finally quit the third at the age of 13 to work for a hymn writer. Five weeks later he was discharged for suggesting a rhyme to go with ‘Jesus with faltering feet.’ ” The interview ends with Albert’s saying, “I can’t help laughing to myself. Me and my silk hat. I came here in steerage and I have attained Fifth Avenue. I get a big laugh out of that.”
When it came time for my father to work, Dad asked Albert for a job. Albert took him on as a night watchman. From eleven p.m. to seven a.m. Dad paced deserted lots with a German shepherd until it occurred to him that Albert A. Volk had no desire to see his brother’s son flourish. Albert married the governor of Puerto Rico’s daughter but never had children. On his deathbed he hooked his finger, signaling the family to move closer. Dad was there. He likes to use the creaky voice of an old, toothless man when he quotes Albert’s last words: “I want you to promise me you’ll read my will as my coffin is being lowered into the grave. I want everyone to know exactly what they’re crying about.”
My father has few memories of his father. When he was learning to walk, Jake would take his hand and sing, “One, two, three! Walk with me!” My father says Jake kept a cat-o’-nine-tails on the back of the kitchen door and used it on him. “I noodled with the nails that held it together,” Dad says. “I helped it to fall apart.” Jake never hit his daughters, but when my grandmother stood between Dad and the cat, sometimes she got hit.
“You beat your son then,” Dad says. “It was supposed to be good for him.”
The worst beating Jake ever gave my father was when he caught Dad playing stickball on Rosh Hashanah.
“He was good with a belt too,” Dad says. “He could whip it off fast.”
A cat-o’-nine-tails is a round wooden baton with nine tails of leather or cord nailed to it. Each tail is two feet long and has three knots at two-inch intervals, the first knot being two inches from the end. When the tails land on a back, their spread is never more than three inches. A three-quarter-inch-thick plank of pine flies apart when flogged once with a cat-o’-nine. In the hands of an eager bosun’s mate, naval flogging, which was suspended in 1871, easily killed.
What kind of man flogs his little boy?
Where did Jake find an instrument of torture that was outlawed before he was born?
Was it part of Jake’s genius for speed to persuade by force?
What kind of man was he?
According to Granny’s sister Rose, “Jake would yank Ethel by the hair if she looked at another man.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Once, in the car, we pulled alongside another car, and Ethel smiled at the driver,” Aunt Rose says. “Jake jerked her head around by the hair.”
“He was affectionate and generous,” Aunt Eva, the youngest sister, counters. “We looked forward to his visits in Princeton. He bought lavish gifts. Every piece of furniture we had came from him. He bought us our first radio.”
Jake used to introduce his children as “My Three Diamonds,” and wear a pinkie ring with three diamonds in it. He cleaned his nails with a gold pocketknife I now keep on my key ring. I use his Waltham watch and store my pencils in his kneeling Indian tobacco jar. Every day my hands touch things his hands touched. In our living room there’s a framed poster with one hundred and ten photos on it titled “Notables of Greater New York.” The portraits are of people who contributed to the creation of the New York Municipal Building, “the largest structure undertaken at that time by any municipality.” If you laid its forty-one floors side by side, a farm of twenty-seven acres would be completely covered. The building was designed by McKim, Mead & White and built by the Thompson-Starrett Company. Whenever I have jury duty, I stroll the colonnade and think, My grandfather cleared the land for this. Jake’s picture is on the poster along with J. P. Morgan’s, Elsie
When it came time for my father to work, Dad asked Albert for a job. Albert took him on as a night watchman. From eleven p.m. to seven a.m. Dad paced deserted lots with a German shepherd until it occurred to him that Albert A. Volk had no desire to see his brother’s son flourish. Albert married the governor of Puerto Rico’s daughter but never had children. On his deathbed he hooked his finger, signaling the family to move closer. Dad was there. He likes to use the creaky voice of an old, toothless man when he quotes Albert’s last words: “I want you to promise me you’ll read my will as my coffin is being lowered into the grave. I want everyone to know exactly what they’re crying about.”
My father has few memories of his father. When he was learning to walk, Jake would take his hand and sing, “One, two, three! Walk with me!” My father says Jake kept a cat-o’-nine-tails on the back of the kitchen door and used it on him. “I noodled with the nails that held it together,” Dad says. “I helped it to fall apart.” Jake never hit his daughters, but when my grandmother stood between Dad and the cat, sometimes she got hit.
“You beat your son then,” Dad says. “It was supposed to be good for him.”
The worst beating Jake ever gave my father was when he caught Dad playing stickball on Rosh Hashanah.
“He was good with a belt too,” Dad says. “He could whip it off fast.”
A cat-o’-nine-tails is a round wooden baton with nine tails of leather or cord nailed to it. Each tail is two feet long and has three knots at two-inch intervals, the first knot being two inches from the end. When the tails land on a back, their spread is never more than three inches. A three-quarter-inch-thick plank of pine flies apart when flogged once with a cat-o’-nine. In the hands of an eager bosun’s mate, naval flogging, which was suspended in 1871, easily killed.
What kind of man flogs his little boy?
Where did Jake find an instrument of torture that was outlawed before he was born?
Was it part of Jake’s genius for speed to persuade by force?
What kind of man was he?
According to Granny’s sister Rose, “Jake would yank Ethel by the hair if she looked at another man.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Once, in the car, we pulled alongside another car, and Ethel smiled at the driver,” Aunt Rose says. “Jake jerked her head around by the hair.”
“He was affectionate and generous,” Aunt Eva, the youngest sister, counters. “We looked forward to his visits in Princeton. He bought lavish gifts. Every piece of furniture we had came from him. He bought us our first radio.”
Jake used to introduce his children as “My Three Diamonds,” and wear a pinkie ring with three diamonds in it. He cleaned his nails with a gold pocketknife I now keep on my key ring. I use his Waltham watch and store my pencils in his kneeling Indian tobacco jar. Every day my hands touch things his hands touched. In our living room there’s a framed poster with one hundred and ten photos on it titled “Notables of Greater New York.” The portraits are of people who contributed to the creation of the New York Municipal Building, “the largest structure undertaken at that time by any municipality.” If you laid its forty-one floors side by side, a farm of twenty-seven acres would be completely covered. The building was designed by McKim, Mead & White and built by the Thompson-Starrett Company. Whenever I have jury duty, I stroll the colonnade and think, My grandfather cleared the land for this. Jake’s picture is on the poster along with J. P. Morgan’s, Elsie
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