We’re on the Amtrak train from Milwaukee back to Chicago after a lovely Christmas day visit with our son Gus in Watertown, and a lovely overnight at the Pfister hotel in Milwaukee. This followed a lovely Christmas Eve spent eating Chinese food with our friends Steven and Nancy, who were visiting from Urbana, followed by a lovely performance by Tammy McCann and a great trio at the Jazz Showcase. This followed a lovely get together at our place for Beth’s birthday, with neighborhood pals from our Hackney’s days, all eating gourmet Sloppy Joes that I whipped up.

Gus liked his nifty combination White Sox/Blackhawks scarf.

It was, to put too fine a point on it, just a lovely holiday.

Now back to Amtrak. The train between Chicago and Milwaukee is a joy. It runs, unlike, say, the Amtrak between Chicago and Champaign, on time like a European train. Big seats, Wifi, no driving, who cares what the weather is. There’s a Zipcar across the street from the Milwaukee Amtrak station. We get off the train, hop in the car, and are at Gus’s within an hour. No Kennedy expressway, no Edens expressway, no tolls.

We’ve been carless for years now and I couldn’t be happier about it. It was weird at first—I grew up in the suburbs where cars were a necessity (and of course, the suburb only existed because of cars). I’d had a car since forever. I liked driving, until I didn’t. I did always like cars from an entertainment point of view—but not nearly as much as I do motorcycles.

The Pfister lobby was in full holiday glory.

And now, I see cars strictly as a necessary evil.

And evil, really, isn’t that much of an exaggeration. I came across this article in The Atlantic awhile back: it sums things up pretty well. It’s insane, when you step back, what driving costs us in blood and treasure. I know, I know, depending on where you live, you don’t have a choice about it.

But we do have some choices. In some places, a choice is public transportation. Almost everywhere, walking is an option.

And Beth and I walk like crazy. But in the winter, it gets a little dicey. Beth broke her hand last year in a fall. And as we age, such things are a bigger and bigger deal. In our neighborhood, the walks in front of apartment buildings, condo buildings, and businesses are well shoveled. But there are these strips of purgatory that go untended. Treacherous stretches that get iced up over freeze-thaw cycles and only go away after a warm spell or a hard rain.

For example, the proprietors of surface parking lots often don’t shovel adjacent walks—though they do, of course, plow the spaces for the cars. And we have a nice little park that serves as sort of a town square for our neighborhood, replete with a fountain that operates in the warm months. Somehow, though, the park district decides not to shovel the walks in the winter.

It makes for some unwanted adventure, especially for the elderly or, say, blind people.

All of which struck me the other morning as we walked to the Amtrak station. Holiday vehicular traffic was extremely light. Pedestrians were everywhere. The streets had been plowed clean. The empty bike paths had been plowed. But the sidewalks were spotty.

I sorta get why that is. But I sorta don’t. Sidewalks are public thoroughfares. But somehow it’s incumbent on households and businesses to keep them clean.

We live with cars and the havoc they wreak as if it all were inevitable. But it’s the product of choices. The mother of all choices was the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. It was sold as a national security measure—it connected all Air Force bases, no matter how far flung, for example. Of course, automakers were all for national security.

That project was to last 10 years. Ha ha.

Anyway, I know it’s not going to change anytime soon. But I do think we can do some things—like face the fact that we subsidize car ownership with tax money. To the tune of $1,100 a household, according to an estimate in this article entitled The True Costs of Driving. One thing we can do is raise user taxes—gas, tolls, etc.—to reflect that true cost.

And maybe one day, that’d help pay to keep the sidewalks clean.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukah! Loyal blog readers will recognize today’s featured immigrant – 96-year-old Hanna Bratman, a writer from the memoir-writing class I teach for older adults in downtown Chicago every Wednesday, grew up in a Jewish family who owned a butcher shop in Mannheim, Germany. “We had many Christian people working at the shop, and we had lots of Christian friends and neighbors, too, “she told me, explaining how friends would join them at their house for Christmas every year. “The Christkind wasn’t the one to come to give presents, though – it was Santa Claus!”

Things changed for Hanna’s family and friends after Hitler took office. Hanna escaped on her own before World War II. She was only 19 years old when she arrived, alone, in the United States. Others in her family didn’t make it out in time.

