Photo Credit: Jewcy

I just finished baking two blueberry pies, brining the turkey and getting supplies in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. My family never, ever fails to celebrate this holiday. It happens that every year, on the day before Thanksgiving, I am reminded of the day I came to America.

I was born in Uzbekistan in March of 1945 and then a few months later, shortly after the War ended, my family left to return to their native Poland. A few years later my father had irreconcilable differences with the Polish Communist regime and so we left left for Germany where in January of 1948 my brother was born.

In December of 1949 my family arrived in America - I was 4 and a half years old. A kind official at Ellis Island gave me a penny and walked me downstairs to the gumball machine where he showed me how to put the penny in a slot and crank the handle. He then blew a bubble to demonstrate what to do with the gumball once I had it in my mouth. He went back upstairs leaving me to my chewing and bubble blowing.

After quite some time I was able to fabricate a decent sized bubble and I bounced up the stairs to proudly show him how skillful I was. As a reward he gave me another penny which I promptly took downstairs to repeat the whole game anew.

This went on a number of times and it helped to keep me occupied while we were being processed. I would show a bubble, he would give me another penny, the mechanism would dispense a colorful little ball that I would crack and chew for a while until all the flavor was gone.

When you are young as I was, you do not have any notion of pushing your luck, and so eventually the man indicated with his waving finger that I had finally pushed mine. I should mention that in this entire scenario, him giving me pennies, me buying gumballs, not a single word was exchanged between us - I spoke no English and he spoke no German.

The events of that day have stayed sharp and pungent in my mind all these past 61 years because of two things: the pennies he gave me were shiny copper Lincoln heads (unlike any coins of Germany at the time) and which I remember admiring for minutes at a time until I pressed them into the maw of the gumball machine.

As for the gumballs, oh my, there was nothing like it in Germany as well. When I first bit into the gumball there was an explosion of aroma and flavor as if I were plunging my tongue into a rainbow of fruit.