Louis Rotenberg

Rosenfeld: When you first came to Portland where did you live? 
ROTENBERG: Actually, I was born in Portland. And at that time, if I recall it, I was born above Rosen’s grocery store, on First and Hall. 

Rosenfeld: Is that the same grocery store they always owned? 
ROTENBERG: That’s the same grocery store they always owned. 

Rosenfeld: Do you know how long you lived there? 
ROTENBERG: I imagine it wasn’t too long, perhaps a year, maybe two at the most. The next residence that I recall is next to what is commonly referred to as Mosler’s bakery, for my dad had it the years before. 

Rosenfeld: Which was on what street? 
ROTENBERG: On the corner of First and Sheridan. Above that was an apartment house and quite a few families lived there. Simon Director, I don’t remember him from there, but I remember Mother telling me that he and his wife lived there before they moved to Salem. 

Rosenfeld: Right above there? 
ROTENBERG: Above the bakery, in that apartment house. Now next to the bakery was a little house. We lived upstairs. Now I don’t remember if it was over the store or not and that’s my first residence that I remember, because there are pictures during the Seder taken there. Subsequently we moved next door to that house, which was the Enkelis home. 

Rosenfeld: Now how old were you then? 
ROTENBERG: About that time I must be getting into my four, five, six year old bracket. 

Rosenfeld: This was a complete house and before that you were living above… 
ROTENBERG: Well, even my first remembrance again, it was kind of like a flat over something. I just remember we had to go upstairs. I do remember living in the Enkelis house. At that time I was at least eight and a half, because Irv was born when we lived in that house. So, I know I was eight and a half when we lived in the Enkelis house. 

Rosenfeld: Who were your neighbors? 
ROTENBERG: Next to us there was the Schneider family. Now we are going north, that’s now the family that is Al Schneider the attorney. And then Oscar and Leo Schneider, the doctors. Next to that I recall the Robins lived or at least they had their delicatessen. She had sort of a milkshake place, and I remember Norma and I eating some of the malt for the first time. The age group of that I don’t remember. After that came the Salomon apartments. They took the rest of the block. They were called the Salomon apartments but actually that was not the name of it. I don’t remember. 

Rosenfeld: Now this was the one that had the pool hall you said? 
ROTENBERG: Yes, it had the pool hall. At one time it had Gordon’s bakery, a lot of stores. They had a lot of shops on First Street. I remember the pool hall. I remember the grocery store in the corner. The first owners I remember there were the Geroffs. 

Rosenfeld: Now how was it? Was it like a big building and it was in the building? 
ROTENBERG: Salomon’s apartments took over half of that block at least, it was quite a…. 

Rosenfeld: It seems almost like a … 
ROTENBERG: No, it is a regular apartment house 

Rosenfeld: But with shops within that? 
ROTENBERG: Shops on the main floor only. Some of the places behind the shops even had rooms to live. In other words people that ran the grocery store would live in the back. I remember one time we returned from Philadelphia we lived in the back of the shop. That would have been the nearest one from where the Kobins lived. On that end of the building. I remember we lived there for a few months when my dad came back.

Rosenfeld: Now when was this? You lived in Portland up to when you were eight or nine.
ROTENBERG: A little bit younger than that. My dad had done very well and he was the old-time baker here. He was rather successful. He decided then that he wanted to go to his side of the family, who lived in Philadelphia. And he invested some money.

Rosenfeld: Oh, this is when he lost the money.
ROTENBERG: He invested some money with a distant member of the family who disappeared with my dad’s money. Those names we shall not mention. And my mother determined that we were coming back and subsequently my dad did come back and started the bakery here.

Rosenfeld: How long were you in Philadelphia?
ROTENBERG: I think less than a year. I don’t have much recall of that. 

Rosenfeld: When you moved back to Portland you lived where?
ROTENBERG: It is difficult to say right where. Someplace down the line I remember living…. As I mentioned previously we had that bakery underneath the Bowl’s Candy Company. Now this was on Second Street. We lived above that for a while. My dad had his bakery in the basement and the Bowl’s Candy Company was on the main floor. Sometime after that when I began to be a little older it was a big deal. I had to leave Failing School. Now that was starting in the fifth grade and I must have been ten. At that time we moved to Second and Lincoln, to the Park Block area. I am getting rather current now. We had our own home, and all that property is gone with the freeway and improvements. We had our own home there [?] and facing the Park blocks on our left were the Bachmans; on our right were the Greenbergs. 

