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.
Four Tenenbaum children contentedly watch
Liverpool billboard painters at work. [original page 41]
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...
