The Stork Dropped Us

That night we slept over at the home of distant cousins, Shifra and Alfred Appel. By then our luggage had been found and delivered. Shifra was not sure that she wanted us sticking around for long. Patty sensing her reticence, suggested that we her give her the Nina Ricci perfume that had been bestowed upon us by Air France as "first class passengers".  After receiving our token gift, Shifra  mellowed out a bit, but not much.

She woke us up at 6:00 am the next morning. The Israeli sun was already creeping through our curtains. "If you're gonna find a kibbutz that will take you girls in, you'd better hit the downtown offices first thing in the morning." she said.

The first kibbutznick flatly refused us."There's no way that we can take responsibility for a 14 year old girl." he said tersely. We were sent on our way. We traipsed from one office to the next that morning - all sang the same tune.

Finally, I remembered a youth movement from when I'd been in Haifa three years ago - It was left leaning, Shomar Hatsair - The Young Guardians.  When we presented ourselves, the burly man behind the desk said, "Okay. Even a girl of 14 can work."

They put us on a bus headed for Ashkelon and told the Egged driver to let us off at the road to Sde Yoav.  It was a brand new kibbutz and the driver had never heard of it - but they told him that it was cross the road from Kibbutz Negba which had been around forever.

We didn't have excessive luggage, but it was still a schlep from where the driver left us off to the entrance of Sde Yoav. We trudged down one long dusty road. We were greeted with little formality and immediately put to work.  Our job was to remove rocks from a big open field that was needed for seeding.

Neither of us were sissy kids; I for one, had worked with my father for years lifting and hoisting and my sister was willing to give it a go.  We set to work in the heat of the day with a few other volunteers. Our sole task was to bend down, pick up rocks of varied configurations, and heave them into a huge pile. As I bent over for maybe the twenty-seventh time, I remember having the distinct feeling that a stork had opened his beak and dropped us down on this God forsaken plot of earth.

We toiled away that day and the next - By the third day, watery boils were sprouting on our arms and it was agreed that we each had a case of sunstroke. Our crew leader said, "Listen to me, you sisters, both of you, go to the Dining Hall and make yourself useful over there."

Our work in the Dining Hall was heaven compared to where we'd been.  They taught us to mop floors with their Israeli mops which were sticks with rags over them, way different from our string mops back home. We peeled potatoes sitting on overturned plastic tubs out on the back porch. We refilled salt shakers, placing a little rice in the bottom of each shaker so that the salt wouldn't harden up.

This all went on for about ten days when my sister began to get restless. I'd stayed with an Israeli family in Haifa as an exchange student in 64'. Patty phoned them and asked if she could come for a visit. They agreed to a few days.

"I've had enough of this drudgery," Patty complained, "I've gotta move, I've gotta see what's going on. I'm headed out. I'll take a bus from the top of the road."
"Come on, you can't just go wandering around the country, all on your own." I argued.
"Yes, I can," she replied.
 Before I could say more, she'd set off up the dusty road.

Some days later, it could have been a week, I was out in the fields picking peaches with the others. A soft breeze blew through the nearby willows and the sun was strident, but not overly so. Gazing up, I saw Patty on the horizon. She appeared off in the distance, a silhouette, something like a woman from the days of Abraham carrying an urn on her head. As she drew closer, I saw that she was wearing a new dusty blue tank top, on her feet were a pair of bonafide Israeli sandals. She returned victorious and in high spirits. I couldn't help feeling a tinge of envy.