At the turn of the 1900s they came to America, and began again. Some made fortunes, but most did not. Born here, their children and grandchildren have little understanding of what life offered those brave souls to arrive, build, and grow old in this country. Jakob, a prominent merchant, and Charlie, a poor house painter, sat on the benches in the Bronx, New York in the 1940s with my grandmother Yetta. When the Board of Directors of the department store chain he had built retired him, Jakob fled to his Southern California beach house, and soon wrote a letter inviting Charlie. Their lives were as full of people, creatures, joys and sorrows as yours and mine but they saw life another way.

In the 1940s, while her sons served in the war, my grandmother, Yetta, sat on the benches in the Bronx, New York, almost every day. Everywhere in the world, people sit together and share ideas, hopes, joy and sorrow. This book presents some events-as I remember them-as if in the minds and out of the mouths of people I knew.