LEVINE:

(laughs) Good for you. Okay, now we're going. Alright, it's December 27, the year 2004.

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

I'm here in Boynton Beach, Florida, with Harry Sablerolle.

SABLEROLLE:

Sablerolle. That's alright.

LEVINE:

Sablerolle. Sablerolle. Who came here from the Netherlands in 1920 when he was ten years of age.

SABLEROLLE:

Right.

LEVINE:

And at the time of this interview, Mr. Sablerolle is ninety-four.

SABLEROLLE:

Ninety-four.

LEVINE:

Ninety-four. And I want to say that Mr. Sablerolle's sister, Jeanne Bisignano, is also in our collection. She was interviewed by me

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

A few years ago. Okay, this is Janet Levine for the National Park Service. If we could start by your saying your name when you were born and your birth date.

SABLEROLLE:

When I was born was

LEVINE:

Try not to touch that.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, it's alright.

LEVINE:

Okay, 'cause it'll make static. Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

It was A-R-I-E, Arie.

LEVINE:

Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

And when the Second World War broke out, I joined the Merchant Marine. And I was a, a, a sailor, during the war years, I was married to my first wife. And she knew I liked banana crème pie, so I was able to call her up from New York, we landed in New York, and I went to Leonia, where I was living at that time. We had our own house, so she made some banana crème pies for me.

LEVINE:

(laughs) That's great. Well, what was your birth date? You know your birth date?

SABLEROLLE:

My, my birthday? June 10, 1910.

LEVINE:

And Sablerolle was the, was the family name when you were born?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, family name.

LEVINE:

And your mother's name?

SABLEROLLE:

Cornelia.

LEVINE:

Cornelia, and Hesther was her last name, is that right?

SABLEROLLE:

See, I don't know.

LEVINE:

Okay, well this is on your, I'm looking at your birth certificate here, which is going to be on file

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

In the oral history office.

SABLEROLLE:

The birth certificate has got all of that on there.

LEVINE:

Yeah. And, I guess your father's name?

SABLEROLLE:

Was Christoffel.

LEVINE:

Christoffel.

SABLEROLLE:

I never knew him 'cause he died before I was old enough to remember him.

LEVINE:

Oh, okay. And you spelled his first name C-H-R-I-S-T-O-F-F-E-L.

SABLEROLLE:

Christoffel.

LEVINE:

And, and, and your mother's name, Cornelia, and Hester, H-E-S-T-H-E-R, must have been her maiden name.

SABLEROLLE:

Maiden name, yeah.

LEVINE:

And your full name was Arie Adrianus.

SABLEROLLE:

I never use that second name.

LEVINE:

You never use. (laughs) Okay, okay. And say where in the Netherlands you were born, what town.

SABLEROLLE:

In Riswjick.

LEVINE:

Riswjick, and that's, before you said, it was between Delft and the Hague.

SABLEROLLE:

Hague, yeah.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Okay. Now you must have memories of Riswjick.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah.

LEVINE:

Yeah. When you think of it now, what are the things you remember most?

SABLEROLLE:

Ah, beautiful, see my father, he had to retired, and fruit, fruit orchards, we had every kind of apples, pears, plums, whatever grew in that neighb, in that vicinity, we had them in our yard. And we had quite a bit of property there. And with all these fruit trees, we had a walnut tree, a f, fig vine, and, excuse me, all kinds of fruit, all kinds of berries, and, oh

LEVINE:

So you say your father was retired?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, he was retired before I was born, you know?

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

Long ago. Did, didn't Jeanne tell you this?

LEVINE:

Well, I'll tell you, I can't remember everything

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah.

LEVINE:

Now that she said because it's been a while, but, but, in other words, he was with, he was older then, maybe, was he an older man when you were born?

SABLEROLLE:

(?) I don't remember him.

LEVINE:

You don't remember him, right. So, but did you have grandparents when you lived in

SABLEROLLE:

I don't remember.

LEVINE:

You don't know. Did you have aunts and uncles around, you remember any?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah, my, my mother's

LEVINE:

Relatives?

SABLEROLLE:

In fact, that was a, the real nice of everything, she had a brother, Joe, and a brother, John, in fact, I don't know if you'll read it in a paper or heard it on tv about the floods they have in (?) Jakarta, she had a brother in Jakarta, was Chief-of-Police of Jakarta, and he used to send us a package every once in a while with all the, he'd married a native woman there. In fact, the lady across the street, her daughter-in-law, oh, us, son's wife, that's her daughter-in-law, right? Is it, has the cutest little baby. (laughs)

LEVINE:

Baby?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, she is the cutest little thing.