That’s Hanna, the author. (Photo by Nora Isabel Bratman)

”On Santa Claus day in Germany, I found myself on the train from Mannheim to Trieste, Italy where the MS Saturnia ship was to take me to safety to New York,” Hanna writes, explaining that when she arrived in Trieste, she was told the refugee ship had docked in Genoa instead. “So we were transported to Genoa on a train at night. That’s where I met MY LOVE: my future husband, Eugene Bratman, was also on the MS Saturnia, escaping to resettle in America.”

Eugene and Hanna married and continued heading west to find work and acclimate to new ways of living – including skiing on Wisconsin hills rather than European Alps. “After moving to Chicago, Eugene and I invested in ski boots and skis, and as often as possible went to Wilmot Hills, where at that time they had a tow rope that I mastered quickly,” she writes. “On 3-day holidays, we took the train to Iron Mountain, Michigan for 2 or 3 days. We did this several times and stayed in the same hotel always by the railroad depot. We ate pasties just like the locals.”

Once their daughter and son were born, Eugene and Hanna stuck closer to home. “With the children, we only traveled to Wilmot again, where I spent most of my time on the Bunny Hill,” she writes, pointing out that Eugene had a lot more to adjust to when it came to skiing. At home he’d skied in the highest range in the Carpathian Mountains, a mountain range that forms a natural border between Slovakia and Poland. “Eugene was a graceful, very experienced skier, well known in the Tatra Mountains.”

Their first baby was born in 1945. Baby furniture was hard to come by, but they did have a pram, and Hanna writes of dragging the buggy up and down from their second-floor apartment at 1059 Dakin, usually with the baby in it. She sterilized glass baby bottles and nipples in a large soup pot she’d brought from Germany five years earlier. “Rudy Joan, our beautiful but fussy infant had to put up with an inexperienced easily panicky mother,” she writes. . “We had no family to ask for advice or help. My very few new friends were busy with their own families.”

Rudy slept in a cradle that Hanna describes as “a transformed beautified extra-large laundry basket.” Their ship’s trunk was covered with a tablecloth and topped with their beloved radio. “The baby slept through many radio concerts and night parties,” she writes, remarking on how precious the public radio station that played classical and jazz music was to them. “Our Blaupunkt radio was tuned to the latest new transmission station WFMT which we loved and supported with a donation of $15.00, a big part of our budget.”

The radio was Hanna’s domain, she says. “And the phone on the buffet was my lifeline to the world.”

Hanna and Eugene’s children grew up strong, thanks in part to advice from their pediatrician’s wife, who Hanna would regularly call with questions. “The strict rules were to feed a baby only every four hours, not a minute sooner to establish a routine, no excuses,” Hanna writes. “Rudy was an early gourmet, she preferred her mother’s breast to boiled water.”

Rudy also liked undivided attention. “In the evening, as soon as Eugene turned the key in the entrance door, she would start crying,” Hanna writes, referring to her baby as a Schreihals (an incessant loud crier). “One day she cried and cried and when I looked she had thrown up and was all covered with vomit, face, eyes, ears, hair, clothing a mess, her face red with rage” Hanna took one look and panicked, reached for the phone and called the doctor. From her essay:

I told the condition of that baby who can hardly catch her breath and had a mess of stuff running out of all openings. This good doctor listened patiently and finally said reassuringly:” Have you tried to clean her up?” End of phone call.

These days Hanna celebrates holidays with her lively and talented children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She had little desire to return to Germany, but the couple did make one trip to the Carpathian Mountains Before her love Eugene died in 1997.

“This was in spring, so there was no snow, but the chair lift was operating for tourists.” She writes that the people operating the lift recognized her husband immediately. “These people had been Eugene’s ski buddies in the 1930s — they gave him a royal welcome and free rides.”

Next up in my series of writings featuring immigrants enrolled in my memoir classes: Mia Miller. For this installment, I’ll excerpt from one of her pieces.

That’s Mia.

Mia was born in Egypt in the French speaking Jewish community of Cairo. Her family later moved to Paris, where she attended college and fell in love with Jonathan Miller, an American who was also studying there. The two of them were married in the United States, and after retiring from a long career in education and social work, Mia now volunteers teaching English to immigrants who have children enrolled in Chicago Public Schools.

