Frances Schnitzer Bricker

Blumenthal: Frances, could you tell me, or do you know, where your mother and father originated from? 
BRICKER: Yes, my mother’s family came from Cheramishon.

Blumenthal: Can you spell that for us? 
BRICKER: Well, it’s phonetic and it’s Cheramishon [spells out]. My dad’s family came from Trifmik [spells out]. It’s in the Ukraine — Vilna gubernia. In those days it was like a day’s horse and buggy ride apart from each other. Today’s world it would be very close.

Blumenthal: You mean these two cities were about a day’s ride apart? 
BRICKER: Yes, they used to ride all day. Rostav was a nearby town, and that could be found on a modern map.

Blumenthal: How did your folks meet? 
BRICKER: It was definitely through a matchmaker, but my mother always cherished the fact that her father did not make her accept anybody that was not acceptable to her. My father had already served in the Army for four years, and when he came she was very thrilled with him, and must have been fairly kittenish, because she ran in the bedroom, and she really was delighted. Her father had never before insisted that she make a match that wasn’t.

Blumenthal: So did they get married in her little shtetl? Do you know where the marriage took place? 
BRICKER: We have, upstairs, the engagement papers, and they are handwritten and in Russian. Our nephew, Bob Levinson, has had them transcribed and I think each of us have a copy. We also have a copy of the wedding license, and that too was handwritten in Russian. I could go upstairs and find them, which would give those places.

Blumenthal: They got married, though, within that area? 
BRICKER: Within that area, because dad said we never knew how to celebrate a wedding. They would celebrate for a week, because it would take so long to gather a clan together.

Blumenthal: Then what happened after they got married? Did they stay there? 
BRICKER: In my mother’s home — my mother’s parents’ home. They got cast, they called it, and part of the agreement was a year’s —

Blumenthal: Was that not board and room? 
BRICKER: A year’s board and room. That was part of the agreement. They lived with my mother’s parents for a year, and my dad was always extremely fond of my mother’s parents.

Blumenthal: What occupation did he pursue there? 
BRICKER: One of his early jobs was riding on a train with fruit and keeping it sorted, so like one apple or one orange wouldn’t rot a whole box. It was on a train, and as the train would go, he had to keep it all sorted. I know that was one of his jobs.

Blumenthal: He sold fruit then? 
BRICKER: No, no, no. He just accompanied the fruit, and in lieu of the refrigeration they had to keep the fruit all good. If there was one apple that was bad —

Blumenthal: It was his duty, then, to oversee the fruit to see that there wasn’t any spoilage. I see. That was his occupation then? 
BRICKER: That’s right.

Blumenthal: How long after they were married did they stay? You said they lived there about a year. 
BRICKER: They lived there a year and then dad worked out of Odessa and mother went to Odessa with him.

Blumenthal: Were any of your brothers born in Odessa? Or born in Russia? 
BRICKER: In Russia, yes. I don’t know exactly where that each of them was born, but Joe, Barney, my sister Sadie — the one whose picture is at the head of the stairs. Sadie was the oldest, and Joe, Barney, Harry, were all born in Russia.

Blumenthal: You had a brother Harry, too? 
BRICKER: Yes, he was killed by an automobile here.

Blumenthal: So they all lived in Russia, and your father — 
BRICKER: Came ahead.

Blumenthal: Came ahead where? 
BRICKER: He came to Portland, Oregon. Fetter Fuchs advanced the money.

Blumenthal: Who did? 
BRICKER: Fetter Fuchs. That means “uncle,” and it was only fairly recently that I found out he was a for-real Uncle. The whole town called him Fetter Fuchs.

Blumenthal: Well, I heard that from somebody else. 
BRICKER: Goldie Rosenfeld, because he also advanced some money for the Rosenfelds.

Blumenthal: But was he really a blood relative? 
BRICKER: Yes. He had two sisters. One married a Rosenfeld, and one married a Schnitzer. The man himself had no children, and he was very good to his family.

Blumenthal: So he advanced — how do you spell his last name? 
BRICKER: I think today it would be pronounced Fox [spells out], but we pronounced it Fuchs.

Blumenthal: Now, I want to ask you something, Frances. He advanced the money for your father to come to America — 
BRICKER: To Portland.

Blumenthal: Why Portland? 
BRICKER: I don’t know why Fetter Fuchs came to Portland, but my father came because Fetter Fuchs sent the money for him to come.

Blumenthal: So your father came because of Fetter Fuchs. Okay. Now, he came ahead of your mother? 
BRICKER: That’s right. And he earned the money to repay Fetter Fuchs and then earned the money to send for his family.

Blumenthal: Doing what? 
BRICKER: First he was in Astoria, drawing in nets with salmon. They used to do that by hand, and they used to wade into the cold water and bring in the salmon. And then at one point he went to work for a furniture finishing place. They asked him if he knew how, and he said yes, but it became troublesome because he wouldn’t work on the Sabbath.

Blumenthal: He came over by ship, of course? 
BRICKER: Yes, indeed.

Blumenthal: How old a man was he when he left your mother? 
BRICKER: I have no idea.

Blumenthal: So then he made his livelihood in all these little jobs? 
BRICKER: Until he found that the only way he could observe the Sabbath was by junking. He had a wagon and, at one time, a horse named Sam. I remember that.

Blumenthal: Frances, where did your father live all this time? 
BRICKER: That I don’t know, but I do know that my mother took in the different ones as they came in, especially.

Blumenthal: That’s after your mother come to Portland. 
BRICKER: Yes, that’s after my mother came to Portland, but before that I don’t know. I never asked.

Blumenthal: Did your father — if I recall, didn’t your father come from a large family here, too? Didn’t he have a lot of brothers? 
BRICKER: He had three brothers.

Blumenthal: Were they here at the time? 
BRICKER: Oh, no. He came first.