LEVINE:

(laughs)

SABLEROLLE:

She's about two years old now, and

LEVINE:

Well, tell me more about, about Riswjick. What, what, what else, did you go to school there?

SABLEROLLE:

We went to school. There was a canal that ran in front of our house, but then there was a small canal where we had a, a bridge that we could raise or lower, you know? And the gypsies used to come there, you know, and as soon as the gypsies come, we'd raise the bridge.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

Over this was like a small canal. But the big ca, was a road, and then the big canal, and in the morning, there was a, a, a bridge, I don't know, about a mile or so down. And, and the man used to wait for us, the one that used to turn the bridge to let the ships go by, and he was to wait for us and let us get on the bridge

LEVINE:

(laughs)

SABLEROLLE:

Before he turned it around, so the ships could go, well, ships, I don't know what they're, ships

LEVINE:

But they were boats, anyway?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, we were both very young, and we used to get such a kick out of that, you know, the bridge turning

LEVINE:

And you'd be on it?

SABLEROLLE:

On it, yeah.

LEVINE:

Wow. Now, what else did you do? Did you, did you ice skate in the winter? Did you go ice skating?

SABLEROLLE:

I never learned to ice skate. (laughs)

LEVINE:

Ice skate. Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

But there was a lot of ice skating there

LEVINE:

Skating. Yeah. Let me get, let me take this,

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, that, that's alright.

LEVINE:

Alright, here, let me put it over here so you don't have to, okay. So, and, and what else did you do for fun when you were little in Ryswyk?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, my sister, Jeanne, and I, we used to go there, and there was a place down the street from us, but quite a ways down, and we used to go visit that, and they, that was the first time I saw a colored person. And, and I fell into the canal one day, and I managed to get back up again, and I was soaking wet, you know, so says, my sister, Jeanne, says, "Oh, gee, you go home, and they, they'll see that we was near the canals." So that was one thing. Then

LEVINE:

Were you not supposed to go near the canals?

SABLEROLLE:

Well, we was never told not to, but that was understanding, you know?

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

And then once they bought me a little goat.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

And we went to, to Hague, mother and I, we used to go, and when we came back, the little goat was dead.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

You never, never had such a disappointment in all your life as that little goat (?) dead.

LEVINE:

Oh, yeah, well. Yeah. And, and what else, did you have other animals while you were growing up?

SABLEROLLE:

No, but, but we had a place in the yard where people, I don't know, one year we had a man to take care of all the trees, trim them and everything like that, and, what was I talking about?

LEVINE:

You were saying that you had a man, he took care of all the trees

SABLEROLLE:

Trees, yeah.

LEVINE:

And what, can you describe your house?

SABLEROLLE:

It's pretty hard to describe. It was or, ordinary house, but Jeanne, she must have told you.

LEVINE:

She probably did describe it. How about the town you lived in, Riswjick, do you, what do you remember about that town?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yes, go to, have to go to church in a, on a Sunday, and instead of going to church, we take the money, and we, there was a candy store there, we used to buy candy. (laughs)

LEVINE:

What church did you belong to?

SABLEROLLE:

(?)

LEVINE:

Were, were you Catholic, Protestant?

SABLEROLLE:

Protestant. There was something like, when my mother died or my, my fa, father died or to get married, he had a, he had to bring the children up Catholic, and mother said, in fact, this is one of the things that I remember, "(?)." That's mother for

LEVINE:

Mother.

SABLEROLLE:

That's the one that's worth, that I remember.

LEVINE:

What was your mother like? How do you remember your mother when she, when you were a little boy in, in Ryswyk?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, she, I forgive her for bringing us over to this country. Now a woman with four children going to a different country, she had a sister over here that was married to a, a, a sailor, I think. Anyway, she married him, and the sis, I mean, I don't know this for, for sure, but I think her sister wanted her to come over here, was more opportunities here, you know? So my mother didn't have any sense of money or anything like that. Parties, oh, I remember at Christmas time, that's why I couldn't go over there. They used to have parties and invite all, all kinds of drinks, and they used to have some kind of a drink where they had grapes or something like that they put in there, they give them to the kids, you know?

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

And, and the, the, see I don't remember now.

LEVINE:

Do, when you had Christmas, did you have like a Christmas tree and things like that?

SABLEROLLE:

See, I don't remember that.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

But I know that with a lot of people used to come to the house, and they used to have big parties there, all kinds of drinks and all kinds, and they had some special kind of cake they used to make (?), that's, just came out now (laughs).

LEVINE:

Really? You know how to spell that?

SABLEROLLE:

What?

LEVINE:

Could you possibly spell that?

