My elementary school in Indianapolis during the 1950’s was as homogenized as the milk served in our cafeteria: almost all white, almost all Christian, perhaps four or five Jewish children per class of thirty, but, as far as per grade, not more than two “colored children,” the only term I ever heard for Blacks until at least a decade later.
So I was amazed when Aunt Anna, my mom’s oldest sister, told me about her school in the same town forty years earlier. She was born in 1911, less than three years after her parents — my Grandma and Grandpa Zivien — came over from Russia. She said that her elementary school classmates were primarily first-generation German, Austrian, Italian, Hungarian, and Greek. And, like hers, their parents had quite recently come to America for a better life. A photo of her class would have looked as homogenized as mine, but Aunt Anna assured me that the ethnic mix of students would prepare her well for the diverse world she would face as an adult.
Little wonder that her class was such an immigrant mix. It turns out that the peak of immigration through Ellis Island was between 1900 and 1914, the very years her schoolmates’ parents were leaving their Eastern and Southern European homelands.
Aunt Anna said she vividly remembered her fifth-grade teacher because of one particular assignment. They were studying world geography and would have to present an oral report. Being sensitive to her pupils’ family origins, her teacher made sure that each immigrant child was given a topic that would be especially meaningful. Aunt Anna said she still remembered when her teacher said: “Anna, I want you to take us to Siberia.”
“DADDY, WHAT’S SIBERIA?” she exclaimed as soon as he arrived home from work. Even though she was the eldest of three sisters (my mom being the baby), she considered herself “daddy’s little girl,” and she proved it by doing the impossible: getting her dad to paint her bedroom bright pink, which was against every somber Russian instinct in him that demanded all rooms should be either white or sedately wallpapered.
What brought about my discussion with Aunt Anna was the fact that, being the eldest child, she was our Zivien family historian and was about to write her autobiography. She had actually saved her notes from that Siberia oral report, given when she was just eleven. Her main source for it had not been the Encyclopedia Britannica, the most used and cherished book in all Zivien and Engel households, but instead her beloved dad.
He had suggested that she tell the class that Russia was the biggest country in the world and that 80% of its landmass was Siberia. And that Russia had eleven time zones. And that it borders three oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic.
“But, Daddy,” she told him, “Give me something that my classmates will remember about Siberia. That stuff is BORR-ing.” I am convinced that Aunt Anna and I inherited the same “Make it fascinating!” speech-giving gene.
“And did he ever,” she continued. He told her that Siberia was the only place on earth that had an enormous lake whose waters were the same candy pink color as her bedroom. Now he had her attention! It was Lake Burlinskoye, an enormous salt lake. Because of its high salt content, it attracted rare, salt-loving microscopic shrimp. They multiplied in the warm summer weather in such vast numbers that their blood pigmentation turned the lake pink.
“But it got even better!” Aunt Anna enthused. There was one type of bird, not native to Siberia, that loved to eat these shrimp. It would fly over 5,000 miles to devour them in this lake, where the concentration was the best on earth, much better than in their native Florida. Because these birds would eat so much of these rosy colored shrimp, their feathers and skin would turn pink. They are, of course, flamingoes.
“And when Daddy told me there were flamingoes in Siberia, I knew I’d be getting a big fat A+ for my report. And I did.”
Aunt Anna’s dad also told her that Siberia’s many salt lakes gave it an endless supply of raw salt and that fortunes were made from it by corrupt businessmen. They bribed Russian judges to send prisoners to their Siberian mines so that they’d have free labor to extract the salt.
On a personal note, writing this essay today has been a godsend for me because it has provided a respite from true drudgery. It’s tax season, so I have been gathering all my countless papers, receipts, W2s, and 1099s to give to my accountant. I must now leave you, Dear Readers, to go back to the salt mines.
Oh, so THAT’S where the term came from…
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here