Blumenthal: Your father came first. I see. What was your father’s name? 
BRICKER: Moishe.

Blumenthal: Then how long was he in America before he sent for your mother? 
BRICKER: I think it was a year, but I’m not positive.

Blumenthal: He worked and saved money and then sent for your mother. Did they have difficulty getting out of Russia, like it is today? 
BRICKER: Yes. Well, they had difficulty in that they had to hire a man to steal them over the border. And Mama said that she often heard that they would sometimes stifle a child if the child cried, because they did steal them over the border.

Blumenthal: And this was a paid man, a guide? 
BRICKER: That’s true. That’s how they got here.

Blumenthal: And so this man took your mother, and your brothers, and your sister out of Russia. Stole them out. Then, they were on a boat — 
BRICKER: They got on a boat — steerage.

Blumenthal: Did your mother ever tell you anything about her trip over? 
BRICKER: Only that they went directly to New York, and dad had money to redress all the children, because he didn’t want them to be like grinas.

Blumenthal: Well, where did he contact them, where did he send —? 
BRICKER: People in New York met them. Now, which people, I don’t honestly know that. I could [have] wished that I had asked, but I didn’t.

Blumenthal: So they stayed in New York for a while? 
BRICKER: Not really, just long enough to —

Blumenthal: Probably Castle Garden or Ellis Island. 
BRICKER: I don’t know. That she never said, either. She did say that they wanted to pack meals for them, but she didn’t want to do that. But she used to hold a piece of bread and a bottle for milk in her hands, and money, and people would go out and get milk and bread for them.

Blumenthal: This was in New York? 
BRICKER: On the way, en route.

Blumenthal: Oh, en route from New York to Portland? 
BRICKER: Right.

Blumenthal: I see. They came by train, then. 
BRICKER: Yes, that’s true. And then she said she lost my brother Barney at one of the stations and she had no language and she was so panicked.

Blumenthal: And how old were the children at that time, would you say? 
BRICKER: I couldn’t say that, either.

Blumenthal: You couldn’t say. Your sister was the oldest, and then came the three boys. Well, we’ve got them on the train, and we’ve got them arriving in Portland. Who met them here? Your father? 
BRICKER: My father, but I don’t know the details.

Blumenthal: Do you know — did he have a place prepared for them to stay? 
BRICKER: There was a home. My mother didn’t indicate which one, but she never did think too much of the home, I am sure, because she —

Blumenthal: It must have been very humble and just the bare necessities. 
BRICKER: I am sure it wasn’t anything that she was very happy with, from what she said. And then the home that she lived in that I remember — I moved in it when I was a year old, and she died in that home.

Blumenthal: Was that the home on Second Street? 
BRICKER: No, it was on First between Arthur and Meade.

Blumenthal: Arthur and Meade. 
BRICKER: 686 First.

Blumenthal: You lived in that home all the while you were growing up until you got married? 
BRICKER: Yes. You might say long afterwards, because when I came home from Seattle, I used to visit her there.

Blumenthal: Frances, when your mother came here, there were no relatives here then? Just this Fetter Fuchs? 
BRICKER: Fetter Fuchs. As Mr. Zidell said, he stayed with Mama. Sam Zidell and all those people came later.

Blumenthal: So your father established this little home for your mother, and your father was out with the horse and buggy, junking. 
BRICKER: Horse and wagon. They didn’t have a buggy; that was fancier.

Blumenthal: Oh, a horse and wagon. And he was out making a living for your mother and the four children. 
BRICKER: Right, and the horse was stabled at Kirshner’s barn.

Blumenthal: On Second and Meade, wasn’t that it? Right across from — 
BRICKER: Kesser Israel.

Blumenthal: Frances, then after your mother and father moved to that home on First and Arthur, between Arthur and Meade, and established their home there, then the additional children were born out of that home. That sort of kind of brings us up to date, so to speak. What was the age span between the oldest and the youngest at the time? How many brothers were born here? 
BRICKER: My brother Lou was the first born here, and he’s about four years older than I. Then there is myself, and there’s three younger, and the very youngest is only five years younger than myself.

Blumenthal: Was it not after you — was it Monte? 
BRICKER: No, my brother Manny is only 16 months younger than I. That, I think, came about because this brother Harry was killed by an automobile. He had done his little Hebrew lesson with my dad.

Blumenthal: Here in Portland? 
BRICKER: In Portland. My sister had taken him up to buy candy as a reward and an automobile struck him. A cousin came down to tell my mother that her child had geharged gevoren [was killed] and so she went to one hospital and gave birth to Manny. He was the only one born in the hospital. Harry went to another hospital and died.

Blumenthal: Did we establish what year your mother and father came to America? What year this was? You can kind of count back, about how old Lou is. 
BRICKER: The only thing I can tell you is that Lou today is 71. He is 71, and he was conceived here, so it would have to be approximately 72 years ago — 1905, 1906. I was born in 1909, and Lou was born almost four years before. 

Blumenthal: So he was born in 1905. So it would be about 1904 that they came here. 
BRICKER: Mama was here, but Dad was here a year prior to that. Actually —

Blumenthal: It would be in the early 1900s, the very early 1900s. 
BRICKER: Yes. True.

Blumenthal: Okay. Then you all were in this home. There is an age span of two or three year’s difference. Where did you go to school? 
BRICKER: I went to Failing School, and so did my brothers.

Blumenthal: What was the neighborhood like in those days? 
BRICKER: Well, when I was very young, that section beyond Second and Arthur was a big gulch or gulley, and there was a water stream. I remember that there were buttercups down there and very rural. The home in which I was born was down in that gulley, and my folks owned it. There was a trestle above with a train.

