Beginnings

Life is indeed interesting with all its strange twists and turns. It would be impossible to foretell the life of a small baby. Who will he marry? Where will he live?

He was born to Russian immigrants in 1904 in New York City. When they entered the United States through Ellis Island in 1899, the family consisted of dad and mom, Phillip and Rachel Flievowitz Kshir, and 10 children. Since Kshir was not a common spelling to the workers at Ellis Island, the Americans decided the family needed a new spelling. So they became the Sheer family.

Twin girls were born to the couple in 1902 and then in 1904, Nathan entered this world only minutes before his mother left this world. Nathan, a good strong Hebrew name meaning ‘Gift from God.’ Phillip wondered if Rachel would have given him that name if she knew what was to happen to her because of him. With Rachel’s death, Phillip decided he could not care for the younger children, so he placed them in a Jewish Orphanage in Manhattan. The other 10 children were put to work in various menial jobs, in the hopes of putting food on the table.

The first fourteen years of Nathan’s life were spent in that orphanage. He knew his sisters were there, but since the orphanage was so big, and girls and boys were separated from each other, he only knew of the sisters and rarely saw them. In later years, Nathan (or Nick as he came to be known to his friends) seldom talked of that period of his life because it was not something he enjoyed recalling.

The older boys were put in charge of the younger ones and that job was taken very seriously. The little ones were ruled by dreaded fear of the older boys. If a little one were to get unruly, the older boys would just beat the little one until he was bloody, then hold him under the shower to get any trace of blood off of him. That was usually enough to get the others back in line for a while. Nick was a small person. At his mature height he stood only 5’ 2”. So as a young boy he was an easy one to catch and make an example of.

One Hanukkah celebration when he was very young and gifts were handed out all around, Nick got a fire truck with ladder and whistle, but when one of the older boys saw it he made Nick trade with him or run the risk of getting bloodied again. In return for the fire truck, a small plastic ladder with a clown was forced into his hands. The clown was supposed to climb up one side of the ladder and down the other. But the clown had been broken, so he wasn’t able to climb at all.

When Nick turned fourteen, his father came for him. He was put to work as an apprentice to a newspaperman and spent most of his day setting tiles for the printing of the paper. The ink from the tiles made his fingers and nails stay a constant black. He lived with his father and new stepmother. This was not to her liking and Nick and his father heard about that every day. At the end of the first 6 months of Nick’s newspaper job, his father had a cerebral hemorrhage and died.

The stepmother threw Nick out. She said she had no obligation to bring up someone else’s kid. Knowing that he had older brothers and sisters, Nick started looking them up. One after the other, his siblings all turned him down. They blamed him for the mother’s death, since she had died in childbirth with him. One of his brothers told Nick to meet him in the park at 7 PM. When they met, the brother gave Nick a worse beating than he had ever received in the orphanage. The brother was unemployed and angry at the world and saw an opportunity to take it out on the one who had made life a living hell for the past 14 years.

Nick spent many cold, lonely nights on a park bench. Someone told the boy that they were looking for captains’ helpers on the Merchant Marine ships at the docks. So he walked from ship to ship asking each captain for a job. Finally, one captain told him to go get a note from his parents, and he would take him on for one trip and see how he did. When Nick told the captain that both of his parents were dead, the captain barked, “Get on board!” For the next 15 years, the sea was home to Nick and he learned how to cook for as many as 700 men.

Then in 1933, Nick decided it was time to grow land legs. Because of his cooking experience, he was able to land cooking jobs in any of the many restaurants in New York City. He lost a couple jobs because he was Jewish and the head cooks were German, but he looked on the bright side. Nick knew he could always get another job and the experience he gained at each new restaurant just allowed him to add to his cooking abilities.

One night on his way back to his apartment, he met one of the boys who had been in the orphanage with him years earlier. The friend asked Nick to join him at a hot spot and get into the lucrative business where he was making money ‘hand-over-fist.’ Nick was interested. He liked cooking, but he knew he would never get rich. The friend pulled out a ‘gat’ and told Nick he would no doubt need that where he was going. Nick looked at the gun being offered him, thanked his friend and turned his back and walked away. How did a poor kid from the orphanage know enough to back away from this ‘opportunity’?

Nick needed a change. There were two ads in the paper for chef, and they both appealed to him. One was a position at the new La Guardia airport. But the other one was for a chef in the small town of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. It was time for him to get out of the city. As he opened the door of Schannaker’s Diner on his very first day of work, the most beautiful country girl he had ever seen greeted him. Together they became Mr. and Mrs. Sheer …Mom and Daddy to me!

© June 10, 2008
Judy Watters