A Visit with Grandma Pearl: Meeting Grandpa Eddie (1919-1921)

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Chapter 5: Meeting Grandpa Eddie (1919-1921)

I was only seventeen when I met Grandpa Eddie. I got the show, as they say, on the road early because I felt a little displaced. I didn't feel that the environment in St. Louis was where I wanted to stay. And besides, it just happened that I met Eddie and got married when I was young.

I was just seventeen the day my cousin, Pearl -- her name was Pearl, too -- introduced me to Eddie. Pearl was my Uncle Max's daughter and she had married Eddie’s oldest brother, Joe, after the First World War.

Eddie’s oldest brother, Joe, was in the army during the war.  He went to France, was in the trenches, and got gassed and shell shocked -- the works.  When he came back, he was in a veteran’s hospital someplace near Washington.  He was pretty badly beaten up from that war. The family decided that he would be better off at home. They didn’t want him to stay in the veteran’s hospital.  That’s where they took all the shell-shocked cases.  His problem was that he never really recovered from that.  He used to talk constantly about “The war, the war, the war.”

His brother Bill, the second son (Eddie was the youngest), was into politics. He made a run for Congress, and got a big vote, but didn't make it. But he had some connections, so he went to Washington and told the Congressman, “Get him out.  I want my brother home.”  You see, the government didn’t want to let him go.  He couldn’t have gotten out if the Congressman hadn’t helped. They wanted to keep him in the hospital; they were responsible for all these veterans that were injured. But Bill said,“We don’t care; we want him home.”  So the Congressman made his call, and Bill went to the hospital and took him out and brought him home.  But Joe was not in good shape; he never recovered from that.

After he was home for a couple of months, he called Pearl on the phone. Her family were St. Louis people, but at that point in time they were living in Chicago. Pearl’s mother was a widow, but they were affluent.

My Uncle Max left them enough money. Back then, if you had $150,000, then you had invested wisely -- you were absolutely rich. Because a young man who was making ten bucks a week could get a flat to live in for ten dollars a month and ask a girl to marry him. It wouldn't be a real fancy flat, but the rest of the three weeks of the month they had all that money left to eat on.

He could get married.  That’s the truth.  When I was a child, young men were getting married with ten or twelve dollars a week in income.  You see? It’s hard to imagine, but that’s how it was.  Of course, they didn’t expect a lot of luxuries.  Nobody had them, actually.  You had a stove to heat the place.  It wasn’t too fancy.  In a lot of cases there wasn’t even a bathroom inside.  There was a privy.  It was pretty primitive, but you could get by.

Anyway, Joe called her up that summer, after he had been home for awhile.  He was not able to be productive, and he talked and talked about the war.  Pearl was his girlfriend before he went into the service and went to war, but she did not realize how sick he was.  She hadn’t seen him for a couple of years since before the war.

He asked her to marry him, and I guess she was in love with him before, and she had this dream all the way through the war that they would get married.

Like I said, her mother had this money, so she never worked a minute in her life.  She never had a job.  And she also thought she was the belle of the ball, like a lot of those southern Jews.  Southern Jewish families were very elegant. There were four daughters and they were all very elegant.  Typical Victorian ladies, you see.  She would talk about some girl she knew, “Oh, she works.”  She looked down on her: “She works.”  They were very tall and wore these lovely suits and they were so swell. She was the youngest of the four daughters and spoiled to hell.

Anyway, she agreed to marry him.  He called her on the phone, and she agreed to marry him.  So he went up to Chicago and they got married and came back to St. Louis.  She called up my grandmother after they returned and said, “Aunt Bertha, I’d like you to meet my husband.” She used to talk with a whine:  “I would you like you to meet my husband.”

My mother said, “Sure, come to dinner.”  So, she invited them to dinner and I met Joe.  I didn’t know anything about him or his family. Joe was a very handsome guy and very sweet and good-natured.  He was a nice guy. but he wasn’t very productive because of his ailment.

My cousin said to me, that night when we were having dinner, “Pearl, do you know any dressmakers?  My clothes need altering.  I didn’t have time to shop or alter my clothes, and I need a dressmaker.”

I said, “Yes, I do happen to know a dressmaker, and I can take you to her.”

She said, “Oh, that’s wonderful.  Would you mind Saturday? Joe and the boys go down to their office then.”  See, right after the war, they had another little extra business going.  They were Liberty Bond exchangers. They bought Liberty Bonds back from people that had bought them during the war and wanted to cash them in afterwards. They did it on a fee basis, almost like a bank. And on Saturdays they had things to do in the background for a few hours.