Rosenfeld: Now can you kind of say who was who? 
ROTENBERG: The Bachmans would be, the ones living now. I think it was Joe Bachman and his wife. And he had children: Rose, who became Rose Goodman, and then there is Dave, Henry and Bernie Bachman still living in Portland. In the other direction, we are going north again, lived the Greenbergs. Dave Greenberg is still living; he is an attorney. It is his family who lived there. Next to that were the N. [Nathan] Directors, that was Estelle, May… 

Rosenfeld: I didn’t realize they lived so close. 
ROTENBERG: Yeah, May Berenson, now she is married again, and Zelda [Zeidman]. After that was another house, the last I remember there. Oh gosh, people by the name of… I can’t remember the name. On the following corner were the Goodmans. That’s where Rose and Wally Goodman, I imagine, met when they were kids. We are getting up there now to the ’30s and I don’t know how far you want to go. 

Rosenfeld: I want to go further back, when you were living in your childhood neighborhood, your Failing School district, Shattuck School. Now in Shattuck you were still living in a house on Jackson and Clifton. 
ROTENBERG: Yes, I graduated Shattuck when I was living up there 

Rosenfeld: Before you lived on Lincoln Street, 
ROTENBERG: I think that is the area… 

Rosenfeld: I think that is what I wanted, Lincoln St. When you lived there, I want you to try to remember who your neighbors were and how you were interrelated with them. 
ROTENBERG: There is a lot of people there that I can remember. In the same flat, we lived in a flat on Second and Lincoln. There are the Sugarmans, (not Milton and Dave). This Sugarman (I can’t remember the young man’s name) is a professor now at Portland State in speech. His sister Rita is still living in Portland. I don’t know what her married name is any more. My recall isn’t good there. In the same general area lived the Cohns, there was Oscar Cohn who used to work for the City Dairy, which was kitty corner from this flat on Second corner. City Dairy. It was there for years. Up the block on Grand Street was another flat. That’s where Abie and his family lived. That’s Abie Puziss. Across the street from Abie, the Weiners and the Shenkers lived in a flat. 

Rosenfeld: The Shenkers, the attorney? 
ROTENBERG: Yeah, that’s Arden’s father. Farther up, half a block. Now we are still on Second Street, where the Levows lived, and then next to them was a church, I remember. Now across the street, the Cohns lived. 

Rosenfeld: Which Cohns? 
ROTENBERG: I know they are still living here. They are related to the Dolmans somehow, who then lived on Fifth Street. And then, oddly, right next to them was another family named Cohn who, were related to the Caplans, but I can’t come up with their name. And farther up, we are getting now to where the Cottels lived. That’s Cottel from the Cottel’s Drug. Now this is on Second. Now we are on Second and Sherman. First and Sherman is where the Cottels lived. Cottels had a big home; I recall it. Across the street from Cottels lived the Rosenfelds, Bess Lebenzon’s family. Next to them were the Lebenzons. 

Rosenfeld: I didn’t know that. 
ROTENBERG: They were next door to them. Now it seems to he there a flat of some kind after that, and there was a little grocery store on the corner, owned by an Italian boy, Martel. I am not sure of that. They had a grocery store on the corner, now this is the corner of Second and Caruthers. I don’t know if you want me to go over the neighbors, but going down now towards First Street. First would be the corner where the Levines had their store. In the middle of the block there was an Italian family whose two children, two boys, were the only two Italians getting into any difficulty in South Portland. I won’t mention the names; it is not important. And the only other one I remember was a Jewish attorney, whose name I won’t mention either, who got into difficulty, it seems to me, right after World War Two. But these were the only three that really turned sour. It doesn’t mean that everybody who lived in South Portland was successful. But at least they never got caught. Except for these three of the group that would be my age and slightly older, none of them got involved in any trouble. 

Rosenfeld: But how in your neighborhood, where everybody knew everybody on the street, how did each of you affect the other? 
ROTENBERG: Well, it must have been to the better. I think knowing the neighbors as we knew, I think we had a very good influence on each other because perhaps if I had done something wrong and an Italian person next door knew it he would have been sure to tell my mother and vice versa. There was not a lot of co-mingling by the parents per se. Socially we didn’t do much with the Italian boys, but athletically we did. We played games together, etc. 

Rosenfeld: You are talking about like from the time at grade school on. 
ROTENBERG: Yeah, we stayed pretty much together. Jewish boys played with the Jewish boys. It wouldn’t mean that the Italian boy wouldn’t happen to be there, but my memories are much more real with the Jewish families. First of all, in grade school we had to go to Hebrew School, 

Rosenfeld: You would go straight there? You would walk? 
ROTENBERG: We would almost go straight. Well, from the time I was at Shattuck I still walked. That was still quite a walk. I wasn’t Bar mitzvah. 

