Gertrude Eckert remembers:
When I was a child I used to play quite often with other kids at the yard of the Strauss’.
One thinks about it only later to find out what kind of people they were. As a child one
takes everything for granted, and only later one finds time to think. We were given
permission to play all kinds of games. The Floersheim girls, Bertel and Erika from
”Fuldaer Berg 20” used to come over. There always joined a bunch of rascals, and we
were allowed to do almost everything. You just can’t imagine, no proprietor of a
business would permit that nowadays! The Strauss’ used to buy up large amounts of
blueberries (huckleberries), often starting work at four o’ clock in the morning. Almost
every year they would be building, renovating or adding this and that. There were always
huge piles of sand at the yard. We would play and make a mess of everything. We took
the boxes for the berries and used them for counters to play shop. We just could do all of
that, although some of the stuff was useless afterwards, only later you think about that.
Well, when we played at the yard and got hungry, my, I wouldn’t go upstairs to our place,
I just went to the kitchen downstairs and said, ‘may I have a jelly sandwich?’, and that’s
what I got.
The Strauss’ was an ever welcoming home, and they were pious Jews. Actually, the big
kitchen had two different fittings, two cupboards, two stoves etc., one for ”Milchding”
(milchig) and one for ”Fleischding” (fleishig). For me as a child this kind of house
keeping was natural since I grew up with it. My fondest memories are of Sukkoth and
Shabbath, Sukkoth being the most beautiful of them.