The Socialist at Bullocks Wilshire
In which my maternal grandmother goes from radical San Francisco Boho to the secretly-Jewish couture buyer at California's Waspy-est department store.
As a young woman, my grandmother Barbara Feningston (changed from Fenigstein by her parents when they emigrated from Poland in @1908) had been a radical; according to chronicles of the American socialist movement, she was never married to Ben Legere, my mother’s father, aka my grandfather. A French-Canadian Catholic and unrepentant ladies-man, Ben Legere was a famous radical labor-organizer—member of the IWW (International Workers of the World), better known as the Wobblies—and Communist Party member. Evidently Ben fathered several children out of wedlock and, along with many of his compatriots, including Jack Reed and Louise Bryant (see: Reds), believed that marriage was a bourgeois institution.
Undoubtably the two young-ish lovers disagreed when real life—in the form of a child—intervened on the utopian scene. Barbara must have decided such liberal ideals didn’t apply to parenthood. In any event, she fled the big, communal house on Nob Hill in San Francisco, where the Bohemians—as they were known in those days, long before there were hippies in Haight-Ashbury—had lived together in apparent harmony. They talked of capitalism and revolution late into the night, drinking endless cups of coffee and jars of cheap red wine, and always wearing black. But Barbara’s appetite for the liberal life apparently evaporated less than two years after she gave birth to my mother. Ben Legere had been terribly charming, but not the fatherly type. Barbara moved south to Los Angeles with her baby, leaving no forwarding address. From what I later learned of Ben, he would not have tried to follow her. Although she never married Ben, she did take his name, and from then on was known as Barbara Legere, a nice, non-Jewish-sounding name. Ben never provided any child support.
In that one decision in 1927, my grandmother consigned my mother to childhood, and life, without a father.
Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Barbara became the couture fashion buyer for one of the fanciest department stores in California, Bullocks Wilshire. What qualifications she cited to secure the job are unknown. Her working lair was all Champagne-colored, draped with silk and subtly lit; she traveled to Paris regularly, and her friends were some of the most respected designers of the time: Irene, Pola Stout, Gunn Trigere.
Excerpted from Rottenkid: A Succulent Story of Survival, publishing on March 5
Four Tidbits For The Week of Month Dates, 202#
Brigit’s What I’m
DOING NOW ➡️ It's PUPPER-SUPPER time at my house! CURRENTLY LOVING ➡️ The film "Scotland, PA." IMHO the best of many Macbeth-based stories. Maura Tierney! Christopher Walken! Black humor abounding! (You'll never look at a deep-fryer the same way again.) THINKING ABOUT ➡️ How much I wish my grandmother had lived a good long life, instead of dying when I was only six. LISTENING TO ➡️ Khruangbin