Blumenthal: This is First and Arthur? 
BRICKER: Right. There was a trestle above with a train that went through. Mama said that when she first moved down into that gulley, they used to take a teakettle and same sandwiches and go up on the hill and have picnics. As I was growing up, they were filling that in, and it became very steep. They rented that house out, and it became more and more filled in. It was then definitely referred to as a gulch altogether, and it was difficult to get to it. It was because of that house that was down in the gulley, or gulch, that my brother-in-law Ben, who had then worked for the railroad — Southern Pacific — came into my father’s grocery store, because for a while we had a grocery store built onto the house. For a short interlude we had the grocery store as well as the junking, and my brother-in-law Ben (he was not my brother-in-law at that time) came in. The living room was above the store, and there was a window. He looked up and saw Sadie and wanted to meet her, and that’s how he happened to meet my sister.

Blumenthal: What was his last name? 
BRICKER: Singer.

Blumenthal: But you all went to Failing School? 
BRICKER: That’s correct.

Blumenthal: Who were your neighbors during that time, do you recall? 
BRICKER: Well, the only one I honestly remember… and this is why I say my memory isn’t as good as so many people, like Eddie [who] would be able to tell you a lot about people like that. Two doors away, for a long time, when I was very little, was Marie Jacobs. Her name is Leton now. I used to keep my toys in her woodshed. We were very, very close. My cousin Tillie Schnitzer lived a block away on the corner of First and Meade, and I was very close to her. We saw a lot of each other. We used to play run sheep run and hide and go seek and that sort of thing. Sophie Weinstein used to play, and we used to yell. I could still hear the screams.

Blumenthal: So you remember her in your growing up stages, too. I want to interrupt you because you mention your cousin Tillie. Well, by this time your uncles must have come over here. 
BRICKER: They came in one by one.

Blumenthal: Who brought them over? 
BRICKER: That I couldn’t tell you.

Blumenthal: You don’t remember. Now, how many brothers were there, of your father’s? 
BRICKER: There was Uncle Harry. We called him Uncle Hersh.

Blumenthal: Uncle Harry Schnitzer? 
BRICKER: Yes, and there was Uncle Shaika, whose name was Sam in English.

Blumenthal: Tillie’s father. 
BRICKER: Tillie’s father was Berrell. I don’t really know how they interpret that because we always called him Berrell.

Blumenthal: Did your father have any sisters? 
BRICKER: One, and that was Mrs. Steinberg — Rifka.

Blumenthal: She wasn’t here? Your father was the first one of the whole family here? 
BRICKER: Yes. Right.

Blumenthal: I see. Then you grew up in your neighborhood playing with all these children. 
BRICKER: Oh yes, and all these people lived in the same area.

Blumenthal: Were you close to a synagogue, to a center, to your school? 
BRICKER: Meade Street Shul was only a half a block up and one block over, but my dad always went to First Street Shul. He only went to Meade Street shul to make a minyan when they called him. But he went to Shaarie Torah rather than Kesser Israel.

Blumenthal: Did you spend much time in your growing up days at the Neighborhood House? Did you avail yourself of the facilities? 
BRICKER: Yes, I have a scrapbook downstairs that indicates that I used to be one of the first to pay my dues every year and that type of thing. I took gym there and I went to cheder there.

Blumenthal: You went to Hebrew school there, too? 
BRICKER: And I learned sewing there. I have a scrapbook, too, of all my sewing patches in it.

Blumenthal: Was that not sponsored by the Council of Jewish Women? I think it was. 
BRICKER: Yes, it was. Mrs. Ben Selling [Matilda] was very active.

Blumenthal: Do you remember any of the other women there? 
BRICKER: Mrs. Holtzman.

Blumenthal: Would that be Lena Holtzman today? No, I wouldn’t think so. BRICKER:  I wouldn’t know her first name, but I remember she was the only one that I can recall who used to come up there in a chauffeured car. I remember her taking me home.

Blumenthal: Did you remember Miss Hirsch? 
BRICKER: Not really. I remember the name, but I don’t remember her.

Blumenthal: I see. So you spent quite a bit of time around the Neighborhood House. 
BRICKER: A great deal of time. And the library. There also was a library in the Neighborhood House, I remember.

Blumenthal: There was? Do you remember the librarian’s name at the library? 
BRICKER: No. I do remember that Mrs. Loewenberg was the head of the Neighborhood House. I remember her well.

Blumenthal: Your folks, were they very orthodox? 
BRICKER: Very. I do remember that the Neighborhood House had a kindergarten at one time, and that’s where I first went to kindergarten.

Blumenthal: Oh, before you entered grade school. Do you remember any of your teachers at Failing School that particularly impressed you? 
BRICKER: Yes. I remember Mrs. Lockwood and Mrs. Coy. They were in the later years. I remember the assemblies and fire drills and that sort of thing.

Blumenthal: What did you like most about your neighborhood at that time? Do you remember? Did it make any great impression on you? 
BRICKER: No, except that everybody was extremely friendly, and we had wonderful friendships with the Italian people. We all grew up together and we just felt that this was the way it was. We enjoyed it. We would stay out in the summer nights, and we’d linger and talk and laugh. I remember playing a game where we would cut out paper dolls and all kinds of things from magazines and put them in a magazine and take a pin to find it. You would pay a pin to take one of the pictures — that sort of a thing.

Blumenthal: All the simple little toys. 
BRICKER: You never hear of anything like that anymore. You never hear about it at all or see anything that is even reminiscent of a thing like that.

Blumenthal: So you had a — 
BRICKER: A very happy, carefree childhood.

Blumenthal: And a pretty fair religious education, too, and upbringing, 
BRICKER: Very religious. Oh, definitely. Dad taught us at first. That is before my memory, but after Harry died, I understand that he just couldn’t bring himself to do this. But I do remember even going to a Mr. Dodiff to learn Hebrew or some kind of learning. That was in a private home. And I remember Mr. Maccoby was one of my early teachers in cheder.

