yeah. Then in 1915, we moved out on South Akersky.
See, we lived there right next to go to a little school. you know the first presbyterian church is on the corner of wood and harwood i lived on that corner and we had to move out because they're going to build the church we moved around the corner to the house that was occupied by mrs tory mrs tory was the daughter of lewis blaylock who was the mayor of dallas the tari moved across the street and when she moved across the street she We were in a great big house that her father picked for us. She was married to a banker from San Antonio in the board.
She had one son, L.B. Tari. And she used to come over, and Mama showed her how to make donuts. My mother used to make homemade donuts, and Mama showed her how to make them. And within a year, she was making donuts. and those days you didn't have automatic switch and she was lighting a fire you put upon another burner and when she did she put the through the piece of paper down and it caught her gallon on fire she burned to death she was a beautiful woman that was mrs. Torrey and mrs. Torrey mama was carrying linseed oil from Mr. Blaylock, her father's home across the street, there wouldn't nobody go in the house, the fire department and the police were there.
There wouldn't anybody go in and when they did, why, Mama kept Karen and Lindsay down, putting it over by there. She said to my mother, her last words, Mrs. Ferris, this is what I get for trying to save a match. We lived next door at that school, and then we moved out on South Akers Street, 1717 South Akers Street. What type of homes were those? Those were nice homes on Akers Street Were they framed Were they individual They were all framed houses yes ma Did you buy them or did you rent it No we rented it We rented that house Then she's my wife's doing, I'll be back.
Well, I... Let's back up. Now, you were talking about quitting school and going to work for your father and going to work for Sears. You had mentioned earlier that you had sold newspapers. Yeah. I was a kid, I was 19, well, I remember the first time I saw him, it was 1910, I was 11 years old. And I went down, and it was on July the 4th, 1910, that's when Jack Johnson fought Jim Jeffries for the Paveaway Championship of the World. And I stood in line, I gave a fellow 15 cents to let me get up in front of the line to get my papers, because there was about 50 kids lined up.
his name was Charlie Adkins and I gave him 15 cents he put me up in front of towards the front of the line I got a hundred papers when I got to a hundred papers they only had a full roll of one sheet I came down there was no radio no television and I come running down Irby Street to Live Oak when I got to Live Oak I started that Live Oak extra all about the fight and everybody bought papers so I bought a hundred papers for 50 cents I got a nickel apiece for him. That's a big profit. And I made $4.50. How long did it take you to do that?
Was that for the day? Was that for the day? No, it took me about 45 minutes at all. Was that the usual? Did that happen day? The next year I always bought a nickel. Okay, what about a regular paper? Regular paper used to be two cents. The dispatch was one cent. The Dallas Morning News and the Times there was two cents. Did they just put out an extra paper then? Extra paper for any special event. If there was a fire or a murder or something like that, and when the kids would run down the middle of the street howling extra, well, people wouldn't want to get a paper and they wouldn't find out what's going on.
See, there was no other way to tell people. What about radios? There was no radio in those days. I remember when Dad Garrett had the first radio station in the city of Dallas, the WRR. He had it above the fire station at the corner of Elm I mean Maine and Harlow About what year Oh that must have been in the late teens Dad Garrett I remember him very well He's the man that, he was an electrician. And Dad Garrett is the man that put in the fire alarm system all over Dallas. First man to put it in. You were, what about growing up in Dallas?
Some of the things you remember about growing up during the years? It wasn't hard growing up in Dallas. The only time thing that was bad was back in the 20s was the Ku Klux. The Ku Klux was bad. They were mean. and I'm being a young man you know I didn't I wasn't afraid of anything but I'll never forget there was a tailor on Main Street by the name of Sam Snyder and you heard of people being tart and feathered Sam Snyder was taken out he was beat up and tart and feathered why the Ku Klux told he was going with a lady who was not Jewish and a Q-plus found out about it and took him out in Tarzan's Fettin.
The lady didn't want to Tarzan's Fettin, but they took him out in Tarzan's Fettin. What happened afterwards? Well, it was... people couldn't do anything about it. I'll tell you why. My father had in a pawn shop. In those days there were two detectives, Sterling Price and I can't think of his name right this minute, Ed Cornwall, they would make the pawn shops all on Elm Street and Mr. Price told us, told my daddy one time, he said, you know, my father-daughter called Mr. D. in the day business that they, you know, we had the Johnny Q class. Had a Johnny. We had a John McGovern.
