Not Forgotten
A library, a road trip, a history
After the business he worked in for almost 40 years went bankrupt, my father became a traveling jewelry salesman, the inverse of the peddler experience that brought Jewish people to the South over 150 years ago. One shouldn’t have to end his working career on the road, hustling watchbands and pendants, but Dad did. It wasn’t a question of money (or maybe it was since Dad seemed always to be looking for/expecting that rainy day).
It was more of a question of pride, though, even when he used to write the names of the store managers and buyers on a slip of paper he hid in his coat pocket because, though we wouldn’t learn why for a year or so after he hit the road, he had a hard time remembering names.
That summer after he started, I was home, planning on researching an article about Jewish life in my hometown of Bessemer. Jews had lived in Bessemer since its inception in the 1880s, and I wanted to know more, and why. The reasons mainly had to do with Bessemer’s being a mining town, and those Jewish peddlers who saw an opportunity and so founded thriving dry goods and clothing businesses.
Dad came to Bessemer because of marriage, though he had relatives, and grandparents, who had always lived there. But there were more families …and even a synagogue. To learn about this history, one of the…