SABLEROLLE:

(laughs)

LEVINE:

No, okay. (laughs) Say it again, though.

SABLEROLLE:

Spikolas [ph]

LEVINE:

Spikolas, okay.

SABLEROLLE:

Spikolas. And they used to have all these fancy cakes they used to give to people.

LEVINE:

So this was when your father was alive or it was after your father died?

SABLEROLLE:

No, it was my father died.

LEVINE:

Yeah, so you don't really even remember your father?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No, but, but, did your mother have to work after your father died?

SABLEROLLE:

Who?

LEVINE:

Did your mother have to work after your father died?

SABLEROLLE:

No, she'd

LEVINE:

She was okay, yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

She was alright

LEVINE:

She had, you had the land and the fruit trees.

SABLEROLLE:

I think she worked in some kind of cannery, place where they used to put food in cans years ago, you know. I think she worked there before she was married.

LEVINE:

I see. Do, do you remember going to school in Ryswyk?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No. But do you remember why your mother came when she did? Why she decided, and you had two other sisters? What did you have? You had, you had Jeanne

SABLEROLLE:

Jeanne.

LEVINE:

And you.

SABLEROLLE:

And Chris, Polonia, that was the youngest one, and the oldest one was Christine, and she, she was the oldest, they're both dead now. So Jeanne is the only sister I got left.

LEVINE:

What, so when your mother came, she came with her four children?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

Wow. And do you remember leaving? Do you remember getting, did your mother sell the house and the, and the, and the fruit trees?

SABLEROLLE:

No. It was made in the will that my father had left that the house was not to be sold until, until the youngest daughter was twenty-one.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

So the place was rented out, and the check used to come every once in a while, you know? I, I mean, I don't know too much

LEVINE:

Yeah, right.

SABLEROLLE:

About that, I was young. But in Edgewater, where we went, there was a little store, and everything you bought there, they put it on the books, you know, on, like years ago, they used to do that.

LEVINE:

Yeah, right.

SABLEROLLE:

And then when we'd get the check, we'd go in, pay the bill, and (laughs) oh yeah, I remember that Moran's was their name, Moran's, the grocery store, so, so, so we'd pay the bill, and the woman always had a big bag there, and she'd put in a lot of candies for us kids.

LEVINE:

Oh. Yeah. Well, when, when your mother left, do you remember anything she brought with her when she came to this country?

SABLEROLLE:

There, there was a, this I remember so vividly, was a heavy blanket.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

(laughs) Why

LEVINE:

Why do you remember that.

SABLEROLLE:

Why I think

LEVINE:

How about you as a little boy? Did you bring any favorite thing with you that you remember?

SABLEROLLE:

No, I remember I had a stamp collection, and I went to the hospital or something like that, and when I came back, the stamp collection was, I don't know what happened to it.

LEVINE:

You mean over there?

SABLEROLLE:

No

LEVINE:

Over here.

SABLEROLLE:

Ove, over, yeah, over there.

LEVINE:

Really? Oh. That must have been a disappointment. Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, it was a very, I cried because (laughs) because my stamp collection.

LEVINE:

Stamps, yeah. So, so tell me what your mother was like. What was her personality? How would you describe her? Was she strict, was she

SABLEROLLE:

No, she wasn't very strict. In fact, oh yeah, that I remember is to go out and pick an apple for the teacher, and we'd go looking around the, the, it was a big yard, I mean, there's nothing like around here, it's a great big, big walnut tree in the corner, and we'd pick the apples, and we'd give 'em to the teacher and that, you know, that put us up on the top, and

LEVINE:

Did you play in the orchards too?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah. Oh, oh yeah, the, somebody came along, and they fix a little patch for us, and they gave us seeds to put in, seeds, so we could see the stuff grow. Each one of us had, had their own little

LEVINE:

Oh, that's nice.

SABLEROLLE:

Little patch there, you know?

LEVINE:

Yeah, yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

And, then, then during, during the war years, the, I think my father had a son that lived, not next door to us, but a little ways down, and there was this property in between, and, oh yes, soldiers were stationed there with, with the, with the horses, you know? And every once in a while we'd go over there, and the soldiers would put us up on a horse, you know?

LEVINE:

Oh, so the soldiers were friendly to you.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah, very friendly.

LEVINE:

Were they, what, what, were they Dutch soldiers?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, sure. Dutch, Dutch soldiers.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Do you remember anything else about World War I? That would be the war that

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

you, when you were there.

SABLEROLLE:

The house on the other side of the canal, there was holes in there like where by bullets or what (?), I don't know, but

LEVINE:

So did you see, I mean, in other words, in your town, was there any fighting?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No.