If he didn't join a Q class, he'd lose his job. He wouldn't do it today. In those days, every policeman, every fireman, I stood on Main Street one time, I stood on the corner of L, or Main and Harwood. It was a torchlight parade. I saw 30,000 Coupets Clans members march down Main Street. Now were they only down sights or did they come from... Nobody knew whether they were all wore hoods, hoods and masks and robes. What was the purpose of their march? What was the purpose of their march? How come? These marches, I'll scare people up, I'll scare the black people up. How is it they had that much power?
They did in those days, absolutely. The building that I'm in today was built by the Q-plus clan. I can give you the names of the four men of the leaders. Z.E. Marvin had a drugstore with George K. Butcher, Shelby Costa District Attorney and Reverend A.C. Parker those are the four leaders I've got a good memory of what happened many many years ago and they they leased my building to the Gulf States Life Insurance Company but when they a man by the name of Albert Rowan owned the land and when they leased the land to these men to put up the building. They took a 60-year lease.
Nobody overheard of a 60-year lease. The lease is 99 years. And the lease is up in two years from now. And the family, of course, the family sold the property. But now the building goes back to this. There's 12 men, a corporation, bought the building about a year and a half ago, two years ago. and now they're fixing up the inside of it but I've been up in that building 42 years and I've seen everything happen around that building would you believe that I saw a black man hung the corner of Maine and Ashley do you remember the year? 1909 why did I remember? He was being tried at the courthouse for rape.
Rape to a five girl of a prominent family And they caught him And during his trial there was no air conditioning the windows were open and he had his back to the window and he was on the stand he was testifying and people kept moving around and around around they got up close to him and one fellow had a rope under his coat and in a split second he had that rope around his neck and pulled him out the They drove him down Main Street and hung him on that corner. I'll tell you what they had on that corner. If you read the history of Dallas, there was an arch built there by the Elks.
Elks had a convention here. And they built a big arch about 100 feet high from the four quarters. And on top of the arch, they put a big elk. There was a slung on that corner. and they drug him down to Maine and Nacos. He's already dead. They kept shooting at him going down the street. I heard all about that, but I went down there. I saw him. Right on Pearl Street between Pacific and Elm was an undertaker by the name Will Ewing. Ewing's Undertaker, Paul. He was a black undertaker. And I knew Mr. Ewing. See, you're having a show on Deep Ellum. I knew more black people than I did white people.
All in Swatley. I got newspaper clippings where I took, had a fellow came to me one time in 1935 or 36. A Jewish fellow had a nightclub on Elm Street, right east of Elman Harwood, on the north side of Elm Street. and a fellow came in there one time with a 12 string guitar and we were telling the porter who he was his name was Huddy Leadbetter and they called him Leadbelly there's a song right now they've got a copy of it in the library called Leadbelly and his song that black man wrote 400 songs so he brought I had a liquor store at that time And this fellow brought him down.
He said, Mr. Francis, I want you to meet this man. And he tells me this story. And the story he told me was that he was in the penitentiary in Texas and Pat Neff gave him a pardon After Pat Neff the governor gave him a pardon he went into Louisiana They had him for murder. He gets into Louisiana, and I think he murdered his wife, if I'm not mistaken. He sent him to the penitentiary again. And the governor of Louisiana at that time was the governor, O.K. Allen. And they heard about this guy and his 12-string guitar. good singer and governor O'Carrollin, John Romance, University of Texas.
He went through then, he'd go through the penitentiary, go way back in the backwoods and record some of the songs. So he told his black man, he says, I'm going to get you out and take it to New he got him out of the penitentiary he got on pardon from governor Allen took him to New York and he appeared before Civic Club playing the guitar and so forth and so on and he bought him a suit of clothes in New York then he brought him back to Texas we didn't give any money now he went to the Columbia recording company and made records then he had the book published he wrote all old song and Mr.
