Holidays with our extended family was a lot of fun, growing up in the 50’s. After a few whiskey’s or peach schnapps, many of the cousins who were of my grandmothers generation, would reminisce about their experiences of arriving in America, and the expectations prior to their arrival, followed by their real time experiences. My grandmother’s family came from Rumania, having lived in the Jewish ghetto of a town called Brailia. Life was, good, then bad, opportunities once, then taken away, and all of the Rumanian relatives had the desire to come to America, where they were told (via postcards, or second gossip, or personal letters from their kin), is the most perfect place. “Paved in Gold…” were the quotes from the relatives, then adding, “… not all streets, but if you walked a few short blocks from the tenements, you needed sun glasses because the site of the gold would ruin your eyesight…” There were great smiles on the faces of my cousins, as they related the adventures they supposed would happen in America, and to the person would add, we thought, it was so.
Some of my relatives found their gold like life and did well in this country. Others, it seemed were better off then living in complete persecution for being Jewish, but the finding of the Gold Streets, most still had that dream. Perhaps it was the whiskey bottles emptied by the men, and the ladies who drank the peach schnapps, catching their now drunken heads nodding on their chests, who almost in unison at the end of holiday visit, I remember hearing, would curse “…we all should find that golden street tomorrow!” To make sure THIS miracle would happen, some salt was thrown over their right shoulders.
I understand that Trump has spoken to and motivated the bigots and racists, I get that, I want to assume that some others who voted for him still have ounces of morals and values inside their souls (Supposing they have not sold those to the Devil), and I want to believe there was a positive reason for doing so; and then I realized how something this horrible could happen. Trump is like the old wives tale from the old country, where everyone in the village was told that Streets of Gold exist in America. I suppose the rural folk who voted for Trump were impressed with the gold Trump Tower sign, the bedazzlement of the neon lights as camera’s flash. Trump’s opulent life style (The lifestyle he owes tons of money to live), his glamour wife in extravagant garments. I think some, who are not haters believed as my relatives did so, before arriving in America, that all you had to do was walk a few streets away from your own ghetto to find the gold. Trouble is, that like Trump, the gold is only a facade.