SABLEROLLE:

Not that I know of.

LEVINE:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you remember leaving home, leaving your home in Ryswyk?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah. We went to the city, and we went to the school there for a little while. And I remember, you know, in those days, fencing was a big, big thing, so they had the, the guards there for your face and the fencing, and I remember playing around (coughs) around there, and our house had a, a big a, attic, like, you know, you could walk around on that, and in, in the, in the floor they used to pick the apples, and they used to take 'em to the bakeries to dry them, I, I don't know why, but I guess, then the apples were, all the good apples were laid, laid on the floor of this attic.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

And we had all kinds of rings there, you know, like, exercise and

LEVINE:

Oh, like, like a gym, a

SABLEROLLE:

Gym, yeah.

LEVINE:

In the attic?

SABLEROLLE:

In the attic. Was a very big attic, you know.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Was gymnastics a big thing in school?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No.

SABLEROLLE:

I don't remember that (laughs).

LEVINE:

Remember that. Well, how about leaving home? What happened when you left? How did you leave? What did you ta, what kind of transportation did you take to the port?

SABLEROLLE:

I don't remember that.

LEVINE:

Okay, and then, you mu, you either left from Rotterdam or Amsterdam.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, Rotterdam, I think.

LEVINE:

In Rotterdam.

SABLEROLLE:

In fact, the ship's name was "The Rotterdam."

LEVINE:

"The Rottderdam." Okay, and, and then do you remember anything about, aboard "The Rotterdam" when you were coming to this country?

SABLEROLLE:

The only thing I remember is, was a lot German people there, and the German people used to be at the bar, and they used to put, I think, salt or something in their beer.

LEVINE:

Oh. (laughs)

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, I don't know why, but

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

They did that, and we used to go up (laughs) to watch them.

LEVINE:

And

SABLEROLLE:

You know, you must excuse me for the appearance of the place.

LEVINE:

Oh please, it's fine, it's fine. Don't apologize. Oh, and so, okay, so were you down in steerage? Were there a whole bunch of people?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, no, no.

LEVINE:

No.

SABLEROLLE:

Was

LEVINE:

A cabin?

SABLEROLLE:

A big cabin?

LEVINE:

And who was in the cabin? Just your family?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, oh yeah, just the family.

LEVINE:

Yeah, and do you remember when the ship, when "The Rotterdam" came into the New York Harbor? Do you remember when the ship came into New York?

SABLEROLLE:

We saw the Statue of Liberty, you know, no, nobody has any idea what it is to be away and to come in and see.

LEVINE:

Oh. Did you know as a little boy what the Statue meant? Did you, had you known about

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No.

SABLEROLLE:

(crying) You know we were in America.

LEVINE:

Yeah, were you looking forward to it?

SABLEROLLE:

I don't remember that. (crying) Excuse me.

LEVINE:

That's okay, it's okay. So, so, in other words, after you saw the Statue of Liberty, then you must have gone to Ellis Island.

SABLEROLLE:

Well, the, the ship had a, a pier in Hoboken.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

I don't know if you've ever heard of Hoboken.

LEVINE:

Yeah, I've heard of it. So, so you got off there? Is that where you got off or did, what happened?

SABLEROLLE:

I think we got off there, and they took us to Ellis Island.

LEVINE:

Oh, okay. And, do you have any, any memory of Ellis Island?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, the only thing, I had a sore throat, and they swabbed, and they made me open my mouth, and they put iodine in, in the, in the throat, on the throat, or, and then somebody there let us go.

LEVINE:

So you had to stay there overnight?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah, we stayed there about four days.

LEVINE:

And it was because of your sore throat?

SABLEROLLE:

Throat, yeah.

LEVINE:

So the whole family stayed or just you

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, no, the whole family.

LEVINE:

Now when you were staying there, did you have to go into the hospital?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No, they just were watching you.

SABLEROLLE:

They, they just painted the, the throat with iodine, something, I think it was iodine, it burned like mad.

LEVINE:

Yeah. So then where did the fa, who met you? Who met you at Ellis Island and, and, and took you to, I guess New Jersey, right?

SABLEROLLE:

Ellis Island that took us to the Battery Park, and from there

LEVINE:

Did your aunt meet you? Your mother sister?

SABLEROLLE:

What?

LEVINE:

Did your mother sister come to meet you?

SABLEROLLE:

Gee, I don't remember.

LEVINE:

Remember. But where, did you go to Edgewater first? Is that where you went?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, Edgewater.

LEVINE:

And how long did you stay there?

SABLEROLLE:

I think a couple of, a couple of weeks, that's the most.