Romance had got the book, it's a big thick book, and when he did, he brought him back and said, see, give this black man $75. Well, he was married at that time, we were going on Bowles Street, and I said, well, let me see what I can do for I might try to get you a job or something like that. I said, first, let me see if we can't do something with John Lomax. I took him up to Joe Utay, the lawyer. He tells Joe Utay the story. He said, well, if you have a contract or anything like that, I said, no, I just took his word for it.
So Joe said, well, let me see what I can do. Joe got hold of him. Got hold of John Lomax. He said, now this black man is going to sue you. You took him to New York, you exploited him, you took the money, you didn't give him a seventy-five dollars and you got back in taxes and you bought him a suit of clothes. Well he made a settlement with him. The settlement he made with him was he would take the royalty on the books to give him the royalty on the records and give him in cash That's all he'd give him. Well, Joe didn't want to fight the case.
He said, you could win, you could win it, but it's not enough. But anyhow, he'd give him $200 in cash. Well, he spent that money, and one thing about him, he had a bad habit, and they would drink gin, and he'd get drunk. And when he get drunk, he wants to whip somebody. And Joe told me, he said, Martha, if I was you, I wouldn't bust a bottle with him. Now, he wanted me to take him out, see, and get a contract and all this and that. And Joe Ute warned me. He said, no, he's a nigger. When he gets drunk, he's allowed to kill you.
And don't. I said, okay. He said, I won't do it. Joe Ute known me all my life. And I dropped him. But right before I dropped him, though, when I was trying to get him some work, my sister, my niece got married out of the Stonely Hotel. And we're out there at the wedding ceremony. And the wedding, the wedding was over. I got a phone call. And I don't know how in that woman, Huddy Ledbetter's wife, traced me out there at the wedding. And she, I went to the phone, she said, Mr. Parris said, this is Huddy's wife. No, no, this is Huddy's sister. This is Huddy's sister.
And said, Huddy's out here sitting on a stump of a tree. And said, he done cut half in two. I was going to say, what, cut half in two? I said, well, let me go down there. I said, did you call the ambulance? He said, no, not yet. I get my car. I left. I go down on Bow Street. And he's sitting there. got on his undershirt and she took a razor his wife did and walked around it cut him but he was so fat all she could do just cut through the fat and that was all I said let me get you in the hospital so I called City Hall they sent the emergency ambulance there and I said I'll follow the ambulance out to the hospital we get I went out to Parkland Hospital, and he said, well, let me take my guitar with me.
He took his guitar in the ambulance, and got out there, and this is the truth. There was a doctor. I walked around sewing him up and he started playing that damn guitar. That's a God suit. He played that guitar and entertained everybody in the hospital. And then when they got him all patched up, sewed up, put on, he had a shirt, put on a shirt. I took him back on Bow Street and I dropped him. I wouldn't have nothing to do with him from that day on. Now there's a story. I've got the newspaper clipping of it. They wrote a story about it. Oh, God, that was back in the 30s.
Oh, about 38, 39. And I remember, because I tell you what, I was, I used to know all those black people, like Brian Lemon Jefferson made records, and he became famous. And I was watching television one night. I was watching Channel 13. The reason I wanted to watch it is because it says something about they're going to show Blind Lemon Jefferson. And he's going to play some of the Huddy Ledbetter. They call him Lead Belly. Huddy Ledbetter's song. I'm going to watch this. I watched it. And while I'm watching this picture, it shows scenes of East Dallas. and I'm looking and all of a sudden my father who's standing there is is Jaime Klobler's father Meyer Klobler and Eli Woloski and then is the now this is in the still picture this is before talking and like that and the cars lined up those were T-model Fords and there's a camera pan I saw for this is still We were all still shots.
The Panthers shot and right next to him was Moises Shadnitsky. Molly Shadnitsky's a father, Molly, uh, Mersky's father. At Channel 13, and I told him that I saw a man on there that I knew, and my father's store was three doors below. Well, I told the story that I knew these people. She said well this is going to be shown again tomorrow night I said good I called Eli Colbo I said Eli watch Channel 13 tomorrow night You see your father and your uncle Eli will answer you see him on television I called Molly Mursky. I said, Molly, watch television. You'll see your father's store on Elm Street.