Blumenthal: And all your brothers, of course, were bar mitzvahed? 
BRICKER: Well, I can’t honestly say that. We didn’t make big formal parties like we do today, and I just don’t know. We practically grew up in the shul. I do remember that even on Yom Kippur, my mother had a great big bag of cookies and things under where they sat. We’d come run in and out, and take one, or we’d take the apple, and we’d walk to shul all the time and we’d walk home together. I was sent ahead many times to get things started. In the very early days I do remember my Auntie Brindle, who was Harry’s wife, had one of those built-in ovens. They used to make the cholent and put it in her —

Blumenthal: Make the what? 
BRICKER: Cholent, which was a meat dish with potatoes. They would set it up in my aunt’s oven, which was built in like the old Russian ovens. Then we would carry it home like a big kerchief tied so that, you see, they wouldn’t make a fire. And then that would be hot dinner from shul.

Blumenthal: Isn’t that inventive? 
BRICKER: No, that’s the way it was. We just never thought anything about it. We would come in on Friday after school — you could just smell the cleanliness in the house and the challah baking and the fish cooking and the chicken cooking. There was something exciting and special about Friday night. My dad would leave for shul and tell my mother what time to light the candles. Then he’d come home and say “good Shabbos,” and we’d all sit down together on the Sabbath.

Blumenthal: It was a very gentle way of living, wasn’t it? 
BRICKER: Very. Then on Saturday, everybody went to shul. Dad went earlier, and Mama went a little later, and then we would come home and have a big meal together. Saturday night was the only night we had delicatessen food, because Mama didn’t cook on Saturday, and of course, one of the special things I remember is that my father used to bring my mother coffee in bed on Saturday morning, because she was like a queen, and that was her day off, and it was very special.

Blumenthal: Did your folks belong to any organizations in those days? Do you remember them? 
BRICKER: Yes, my mother belonged — always that I can remember — to the Robison Sisterhood.

Blumenthal: That would have been the Jewish home for the aged at the time, right? 
BRICKER: I remember going to a tea where they raised money for that. My aunt, my Cousin Til’s mother, made a rye bread that maybe was this long and that wide [gestures]. They would cut it in half and get 50¢ for each half, and that was a lot of money in those days.

Blumenthal: That was to raise money? 
BRICKER: To raise money for the sisterhood. When my brother Joe got married to my sister-in-law Murphy, her mother used to come and get my mother to go to the meetings. My mother really didn’t care too much for PTA, but we kids wanted her to go, and she would go.

Blumenthal: Oh, to the Parent Teachers at Failing School. 
BRICKER: Absolutely. I remember them being always interested in community.

Blumenthal: How did they enjoy their social life? What social life did they have? 
BRICKER: The social life would be like… a wedding, and all the kids would go. Everybody would get all dolled up and go.

Blumenthal: The family went as a unit. 
BRICKER: That’s right. When my sister got married, we had it at the Gevurtz Hall, and it was tremendous — just hordes of people. There were two seatings for dinner, and they cooked a week ahead. My mother and people helped her, too.

Blumenthal: How did your father earn his livelihood at this stage? Was he still junking? 
BRICKER: Yes, but in a truck.

Blumenthal: Oh, I see. He gave up the horse and wagon for a truck. 
BRICKER: Absolutely.

Blumenthal: Then, of course, your folks — their social life centered around the home? With the family, the in-laws, the brothers, the sister-in-laws? 
BRICKER: Some, but not always. There was always a teakettle on the back of the stove. It was always going, and there was always kumetch broit or cookies, or that sort of thing, and fruit. There was always a bowl of fruit, and people were always welcome. People were good about coming in to see Mama.

Blumenthal: No formal invitations in those days. 
BRICKER: No, I just don’t remember any. I do remember people staying all night, but who they were, I couldn’t tell you. I remember the children were bedded down on the floor and gave up their beds, naturally, to the company.

Blumenthal: I remember — I want to recall something that you said previously, that when your mother and father got established here, then they took in people who came who needed help. How did that come about? 
BRICKER: Never for board and room.

Blumenthal: Only to help out until they got set? 
BRICKER: Oh, yes.

Blumenthal: Do you remember who that might have been? 
BRICKER: I never remember it, actually.

Blumenthal: Would it have been landsmen? 
BRICKER: Yes. Oh, definitely, because I remember Sam Zidell had told my brother Mark that my sister Sadie took him to his first show with her own money, which was perhaps a nickel in those days.

Blumenthal: Because Sam came from the old country, too. 
BRICKER: Oh, yes. They considered themselves landsmen. I always thought that the Berensons were landsmen, but they always claimed a relationship. I don’t know too much. But Zidells I think, too, claim a relationship.

Blumenthal: Are you not related to the Rosenfelds? 
BRICKER: Oh yes, the Rosenfelds. The men were first cousins. You see, the two sisters married a Schnitzer and a Rosenfeld.

Blumenthal: How is that? Like Goldie’s father? 
BRICKER: Goldie’s father was a Rosenfeld, and my father was a Schnitzer, but Fetter Fuch’s two sisters, one married a Rosenfeld and one married a Schnitzer.

Blumenthal: So the one sister that married a Rosenfeld gave birth to all these Rosenfelds. 
BRICKER: Presumably, but there is that close tie. The one who can really pinpoint it is Fanny Tanzer. She remembers.

Blumenthal: Yes, I know that Mrs. Tanzer has been interviewed. 
BRICKER: I think another person that should be, if he has not been, is Charlie Zidell. He can put these relationships together.

Blumenthal: He is going to be — 
BRICKER: Because he has tried to tell me over and over again. You see, my mother was related to Wolf.