Rosenfeld: So, you were walking when you went to Failing too, then? 
ROTENBERG: But Failing is much closer to Neighborhood House where the Hebrew School was. 

Rosenfeld: That where the Hebrew School was. 
ROTENBERG: Yes, the Hebrew School was at Neighborhood House. 

Rosenfeld: So every single day you went? 
ROTENBERG: I think we went at least Monday through Thursday. 

Rosenfeld: Was it like an hour or two hours? 
ROTENBERG: It had to be at least an hour. 

Rosenfeld: And then you would come home? 
ROTENBERG: I still must have had time to play. 

Rosenfeld: At that age, is that when you used to play in the street? 
ROTENBERG: Yes. 

Rosenfeld: Is that when you got involved with balls and everything? 
ROTENBERG: Yes, we played on the streets a little bit and of course at the Neighborhood House, God bless it. It had a very important influence, I think, on South Portland, much more than people really give it credit for. I admit I was only there until I was about 13 or 14 and then it was more convenient to go to the Center. I think the groundwork for all of us came from the influence of South Portland. In fact it was wrapped more around the Center, the Neighborhood house and the Center. 

Rosenfeld: Now what did you do at the Neighborhood House? 
ROTENBERG: Of course we had the Hebrew School and most of my recollections per se of the Neighborhood House was Hebrew School. I did not learn to swim there. I did swim in the Neighborhood house, but I learned to swim at Shattuck Grade School. Shattuck had a swimming pool and most of us where taught, but the Neighborhood House in its own way… 

Rosenfeld: Well, they have a good gym. 
ROTENBERG: Yes, they had a gym. They subsequently had a couple of handball courts and they had the swimming pool. I remember the first instructor’s name was Tate – a big guy. But I already had been taught to swim by that time by Mr. Berg who was a marvelous swimming instructor at Shattuck Grade School. And of course at 13 and 14 after I was Bar Mitzvah I did not return to Hebrew School. Then my interests went completely over to the Center, and again the influence there was good too. I think it was more diversified because it took in all of South Portland, but then the Neighborhood House took in everything. That’s when Mrs. [Miss Ida] Loewenberg was very active. 

Rosenfeld: Who was she? 
ROTENBERG: She was the director of Neighborhood House for many years and the upstairs of Neighborhood House on the second floor was mostly the Hebrew School. It wasn’t too much there; we bad some meeting rooms, but I think it became as they enlarged it and got the swimming pool. Again this was about the same time that we were beginning to get this movement out of South Portland and this is when we ended up in the Park Blocks and my going to Shattuck school. Most people were moving to the Northeast and to the Northwest. And then the influence at the Center was very great. I still recall very favorable things. I want to give you some record about Mickey, Mickey Hirschberg. I think there was a person who was perhaps slandered more than she deserved. She was a marvelous person and a marvelous teacher. She ran a strict ship. She knew the dangers of slipping and falling. A lot of people did not like her, but I always had a soft spot for Mickey. It was through her that I learned my life saving and put it to use later on. Again we are jumping. I think you want to get back to South Portland, 

Rosenfeld: What I was wondering was what did you like most about the area when you were living in South Portland and the Lincoln Street area? 
ROTENBERG: I think in recall you exaggerate what you liked and disliked. It is so much easier when you think back because you put your thinking into a capsule. I just feel the thing that I remember most about South Portland…. it wasn’t any friends. They were mostly acquaintances you might say today. You are always glad to see them in the street. In fact I ran into one today, we called him “shaygetz”, that is Willie LeGrand and Louis LeGrand, Italian boys. I think Willie today is either working with Zidells or Alaska or in that type of a field, not Zidells, I don’t remember. But he is in that field somewhere. I saw him this morning. I hadn’t seen him in many years. It’s pretty hard. I know one of the questions that I glanced at when you asked me what is my happiest time. Well, they were all happy, think the most unhappy time I had stands out when I had to go from Failing to Shattuck. I remember crying, literally tears. My mother must have thought I was dying when I got there. I don’t remember too much unhappiness in South Portland. My dad being a baker, we were never hungry. We always would have food. My dad got never into the chips where I thought I had a well-to-do dad. He was never in the position to put any of us through school, but we were fed and clothed well. I don’t know of anybody who starved in South Portland during the Depression or any of those years. Now of course, by the time the Depression hit, I was up in the Park Blocks again, and so… 

Rosenfeld: How old were you then? 
ROTENBERG: Well, there again it had to be. I graduated from Shattuck at 14 so I was getting up there into my teens already. So that is when the depression hit in ’29. 