LEVINE:

Oh, that's all.

SABLEROLLE:

And then we found an apartment.

LEVINE:

Where was that?

SABLEROLLE:

In Edgewater.

LEVINE:

Oh, in Edgewater.

SABLEROLLE:

It was in Edgewater. Not far from where we were staying, and mother got a job right away.

LEVINE:

Was this in the canning factory?

SABLEROLLE:

No, that was in a place where they made, at that time, women wore big shawls made of feathers and stuff like that, in a place like that.

LEVINE:

Oh, so she worked, and I guess you kids went to school.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, I've got a little pin where I went to school. I'll show it.

LEVINE:

Oh, well, well wait, we've got the microphone on you. Maybe, maybe you could hold it 'til we finish, and then you show it to me, okay?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, sure. Remind me

LEVINE:

Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

Because I forget too things.

LEVINE:

Okay, so, so you went to school, and what was it like for you, you didn't know any English?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, the teachers were crazy for us, you know, they, they wanted us in their classroom.

LEVINE:

Wow.

SABLEROLLE:

So my two oldest, my Jeanne and the oldest sister went to one class, and Polonia and me went to a different class, and I remember the first thing Arm and Hammer soda.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

See, they had the, like a stand there with all kinds of boxes and stuff and there was what it was, and we, we learned, we learned English very fast. In fact, mother, she used to get the paper, you know, and tried to read the paper, and she, she learned, learned very fast too. And

LEVINE:

Did the kids treat you like a greenhorn? Did they call you names or anything?

SABLEROLLE:

No, no.

LEVINE:

No.

SABLEROLLE:

They were all very nice. That's where I had this accident in Edgewater.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

See, New Year's Eve, I asked my mother could I go outside and go sleigh riding with the kids. "Oh, go ahead." So, there was a big hill there called Oxen Hill, Oxen Hill, and this was a very narrow road, but it had big stones on one side, like on a downhill side, and the kids during the day had piled up a, a big snow bank a, across the road there, you know, and the kids would go down and hit this and go flying, and I must have hit it crooked or something like that, and I went into those stones

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

And I had my jaw broke, my nose broke, my chin broke, I was in Saint Mary's Hospital in Hoboken for, I don't know how long, about three months, I know

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

Would visit, visit us, visit me, and see, of course, I was alright, except my head was all bandaged up, you know, and I, for, for three days, oh not three days, all the time I was in the hospital, I used to, not solid food, but drink through a straw, a glass straw they had there. And, this must be awful.

LEVINE:

No, it's interesting. How old were you when the accident happened? Had you been in this country very long?

SABLEROLLE:

No, only about two or three years at the most.

LEVINE:

So what was it like for a little boy to be in the hospital for three months?

SABLEROLLE:

The sisters, the, you know

LEVINE:

Oh, the

SABLEROLLE:

It was a Catholic hospital. The sisters used to take me, and like every payday they used to go certain factories, you know, and they'd just sit there, and people used to put money in there. And they also take me along. (laughs)

LEVINE:

(laughs) They took you with them?

SABLEROLLE:

What?

LEVINE:

They took you to the factories?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, one sister would take me to the fac, well, I don't know if it was a factory or, it was a place of business anyway. They used to take me with them, you know, my head (laughs) all bandaged up. Oh god.

LEVINE:

Gosh, well, so you, did you work at all while you were growing up? Did you have to work? Did you have to get a job?

SABLEROLLE:

Gee, I don't remember. Oh yeah, then we were just about ready to go out of school, finish school, and mother got married to a guy. Oh, he was alright, but he lived up in Fort Lee, New Jersey. I don't know if you know Fort Lee.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

Fort Lee, and we moved into his house. And there on, I started different jobs.

LEVINE:

What kind of jobs did you take? Now did you go to high school?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No, you went, from grade school you went

SABLEROLLE:

I went to high school, but my eyes were so bad that I couldn't see the blackboard, you know,

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

I could see the blackboard, but I couldn't see the writing on there. So I did that for about a week or so, and I said, oh, I don't want no high school. So I got out of school. Then, then I married this lady from, from Germany in Leonia. She had come, at that time, people from foreign countries they had to come here if they had a job, you know, so she, she had a job, oh yeah, we got married.

LEVINE:

Did you stay very long in Fort Lee? Did you live in Fort Lee very long?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah, quite a while.

LEVINE:

And then when you got married, you went to Leonia?

SABLEROLLE:

Leonia, yeah.

LEVINE:

I see. And so what, what did your wife find a job, how, what kind of job did she have that she could come here?