She said, “Joe has to go down, so I’ll go down with him.”  I was working, remember. I had to work Saturday, half a day. But we agreed that I would meet her downtown in Joe’s place of business. I said, “Alright, I’ll meet you there. I’ll get off work at noon and I’ll come over.” And that’s how I met Eddie.

The business was only a few blocks away.  So I came over there, and at that point it was about a week after my seventeenth birthday.  I had my little suit on, and a hat -- you always went with a hat.  And at seventeen, I mean, how bad could I have been, with my red hair?

I remember it very well. I walked into that place of business and it was like a bank, with a bank teller cage, and I could see Joe and Pearl, and Eddie was in the background.  He was sorting something at a table.

I walked in, and she said, “Oh.  Here’s my new friend, Eddie.  I want you to meet my brother Ed.”

Eddie turns around, finally.  And I say, “How do you do?” I was taught to say that.  Introduced, you say “How do you do?”

I see that scene like I see that picture in the wall, so clearly.  He had a grin from here to here.  He was in the middle of something, but in a flash, he did a double take – he turned back, suddenly. He couldn’t believe what he saw, you see?  And he was grinning.

He said,  “What do you do?”  He started to interview me.

“Oh, I work.  I’ve got a job.”  “

“Well, what do you do?”

He asked me a few questions, and I was getting impatient because I had told the lady at the dressmakers that we were going to be there, so I wanted to get the hell out of there.

He asked me a few more questions and then I said, “Pearl, we have to go. We have an appointment.”

She said, “I’m coming,” and we left.

When we got through with the dressmaker, she said to me, “Pearl, how would you like to come back to the house?” because she was living in their grand house for a little while. They lived in a magnificent house, one of those old Victorian mansions.  It was a beauty: Number 10 Windemere Place.  In those days, it was a mansion.  Inside they had frescoes, and paneling.  There were three such enclaves in St. Louis.  Windemere Place, Parkland Place, and Westmoreland Place.  They were private enclaves for the upper people of the city.  The publisher, Pulitzer from St. Louis -- they still give out the prizes for literature --lived in town here and had that scandalous marriage. And on that street there was the banker, the worldwide rope manufacturer, and a guy named Clarkson who was a big coal magnate, and some big insurance guy lived across the street.  I think what happened was that everything was depressed during the war, so Eddie picked that house up at a bargain.  Because otherwise, he couldn’t have afforded to live on that street, in a house like that.

And I was living with my grandparents in a hovel.  This was Cinderella time.  I said, “Well, I don’t know.  I have to ask Bubbie.”  I wasn’t going over there for dinner without asking Bubbie if I may.

So I called her up and I said, “Bubbie, Pearl wants me to go to their house for dinner.”  She thought about it and she figured, “Well, how bad can this be?” This is her niece, mind you, that’s now my chaperone.   She finally consented, so I went there for dinner.

When I walked into that house, it was a house full of men.  There was my father-in-law, Mordecai, and Joe, Bill, Eddie, and Lou Marks, who was married to Edda, the youngest one.  And there were three other young men there, from New York , who were there on business.  One of them was Lou’s brother, and one of them was a friend, and then there was another young man.

It was a three-story house, with a staircase that continued from the second floor staircase to the third floor.  This was  a big house, so they were able to put up these three guys up there.  Can you imagine?

I grew up with my grandfather, but there were no brothers there.  All these men were there, and I didn’t know what to do.  We went into the great big beautiful dining room, paneled like the old Victorian houses and we had dinner.

I don’t know what we ate for dinner because I was looking down.  I never lifted my head up.  I was so shy and out of place.  I was glad when dinner was over and Pearl and I got up to leave the dining room.

Eddie shot out of the chair and followed us out, and said, “I’d like to take both Pearls to the movies.” He decided at that moment that he was going to take both of us to the movies.

She said, “Oh, come on, Pearl, let’s go.  Joe’s got some work he wants to do. We’ll go.  Come on, Pearl, we’ll go.”

I said, “Oh, no.”  And she said, “And I tell you what else.  You stay overnight with me, and Joe and I will take you back tomorrow morning.”

My God!  Now I’ve got big problems.  I mean, big!  So, naturally, I had to call Bubbie again. I didn’t think she’d allow it.  I told her the story.  “Would it be alright?  Pearl insists that I stay here.”

Now, she’s got a real dilemma.  And she said, “Well, you’re going to be there with Pearl.”  She loved her brother’s children so much, so she felt it was okay to give her permission.