Rosenfeld: Then you were in Lincoln High School during the Depression. 
ROTENBERG: Yeas, because I started Oregon in 1933, which was the beginning of the coming out of the Depression. 

Rosenfeld: What was it like going from, after all, basically a ghetto into Lincoln High School? 
ROTENBERG: Oh I think that word “ghetto” is misplaced. I don’t buy that as a ghetto. The South Portland area was clean. 

Rosenfeld: I don’t mean a ghetto as a kind of slum. What I am talking about is that it was a very sheltered Jewish… I mean, from what I have learned of it, it sounds like a community unto itself. And it is like when you went to Lincoln and a whole world now of the gentiles and of the kids coming from Portland Heights, they went to that school too. 
ROTENBERG: Actually, I am seeing the point you are getting to there. But by the time I got there, you remember, this is now in ’28, there have been a lot of Jewish boys and girls going up there. I remember Commerce High School used to be what Cleveland…

ROTENBERG: I was there until I think the early ’30s before they moved out and it became Cleveland High where it is now located. I don’t recall now any problems when I went to Lincoln High. The fellows were active in clubs, the Jewish fellows. Of course a lot of them couldn’t…. There was this prejudice. I can think of that, because some of the boys had to organize their own clubs and what not. But I was never aware of a strong prejudice. You might say that those people who came from the Heights represented more money, perhaps some of them were a little cliquish, but I never felt any discomfort myself. Maybe some of the others did, but I have never run across prejudice myself. 

Rosenfeld: Now what about because you were in sports. Did that make a difference, you think? 
ROTENBERG: Well, in high school I myself was not in sports per se. I was with AZA. Whatever growing I did was after I got out of high School. I was good enough for the AZA, but that was an age transition and the size and what not. I myself did not play high school sports. I went out for the football team in my senior year and I had a lot of fun with it, but it didn’t mean anything. I was never aware, I have gone through life that way. I am sensitive to the prejudices. We are all stiff about that, but I have never run into it, even in the Army, so strongly that I felt that I was being picked on or kept aside because I was Jewish. 

Rosenfeld: So you spent most of your time in high School with AZA. Now AZA, from what you describe to me, it sounds like a traveling basketball [team]. 
ROTENBERG: Well, AZA, in my opinion has changed not to the better, as you have heard me often tell you, the same as the B.B. girls. But I don’t think that this is the time to hear this.

Rosenfeld: But what was the AZA like then when you were involved? 
ROTENBERG: Well of course, being an athlete in that day, my interests were strictly with the athletics, of course. But I took part in everything else that we did, in the dances and whatnot. The orators orated, and the debaters debated, but we had a pretty good-sized active group. The activities were basically around the local chapter. Your conventions, at that time, were competitive conventions. Your basketball teams met, your debaters met, and your orators met. 

Rosenfeld: So only then those people in the contest actually went there? 
ROTENBERG: Those that won and did something and a few others might go if it were Seattle, for example. So, most of the importance there was the fact to keep themselves busy locally. There was no politics on the northwest regional basis. Everybody who made the AZA successful put into it and got out of it. But I think you want me to get back to something else. 

Rosenfeld: Now what I wanted to ask you about, since you can’t really remember the hard times; what I was wondering was in your neighborhood who did you spend the most time with? Were you with close relatives, your family? 
ROTENBERG: Well, in playing, again I am trying to get back before high school. I think that is more important because you play with the kids that were in your own neighborhood mostly. But I remember the visits mostly would be with the family, although there were always children around. I mean the one thing about South Portland: it was a residential district which had a lot of stores. So every house had children and you the same time you walked to the Hebrew School with them, played with your neighbors, and if you were going to Hebrew School at…. 

