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The conductor quickly realized the situation. He gently took my hand and motioned as if to say, “Come with me.” Again with our hands clasped together, we were escorted down the stairs and onto the pavement about four blocks from where we had boarded the bus. We just stood there for a while, not knowing what to do next. We sat down on the curb, failing to see any just reason why we should be denied that which others were enjoying. Was it because of the way we were dressed? Or was it because we could have gotten lost in a city so vast in size compared to our village? I dread to think of what could have happened had the conductor, as an act of kindness (or, the other way around, to be mean) ... allowed us to travel much farther than we did.
We had just come from a village...
We had just come from a village where one could see from one end to the other. Imagine the comparison! Liverpool covers such a large area. Had we become “lost” in such a big city, we would not have known how to describe where we were staying. The only clue we could have given was, “It is a house with a high wooden fence not far from where the bus stopped.” And we spoke only in Yiddish.
I often heard our optimistic Mother say, Alas vet zoich oiysdrayen gantz goat.(Everything will turn out quite good.) That philosophy helped to overcome any possible eventuality... However, the eviction from the bus took place at a very interesting location. It did not take long for us to observe two men high on a scaffold, painting a billboard. This new, unexpected, never-before-seen fascination created an opportunity for us to sit on the curb and watch the slow progress. Similar to [following] a serial movie, we had to visit that new point of interest every day to see what progress was being made and what the billboard was to represent. The billboard was finished in a few days. It was an advertisement showing a man drinking some company's ale. How uninteresting now. While we were seated on the curb, people passed us in all directions. Some noticed us with short glances and smiles. Others would hastily pass us by and ignore us, as if it was an everyday occasion to see four children sitting on a curb without even a bag of popcorn. But we must have appeared happy, and happy we were. And that was really all that mattered...
Those activities continued during our entire stay in Liverpool while [we were] awaiting the ship that was to take us to [Montreal] through the St. Lawrence Canal. In order not to spoil our pleasure and enthusiasm during our last day, Mother avoided informing us that our stay in Liverpool would end the following morning.
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