We went to the movies and then we went out and had something to eat. On the way to the movies -- I’m sitting in the middle, he’s at the wheel, and she’s on my right side -- he said to me, “Are you busy next Saturday night?  There’s a dinner party being given at the YMHA (Young Man’s Hebrew Association).

This was the social scene in 1919, you see?  You met in these places.  You met at the Jewish community centers, and the old peoples’ home, and the orphan home.  They had their parties, picnics, and dancing, and the young people of the Jewish community would meet.

I didn’t answer him right away.

Pearl said, “Oh, my cousin Pearlie has got a date!”

I didn’t say that I was going to go yet, but she was insisting that I had a date.

I said, “Yes, alright, I’m not busy.”

I had a real date.  But it wasn’t a date, you see; I had just met him five minutes ago.

I slept overnight. I shared her bed with her -- Joe slept in another room -- and in the morning Joe and Pearl drove me back to Bubbie's.

Eddie had asked me on a date right away -- that same day that I met him. He made up his mind right there and then, at the first sight that he had of me; he fell overboard.

At first, I didn't pay attention because I thought he was old. Too old. He was a Methuselah. You see, I was seventeen and he was twenty-seven. I wasn't too interested, but he came after me very fast and furious.

His brother Bill told him, “You’re robbing the cradle.” But no, that’s what he wanted. When Eddie saw something he wanted, he got it.  He was going to get it by hook or crook.  One way or another, he went after it. But I wasn’t ready yet, and I thought he was too old, and I monkeyed around with him, and I dragged him around for a while. You know, I wasn’t sure.

I don't know how he knew it, but he would know if I had another date. Listen, I had a few dates with other guys and he would call the guys up and let them have it on the phone: “This is my territory. Get lost!” Oh, yes, he would do that. He followed me in the car a couple of times too. But he hung in there.  And I recognized that I could trust him.  He was a father figure for everybody, especially me. I think that I was attracted to him already by this time. There were certain strengths that he had. There was something about him.

Eddie was going to sew this up, and fast, and he got me to consent. He finally proposed. I think we were coming back from somewhere on a date, and before he took me into the house, he proposed in the car.  I was halfway surprised. I didn't expect it so soon, you know? But by that time, I was ready to make a decision. I knew that I had to get the show on the road -- very young, very early, because I knew that for all practical purposes I really didn't have a home. And also, I didn't have a father in residence. And Eddie was definitely a father figure, supporting his whole family all of their lives.  He was everybody's daddy.

I said to him then, “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing because you have to be my father and my mother, as well as my husband.” That’s what I told him off the top of my head.  Because I didn’t have a mother and my father was absent.

I looked at him, and he laughed. “I can handle it. My mother will be your mother,” he said. “And the rest of it I can handle.” Eddie wrote a letter to my father stating that he was going to take care of me very well, and my father wouldn't have anything to worry about. My husband did that out of his own free will and volition. He hadn't met him yet, so he reassured him.

By the time I got married to him I was eighteen.  I can't tell you what it would have been like [if had I not married] because I was determined to get married. I was an attractive little girl too, so I was destined to marry; I couldn't avoid it. And he just fell dead in his tracks.

We couldn't get married for about five months after we consulted the rabbi, because there is a time before Passover, months before, where they don't perform marriages. We would have been married in January but we couldn't get married until May; it was a long time. I had a home wedding, May 8, 1921. My father came, and some relatives came, and we were married.

It was a sad day for me because my mother wasn't there. See, I missed her very much. I didn't have a mother there. My father and these other relatives from Chicago came because Chicago had been my home, but for me, it was a kind of sadness.

But when they brought me into that house, out of Bubbie’s hovel, now, that was a real Orphan Annie story.  Eddie told me right away, “If you need anything, just charge it.”   When I went into Sonnenfeld’s -- I bought a few things there before I was married-- now I had changed my name. I had a charge account while I was working, believe it or not, under Pearl Weinhouse’s name.  Now I was Mrs. Gray. Oh, yes, they gave me credit. Yes they did.

When I got married, I went over to the credit guy, the cashier there, and I said, “Now I’m Mrs. Edward Gray.”  Oh!  It was so..!  You’d have thought that I’d married the crown prince.  Oh, my God, the store was available to me, you know.

It was a regular Cinderella thing, you know, if you had seen where I’d come from.  I often told my sister Goldie, “There’s one thing I’ll thank him for the rest of my life.  He rescued me out of Bubbie’s dump.  He took me out of Bubbie’s dump and I’ll never forget it.”

Keep reading: Chapter 6: Motherhood & Married Life (1922-1962)