Rosenfeld: So what kind of things did you play? 
ROTENBERG: Well again, going to grade school and then to Hebrew School, I can’t visualize too many things that I did, but I can see myself walking back and forth. I always stopped by the bakery to take cookies with me. I was the most popular guy to walk with because of my bag with cookies. In fact Abie and I often recall that. Who knows what kind of games we played? At that time the Neighborhood House athletically did not mean much to me as I stated, but we played softball at the old Duniway Park, which is now called Lair Hill Park. It used to be called Duniway Park. We used to play softball in those days with really a big ball, and you didn’t need as much ground to play in as you do today. What they call a soft ball is a harder, smaller ball and the ball therefore can be hit a lot farther, so therefore you need a larger area. Well we would play ball with a rubber ball of some kind on the streets, but you see at that age now I didn’t play any basketball. The only ball I could play was either touch football, which we used to do sometimes right on the side walks by wrapping up a newspaper with strings that became a ball. We didn’t have a ball, so we would wrap up a newspaper and string and we would line up maybe four or five guys on the side (or two and three) and play football. We didn’t expect too much, We had to make our own fun. As I think I mentioned, when you were growing up, the problem of kids becoming too dependent upon their parents to bring something every time they go somewhere, “What did you bring me today when you came from downtown?” We had to make our own fun. We made use of our own toys. This is why it is difficult for me to answer what we did. We just did things to keep ourselves entertained; we didn’t rely on toys. We didn’t have those. Most of my recall on the athletic part would come by the time go into high school. 

Rosenfeld: Now what about like in grade school in terms of girls? Did you play with girls? 
ROTENBERG: Never gave a darn about girls. In fact, up until the time where I got into AZA I didn’t care about girls at all. I didn’t learn how to dance. I wasn’t interested, but the girls saw to it that we learned how to dance. 

Rosenfeld: Now where were you taught? 
ROTENBERG: Right in the homes. At this age now, and now we are getting into the late 20s, most of everything that was done was as house parties. 

Rosenfeld: Now what were you then, teenagers? 
ROTENBERG: I was teenaged. We would have house parties. I think the parents loved that because they knew where the kids were. Again we had no opportunity to get into difficulty. We went to some house and they would have some type of food for us later on. And then we would be from one house to another. 

Rosenfeld: Now, what do you mean? You would go each time to a different party? 
ROTENBERG: To a different party on a different weekend to a different house usually a Saturday night, and it all had to be at that age group within a walking distance. Now May taught me bow to dance. 

Rosenfeld: Berenson? 
ROTENBERG: Yeah. She was a good teacher and I was a good student. We were both cocky about that and I still enjoy doing the waltz with her. She is the only person I would rather say, “Here is a waltz; I would love to do it with May.” And this is how the fellows learned to dance. And to carry the stuff farther, which is not important to the story is that whenever we met our dates, if we had a basketball game, either the girls had to wait for after the game for us to pick them up or they had to come real early with us and see the game. Priorities. It was no question about it then. To us, the basketball game was much more important than girls, which I think answers your question about girls. 

Rosenfeld: Then I wanted to ask you, you know I want to go back. Grandfather was a baker. Now how did his life, his kind of working hours, how did that affect you and the family? 
ROTENBERG: That did have a very definite effect upon us. But again that was the unusual. My dad was the only guy that had to work nights. His working day might start around 1:00 in the morning, somewhere between 12:00 and 1:00. He would go to work, if he had no emergencies, get the dough made etc., get the stuff delivered etc., and then get home in the middle of the afternoon, maybe for lunch or shortly thereafter. [He would] sleep a few hours, go in and check the retail outlets of the store and then go to bed early at night so that he could get up early to go to work at one. So this, you see, would have a very definite effect on us at home. We knew we had to be quiet. My dad had to have his rest. So I think we were very quiet and we respected that and tried to keep it as quiet as possible. 

Rosenfeld: But did you ever have a chance to get to know him? 
ROTENBERG: Oh yeah, yeah, but not as well. But that had nothing to do with South Portland. You see my point. That’s one reason we were all raised to stay out of the bakery. My mother saw to it. She was against it. I think in South Portland, where my mother raised us, I am inclined to think that the mother in most instances was a strong influence in all the Jewish families. I have no proof. I am just making a general statement, but naturally it was the mothers who called as to come home and eat, and it was the mothers that we spent most of the time with. I am sure that the other fellows had a little bit more time with their fathers in the evening than I did, but when we got older we were out going to the Center. 

Rosenfeld: You mean right after dinner? 
ROTENBERG: Yeah. They would do the same thing. We always went out and played. Remember, we again had nothing to do in the house. We had to make our own fun and we didn’t have a room where the toys were, necessarily. I don’t say we didn’t have any at all. I don’t remember, but our effort was to get out of the house, so I don’t know if they had more parental guidance than I did, even though my dad had a crazy shift. 

Rosenfeld: Well, now all of you had helped out, like with the deliveries? 
ROTENBERG: Yeah, in a bakery we all did take our turn. And all of us sold papers. My brother sold papers. Now that was a very common work for everyone in South Portland to raise a few bucks, You sold the paper for two cents, then you made one cent and this was common. Everybody was taught the value of something. We knew the value of the money, that doesn’t mean that some people didn’t spend more than they should have, but almost everybody earned money one way or another, whether we sold boxes downtown for the parades. 

