At
which point the combat would be taken up by our mothers
The room, part of which was our home, and two other single-room
apartments, similarly tenanted, opened into a pitch-dark vestibule
which my fancy peopled with "evil ones." A steep stairway led up
to the yard, part of which was occupied by a huddle of ramshackle
one-story houses. It was known as Abner's Court. During the
summer months it swarmed with tattered, unkempt humanity.
There was a peculiar odor to the place which I can still smell.
(Indeed, many of the things that I conjure up from the past appeal
as much to my sense of smell as to my visual memory.) It was
anything but a grateful odor
The far end of our street was part of a squalid little suburb known
as the Sands. It was inhabited by Gentiles exclusively. Sometimes,
when a Jew chanced to visit it some of its boys would descend
upon him with shouts of "Damned Jew!" "Christ-killer!" and sick
their dogs at him. As we had no dogs to defend us, orthodox Jews
being prohibited from keeping these domestic animals by a
custom amounting to a religious injunction, our boys never
ventured into the place except, perhaps, in a spirit of dare-devil
bravado
One day the bigger Jewish boys of our street had a pitched battle
with the Sands boys, an event which is one of the landmarks in the
history of my childhood
Still, some of the Sands boys were on terms of friendship with us
and would even come to play with us in our yard.
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