MAGPIE...Prompt #176

                                                  SUPERMOON 2013/ Julio Cortez/ AP


THANK YOU, Tess...at Magpie Tales...


Salute

Today, July 7th, I'm saluting my father.  Who died on this day in 2001.  At the steadfast age of 95.  The beginning of days of reckoning, both national and personal.  2001.

He never knew...that his granddaughter gets cancer.  That the World Trade Center in his beloved New York becomes the apocalypse.  And he, Carl Golden, origin name Koppel Goldendrut, will go to heaven to find his mother.  Again.

Minnie Goldendrut lived and died in the shtetl of Roshkov in the Ukraine when he was ten.  My father was moved from one mean Russian street to the next, relatives just able to provide stale bread, thin soup.

My grandfather, as was done in those old days, abandoned the Czar's army, went to America, to New York, to find the assured streets of gold.  My grandmother, my father and three other sons were left behind.  But all to be sent for...whenever.

At the age of twelve, Koppel, useful to no one, Revolution over, starts the trek of the emigre'.  Money sewn into clothes, gets rowed across the Dnieper by a friend.  Romania and Russia shooting over his head.  Steps foot on Romania.  Let's go. 

A year of wandering, becoming a little man.  Ship departs for America from Trieste, Italy.  Steerage, thin soup, dry bread.  He's Koppel Goldendrut.  Here he comes!

There she is, in the harbor, his mother!  Holding a torch, calling herself Liberty.  "Momma it's me, I'm here.  Don't ever go away again.  I'll find Poppa, and then we'll go home!" 

Poppa seems to own Ellis Island, pushing his boy here and there.  Pulls Koppel's hat off, looks at his scalp..."If you have lice, they'll send you back.  Don't scratch.

" And you have a new name, Carl Golden.  I'm Morris Golden now, just a bootlegger.  Gin, in the bathtub.  You'll see."

Golden?  Familiar name?  Yes, that Golden.  Snapple sound familiar to you?  Streets of Gold, indeed.


Rest In Peace, my loving Dad.


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