SABLEROLLE:

Well then she worked for a place in Palisade Park

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

That was making pajamas for, ladies pajamas, and she was a very good sewer because she had learned her trade in Germany, and the people that liked her put her on collars was, was very hard to do because the collars, you know, they were exactly the same size, so I told her quit the job. So she quit the job, and the man that owned the factory where they made the pajamas, he come to my house once and wanted to know, you know, what was, why she wasn't coming into work. So I said, "Oh, she quit, the job was too hard." Not too hard, but it was, had to be very (?).

LEVINE:

So what did you do? What did you do for work?

SABLEROLLE:

All this pausing doesn't affect the

LEVINE:

No, it's fine.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah, I worked in a gas station by a fellow by the name of Smith. His wife had had three or four or five kids. And I worked for him for a long time. And then his kids grew up, and he fired me to, well didn't fire me, he told me well, my services were no longer required. So, oh yeah, we, we bought a golf driving range.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

So the golf driving range was, that was too much work, you know, was, had to cut the grass, that was in Paramus. In fact, my, my burial expenses and all that, I went here, and I, "Give me an estimate," and he'd give me an estimate to ship my body up there, and I'm going to be buried in the same place as Thelma, only Thelma's got a, a veterancy, her husband was a veteran, you know? So there's a, a special spot there for veterans, and (?) my first wife was buried there, so she was cremated, which was something she did on her, her own, pardon me. Yeah, (?). (?) long time we first moved down here. She went and had the cremation society fix the place for her, so her, her, when she died, her son was down here, he said he don't want to be cremated, I said, "Neither do I." So my first wife died.

LEVINE:

What was her name?

SABLEROLLE:

Emily.

LEVINE:

Emily, and how did you meet Emily? How did you meet her?

SABLEROLLE:

Gee, I don't remember. I don't remember.

LEVINE:

Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

But she, she got a job, the people that, Metropolitan Opera House, they were the, he was the, he took care of all the s, stage settings, and everything like that.

LEVINE:

Oh. Now the, is Emily the one who came from Germany?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, she came from Germany before we came from Holland.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

And

LEVINE:

Did you have children with Emily?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No.

SABLEROLLE:

No children, no, any kind.

LEVINE:

So, so you were saying, you worked in a gas station, and did you do mechanical work at all or did you, you just, you did the

SABLEROLLE:

No, this, this fellow was like a, like a brother to me, he, no mechanical work.

LEVINE:

And then after, after his sons grew up, and he said he didn't need you to work there, what did you do then?

SABLEROLLE:

We bought the golf ri, range.

LEVINE:

The golf range.

SABLEROLLE:

After the golf range, we got rid of that, that's when Jeanne's husband was still alive, you know.

LEVINE:

Well, let me ask you this. What do you feel proud of? What do you feel very satisfied about that you've done in your life? What makes you feel good when you think about having done that?

SABLEROLLE:

Mechanical.

LEVINE:

Oh yeah, you were good at that?

SABLEROLLE:

In fact, when I came down here, people with their lawn mowers and their weed whackers, and they, they wouldn't work anymore, they'd bring them over here, and I'd fix them up, but all the time I was down here, in fact, when, I got the big shed in the back, see I had that, well I bought the material when they made, made it two foot longer, so

LEVINE:

So you would take people's things and fix them up for them?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, I used to fix all the lawn mowers and everything. In fact, there's a le, bridge, oh yeah, that Thelma was the one that came down here, see that's, she came from New Orleans.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

She was born in New Orleans.

LEVINE:

Wow.

SABLEROLLE:

We went to, I keep telling the lady across the street, she was the one that invited me. It's later than you think. I don't know you'll remember Guy Lombardo?

LEVINE:

Yes.

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, well, his brother-in-law, I think it was his brother-in-law or son-in-law or some, so there she goes now.

LEVINE:

Oh, your neighbor?

SABLEROLLE:

(?) across the street. I keep telling her, (sings) "It's later than you think. Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink. The years go by as quickly as a wink. Enjoy yourself, enjoy your." I remember that song so well. She's a wonderful person, but she's from New York state, and she remembers my younger sister lived in Newburg.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

I think, yeah, Newburg, yeah. And she used to teach her son that's the one, he lives out in Virginia Beach. He's got a beautiful home out in Virginia Beach, and he's always saying about how smart she was, you know, well, she was smart in teaching the child when he was very young. They used to come to us in Leonia, and, gee, I know his father, his father was in, in Edgewater. I don't know, this is getting too

LEVINE:

Alright, well, let me just ask you a couple of more questions 'cause you're getting tired, I think.

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, I can answer questions.