When I asked the memoir writers in my classes to write about a celebration that centers around food, Mia chose Thanksgiving. “It is, for me, a Jewish immigrant, a holiday that has universal meaning for all of us in America, no matter what our race, creed or ethnicity,” she writes. “It’s a holiday where I am reminded that I have so much to be thankful for for being in this country with the many blessings that were bestowed upon Jonathan and me.”

Mia came to the United States in 1969 and celebrated her first Thanksgiving in Niantic Connecticut with Jonathan and his parents. “I learned to cook a Thanksgiving meal from my much beloved mother in-law, Vivian Miller, whom I called Mom,” she writes. “I loved every dish Mom served.”

When Mia was growing up, her own family kept celebrations and rituals to a minimum. Now she has embraced the Miller family traditions and made them her own. “To this day we have kept many of Mom’s recipes and traditions,” she writes, noting that the two holidays dearest to her husband’s parents — Thanksgiving and Passover – both center on food. ”For Jon and me, these two holidays are sacrosanct,” she writes. “The common thread of these two holidays is one of survival — Thanksgiving is about the pilgrims giving Thanks, and Passover celebrates the exodus of the Jewish People who left Egypt, the land of oppression, for a new life of freedom.”

Mia says she cherishes the “connectivity across generations,” and the way cultural, religious and culinary heritage passes from generation to generation. “Food brings people together,” she writes. “Thanksgiving is a Miller tradition that was handed down by Mom and Dad to us, from us to our sons, and I hope, in some part, to our grandsons and granddaughters when they become adults.” She ended her essay with a quote from a favorite American musical. “As Tevvye in Fiddler on the Roof used to say: Tradition, Tradition!”

Anna Nessy Perlberg was born in Czechoslovakia. Her mother, Julia Nessy, was an opera singer, and her entire family was devoted to the arts. Her father was Jewish, and when Hitler seized Prague in 1939 she and her two older brothers and their parents left their beloved city for New York.

Anna met her poet husband Mark when they both were students at Columbia. They were married in 1953, and a few years later Mark took a job with Time Magazine that sent him to its Chicago bureau. Anna found work in education and social work. Her last stint was as Director of Blind Service Association (a Chicago non-profit I cherish), and years after retiring she enrolled in one of the memoir-writing classes I lead. Here’s a story she read in class about her first years in Chicago.

by Anna Nessy Perlberg

Anna Nessy Perlberg reads from The House in Prague. Photo by: Diana Phillips, courtesy Lincoln Park Village

It was the middle fifties, and Mark and I had just moved to Chicago. My mother was with us for the holiday. The Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik was also in Chicago. He learned that mother was visiting us and so he came to visit her at our house.

He and mother had concertized together and although there was a difference in their ages — mother was quite a bit older than he — they were good friends.

When he arrived, they embraced and mother introduced Mark and me to him. Then they started to speak in Czech and to recall old times. Suddenly, Kubelik put his face in his hands, saying “It’s almost Christmas Eve, and I don’t have a vanocka.” Vanocka is the Czech version of the German stollen — a sweet cake-like bread, filled with almonds and raisins.

Kubelik looked so sad. Mark and I stared at him and then looked at each other. Simultaneously we had the same thought. After a minute or so, we excused ourselves, saying that we had an errand we’d almost forgotten, but that we’d be back.

We jumped in our car and drove to the Czech section of town on Cermak Street, a street, by the way, that was named after Anton Cermak, an immigrant from an area in Austria-Hungary that is now part of the Czech Republic. (Cermak was mayor of Chicago from 1931 until 1933, when he was at an appearance with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and died from an assassin’s bullet intended for the President-elect.)

in the 1950s there were three Czech bakeries on Cermak. The first one was all sold out of vanockas. Same for the second one. But the third had one left. When we told the Czech saleslady for whom our vanocka was intended, she wrapped it with special care and put a huge red ribbon around it.

Then back in the car and to our neighborhood. We were pretty sure that Kubelik had already left our house, but he had told Mother where he was staying. We drove to the Belden-Stratford Hotel, and told the people at the desk that we had a special delivery for Mr. Kubelik. They sent us up to his room.

Golden Alley Press published The House in Prague.

We knocked and when he opened the door, I said “Vesele Vanoce” (Merry Christmas) and we handed him the vanocka. He was surprised, then understood and hugged us both.