Rosenfeld: How old were you when you started? 
ROTENBERG: Selling papers? 

Rosenfeld: Or selling the boxes. 
ROTENBERG: Boxes, I was quite young, but I sold with my brothers, and they were older. They must have been in their late teens. Now Morris I would say was 15 or 16. That makes me around ten. I can just recall some of that stuff. I knew what to sell. I knew it was ten cents a box or a quarter a box. 

Rosenfeld: How old were you when you started helping your dad in the bakery? 
ROTENBERG: In order to help my dad in the Bakery, the first time I was now in my teens. By that time again, we were pretty much on the fringe of South Portland again, living up in the Park Blocks, and I think I am getting to what we talked …. 

Rosenfeld: No, that’s fine. Is that when you helped with deliveries? Or did you actually work in the bakery? 
ROTENBERG: Now the first time I worked for my dad. I remember, they had to take me back from camp. My dad had started another bakery by himself and so I was called back oddly enough. And we had bakery on First and Mill (approximately) and our retail store in South Portland was in one of the same buildings I was telling you about in Salomon’s. We actually had a store there. I can remember the block. At that time I had to be 14 or 15. I didn’t work for my dad per se until my last year in high school and then I used to go to work in the afternoon. I said it wrong. I used to come to school late. I only needed so many hours. I came to school late. I delivered bread in the morning on the bread route to the east side and I could still get to school. I remember that. I am getting my story confused here. I think that bread route deal I had to do afterwards, when I quit college. I had paper routes and everything else. I didn’t work with my dad except that one summer until the end or during my junior year in college, I had to drop out of school.

Rosenfeld: You didn’t help until then? 
ROTENBERG: Well, from that point on, I don t remember helping too much with my dad. I either had a paper route or sold papers or something. There wasn’t too much I did for my dad at that time. 

Rosenfeld: Now, if you don’t mind, tell about the bakery, the competition, like you did the other day. 
ROTENBERG: I want to get the story straight. I did say it right when I went to high school. The last year I was working for my dad because that’s how I got into a wreck when I was still playing ball for the AZA. I would get to school in time to get my few hours in that I needed. If you want the story of the bakeries, we will have to start with the time when my dad came back from Philadelphia. At that time when he came back from Philadelphia, I don’t recall there may have been another bakery in town. I don’t remember. There must have been, but if there was, I don’t know. Right around the same era there came in Gordon. Shortly thereafter and eventually Mosler’s. Then they had three bakeries competing, making the same bread, same type, and three good bakeries. 

Rosenfeld: Now Mosler you said did not come in until when? Close to World War Two? 
ROTENBERG: No, it wouldn’t be that far back. I think he came in in the early 30s, somewhere there. These people were all good bakers. They all knew what… some of the people who worked gave them credit that they were good bakers. My dad always said that Mosler was a good baker; he knew how to really bake. 

Rosenfeld: Now when Gordon and Rusumny and your father attempted for that year to merge, why is it that when Mosler opened the bakery everybody else moved out? 
ROTENBERG: That was the easiest route. Mosler was the smartest. Mosler used to say, “Don’t like it? Go someplace else.” So everybody had a piece of that action; nobody ever acted on it. And this is how it was. And I am sure the thing did not last a year. 

Rosenfeld: Now when did this occur when they attempted the merger, about? 
ROTENBERG: I’d have to say that this was in the early ‘30s. Wait a minute, I started college and it wasn’t going on at that time. So Mosler must have come in the late ‘20s and this other bit was within a few years, because they realized that three bakeries couldn’t make it. So by all going in together they felt with less overhead they could make it, but then their temperaments clashed quickly. Three guys that felt they could run the whole thing and they could just not get along. I think the strongest of them was Mosler. And then it got back to three bakeries and very quickly Gordon disappeared from the picture. Then it was just two and there were always these two here until World War Two. About that time my dad went out of the bakery business and then Mosier had it all by himself. 

Rosenfeld: Well, I remember you said that you would all make your deliveries and that you would all deliver basically to the same retail stores and then they would mark them, 
ROTENBERG: We would mark them with a piece of paper. That is, it was imprinted. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anybody; nobody would eat it. You would have to slice it off. 

