For me PBS towers over every other television channel. It gives me so much enjoyment that I will continue to donate my monthly pittance even if I have to live on peanut butter sandwiches forever.
While looking for something interesting to watch on TV today, I happened to come across the last half-hour of the PBS show "Live from Lincoln Center." I don't often watch orchestras, but in this case a young man was playing a violin with such passion and sweetness it paralyzed my clicking finger on the remote. He was playing variations on a familiar Russian composition, and I watched it spellbound until the last note died away.
I learned that the violinist was Gil Strahan playing with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Apparently he is very well known in classical music circles. He followed up with a jolly and intricate piece accompanied by an attractive and sturdy young woman with shining black hair. He introduced her as his wife. It was she who reminded me of a little girl I played and was friends with from 1934 until about 1940.
Her name was Hilda Tolmach, and for a summer home her family bought a small farm with a big house about half a mile from my family's dairy farm. They actually lived in Brooklyn New York where her father was a well-known dentist. They were an orthodox Jewish family with just two children - Hilda and an older brother. In retrospect, I'm surprised they allowed her to play with a hoydenish pagan like me. I didn't know anything about kosher diets, and I never understood why I was shooed home at dinner-time.
Other than the fact that we were close to the same age, the only thing Hilda and I had in common was that we both played an instrument. I played a ukulele with which I accompanied myself singing cowboy songs. I knew 24 verses of "Little Joe the Wrangler". Hilda played classic violin, and she was so good that at about 12 years old she played second fiddle in a performances by an adult orchestra somewhere in upstate New York one summer. But for me she would retune her fiddle and join me in singing "Home on the Range" and other gems of the old west. As I said before, I can't understand why her parents let her play with me. Well - I did take her horseback riding fairly often. We had horses to ride.
One autumn they invited me to visit them at their home in Brooklyn. That was when the World's Fair was in New York. I can remember seeing the 'World of Tomorrow', a miniature world that amazed me with its freeways and so many cars whizzing around. We saw everything, and when we got blisters, we took off our shoes and soaked our feet in the Lagoon of Nations. We had a wonderful time! Hilda knew her way around on the subways, and she took me to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Central Park Zoo. One night her family took us to see Gilbert and Sullivan's light opera 'The Mikado". I was enchanted. It was a new world to me.
Later Hilda and I kept in touch by mail with our letters becoming less frequent as we grew away from each other in interests. Even I could tell that she had extraordinary talent, and her parents encouraged her in every way. I knew I was being left in the dust.
The last contact I had with my friend was after I had joined the WAVES. When my crew chief and I were married on the spur of the moment on a day we had liberty in Pensacola, I wrote and told Hilda I had married, and my new name that I gave her was pure German.
It was years before I realized how that must have made her feel. The Tolmachs had family in Europe, and they were probably heavily involved in trying to save their people from gas chambers in the concentration camps. It is no wonder I never heard from Hilda again. In her family's eyes I had joined the enemy camp.
Yet I remember her as a pretty little girl with soulful brown eyes and long brown pigtails who was always ready for anything I thought up to do. Through the years whenever I have seen classical orchestras on TV I have looked for Hilda in the string sections. I hope with all my heart that she had a good life.
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Comments: 13
A 'pure German' name!? Sort of shocking, sort of funny. If she is the good spirited friend of your childhood, then I doubt she noticed or maybe smiled realizing your innocence.
I wish you well and I wish her well.
The summer after my high school grduation in 1940, I took a summer job as a maid and cook at a resort home. There was a German au pair working next door. One night I went out with her to a roadhouse called "The Little Hoffbrau" and was shocked by the collective feeling of power and aarrogance of the crowd that they were a better breed of people than everyone else. I never before saw so many young strong blonde people in one place. They must have all been Nazis right here in the United States. It was about that time the Nazis had a mass rally at Madison Square Gardens.
I too, hope that someone who knows or knew Hilda will find you. Have you ever done an internet search on her name. Try the brother's name because if she married that makes it harder to find her.
Like you my friend I have a couple of childhood friends I often wonder about. I think because these friendships were formed and grew in the innocence of childhood, in many respects they were the most real friends we will ever know. As I read your story Rick came to mind, I have written a few stories about him on Gather. Although he has passed now he will always be in my memories, and I have never had a friendship as open and honest since then. We shared all our secrets holding nothing back, he was the brother in life I chose. I would love to hear one day that you found Hilda, who knows Ruth life takes some strange twists and turns. I hope one day I'm reading an article of yours describing how you ran into Hilda again. I hope you are well my friend ,take care.
Darcey.
TV being broadcast from one room to another, do you remember,everyone wore black lipstick, just brought that one back to me, take care Ruth.