Member-only story
I don’t even know for sure if the story is true. I’ve told it myself often, but most immigrant stories are like that — a mixture of history and a healthy dose of memory, the latter distinct from the former, however often we confuse them.
History is what happened. Memory is what we choose to recall for reasons of our own. And when it comes to origin stories, most everyone takes liberties.
As for this one, it could have been fabricated or at least embellished. Coming to America tales usually are — unless they are the stories handed down by descendants of enslaved persons, in which case they are, if anything, likely understated relative to the actual horrors experienced. But for those who made the journey of their own volition? Their stories are definitely given to artistic flourish, especially those from a time prior to the kinds of extensive documentation available now.
In those days, every immigrant had a story, and they were often the same, usually amounting to disembarking at Ellis Island with 18 cents and a ball of lint in one’s pocket, mixed, perhaps, with a bit of soil from County Cork or, in my family’s case, Minsk.