Rosenfeld: It was actually put into the bread? 
ROTENBERG: No, on top. After the bread was shaped and it was ready go into the oven. The last thing that you would put on would be this piece of paper that would show the word Star, Star Bakery or Crescent Bakery he had at one time and then Mosler would have Mosler on it. And then you would know that that was the bread you would want, and everybody would leave a like amount of bread and take back a like amount of bread instead of making it… 

Rosenfeld: What would they do with all the left over bread? 
ROTENBERG: Left over bread used to be bought by farmers who would come in and they would usually buy it as feed. And you would be surprised (I won’t mention any names) how many Jewish people even today ….Jewish bread in local bakeries are still not using additives. And in those days they didn’t have additives, and the next day it was day old, period. Three or four days later it was as hard as a rock and we used to put it into empty flour sacks. I think we could get 50 cents for a sack of bread. And the farmers would come and it would be cheap feed for the pigs or whatever else they gave it to. 

Rosenfeld: That’s amazing. 
ROTENBERG: But a lot of bread was bought by people a day old and there was certainly nothing wrong with it. The mold would come on after three of four days. Today bread won’t get moldy. It is treated differently. That’s why I don’t eat much bread. I remember how it used to taste.

Rosenfeld: Now we’ll get back a little bit more, about the family life. In your family what was the religious life like? 
ROTENBERG: Well, we were not an extremely religious family. My grandparents, yes. The High Holidays we respected–every one of them. We went always for the high Holidays. In fact we wanted to be, first of all we wanted to and that’s how the school…. But we didn’t practice the High Holidays pretty completely, but were not a religious family in the sense that we continued on. And I had the advantage after Bar Mitzvah of being son number three and to my two older brothers there is four and six years. They had browbeaten my parents enough so that they gave up on me, and Irv even cared less. But in respect I think to my grandparents, I kept it up pretty well. But I never was a religious man per se, and the only time I would go to the synagogue would be on the High Holidays. 

Rosenfeld: Well now, did the family get together for a big family dinner and would you go with the Puzisses and be together like that? 
ROTENBERG: Well, very frequently we would get together. There are some pictures that you can see in the albums you have seen. But remember how many get-togethers we would have. I mean they would be so there was no question if I wanted to eat at Aunt Rishka’s I went to eat at Aunt Rishka’s. If she was there, she would feed me; there was always food. There was a closeness between the sisters, the aunties and the families. And in fact I can say as a kid we wouldn’t pay attention to the social life; it wasn’t important to us. If we got together Abie and I would be together and if Fannie would want come along with the cousins we would be together, or Rose. They did have a certain amount of social activities, but not nearly like they have them now. The eating out was an unheard thing; first of all we always had kosher food so that was the only type of food you could eat. So naturally my parents didn’t go out to eat very much. Most of your social life had to be around the house. Picnics, sure, I remember them. I am sure somebody has brought it up. The “Old Swan.” I would follow up on that. It was either Mel Blanc or Chuck Silverman. I think it was Chuck Silverman who saved a girl’s life when she had gone under the Swan and he recognized her. All I remember is it was a very dark-complected fellow. I don’t remember to this day whether it was Mel Blanc or Chuck Silverman. 

Rosenfeld: Now, what was the “Swan”? 
ROTENBERG: The “Swan” was a boat that could be rented. It was a two-deck barge. It could have room in the center for a band. There was dancing available. It had eating areas on the end of the boat. And it pushed by a tug and usually taken down the Willamette somewhere and parked along an island and stayed there for the day, so we could get off on the island and swim. And that is where the little accident… I all of a sudden remembered it. That I thought was the highlight…. 

Rosenfeld: Now with families, I mean like a large group would go down. 
ROTENBERG: Yes, this would be a big deal. It would hold hundreds of people. You would board on it somewhere around the Morrison Bridge I think; I don’t remember – in that area. That would be an all-day deal. You would get on in the morning and come back in the evening. Of course kids had there all the room in the world to play, to get off onto this island, and you could run around on the ship. And the older kids could dance if they wanted to, and the parents would dance. There would be music. Usually it was an organized picnic, say the Rose City Lodge or somebody through it. It was a moneymaker too, so they would charge so much to get onto the boat, this should pay for the band cud I suppose they sold pop or something on there and made a little money that way. 

Rosenfeld: The other thing I wanted to ask you, you know the stress on education like from the time you were a child? Like how did you get to college? 
ROTENBERG: Well, we always, the parents (and all parents I am sure had the same thing for their children) all hoped that we would be better off than they were and pushed the ambition to do better, to do good. They emphasized the importance of education. The more education they had, the better their opportunities, and then they wanted everybody to be a professional man, a doctor, a lawyer or a dentist. Only so many had that direction, so many did. There was always this undercurrent for us to go to college. In my family it was mostly from my mother, I am sure. And that straight desire to go to school. And you know, I am the only one that finished. 

