Excerpts from interviews with William and Fannie Samuels
Transcript of Tape 1960 and 1965

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1/2/60 (trying out new tape recorder)

Barbara:   You talk, Grandma.
Grandma:   No, I don't want.
Barbara:   How do you like your new house?
Grandma:   I like our new house very, very much, and I was so happy to celebrate our forty-third anniversary at a beautiful new home with all our children and grandchildren at a big dinner and the children looked so beautiful and our grandchildren, each and every one of them, are so pretty and smart that we were very, very proud of them. We would have everyone there if Alvin would be with us. But unfortunately he's far away from us, and we hope that next year, at our Christmas dinner and our forty-fourth anniversary Alvin and his bride will be with us.
Barbara:   I think she can talk better than Pop, don't you?
Pop:   Oh, yes, she talks very good. (Grandma laughing.)
Ed:   I know you like the new house, everybody does.
Pop:   Yeah, I should, the price that I paid for it I should like it (laughing).
Pop:   Oh, when you were crossing the border, they catch you and if they catch you they send you back.
Steve:   Well, were you ever caught?
Pop:   They pretty near caught us, but you pay the man to let you go through and you go through.
Barbara:   That's how he got out of Russia.
Pop:   And do you know when I . . .
Steve:   How much?
Barbara:   How much did you have to pay to get out?
Pop:   It cost about fifty rubles.
Ed:   And how much is a ruble?
Pop:   A ruble is equal to about fifty cents American money, and it's a dollar down there. And you want to know when I came over here?   I came over here in 1912.
Ed:   Did Grandma come over at the same time?
Pop:   They came I think the same year, but they come from a different part of the country.
Barbara:   Tell us what part of the country you're from, we want to remember that.
Pop:   We're just from, you know, you've read in the paper about the Ukraine, that's the wheat belt, just like Kansas City is in the United States. That's where they grow all the wheat, and that's where this here is the state where I came from. In other words, over there they don't call it a state, they call it a, uh, more of a, it's a division, and I don't even know how many states they've got in Russia. In other words, the country is divided in just about four parts instead of forty-eight parts like the United States. And each part covers a certain amount of territory. In other words, you come in from our country you'll take in Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Malarussia, and that wheat belt, and that's just one part of the country of Russia. And then they go as far as Siberia. Now they're not very far from Vladivostok. That's just close to the border that we got, the part that we bought from Russia, that, what is the state?
Barbara:   Alaska?
Pop:   Alaska. That isn't very far from Alaska. Only it's a little bit colder in Siberia than it is in Alaska, but that's on the same line. That's where we bought it for, I think we paid them one million dollars and we've been getting out resources, in six months, we got more than what we paid for it and we've been having it for the last forty, fifty years.The seals, all this here fine fur, comes from that part of the country.
Barbara:   What did you do when you came over, how old were you?
Pop: I was seventeen years old.
Barbara:   And what were you doing right before you came, were you working?
Pop:   We were dealing in wheat, we were buying it up from the peasants, and we'd accumulate some carloads, and we were shipping it from one part of the country to the other, which it was a pretty hard job to do. But we didn't work for anybody. But that's what we used to handle was wheat.
Barbara:   Did you go to Hebrew school?
Pop:   Oh, yeah, they got a Hebrew school. They don't have public schools.
Grandma:   In Russia.
Pop:   In Russia. But they have a Hebrew school and they teach you two or three different languages that when you go down there . . . .
Ed:   Um, hm. So you got a little education down there.
Pop:   Oh, yeah.
Ed:   If that's what you want to call it.
Pop:   Well, that is an education, you, they teach you Jewish, they teach you Hebrew, they teach you your religion points, and they teach you to read and write, just the same. But you just go a certain period of time to the school, it's not compulsory to go to school. If you want to go to school, you go to a private school and you pay for it, you got to pay for it, otherwise they wouldn't take you in.
Barbara:   I wonder if Pop was a good little boy when he was a little boy. I wonder what he was like.
Pop:   It's been so long that I forgot whether I was a good boy or not.
Ed:   Did you speak English over there?
Pop:   No.
Ed:   I didn't think you would.
Barbara:   He didn't speak English when he came to the United States, did you?
Pop:   I didn't speak English by the time I got to Paragould.   When I got to Paragould then I learned how to speak English.  
[This is obviously an exaggeration, or he meant St. Louis or Cape Girardeau.]