Blumenthal: Monte Wolf? 
BRICKER: Monte Wolf’s dad. Now Schnitzer and Wolf were in business together for so many years, but they were not related. But my mother was related to both of them, you see. She married a Schnitzer, and Wolf was her cousin. So there are other relationships that are prevalent in people who live in this town, through that Wolf side and the Schnitzers.

Blumenthal: It is quite a big family. 
BRICKER: Oh, it’s a tremendous family.

Blumenthal: Frances, when you graduated Failing School, what then? 
BRICKER: Then I went to the High School of Commerce for four years. We were taught definitely to go for office work, the shorthand, typing, bookkeeping.

Blumenthal: Were there many jobs open to you as a girl in those days? 
BRICKER: No. I graduated in the height of the Depression. It was only through my brother Lou at the jewelry store that I was able to get a job, but once I got it, I worked four years.

Blumenthal: In an office? 
BRICKER: In an office. That was Charis of Oregon.

Blumenthal: What was it? 
BRICKER: Charis of Oregon. It was a foundation garment concern, but I was in the office. That was for the four years before I was married.

Blumenthal: You worked there four years, and then what? 
BRICKER: I was married and moved to Seattle.

Blumenthal: Oh, so that was the only job you held after you graduated the High School of Commerce. 
BRICKER: That’s right.

Blumenthal: Before going into your married life in Seattle, I want to ask you: How did the Depression affect you or your family? Was it very bad? 
BRICKER: No. It was bad in this respect — that Barney and I were engaged with the intent of being married right away, but we kept waiting for the Depression to get over.

Blumenthal: Are we talking about 1929 then about, or earlier? 
BRICKER: Well, I would have been married 45 years at this stage. So we’re talking about 1932.

Blumenthal: Okay, go ahead. 
BRICKER: So, we kept putting off the marriage until the Depression would end.

Blumenthal: Did your folks suffer much because of the Depression? 
BRICKER: No. We were never wealthy people, and we never stressed the fact that we were not.

Blumenthal: Everybody was in the same boat, then. 
BRICKER: That’s right, and everybody was happy about it. We ate well, and the house was kept up. There was always plenty of fuel, plenty to eat, and whatever needed fixing. We were not extravagant; none of us were. We never travelled in those days. It would be the furthest thing from our minds. My brother Lou once went down to San Francesco, expecting to ship out. He wanted to try that, but it didn’t come to that. He came home.

Blumenthal: And were all your brothers still at home, or did some of your brothers get married? 
BRICKER: No, my brother Joe had left home even before he was married. He lived with Eddie Savan, who was widowed, and he [Eddie] taught him [Joe] the pawnshop and jewelry business. Joe, in turn, saw that each of the brothers learned that same business. My brother Barney lived home until he was married. Then Lou never married. He lived home always, until Mama died, and then we closed that house up. It was then leveled for a filling station. No one else ever lived in it.

Blumenthal: How did you meet your husband? 
BRICKER: That was very strange. One of the fitters at Charis knew only one Jewish fellow, and that was Barney Bricker who lived at the Hazel Hotel.

Blumenthal: Here in Portland? 
BRICKER: In Portland, and she lived at the Hazel Hotel. It was a residential type place. She wanted me to meet Barney, and I wouldn’t consider it. About a year she was after us, and then Bunny Moore, Caroline Moore —

Blumenthal: We were talking about how you met your husband. 
BRICKER: Tyre Bros. opened up a glass…

Blumenthal: How do you spell that? 
BRICKER: Tyre [spells out]. They are cousins of Barney’s.

Blumenthal: What was the type of firm? Tires? 
BRICKER: Glass. Barney was instrumental in helping open the office, and he needed a telephone girl. He got Bunny Moore the job through the gal who lived in the hotel, and she saw that he got the help. So she, in gratitude for the job, had Barney, myself, everybody involved, for a dinner.

Blumenthal: And then you met Barney. Did you live here after you were married? 
BRICKER: No, the day we were married, we moved to Seattle.

Blumenthal: And that year was 1932. 45 years ago. 
BRICKER: Yes.

Blumenthal: And your children were born — 
BRICKER: All three were born in Seattle, and we lived there eleven years.

Blumenthal: You have one daughter or two daughters? 
BRICKER: I have two daughters. One daughter now lives in New York, and one daughter now lives in Modesto. My son lives in Lake Oswego.

Blumenthal: How many grandchildren do you have, Frances? 
BRICKER: My daughter in New York has a boy and a girl. My Nadine has a girl. Monty has three boys. Well, that’s six grandchildren, all told.

Blumenthal: When you returned, after eleven years in Seattle, did you return to live in Portland? 
BRICKER: In this house.

Blumenthal: What brought you back to Portland? 
BRICKER: Barney was offered a job by Morrie Schnitzer. He was opening a steel rolling mill. He felt that he trusted Barney and wanted him to be the purchasing agent, something that was foreign to Barney, because he had been in the glass business all that time. He opened up a branch for Tyre Bros. in Seattle, and after Tyre Bros. retrenched, then Morrie Schnitzer wanted him to come and act as purchasing agent for the steel rolling mill here. So he came ahead and I waited until the children were out of school.

Blumenthal: And so then you established your residence here, at 1540 SE Elliott at that time, and Barney worked for— 
BRICKER: For the steel rolling mill. Then when they found that Morrie had to go into the service, he went to work for Uncle for a while.

Blumenthal: Frances, then you never lived in South Portland after you were married? 
BRICKER: Never.

Blumenthal: But did you see the change in the South Portland area? 
BRICKER: Oh, certainly, because naturally I always visited my parents.

Blumenthal: You always came back? 
BRICKER: Yes, always. I never discontinued my relationship. After my father died I used to see my mother every day.

Blumenthal: You were living here when your father passed away? 
BRICKER: Right.

Blumenthal: I see. What did you notice about South Portland? 
BRICKER: Well, it was apparent to everybody.