And see right next door, the Camel Hotel. And they all watched it. Eli Colbo called me. We didn't know if that picture existed in Dallas Public Library today. That picture. It's a still picture. And I listened to it and of course, I was always, first I was just interested in Lead Belly and his song. But I knew Lead Belly. I could have taken him, could have made money with him, with him but I took the advice of a good man I didn't want to live before you know how it is nigga gets broke wants money and wants to buy that gin and let's see Joe told me I'm gonna charge you 50% of whatever I get that's what it was Joe made $200 on him and this nigga got $200 but the funniest thing happened I had the liquor store and Huddy Ledbelly was out to his wife.
I knew I was going to get some money, and I went down to Johnny Rubin's. They had a grocery store at Elman Hawkins. I said, Johnny, give this man about $20 of the groceries. He hasn't got any money, but he'll pay you. If he don't pay you, I will. So I give him groceries. Well, in those days, $20, you know, you got a wagon load of groceries. And I stood good for his grocery bill. And then when Joe made the settlement with him, Joe called me and I went up there and I said, honey, I says, I want to go with you. We're going right up to my cousin's place and you're going to pay him that $20 you owe him before you buy any whiskey.
He said, all right, I'm going to pay him, I'm going to pay him. And I walked with him from the Republic Bank building on Main Street all the way to Elman Hawkins and he paid Johnny the $20 he owed him for grocery. Were you always a member of Shea Israel? I was, I wasn't a member of Shea Israel for 45, as a member. Why Because my mother and my father And after mama died I went in as a member But I was always just I was a mixed with everything Did you have any other affiliations other than being a member of Sheriff Israel? Dallas organization?
No, affiliations with any, like in Temple or in any of the other shows. Sheriff Israel was your only affiliation. The only synagogue I've ever gone to. How has your observance changed over the years? Or has it? Your parents orthodox? Or were they? My father and mother were orthodox, and of course you had to be a conservative. You stayed in the synagogue. Did they change over the years from the time they came? Did they get more likes in their observance? Papa died in 36. When we moved out on South Boulevard in 1917, my mother Oliver Shullin and my father Oliver Shullin, both of them, used to walk from South Boulevard all the way down to the city park to go to children.
Always walked. What about on Circus and on the road? They always walk. They always walk. They did walk on Saturday morning. Papa had to be at the store on Saturday morning. But the other people walked from South Boulevard. All of them. You take the Yalickson, the Michael Sons, the Sewells, and the Al Butler. There wasn't too many people who drove cars to Sheriff Israel. Until it really became... The man who really did more towards making Sheriff Israel conservative was Rabbi Bowen. What were some of the things he did? Well, just a bit more modern. They weren't as strict as they were in those days. Years ago, if you saw anybody riding, oh, it was a sin.
But that changed in later years. Did most of the people keep kosher? They were members of sheriff's? My mother and father kept kosher. My mother kept kosher all the time. Farm he could come to our house all the time on South Boulevard And you could always tell him come and he be singing a half a bottle of the sweet And I say Mama where do you want to kill today He'd come every week regularly to kill chickens. He'd kill a goose, he'd kill a chicken, he'd kill a turkey, whatever Mama had. My mother had four sets of dishes. Two, two for the regular meal. Did you stay out of school for Pesach and the circus and the school?
Oh yes, absolutely. Yes ma'am. I would never go to school on the Jewish holiday. You know, some of the ladies are talking about raising money at this meeting, how they raised money years ago. my mother made one thing and if you didn't get there early one man thought about my mother used to make school now you ask well rose what is your old name now used to be rose zimmerman was your maiden name i can't think of it but everybody Every bazaar they have, she makes a hundred pieces of strudel. And nobody to this day has ever been able to copy it. My sister makes the nearest to the strudel my mother used to make.
And I've seen my mother roll that billow out as big as this table. paper thin. My mother would take goose feathers with schmaltz and she would spread it over that thing. I can picture her right now spreading it. Then she would take her cinnamon and sugar and spread it in it. She would take her raisins. She would take her currants. She would pitch it all up and then she would start rolling it out. She would always tell the hundred pieces. They were bizarre. They were like that. Do they always have bazaars to raise money for the show? Oh, yeah. Always. Always. What are some of them?