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1965   (Steve's interview for 7th grade civics class)

Pop:   We stayed in Germany, we stayed in England, we were close to France, and we went all over the country before we ever reached [the U.S.], and many times we stayed as much as four, five days before they let us go to the border to the other places.
Steve:   Do you remember who was the ruler of Russia when you were there?
Pop:   The Czar.
Steve:   Well, you don't remember his name, do you?
Grandma:   Uh, Czar Nicholai.
Pop:   Nicholai, Nicholai is right.
Steve:   What did you do in St. Louis after you came?
Pop:   I came to St. Louis, and I thought that I was in a country that you only need a shovel and a rake to rake up the money in the street, and for a while I was thinking that I would go to a college, and educate myself and get somewheres in this world. Come to find out that I had a brother in here that lived here for about fifteen years and we multiplied his pay, what he was getting per week, and I figured that he must be close to a multi-millionaire. Come to find out that he didn't have very much. And the best thing for me to do is to learn some kind of a trade and get out to work, and if you don't work, you don't eat. So . . . I worked down for about . . . about three weeks, a month, for nothing, and I've learned a trade, and then I went to work for Kolnee (?) Clothing Co.
Steve:   What did they do?
Pop:   They making suits and pants and . . .
Steve:   Oh, okay.   You said you, at one time you wanted to go back to Russia, what was your . . .
Pop:   Well, the reason that I wanted to go back, when I reached to the age of twenty-one I was supposed to report as a soldier. To the army.
Steve:   To the Russian . . .
Pop:   To the Russian army.
Steve:   Yeah.
Pop:   If I don't report they would fine my mother three-hundred dollars and three-hundred dollars was a great deal of money over there. So I figured for three-hundred dollars, I bought a ticket to New York one time, which it was a very reasonable price . . . and I was figuring to go down there in a . . . get in the army and then get away from the army after I stayed down there for about a month or two. But luckily, when I got my ticket, I didn't have sufficient money to get from England or Germany or France or any other country to the place where I lived. And it would take just as much more than that much for the ticket to get . . .
Steve:   And three-hundred dollars . . .
Pop:   No, not three-hundred dollars, it was just a part of the money, and I decided that I'd wait in St. Louis and work for about six months, and save up sufficient money so I could get back. And when I went to work, by the time the six months was over the war was already on and they started to fight, and the time that I've lived and I was still counting my blessings that I didn't have the money to go back.
Steve:   I'm happy you didn't, too. Why didn't your parents or your mother come over with you when you came to America?
Pop:   Well, my father was dead way before, when I was thirteen, he died. My mother was living, and she was to provide for the family a living. And when I left she was all right, and after three or four years she got pretty old, and I did send her a ticket to come over, but she, she just wouldn't commit herself to come down to this country because she felt like she couldn't make that trip.
Steve:   What did you do after you were in the business in St. Louis?
Pop:   I stayed in St. Louis for about 3 years.
Grandma:   Then he met me and married.
Pop:   About a year and a half and then I met my wife that's still with me.
Grandma:   Your Grandma.
Pop:   Your Grandma.
Steve:   Yeah.
Pop:   And we decided to, then we left from there for Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Steve:   And what did you do there?   The same thing?
Pop:   There we went to work for my brother, he had two stores, and I operated one, he operated one, and I stayed with him for, oh, twenty-two years. And after 22 years we find that we couldn't make a good, a go out of the business, so we decided to come over here. And then we came over to here.
Grandma:   To Paragould.
Pop:   To Paragould.
Grandma:   In '38.
Pop:   1938. And we still, and we're still here in the same place.
Grandma:   And we're very happy here.
Pop:   And live very happy.
Steve:   That's good. Well, how would you compare the government of Russia to the United States, besides that we're a democracy and they're a dictatorship?
Pop:   Well, you can express your opinion to some degree. But when there's a dictator, they dictate to you what you should do and what you can't do. And 90% you can't do. When you got a democrat country, like this here, you could express yourself, you could say whatever you want to, if you do like a man you could work for him, and if you don't like him, you don't have to work for him, but there they force you out with the guns to see whether you could do it or not.
Steve:   What gave you the idea to come over here? Where did you find out about freedom?
Pop:   Well, I had a brother that was with us, was here about ten . . . I had two sisters, and one . . . two brothers and one sister, that they were here before I came. . . .   What else?
Steve:   Well, why didn't more people come over, if they could have found out about it, did they just not know?
Pop:   I don't think of any person that's living in Russia that would not sacrifice his life to come over to stay in this country.
Steve:   Okay, thank you.

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