Blumenthal: Was this after World War II that you moved back here? Or during? 
BRICKER: Well, we would have lived here 35 years in June.

Blumenthal: Well, the war was from 1941 on, and you were living in Portland then. 
BRICKER: Yes. We came, and it was beginning to be wartime. That’s why the steel rolling mill, and all that. And Morrie went into the service then.

Blumenthal: Did World War II make a great difference in your life in any way? Your brothers? Or …? 
BRICKER: Well, it made a difference in that Barney was brought to Portland for this job. So I was, so to speak, reunited with my family. We are a close family and a large one.

Blumenthal: Did any of your brothers — did World War II affect you in any way? 
BRICKER: Yes. Of course it did, because then the jewelry store was short of help, so I went to work there to help out. Barney never wanted me to work while I was married. He felt that a woman shouldn’t.

Blumenthal: But there wasn’t anyone in your immediate family who had to go to war, did they? 
BRICKER: Well, my brother Lou.

Blumenthal: Oh, he was in the service. 
BRICKER: Lou was in the service; he volunteered. And my brother Mark was overseas in a tank division.

Blumenthal: What difference did you see in the area where you grew up, during your childhood? When did South Portland begin to sort of disintegrate? 
BRICKER: Well, I can’t say as far as that. We were talking earlier about the fish market. My mother used to send me there, and she used to send me with the chickens so they would be killed ritually.

Blumenthal: It was a little colony there at one time. 
BRICKER: Oh, definitely.

Blumenthal: When did it begin to change? Could you notice the change coming on? 
BRICKER: No, I just accepted each change as it came. I can’t begin to say when I quit carrying the chickens to be slaughtered ritually and when my mother started buying at the butcher shop all ready to go. She used to pick the feathers over the garbage can, and I used to help her. I can remember the rhythm. Then gradually the little fish market phased out, and there were two Jewish butcher shops to which she used to go. One was with a cousin, Schnitzer, had one. Then there was another one. I don’t even remember. You see, this is the sort of thing — I don’t have a retentive memory. But I do remember when I started visiting my mother every day. At one point Barney had to say yahrzeit for his mother, so he’d go to shul.

Blumenthal: Your husband, Barney? 
BRICKER: Yes, he’d go to shul and he’d drop me. That was already after the First shul [moved] to the Park Blocks.

Blumenthal: Why did the Shaarie Torah move from First and Hall to the Park Blocks? 
BRICKER: Well, they thought the neighborhood was getting shabby, and it was dirty, and it was not fitting.

Blumenthal: Wasn’t it also because the Urban Renewal was beginning to move in there? 
BRICKER: Well, I personally went to all of those evening meetings and suggested we retain the property and build on that property, because my brother Joe, who had a feeling for properties, felt that that would be revived. We didn’t know that there would be an Urban Renewal at that time. That was later, because Joe said New York blossomed again where the older neighborhoods were wiped out, and you could see the river. He predicted that for Portland.

Blumenthal: He was farsighted. 
BRICKER: He was when it came to property. When he said that to me, I had not been attending the meetings, when they were looking for property. But that’s when I went to a meeting and got up and said that maybe what we can’t afford … because there was much talk of the big expense … was the property, that maybe we should build on the actual property and tear the old shul down.

Blumenthal: Your mother’s property was not affected by Urban Renewal. I think it stopped right there, didn’t it? 
BRICKER: Right, right.

Blumenthal: How do you feel about the Urban Renewal area in old South Portland? 
BRICKER: I love it. I have said many times, I wished my father could see it, because he was always in favor of progress. But I started to say when Barney was saying his yahrzeit at the one at the Park Blocks, the shul. He would drop me, and he would go say his prayers, and I would walk to see Mama, so that I could see that the actual streets were changed. You could not, for instance, when I try to tell my son that the Hazel Hotel was here — where Daddy lived, where I met him — the actual street wasn’t there. You couldn’t pinpoint it.

Blumenthal: Well, don’t you find that whenever a building is torn down, a week or two, or maybe a month later, you can’t remember what was there? 
BRICKER: That’s why I feel I’m not the one to give the historical data. Well, where the Labor Temple sits today is probably where I lived. You know, on Sheridan. At one time, across from that Labor Temple where it is (I remember it well, because it was kitty-corner from mama’s) that there was a little grocery store owned by the people named Shank. 

Blumenthal: They called Labe Shank the Mayor of South Portland, if you remember. 
BRICKER: I don’t remember him, but I remember the name of the people who owned the grocery store — L. Shank.

Blumenthal: So you feel that it was a very good thing for South Portland to have cleaned out all the old buildings and establish all these new buildings? 
BRICKER: I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s progress, and it’s natural. When I was President of PTA, I attended meetings at Buckman and we were well aware that I lived in an old neighborhood. There was talk of the core of the city rotting out. That was the terminology they used.

Blumenthal: As respects the urban area now? 
BRICKER: The urban area, and even this area. An area like this does … it just happens that this particular area from the printing shop up is commercial. But from that printing shop, starting with my house, South has always been highly restricted, so that most of us own our homes and take pride in them and take very good care of them. But once you let a neighborhood go and there are many renters, which is true up around Buckman school, it rots out.

My two little boys were here playing in the park, and two boys wanted to buy their basketball and a big rubber ball. They wouldn’t sell them, so they took them and ran, right here at this little Belmont Park. So I went up there to see what I could do, and I was shocked — walking beyond Belmont Street instead of getting in the car and going the same little route — how the area was rotting out. Then Monty got in the car when he came and he heard about the boys’ balls. He also took the car trying to see if he could find the fellows, with the children, and he was shocked to see how that area had rotted out, because he walked from here to Washington High all the time, and it wasn’t like that when he was little.

