She was driving me back to her apartment from shopping once when I was 14. I have a secret about my Bubbie that I have never told anyone in my family. Bubbie sharing a story with my Yaya at my wedding rehearsal dinner, 1986 She was so generous that she sent me a monthly allowance when I was at Chico State even though she didn’t have much money. Bubbie was so generous that if you said you liked her shirt, she would literally go change and give it to you. She’d begun working at age 14, lying about her age to get the job, and her working life spanned more than 60 years. After “retiring” she worked part-time as a secretary until her late 70s. She helped her brilliant son get into UC Berkeley. She was an executive legal secretary and could type faster than anyone I’ve ever known. She had a gravelly smoker’s voice by then with a touch of her native Chicago. She called my dad “Al” which I thought was funny. She loved to belt out a good old tune at parties. When we moved to Marin, we visited Bubbie for brunch once a month when we saw my dad and had an occasional dinner with her if my dad had a night class. Because nothing says loving Jesus like not wanting kids on your lawn.) Although she was Jewish, she spent Christmas Eve and Day with us every year. (My siblings and I loved to roll down the lawn at the Mormon Tabernacle near her apartment but someone in the church tracked her down and complained. If it was dinner, she’d watch The Tom Jones Show after we ate. We saw her every week when we visited my dad and she made us brunch or dinner. When I was a small child, Bubbie was the grandmother that lived close by. Yaya holding me while I smile and stare at Bubbie And even at the end, I couldn’t imagine what it meant that she was dying, that she’d be gone forever. We were poor, but really, I was just self-centered. I have no excuse for not calling her more often. I was 6 months pregnant with my second child and had a 2 year old and she lived in LA and I lived in the Bay Area and these are the excuses I tell myself for not visiting her during her at the very end. Seriously, though, today I’m struck by how arrogant I was in my youth, so consumed with my own life and my own new family that I grew careless with my older loved ones. The newer town of Rawson is located a few kilometres away.I have been hearing myself say, “The arrogance of youth” a lot lately. Īt the 2011 census, Erica and the surrounding area had a population of 324. The history of the town and surrounding area is the focus of the Erica and District Historical Society, located in the old Rawson Police Station. Įrica still maintains agricultural and timber industry connections, as well as being a service town for local tourist destinations such as the Thomson Dam, the Walhalla Goldfields Railway, Mount Baw Baw and Mount St Gwinear. The Erica Court of Petty Sessions closed in 1968. The section of line past Erica closed to traffic in 1944, save for occasional goods services to Platina station, and the line from Moe to Erica closed completely in 1954. The township of Erica lived mainly from forestry and agriculture, and owing to Walhalla's decline by the 1920s was the largest town on the Moe-Walhalla railway. As a consequence, the Post Office opened on 14 July 1910 as Upper Moondarra and was renamed Erica in 1914. When the station opened in 1910 it was named Harris, but had been renamed Erica after a nearby mountain by 1914. The area was generally known as Upper Moondarra in the early 1900s, the township of Erica beginning to grow after construction of the railway line from Moe to Walhalla, which passed through the area.
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