LEVINE:

Yeah, okay. Do you think the fact that you came here as a ten year old boy and, and you started life again in another country, what, what difference do you think it made? In other words, if you had been born here, what would be the difference between having been born here and coming here later, and, you know, coming to a new place, and then

SABLEROLLE:

I don't think it made any difference at all.

LEVINE:

You don't think it did?

SABLEROLLE:

In fact, this is something I do remember now that you bring this up that Boynton Beach used to have a beautiful beach, you could sit there, and you'd look right out and everything, and I met a man there, and well, it was two or three people there, and I said, "See, I come from Holland." "Oh," he says, "You wouldn't want to live there now anymore." So that kind of set my

LEVINE:

Yeah. Would, did, did you ever think you would go back?

SABLEROLLE:

No, never went back.

LEVINE:

Did you ever want to?

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No. Wh, how about your mother? Was she happy she had come?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh yeah, she, sh, she, she made out, made out alright here.

LEVINE:

Yeah. Did she ever want to become a citizen?

SABLEROLLE:

She, oh, she became a citizen

LEVINE:

She did?

SABLEROLLE:

Right off the bat. She, she became a citizen and all the children less than twenty-one

LEVINE:

Became

SABLEROLLE:

Automatically became citizens.

LEVINE:

Right, right, right. Did, let me ask you sort of a funny question. Did you ever have any heroes in your life, people you looked up to whether you knew them personally or they were a public figure that

SABLEROLLE:

No.

LEVINE:

No. Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

I never looked at anybody that was better than me.

LEVINE:

Well, alright, yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

You see, well, television has ruined this country to begin with, but on television, all these baseball players getting fifty million dollars and thirty million dollars, what, what do they need that much money, you know? Believe me, I won't give you the figures. Oh yeah, we, we were here for a while, and Thelma, the last couple of years, she was, she had macular degeneration, I don't know if you know what that is.

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah, so she, she was practically blind, you know, and I had to take her to the doctors. I was getting older too, and I didn't pa, particularly care for that driving, but I was way up in the West, West Palm, oh forty-first street, that's West Palm, I guess, so I didn't mind taking her, and I made things very easy for her. I miss her so much.

LEVINE:

What about your eyes? You said you had bad eyes when you were in the, in the Merchant Marine, right? Your eyes were bad?

SABLEROLLE:

Well, see at that time, they were so hard getting seamen, so an AB is about the best that, I never had no AB certificate, and all the trips I made was as, as a, gee, I wouldn't want your job.

LEVINE:

Listen, all I was wondering was, you, you don't even wear glasses. Is, is your eyesight alright okay now?

SABLEROLLE:

What?

LEVINE:

I'm surprised you're not wearing glasses.

SABLEROLLE:

I've got glasses

LEVINE:

Oh, you wear them sometimes.

SABLEROLLE:

But I can see better without the glasses. (laughs)

LEVINE:

(laughs) I see, I see.

SABLEROLLE:

My eyesight is good. In fact, I got my driver's license only a year ago, less than a year ago.

LEVINE:

You just got it? You just got your driver's license?

SABLEROLLE:

Well, I had driver's license, but all they do is they test your eyes.

LEVINE:

And you were okay?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

I see your car in the driveway, so you're still driving.

SABLEROLLE:

I'm not supposed to drive at nighttime, but in the daytime, I go to the stores, I go to the doctors.

LEVINE:

I see.

SABLEROLLE:

(?)

LEVINE:

Wow. Well, is there anything else you can think of about, in other words, is there any advice you would give to so, some little ten year old boy who was immigrating to this country now?

SABLEROLLE:

(laughs) I think (?).

LEVINE:

(laughs) Well, t, t, how about, things that have changed. You must have seen a lot of changes.

SABLEROLLE:

I could write a book.

LEVINE:

What are the biggest changes that come to your mind about, that you've noticed?

SABLEROLLE:

People are getting wilder and more liberal.

LEVINE:

And you've been in Florida for over thirty years?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

Yeah, that's nice.

SABLEROLLE:

I said to my second wife, she had the boy at that time was coming out of school, you know, I said, "I can't stand this cold. Let's go to Florida," so in 1974, that's when the gas shortage was there, so I says, "Instead of the two of us going down and getting stuck somewheres, I'll go down, find a place, and if we like it, we'll stay there." So I came back home, and I said to her, "I found the place that I like, if you like it, we'll go down there." Believe it or not, the rent here was seventy dollars a year, a month.

LEVINE:

That's nice.

SABLEROLLE:

It's four hundred and thirty something dollars a month. So Jeanne was telling me, well she pays four thousand dollars taxes, well, four thousand taxes.

LEVINE:

That's a lot. In New Jersey, you mean?