Blumenthal: This all depends on the people who are occupying the residences.  As you say, renters are transient. 
BRICKER: Right, right. But for the core of a city to rot out is a natural phenomenon. For it to be built up, in what I think is a very modem manner, satisfying a lot of people who lived there, is natural. I keep saying, I wish my dad could see it, because he would love it, because he liked progress.

Blumenthal: Frances, in your growing up days in Portland, and your going to business, had you ever experienced any anti-Semitism? 
BRICKER: Only once in my life, of the whole 67 years, did I have an experience, and that was at the High School of Commerce. There was a boy who spoke very badly. My shorthand teacher, Mr. Haroun, was also my home room, and I remember being most disturbed. He [Mr. Haroun] was a preacher on Sundays, which I was not aware of until the incident, and he asked me to stay after school. He was the one who told me about such ignorance — of people of that kind who would talk in that manner. That was the only incident in my whole life.

Blumenthal: Mr. Haroun thought this boy was ignorant because he talked broken? 
BRICKER: Not broken, no, but he was anti-Semitic.

Blumenthal: Oh, you mean this boy was anti-Semitic. I see. 
BRICKER: That was the only incident, and the only person I had —

Blumenthal: Did you hear him yourself? 
BRICKER: Oh, yes. I was very disturbed and very upset, and I do remember this incident so strongly. Then after having been gone eleven years, and when I became active in PTA down there, [I] had occasion to go to the High School of Commerce, which was then Cleveland. I walked into a room, and there was Mr. Haroun. I was thrilled, because it was so out of my past, because by this time, like I say, it was four years before I was married and eleven years married, so it had to be about fifteen years.

Blumenthal: Frances, did this boy at Commerce High speak derogatory to you about Judaism? 
BRICKER: Oh, yes.

Blumenthal: But that was your first experience? 
BRICKER: That was my only experience in my whole life. That was the only time I’ve ever had a problem. But I walked up to Mr. Haroun, but when I came in, he recognized me immediately. He said, “Frances Schnitzer!” He was at the head of the class and I was at the door, and this really surprised me, because of how many children he had had.

Blumenthal: Certainly nostalgic, too. 
BRICKER: When we got to talking, I recalled this incident, because it was so important in my life. He didn’t recall that at all, and he brought up other incidents that he recalled that I didn’t. But I was so sure he would remember an incident like that, and remembering me as an individual, after all those years.

Blumenthal: Can you tell the difference in Portland in the Jewish community? Are they much more active today than they were when you were growing up in your folks’ day? What changes do you see in the Jewish community? 
BRICKER: Well, when I grew up, I was going to say, everybody was Jewish. But that wouldn’t be true, because we had Italian friends. But everybody lived such a Jewish life. We walked to shul, and shul was a part of our upbringing. Every holiday was important. And they came with the etrog and the lulav to our home, and we benched. Every holiday was vitally important and had its own pattern. My family, my cousins, uncles, aunts, all lived that same kind of a life.

Blumenthal: That was the Jewish social life , actually, was around the family then. 
BRICKER: That’s true, and around the shul. We celebrated each other’s simchas together — the weddings and all. We wouldn’t think of having a wedding without having everybody, meaning the uncles, aunts, cousins. We became a very large family, because all of them multiplied so prolifically. But today, it’s a different type of thing entirely. I have never thought of it in just exactly that way, but it’s more contrived. It’s very much more contrived. We lived the Jewish life then. Now we work at it.

Blumenthal: Because there are an awful lot of Jewish organizations working today. The young people are active in it, and I didn’t know if you knew if you were a part of that now, or — 
BRICKER: No, in the earlier days I was. I was the Hadassah president, and I worked in Scouting. I was a Scout leader. I had been very active in some of these organizations, but when I think of the life as a child and the life of today … I go to shul almost every Saturday morning. If I’m not there, they want to know what is the matter. I am either out of town or —

Blumenthal: Even today? 
BRICKER: Yes, I do, because that’s part of my life.

Blumenthal: To Shaarie Torah? 
BRICKER: Yes. But on the other hand, the rhythm of the actual Jewishness is not the deep thing it was when I was little.

Blumenthal: In other words, you’re not into organizational work as such. 
BRICKER: Well, not any more. I’m not that active in Hadassah, but I wouldn’t dream of not paying my dues and that sort of thing. But that isn’t what I mean at all, Mollie. We lived Jewish. I still light the candles, but you could walk into my mother’s house on Friday and smell Shabbos if you were blindfolded. The house and the activities … it all revolved in Jewishness.

Blumenthal: Has that carried over to your daughters, do you suppose? 
BRICKER: Nadine, who had married a man who had converted, does light her candles, and her child goes to Hebrew school and to Sunday school. She is a very Jewish neshama. Monty’s family does nothing. My Sue sent her children to Sunday school, sometimes under great hardships, because her husband in no way has participated in any shul life at all. When his mother died, they went out and found a rabbi. They didn’t belong to any organization, and when her father-in-law died, her husband did the service, I understand. Gave the eulogy for his father. But she sent the kids — when she lived in Warren, Michigan, she used to drive for miles and miles to take those kids to Sunday school, and she used to wait for them.

Blumenthal: It was a sacrifice. 
BRICKER: Oh yes, she did. He always paid whatever dues were necessary so they would have the Sunday school training, even though he particularly could care less. She started out lighting the candles and stuff, and when she lost her first baby and I went there to be of some help, the candles were on the top shelf and it was obvious that she no longer did these things. When she went to college, she was in the money-raising part of Jewish collections and things. She went to Stanford. They celebrate Pesach, but it isn’t as important to them as it is to Nadine.