Rosenfeld: How did you go, considering that after all, your father wasn’t able to support you? 
ROTENBERG: I don’t know how this affects South Portland? I wanted to go and I worked my way through school. 

Rosenfeld: How? 
ROTENBERG: I washed dishes and in the fraternity house. I belonged to the fraternity. 

Rosenfeld: But how did you earn money, like for your first year to go? 
ROTENBERG: In the year before I went to school I had worked with my dad in the bakery and I saved enough money to get started on and at the fraternity house. I got half my room and board and subsequently I became the fraternity house manager, which even gave me a better deal on room and board, and I worked at school. In fact, I worked for Simon Director. I remember he had the Metropolitan Dime Stores in Eugene. This kind of push had nothing to do with South Portland. 

Rosenfeld: The fact that it was from your background… 
ROTENBERG: The push was there. The desire, the parents instilled that. 

Rosenfeld: The kind of money you had, you didn’t eat on Sunday. 
ROTENBERG: I don’t see why that has to .. 

Rosenfeld: Don’t you want that? 
ROTENBERG: I rather not. I am sure other people had it worse that me. I’d just as soon not discuss me. So get to another section. 

Rosenfeld: Well, then other thing that I want to ask you, did you found the Ramblers or did you get involved? 
ROTENBERG: No, the Ramblers existed much before I came out of school. In fact I don’t think anybody got into the Ramblers at a quicker rate than I did. Namely they used to practice as a softball team on Shattuck play ground. I got in there to practice with them one day and hit two home runs and two weeks later I was a Rambler. But I took an active part. I became a president within a year and half. I was already out of college. Within a year and half or two and a half years I was president. 

Rosenfeld: Was it a very young group? It sounds awfully young. 
ROTNBERG: It was a group basically that took in between the AZA and the more active part if the B.B. Lodge. This is the place it fit. It had a very important social need, which I think would be part of the story because most of the guys came from South Portland, although they may now be coming from the Irvington district. You know what I mean, they originally as kids lived in South Portland. It was a South Portland-born bunch that organized the Ramblers and it had a scholarship fund and that was very secret. Even I as the president never knew who got the money. And I understand in the long run it paid for some people. I myself never got any. I may remember one or two people who did get them, but I wouldn’t mention them. I think all moneys were paid back. 

It had a purpose up until World War Two. After World War Two a lot of the so-called social things changed. First of all, now the Jewish element for the first time began to go out more. They didn’t have to live at the Center. They had more money. They went to more resorts. They went to restaurants, which we didn’t do very much. I don’t remember having many steaks prior to World War Two. I won’t say I didn’t have any, but it wasn’t that important. That’s when affluent society came up. And that’s the beginning of the end of South Portland too, right around there. Yeah, because already most of the people had moved out of South Portland, and many of the little businesses had folded and there were just a few things there to draw them. Korsuns were still down there and one or two other grocery stores. Halperin was still there and I believe Calistro and Halperin had a liquor store within their store for a while to make ends meet. But I think South Portland was beginning to fade prior to it and it became very unimportant to the Jewish community per se except for getting their delicatessen food. Nobody else came to South Portland. You had no reason to shop there. You only came there from wherever you lived to get your delicatessen food on Sunday, or other days if you wanted it. 

Rosenfeld: During the time that you stayed in South Portland did the area and the people change? Who moved and why? 
ROTENBERG: I would think that, as homes began to get older, the South Portland homes, they kept it neat and clean, they began to depreciate. In the meantime people began to get a little more successful, and I think the status symbol may have had something to do with it. I think perhaps we never moved out of it because my dad was a baker and his business was there. He never thought of moving to the east side. I would say this would be the primary reason. People began to want more room for their kids, and the area began to be more run-down, and you might say, “Why did people move to the suburbs from the city?” This is about the only reason. 

Rosenfeld: How did the community organization seem to strike the Neighborhood House? 
ROTENBERG: Well, as people moved away from there, they also moved away from the Neighborhood House basically. Those who lived closer to the Neighborhood house stayed close. Those, like ourselves who moved closer to the Jewish Community Center. It was much closer to walk from the Park Blocks to the Center, and we practically lived there. We were there almost every day. 

Rosenfeld: Did the Center change? 
ROTENBERG: The Center served a great purpose and continued to serve a great purpose all through the years in that one little area it had and it grew a little bit as it did on 13th Street. It had a very strong influence on all our lives. We had a central meeting place. We knew we could see people there. We would meet there to go some place.