[Mrs. Irene Dolgin Goldstein, interview 3, March 17, 2015, by
phone - Beth Kanell]
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| Railyard would be on far side of river, left part of photo. |
Mrs. Irene Dolgin Goldstein – “Irene” – made a correction to
one date in interview 2, mentioned that her father had a siding and scrap yard
near the railroad tracks, and said that her father’s arrival date in St.
Johnsbury should instead be “after 1910 and before 1916.” [No archived
materials address this; we only have the 1920 Census showing Irene’s parents,
Harry and Frances Dolgin, living in St. Johnsbury with their son “Aron” (that
is the Census record, although Irene says her brother’s name was always Arnold)
at age 1 year, 11 months. I will keep searching.]
Irene’s family home
was at 113 Portland Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Across the road was 80
Portland Street, which included a filling station. There, her father built an
office, and a platform scale that could weigh up to one hundred thousand
pounds, so it could weigh a big tractor or trailer, says Irene. She added that
her father installed in later years steam heat for the scale, so it would work
in the winter. “The police used to come by with some driver with his truck
loaded and it would be [shown on the scale to be] overloaded, and they were so
happy with that!” Also pleased with the scale was the Cary Sugar Company (now
Maple Grove) further east on Portland Street. “Trucks bringing maple syrup [to
the maple sugar company] would weigh before and after unloading. It was convenient,
just down the road.”
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| Cary Maple Sugar Co., photo from about 1960; would become Maple Grove. |
Irene learned to drive on a 1920 Oakland. “Everything had
standard shift.” It belonged to “the girl who worked in the office” (her
father’s office), and Irene’s mother arranged for this office worker to teach
Irene in that car. The first car that she owned was a 1939 Ford convertible,
“the last year they made the rumble seat.” Then a cousin of hers had an
accident in a convertible, and Irene’s father took her convertible away,
replacing it with a 1941 Pontiac.
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| 1920 Oakland automobile |
The driving test was in St. Johnsbury, although no
particular office location came to mind. Helen, the office worker, took Irene
in that 1920 Oakland. There was a written test first, and then they “drove
around, not too long.” As a new driver,
she especially noticed how challenging it was to handle a standard-shift car
going uphill: “Going up Eastern Avenue in the winter could really be
something.” One time, she noticed a line of cars at the bottom of that hill, so
without thinking much about it, she detoured to the shorter (and steeper, but
less traveled) Sand Hill, made it all the way up just fine, then realized
afterward that it could have been a bad choice!
As a girl, Irene wanted to be a nurse. “However, in those
days, nurses did the dirty work,” and her dad said, “No daughter of mine is
going to lug bedpans, period.” So instead she “did secretarial training.” She
didn’t go to college because of the war (World War II). As she reflects on her
career today, she says she had a lot of fun in all her jobs. For example, she
worked for her father, and when he bought a restaurant, she’d sometimes help in
there. “I learned how to carry a tray when they were shorthanded.” She also
learned from her father’s business about scrap iron and metal: what they were,
how they were treated. “And everything to me was learning. You can learn so
much from different jobs.”
As another example from her career, later, when she lived in
Montreal, she got an “entirely different job for a small firm importing
textiles from around the world. I worked with letters of credit, and foreign
exchange, and it was so great!” She worked four hours per day at that time, so
she could be home for her kids after school. She took her work seriously, even
though she enjoyed it, and one time the bank said her business had overdrawn
one of its letters of credit. Her boss said to go home and not worry about it,
but she went through all the numbers and worried all weekend – and on Monday
showed that the bank had made the error, not her! [Later, she would work in
Malden, Mass., for a building supply company, including bricks, and enjoyed
learning that, too.]
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| Filene's on Boston, where Irene's mother bought the wedding dress. |
Irene married at age 20, in Boston on February 22, 1943, a
few weeks before her birthday. Her fiancé was in the Royal Canadian Air Force,
and he suddenly got word of his leave being approved. It was okay’d on February
1, and Irene went to her mother and said “I’m getting married on February 22.”
That put everyone into a rush to prepare – especially her mother. Three weeks!
Her mother said, “Pick up the phone and call your aunt” [in Boston], who was a
whirlwind at getting things done. Irene’s aunt said, “Tell your mother to get
down her tomorrow and we’ll get started figuring things out.” Together, Irene’s
mom and aunt rented a Boston-area hall for the wedding and printed up
invitations. “Then they went to Filene’s Basement [famous dress shop in Boston,
with a “basement” of wedding gowns] and my mother found a girl about my size
and had the girl try on a gown” that seemed right. It fit, and Irene’s mother
bought it. Then her mother came home, and the next task was to address all the
invitations to Irene’s family members. Next, they went to Montreal to give
invitations to Irene’s fiancé’s family to send out. Irene’s recollection is
that her family had to provide checks for the Canadians to travel to the
wartime wedding, so the Canadians could prove they were “not taking money out
of the country.”
The dress was ready and right, but Irene had to go to Boston
herself and, with her aunt, go purchase her headpiece and veil. About 250
people would be coming to her wedding. And now she had another challenge: Her
older brother was in the service and stationed at Camp Gruber in Oklahoma,
close to being shipped overseas to the war. All leaves had been canceled. But Irene
was determined to have him be her best man. She sent a letter to Lieutenant
Colonel Carver, who was head of his group, Rainbow Division. She said it was
important to her to have her brother take part in the wedding, especially since
he was being shipped out and she “might never see him again.” Her brother was
given two weeks of leave, even though nobody else was getting any!
It was a big favor she’d been given, so she went to Cary
Maple Sugar Company and got a case of maple syrup and sent it to the Lieutenant
Colonel – her brother had told her that they didn’t have maple syrup in
Oklahoma. Soon Irene “got a lovely letter back, the Lieutenant Colonel’s
children had fun, they had only ever had molasses before.”
At the wedding, “the fellows were all in uniform.” Irene and
her new husband stayed in Boston for a couple of days of sightseeing, then took
the train to Montreal to see her new father-in-law, who had been sick and
couldn’t come to the wedding. [Irene notes that this marriage, which took her
to Montreal to live, lasted about 16 years; her other marriage was to Sam, also
an airman, and lasted 34 years: “Every day was special.”]
At this point in the interview Irene took time to talk about
the family years in St. Johnsbury again. She recalled other Jewish families in
the area with the names Prolman and Brody, who were in-laws of each other. She
also mentioned the Zabarskys, who “used to live in Barton. Daniel, the older
one, was a junk dealer and would go with the two boys with horse and wagon to
peddle” and would stay at the Dolgin home in St. Johnsbury. But Irene’s mother
decided there really was not enough room for three extras, so she told Harry,
Irene’s dad, to give the Zabarskys money for a hotel room, although they
continued to come share meals.
Irene has in her papers a receipt written by her mother,
accepting a cow as payment for a car at the family business – the cow was worth
more!
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| Hilda Handy's family members, at their St Johnsbury ice house. |
The family home at 113 Portland Street had a garage and
office on the first level. The home, upstairs, had its own separate entrance,
on the right of the building. The kitchen was 18 by 18 feet, and it was a
lovely home. Irene’s dad would try to be home for supper each day, so they all
ate together. Lunch was a family meal as well. When Irene was a teen, attending
St. Johnsbury Academy on the other side of town, she would run home a mile and
a quarter in fifteen minutes. Going back was an uphill trip, so sometimes she’d
go over to her friend Hilda Handy and get a ride with Hilda on the Handy family
ice truck back to school.
-- BK
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