An Engagement without a Proposal on the Howard St. El & Riding That El to Get Married

Today I reposted a story shared by a friend in Portland who, as I had, also grew up in Chicago and graduated from Senn H.S. A couple got married on the Howard El Line (elevated train line). That was the one I used to go downtown from my neighborhood. Paul and I got engaged riding the train on the Howard Street line (now called the Red Line). I said: "When should we get married?" Paul answered: "Next Summer?" Me: "Let's tell them." It was during Thanksgiving break. We had gone downtown via El, to look at emeralds shown to us by the jeweler Peter Piper, a family friend (yes, that was really his name). That was it. No proposal, no great romantic setting like on our first date. It was a decision made pragmatically so we could share our news with our respective families that weekend while Paul was home from college in Champaign/Urbana.

I was living with my parents in Chicago and working for a pediatric practice as a receptionist. I felt a need to take a break from campus living and studies. Cousins Bob Bloom, also at the University of Illinois, and Fredi Bloom, studying at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, were at my parents' home for Thanksgiving. It was a perfect time to announce our engagement to people we loved so much. We didn't need to decide to get married, just when, because somehow we'd already had an unspoken agreement that we wanted to share our lives together. I am so glad we were on the El.

We took the same El to get married before a Judge on July 24, 1965, one month before our big Jewish wedding in a synagogue. I was pregnant (much to my embarrassment in the age of "good girls don't,'" although we all did). My mother wanted our baby to "have a name." This was because Paul was doing research on the Kaskaskia River downstate, and "in case anything should happen the baby should have a name." And so on a very hot humid day, we took the El to the Courthouse accompanied by my friend Ginny. We giggled through the ceremony, had a lovely lunch at a then upscale hotel. Home again on the El.

So congratulations to the couple who got married on the Howard Line El, and thanks for the memories.

Being Mama on Pesach

I miss my mother most of all during the week before Passover. Mama schlepping the dishes she packed in boxes to store away for the eight days; Mama unpacking the 4 sets of Pesadich dishes (the dairy for everyday and the one for the Seder; the same for the flaisech set), the two sets of pots and pans (dairy/milchek and meat/flaisheke);Mama sweeping and wiping away every crumb of chametz as she stored the rest, lined the cabinet, refrigerator, and counters with plastic so no chametz would touch our food for Passover; Mama cooking chicken soup, making the charoset, grating the horseradish, Mama the quintessence of this holiday.

The last Seder in her own home was catered. I hired the only Kosher caterer in town, and our wonderful cleaning woman (Mama’s also) to help unpack the Passover dishes, set up and clean in the no longer lived in house in SW Portland. Dad by then was at Robison debilitated by Parkinson’s. Mama was living at Rose Schnitzer Manor paralyzed on her left side by a stroke. But both of them sat at the Seder table in their own home with all their children and grandchildren. 

It was at a Seder at Robison Jewish Home 9 years after Daddy had died, I knew it would be my mother’s last.  Mama couldn’t make it past the first half of the abbreviated large group Seder. Since she asked to go to bed, leaving this holiday she loved, I knew she was leaving us.

And so I bring her to me in making the kitchen chametz free, in making chicken soup with kneidlach, in lighting the holiday candles and sitting at our very large family Seder. Pearl Lipkin thank you for the blessing of your life.