An Immigrant in an Immigrant Nation by Henry P. Kramer

        As the son of immigrants I very soon found out that I had the singular misfortune that my parents were peculiar. This discovery continues to be made by all children as they approach adolescence independent of their parents' status as immigrants. Peculiarity is a characteristic that young people observe in everyone except in a minority of people who are normal. Oddness is most evident in parents. Immigrant children, however, find that their parents are more peculiar than average.
        My father had a variety store in which he sold all kinds of things including crépe paper. Father was fluent in French and pronounced crépe paper in the French manner which to normal American ears sounded like crap paper. This was a continual source of amusement to others and of embarrassment to us children.
        Off and on I worked in the store to help my parents and to while away the time I would sometimes whistle a tune to my mother's annoyance. She told me to stop "siffling". I knew perfectly well that "sifler" means "whistle" in French. However, I felt strongly that my mother should use the correct English term until I was convinced otherwise by the impact of a piece of wood on my head.
        When we first moved to Southern California my father wisely bought a car and hired a young man to teach him how to drive it. In those days all cars had stick shifts and to go from one gear to the next it was necessary to release the clutch, shift, and then reengage gently but quickly so that the transition to the new gear was done smoothly. Father, however, did not master this trick and caused the car to buck and chatter and then die. On the first few tries he did not get his driver's license.
        Then father bought a small variety store in the center of a small town in central California. We lived in a rented house at the edge of town about a mile from down town. And every evening after the store closed we would all walk home carrying our school books and bags of groceries. The streets were empty except for passing cars but I knew that everyone in town was watching this strange procession from behind their curtains. Normal people used their cars to drive their families home. Only we undertook this long shameful walk under the full scrutiny of everyone.
        Father and mother had bought a rather small store. It was dark, dirty, and rat infested. We had a fire caused, so we were told, by rats gnawing through the electrical insulation. After the fire, all of us children were put to work after school polishing the water stains off the hinges and corner braces and other similar pieces of hardware so that they could be resold.
        But the business prospered so that our parents bought an empty lot, hired an architect, and constructed a new, bigger store. We were quite proud and excited.
        But how disappointing it was when to move the goods from the old store to the spanking new one our father obtained a hand cart which we would load up with merchandise and push through downtown for two blocks. Normal people would not have made such a spectacle of themselves and their children.
Father and mother thought it was important for their children to learn how to work and how to earn money. They found a job for me at a pharmacy on the main street mopping and waxing floors for twenty-five cents an hour. That was great. I did however mind having to wash the windows because some of my fellow students might see me.
        I was a rather obnoxious boy. Every day on the way to school I would pass a fruit, vegetable, and grocery stand with various hand painted signs advertising the goods for sale. One day a sign announced "Ham what Am". I asked the grocer what that was supposed to mean. He said "Ham what Am". Then I said, but sir, 'am' is the first person singular, present tense of the verb 'to be'. So he said what are you some kind of smart ass and started chasing me.