Blumenthal: I wondered if what you believed in carried over to them? 
BRICKER: To a certain extent. Anybody who ever came into this house always knew it was a Jewish home. The children in Monty’s house know they are Jewish, but they don’t do too much about it. Nadine, and Lisa and Mark, as I said, bless the wine, and they do the candles and they go to shul. But it is, of course … well, I don’t keep a kosher house, either, so I am very far removed from what my parents did.

Blumenthal: But you still are traditionally involved. It’s embedded in you. 
BRICKER: It’s in my — you see, Barney did the Kiddush for me and blessed the bread and that sort of thing. We carried out, and we sent the kids to Hebrew school. Monty graduated, and the two girls went to Hebrew school. The kids went to Sunday school, and they went to high school Sunday school, and they did their graduation bit. But I am very far removed from what my mother and father did, and my children are far removed from what I did.

Blumenthal: But still very Jewish at heart. 
BRICKER: Oh, yes, definitely, there is no doubt about that. But there’s a different way of living it. I say, we lived a Jewish life as children, but it is a more contrived thing today.

Blumenthal: Frances, I would ask you, reflecting, what is your happiest time in Portland? 
BRICKER: Oh, I think any married woman who has brought up three children and had a husband would say those growing up years would be the happiest time, naturally. A very productive time.

Blumenthal: And what about your unhappiest memories? 
BRICKER: My unhappiest time was the death of my mother, my father, and my husband, naturally.

Blumenthal: Death is always the unhappiest, when you lose dear ones.  I would ask you now, growing up as a Jew in Portland, in Oregon, what are your impressions as a Jew? 
BRICKER: Well, my father always said this was a goyishe town. I heard him say it many times. At one point, his own father wanted to come to the United States. The brothers had a meeting, and they decided he’d better be married a third time, which he did. You see, my dad’s mother had died, and he had remarried in the earlier years. And he did, in his older years, remarry a third time rather than come to the United States, because my father always felt that this was a goyishe town. I could never understand his feeling, but shall I say more recently, like the last two years, or two and a half years, I’ve been going to Neveh Shalom for the Talmud class with Rabbi Stampfer, and it has me in awe. I am just beginning to understand what my father was trying to tell me.

Blumenthal: But as a Jew growing up in Oregon, has it been pleasant, the environment? 
BRICKER: Oh yes, I’ve enjoyed it. I certainly have. And my dear friends, both Jewish and not Jewish, know that that is part of me, and they have all entered — Passover, I had a whole row of cards over the mantle, and they were mostly from people who are not Jewish. In fact, they all are. I have some friends who do have some very good pronunciation of Jewish words. I have enjoyed being Jewish.

Blumenthal: And especially in Oregon? 
BRICKER: No problems. Just that one incident in a whole lifetime … that has to be for 67 years, pretty good. I was told, after I had worked for 15 years in the Scout office — I was told afterwards, by somebody outside of the office, that I was the first Jewish person employed, but I was never conscious of it.

Blumenthal: Did you go to work for the Boy Scouts of America? 
BRICKER: No, the Girl Scouts.

Blumenthal: After Barney, your husband, passed away? 
BRICKER: No, before. When the kids were ready for college, I finally convinced Barney it wasn’t a disgrace to go to work, because they went to good schools and it took a lot of money. Barney was always a salaried man, and it would have been almost impossible to send those three children to their colleges without the additional …

Blumenthal: So you went to work in the office of the Girl Scouts of America? 
BRICKER: I did for the last fifteen years that I worked. But before that I went to work other places. I started in my brother Barney’s place and worked in other offices for a while. But I always, in the first interview, said there were three days in a year I never work, and that’s Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This was my way of saying I was Jewish, and I would not work on those days in any event.

Blumenthal: What was the third day? 
BRICKER: The two days of Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. It was my way of saying I was Jewish, and it was my way of saying also, firmly, from the beginning, that I wouldn’t work those three days. It never handicapped me in finding a job, never. In fact, I remember C.D. Johnson, Jr. saying he admired me for living my beliefs.

Blumenthal: Is there anything else that you can think of that I haven’t asked you, that you would like to relate? Or will you think of a million things after I leave here? 
BRICKER: No, I can’t …

Blumenthal: It is very difficult covering a person’s lifetime in an hour and a half, or two, I know. 
BRICKER: No, I can’t say. I think that we all — everybody that I lived with, as a youngster, meaning my brothers, my cousins, and my schoolmates — we all lived very similar lives. We were all content and happy. We had the warmth of a Jewish home, and never, in my memory, did my father not work. He always worked. The same with my husband; he was never a day out of work. I don’t remember my brothers ever feeling that this was a problem, so that always, while there wasn’t great wealth, there was great warmth, and we all lived a natural, happy life. I enjoy today, even, running into people that I knew as a youngster, and my son always reacts the same way. He’ll come in and say, “Mother, do you know who I saw?” And it’s warm and happy. We’ve never regretted living in Portland and growing up here.

Blumenthal: I think it is a very good life, a very easy life. It’s nice to be able to say that your friends, years and years ago, are still your friends today. Don’t you feel that way? 
BRICKER: Oh yes, that’s true. You know we talked about Goldie earlier? She is a cousin, because her dad and my dad were cousins, but this isn’t why we were friends.

Blumenthal: Because you can dislike cousins. 
BRICKER: That’s true. My niece Sylvia always says that my daughters are her friends. She enjoys them. But that’s the closeness of family and friends. When I see Marie Leton, the one I told you who lived two doors away from me when I was five and six, we may not see each other two or three years, but always when we do, it’s as if we didn’t miss a day. It is very warm and very gratifying.

Blumenthal: Well, Frances, I would say thank you very much for granting this interview. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. 
BRICKER: Well, I’m glad you did, Mollie, because I do enjoy it, and I think the average person gets a little nostalgic and enjoys talking about these things. I would hope that you would also go to people who have very retentive minds who can —

Blumenthal: Oh, I don’t think you did too badly, Frances. Thank you so much.