They used to bake cakes. People that could make something, they could sell it. They didn't sell canned goods or put up fruits and things like that. They never had problems bringing the kosher things from home into the show? No. They knew that they were kosher. My mother made, you know who used to buy Mama's shoes? He got there first, he'd buy every darn piece of it. Jake Winnemont. That's Herman Clark's partner. He loved the screwdriver that Mama made. It's a funny thing that nobody... Mama tried to teach my wife how to make screwdriver and couldn't do it. Were all the holidays observed? Do you observe all the holidays?
Absolutely. I'll tell you, this shows you how times have changed. On Russellson and Yonge-Kipper, A. Harrison Company would close. Sanger's would close. Neiman's would close. Lindreven's would close. Goldsmith's would close. Texas Dragas Company would close. Can Shee Store was close. The model clothing store downtown is Elman Portrait's closed. every Jewish store was closed on the Russian and Yom Kippur. Then, when the new generation came in, they just forgot. About what years ago? Oh, God, honey, I don't remember. It's hard to say when they quit closing. I'd say back in the 30s when they used to always close up. And it'd be an ad in the paper to close until a Jewish holiday.
My father closed, his papa closed on Rush Surney closed two days. Young Kipri closed one day. How has your observance changed? How has your observance changed over the years? Has my personal observance changed? I closed on my holidays. I closed my office. Yes, ma'am. I will never work on Rush Surney and Young Kipri. And the other holidays I'll be here. Russian and Kippur, I observe. That's something my father and mother instilled in me, and I won't change. That won't break me. What are some of the traditions that you observe at home? Or do you observe? How do you observe at home? Well, one thing I do observe, I observe every holiday that I have to burn a light for my my mother, my father, my brothers.
I got a star David And I light it and I observe every holiday as much as I possibly can I'll say one thing I have never done and I never will as long as there's a bit of breath in me. I will always observe the years out of my mother and father. I go to shul every year. I go out to the cemetery when you're supposed to go. I take flowers out of the cemetery. That was instilled in me. The rest of my family, I'll say no. My brother Jake, the guy Jake didn't know, because Jake was in Brownwood. They didn't have a shul there.
brother chicken oh that's even my sister did my sister and myself we observed well she's very active in Houston in this Jewish center they have down there she's very active she goes there two or three times a week but I I would say in my family I probably observe the holidays more or anybody else, and I've never lost sight of the fact that I had a mother and father. How do you observe Pesach? Pesach? The only way I can observe Pesach is, I can't help, I've got to eat from it, whether I've got to eat downtown. And I'll put my sauce on my table, I'll have it.
I'll eat mozzarella all week long and my wife likes it. I like my, I have mozzarella, I make, I buy my food, I buy some walls. And you think right now, I might open a box of mozzarella more and I also make mozzarella. Do you have a Seder or do you go any place for a Seder? Seder for a place like that? Seder? Mm-hmm. Well, I'll tell you, for many years, for many years, we had a Seder with Al Butler. We had one we never had we had one with Fanny he was married to Fanny about a year We had one with either one or two one I think was Leo But every year we had a sailor right across the street Because when Adelaide was alive, Adelaide always had a big sailor.
And we never failed to go there. This is the first year that I had to go to the table. The first one. What are some of the Jewish organizations you've been a member of in past years, or what organizations have you been involved in? The Jewish organization I belong to, I belong to all of them. You name it, I belong to. My wife is not Jewish. She belongs to Adassa, Council of Jewish Women. She belongs to the Sisterhood. And she belongs to three Jewish organizations, women. She belongs to the doctor, sisterhood, counseling Jewish government. Me, I belong to the Breth, I belong to the Zionists, I belong.
I look at my cards, for I can tell you which ones I belong to. I belong to every one of them. Are you member of the center now, the Jewish center? Do you keep a membership in the Jewish community center now? Yeah. See, this is an organization that I'm proud of. Church Eastern Star. My wife and I are both very active in that. We're both grand officers. We hold office every year. We get an appointment. A lot of people, you get anything at work, get an appointment. We get one every year. We do a lot of work. What kind of work does Eastern Star do?