SABLEROLLE:

In New Jersey, yeah.

LEVINE:

Yeah, well, I know they're all gone up. Well that's a big change too.

SABLEROLLE:

See, see when I moved in here, the man that owned this park, he was alive, and they come from Detroit, and his wife's, I don't know what his wife's name is, but anyway, Cookie, so I got him to sit aside one day, I says, "Why do they call her Cookie?" Well, in Detroit, there was a factory making crackers or some kind of cookies, and she used to get all the broken, broken cookies, you know that broke or had a chip on 'em, you sure I can't give you something to drink or something?

LEVINE:

No, I'm fine, I'm fine, thank you.

SABLEROLLE:

I've got crackers here.

LEVINE:

Well why don't we, why don't we finish up here, and then you can show me your, your pin

SABLEROLLE:

Oh.

LEVINE:

That you got. Okay, is there anything else, how about the Depression? Did the Depression affect your family in the thirties?

SABLEROLLE:

Not too much because both my mother and step-father was working at the Alcoa Aluminum Company, I don't know if you've ever heard of Alcoa

LEVINE:

Yeah, sure.

SABLEROLLE:

So we got along alright. I used to, I wasn't working steady, but I used to get different jobs here and there, fixing cars or doing this to automobiles, my brother-in-law had a (?), and I rebuild the motor for him, you know, I'm mechanically inclined.

LEVINE:

Okay.

SABLEROLLE:

And the, the first thing I did here is I planted all the trees in the backyard. I don't know if you

LEVINE:

Oh wow, I'll have to look when I go out.

SABLEROLLE:

I got a

LEVINE:

Yeah.

SABLEROLLE:

Mango tree, avocado tree, orange trees, I planted them

LEVINE:

That's wonderful.

SABLEROLLE:

And I used to have so much fruit to (?). I used to give them to the, see, Ted Miller, the one that owned, he's dead now, but he had a son that committed suicide right in the park here. He's got a daughter that's crippled that got a store in Lake Worth, married to a crippled guy.

LEVINE:

Well, tell, tell, is there anything you'd like to say about, about coming to this country before we close the tape? Anything else about before you came or coming here

SABLEROLLE:

No, I think that's why I joined the Merchant Marine, to be on the water.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

You know? And I think that's, that's helped me to decide that's what I wanted to do. And, oh yeah, I was working in the aluminum company at that time, and they wouldn't release me because it was a, a, oh,

LEVINE:

It had to do with the war effort, did it?

SABLEROLLE:

Yeah. Yeah, there, there was a, oh, I don't know, it was a job that they needed here.

LEVINE:

Right.

SABLEROLLE:

So they call up the

LEVINE:

The Merchant Marine?

SABLEROLLE:

The head of the Merchant Marine, downtown where that building was knocked down, right across the street from that was the Maritime

LEVINE:

Maritime

SABLEROLLE:

Service. Anyway, the guy says, he was the head of that, he said, "What do you need him for? What's the use of you making all that stuff if you can't send it over there?" (laughs)

LEVINE:

(laughs) That's good.

SABLEROLLE:

I remember that just like it was stamped on me.

LEVINE:

So in other words you think because you, because you spent your early years in Holland that you, and then you came across the ocean, you thought maybe the Merchant Marine would be the place

SABLEROLLE:

Well, being on the water, you know?

LEVINE:

Yeah. And did you enjoy your service?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, sure. The only thing that was better (?) paid too much to, everybody thinks the Merchant Marine was getting fabulous salaries, oh, but that's, that's when I was married to my first wife.

LEVINE:

Did you see action during World War II?

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, sure. In fact, right off Gibraltar, the ship in front of us was sunk.

LEVINE:

Oh.

SABLEROLLE:

I was in Africa, (?). There was a, a lot of people don't notice the French had part of their fleet there. The British came in, and they, they sunk most of the ships there, the French ships and the French were with (?), they was afraid that the French would give the ships to Germany or something like that, you know? So they sunk 'em (?) through the Suez Canal, and there's two (?) in the middle of the Suez Canal, big bit of lake and a little bit of lake, and they had to stop there because it was one-way traffic only (?). So we went swimming

LEVINE:

Oh, wow. Well, I, is there anything else you would like to say before we close? We're just about at the end of the tape.

SABLEROLLE:

No, you can close it.

LEVINE:

Okay, and I want to thank you for your interview

SABLEROLLE:

Oh, no, don't thank

LEVINE:

It was a pleasure, and I want to say that I'm, I've been speaking with Harry Sablerolle, who came at the age of ten years old from the Netherland. This is Janet Levine for the National Park Service signing off.