I think of it now, and like to remember that on that occasion Mark and I made someone special feel especially happy with a simple gift of a loaf of special Christmas bread.

The House in Prague, Anna Nessy Perlberg’s memoir of leaving Prague in 1939 and making a new Life in America, was Published this past summer. With immigration in the news, her story is very timely – her publisher, Golden Alley Press, says Anna’s book allows readers to “witness the family’s escape and voyage to Ellis Island and Anna’s struggle to become an American girl in a city teeming with immigrants and prejudice.”

We put the finishing touches on our trip to Scotland this past week, booking a hotel in Edinburgh. In truth, it’s as much a trip to England as Scotland. We’ll first be visiting with our friend Jim at his place in London, then up to his father’s in the North of England, which is how we began our honeymoon back in 1984. We’ll overnight there, breakfast with Jim’s father, and Jim will drive us to Newcastle, where we’ll take the train to Edinburgh.

But not before we have a Newcastle Brown Ale, which is exactly what we did when we embarked back in 1984. Remember, there was no craft beer here in the states, as impossible as that seems in an age when you get raspberry infused IPA with rare hops from an obscure valley in the Ruhr with just the right amount of citrus. I’m making that up, of course. Well, at least I think I am.

Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert were the headliners. Others included Peter Capaldi (you know, the current Dr. Who).

Anyway, a Newcastle Brown Ale, to a person weaned on mass-brewed American beers, well, that was exotic. And delicious.

I don’t remember a lot of details about the trip—but certain vignettes stand out. The crescent-shaped streets of Edinburgh. Walking the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle. Stopping at a little shop where Beth bought a beautiful blue sweater of a type and quality that was, and maybe still is, exclusive to Scotland. Staying at a B&B called Mrs. McCreedy’s, and eating breakfast with her grown son, a comically sour man given to grousing about Americans and America.

Back then, Edinburgh was just the start of our trip. We rented a car in the city centre, I sat on the wrong side and shifted the manual transmission with the wrong hand, hopped a curb on a left turn that felt like a right turn, and we were off—without another traffic incident. Actually, a bicycle ran into us—or did we graze it?—in a traffic circle days later. No harm, no foul. Apart from that, we had to stop a lot for sheep.

I remember being struck by how American Pop Music was playing everywhere we went. “I just called to say I love you,” by Stevie Wonder, was ubiquitous. On the recommendation of someone, we can’t remember who, we made our way to a little village called Oban, where I had my first single-malt scotch. And at a little seaside church, we attended a service for the fishermen who were out on the sea, where prayers were said for their safe return. My lasting memory: The piano player was an ancient woman named Helen.

Helen was a good sport but her tempo was a bit slow for the pastor, who at one point during a hymn crouched down alongside the upright piano, pretended to turn a big imaginary crank, and shouted, “Can you speed it up a bit, Helen!” Imagine Scotty from Star Trek yelling about the engines and that completes the scene.

Mark Knopfler did the soundtrack, which is superb in its own right. Gerry Rafferty has a song on it, too.

I think our Oban experience is partly why to this day, “Local Hero,” a quirky and lovely little film about an American oilman who lands in a tiny Scottish seaside town and is charmed by the locals, is still among my all-time favorites.

And there was Inverness, where we stayed in a converted royal hunting lodge for one night, which happened to be the last night it was open for the season. We were the only guests, so we got royal treatment. We’d been sleeping in B&Bs and the floors of friends’ apartments: It was a luxurious way to end our time in Scotland. After dinner, Beth stayed upstairs in our room and took a hot bath. I headed downstairs where I learned from the staff how to play snooker, and was treated to their favorite local spirits.

There is one other thing about that trip—which I hadn’t thought about until I uploaded the photograph in last week’s post. I mentioned that we saw a lot of sheep on our trip. It was while looking at a flock of them that Beth first began to see spots. She asked me, in fact, whether they were funny kind of sheep that were supposed to look that way.

We didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of the end of Beth’s vision. That was October and it was gone by the following July.

It struck me that when I think of our honeymoon, I never think: Beth could see back then! At least not until I looked at that photo of her feeding the gulls.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I think it’s neither. What I remember is what a grand time we had.

I expect it’ll be every bit as grand in January.