Eastern Star? Well, first thing, we maintain a home right here in Arkansas. right here in Austin. We have one, right now we have about 104 ladies out there. We maintain that home and if you ever walked into this most beautiful place you went into beautifully furnished finest of furniture Every lady has her own individual room We have our own hospital We have our own doctors. We have our own nurses. And a lady goes out there, it doesn't cost her a penny. No money. You go out there, you divest yourself of what you've got. And I would say 90% of them don't have anything. I don't know, one girl had a little house, not a girl but a lady, and she wanted to go into the home, she gave them the home they sold them.
Well, she couldn't do two years on what they sold a house for. But that is strictly charity. And we do an awful lot of work out there. We have Christmas parties, we have birthday parties for them. But there's a lot of chapters that tend to keep it up. See that property out there is worth millions of dollars. The Van de Grift tried to buy it. He offered us a million dollars. If one of those gets the land, they won't sell it. And it's beautifully furnished. And we go out, I guarantee you that they know my wife's life. We come in out there. We take them to the state fair.
We're just one of this so many people we got 28 chapters in Dallas Texas of all the reasons done We got a hundred thousand members there in Texas And they don't have sort of money we've got money all over Texas. I don't know how many banks it's in today They're on there. Are you a member of Sherry's Israel Brotherhood? Yeah Are you a member of Can you think of, you said, B'nai B'rith and ZOA? Yeah, B'nai B'rith. Can you think of other things, or other groups that you hold membership in? Is the T-double still active? The T-double-O, is that where you said, did they disband?
We lost too many members. Too many have died. We had, we lost too many members. We got only half of our members alive today. There were two organizations at one time that were rivals. One of the Jonathan Equestrian The Jonathan Club worked in conjunction on several projects with Sheriff Israel. And we didn't work in Senegal. We gave, we raised money for charity, and we gave for charity. Theirs was, ours was mostly a social club. Because I can, on that picture, I can see a lot of the young Jewish women, there's married women today here in Dallas. You can go down for their days. Everybody wants to date.
We always invited people. We had a club in Fort Worth called the F.O.P. Club. F.O.P. meant full of club. Full of pep. Full of pep club. And they operated like we did. And we'd invite each other over. we gave a dance we invited them to give a dance and we used to go over there uh what about some of the other clubs remembers of uh like elks or any of the service organizations that are non-jewish or non-saccentarian i brought them jewish water veterans i've gone to that i bought the scottish light bodies i brought a masturbation and I have achieved something that very few people get.
And I don't know why I got it, but who got it for me? But you see, when you become a 30-degree-lodd nation, that's the square in the compass. Then you want to take the rest of the degree to be a 32-degree nation, then you belong to the shrine. The shrine is the playground of the missionary. there's no nothing in the it's either the Scottish Rite and the York Rite and the Scottish Rite the only mention of God the York Rite the mention of the name of Christ it's divided the York Rite Scottish Rite almost Scottish Rite nation and nearly every man is Scottish Rite nation but And after you get to 32nd, you're going to join the shrine.
They got a big monster just built out here, Rollet, on Lake Bray Hubbard. And they used to spend several million dollars putting up that building out there Well I a past president of the Dallas High Noon Club which is a club we meet every Thursday in the Republic, National Bank of the Engineers Club. And right now, we did have about 300 members. We've got 160 now. And we're going to pull out of that club. I'm trying to get into this new tower club. And we meet once a week. And whatever we do, we do for charity. Now, I'm in charge of charity. Bill Burks is secretary.
We do all the work for the Christian party, the state fair party, for the Masonic School in Port Worth, Eastern Star Home in Arlington, and there's all the last Masonic home in Arlington. there's two homes in Arlington and I received about three years ago what they call a KCCH that is one step above the 32nd it costs you nothing everything else you're paying for this is an honorary degree that comes to you out of your national headquarters in Washington DC and when you get that degree that's like buddy Minyard got his the same night I got mine When you get that degree, it's given to you at a banquet that your wife attends.
They have a beautiful banquet, a banquet at the Scottish Rite Temple, and everything is free. It don't cost you any money. No dues connected with it. You don't pay any dues to it. But it's an honorary degree. It's called GCCA. It says one step above the 32nd and one step below the 33rd. thirty-thirty I don't expect it yet because I'm not active enough but I do I do a lot of charity work a lot let's go back to the show for a few minutes here if you may how have you seen the show change over the years you said that you remember when it was Orthodox and that Rabbi Gold changed it to more of conservative orientation.
What about some of the services? How have they changed? What are some of the general changes? I never saw a rabbi come in. He really didn want to have an innovation He did it He created this he created that We had good rabbis but we had some that I have no use for Some that fell by the wayside. But we've had more rabbis than any other synagogue. Let me see you now. You take Tefer Thistle. They haven't had half of many we have. You take them to Temple of Manu. How many rabbis did you have there the last 50 years? Three. You had Rabbi Greenberg, Lefkowitz, Olin, now you've got Klein, the other fourth one.
That's as far back. which I remember Rabbi Greenberg many years ago, and the way it's changed that our Synodology, there's too much jealousy, there's too much politics among the Board of Directors. There's no sense in a Synodology having 50 men on the Board of Directors. They say some are, well these are the active, these are non-active. I don't mean that if you're not active, put them on a board. I have never, even I'm going back 20, 30 years ago, I've never wanted to be on the board. My relatives have. Rubens has been on the board. Lewis Ruben right now will be president probably next year.
If he decides to keep it, he may just stay vice president. Of course he's cousin of by marriage, Morris Ritchie. He's an officer. But I had a man, yeah, well and I was talking yesterday. I was telling them I went to the show. And I can't get one thing through Al's head, and that is that we're living in a different age. I'm too old to be on a board of directors. I'm too old. I couldn't be active, really. And I said, Al, who's going to do the work? Are you going to do the work? Well I remember the times Al now let not go back let go back to history That ancient history We have changed Al I said you came into Dallas in 1920 that was an off show And I remember the time when I was a young man, this was in about 19, I mean, my mother got married in 1914.
I remember 1913. The women and sheriff's little sat on one side, the men on the other. I bet way back then. None of it was when they came to Park and Eakin Street. They always sat together. Always, yeah. They started sitting together over Jackson Street. In fact, well, yeah, they sit. What about the length of the service? The length of the service. Oh, sometimes where they don't have resets, They did a recess in those days. They went right straight on through. If you went to show on Young Kipper, you came in the morning. You didn't leave. They used to raise the devil with your suit and then.
And, of course, the library at the time, they locked the doors when the rabbi would go to talk. There wouldn't nobody come in. There wouldn't nobody come in and go out. I'll never forget Louis Ferris' mother at Park Avenue in Aiken. There was no restroom upstairs. She went down the back to the restroom. And I forget who the rabbi was. Because I think it was Rabbi Gold. And she come upstairs. The door's locked. She can't get in. Everybody's quiet. No loudspeaker. And she's just having all that. And she revealed it, and somebody was on it, and they opened it up. And she come in there hollering, because it was locked in her eyes.
I mean she broke up the service there for a few minutes. During Rabbi's goal tenure in office. But as far as changing, every Rabbi is different. I'm just trying to think of some particular things that they did. Because now you take even a young tipper you've got a recess in the afternoon. They never had that before. That's something they need. Well they used to do it from the Cullen even used to bless the congregation. Yeah. And Shapiro while he was there stopped. You know, it's a funny thing about Shapiro. My wife liked Shapiro. She liked him. He was very friendly. There'd been rabbis there that didn't know who I was.
I was in the shul. Just about as long as anybody had always went to services. And you had some rabbis that had the nose and the air a little bit too high. See my wife runs the Northway Christian Church And I can say this she never swore to her The man who told the truth I tell you In the 40 years that my wife and I have been married we have never had one word, one crossword about our religion. She respects my religion, I respect her religion. And I swear to God, we've never had one word in discussion about what is like and what is wrong with the Old Testament, what's the read lesson.
They don't do it. My wife is always reading the Old Testament, taking excerpts out of the book. She's a librarian. My wife, she brought more organizations than my being. She brought some literary groups in town. She brought some books in music in town. She brought some Dallas women, four women here in Dallas. and she's now a librarian for one of them. She has to make a talk. She has to have a thought for the day, and she's got, but she's always reading and writing and down. And she brought to three organizations she does that in. And we've never had one word, one crossword about our religion.
Because one thing about her, she's just like I am. I respect her religion. She respects mine. And she'll fight like hell if anybody says anything about a person being Jewish. And I'll argue with anybody.