 1928 - 2020 (92 years)
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| Name |
Stanley Jason Zarakov |
| Born |
08 Mar 1928 |
Boston, MA  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Died |
28 Sep 2020 |
Yucca Valley, C |
| Person ID |
I2 |
Zarakov Family History |
| Last Modified |
8 Jan 2022 |
| Father |
Barney Zarakov, b. 19 Mar 1900, Odessa, Russia , d. 21 Sep 1996, Yucca Valley, CA (Age 96 years) |
| Mother |
Sarah Berly, b. 25 Dec 1900, Elizavetgrad, Herson, Russia , d. 25 Oct 1984, Braintree, MA (Age 83 years) |
| Married |
02 Aug 1925 |
Boston, MA |
| Family ID |
F5 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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| Photos |
 | Left to Right top: Barney, Stanley and Sara (Berly) Zarakov
Front: Wilma Zarakov
(At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.) |
| Four Generations
Left to right:
Barney, Stanley, Milo and Simon Zarakov
June 1950, Milo was a little over one month old (At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.) |
| Judie, Wilma and Stanley Zarakov
Taken in 1945 (At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.) |
| Stanley and Wilma Zarakov
Stanley and Wilma Zarakov
1936 (At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.) |
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| Notes |
- Letter from Stanley Zarakov to Milo Zarakov
(from Milo's request that Stanley write down a few of his memories from growing up)
March 20, 2001
Dear Milo,
Your interest in my background is touching. I'll try to write something on a regular basis.
One thing I remember was getting my tonsils taken out. I heard that they gave you ice cream after you woke up. Well I remember them taking me to the O.R. A lot of white walls. They put a rubber mask on my face and Bingo I was in the recovery ward. One of 10-15 kids. I don't remember any ice cream though. I must have been about five years old.
I remember kindergarten. A large schoolroom (in Roxbury, we lived at 95 Harrishoff Street). There were a lot of wooden blocks, also a sand pile. The teacher would have us chase a reflection from a mirror that she moved around the room. I would walk home to the back of hour house. There was a tall retaining wall made out of large round fieldstones. It was maybe six feet high. I'd jump down and into the house. In the back yard there was a shed that held rubbish. Later I remember setting it on fire at one time and watching the flames rise from the bottom of the paper bags and rising up. And I remember running like hell away.
We had a big black German Shepard. My father trained him to be able to chew through clothesline. So we had to have him on a chain. One day he jumped on an old lady and it was goodbye "Biff."
I remember (from old photos) me playing with a Tonka toy crane. Maybe that's why I collect them now.
One time when I was maybe 5-6-7, my father promised to take me fishing early the next morning. Well, he went without me (probably was too young anyway). I've never forgotten it.
We had a rubber plant that we kept outside during the summer. Rather than go inside to pee, I'd piss in the rubber plant. I never let on that I knew why the tree died.
We moved from 95 Harrishoff Street to 141 Harrishoff Street. "95" was a two story house with an attic. My mother and father lived on the first floor. My grandmother and Mollie lived upstairs. Mollie taught school to the 2nd and 3rd graders. At "95", Wilma and I were upstairs in the attic room playing. I decided to make a swing from the chandelier to the gas jet on the wall. The jet was a remnant from the days when there was no electricity and they used gas for illumination). In fact the street lights - I remember them coming around to change the mantles when they had burned out.
Getting back to my swing. Sure enough the gas fixture broke. I could hear gas escaping and it stunk. Mollie ran upstairs and with a bar of brown soap (it must have been Fels Napa) and pegged the hole.
We were very poor (only I did not know it). My father couldn't get work as a druggist (he hated it) and opened up a bicycle repair and battery and lawn mower repair shop in Belmont, MA. Belmont now is a very ritzy uppity place. He lasted about 2-3 years before competition drove him out.
Somehow we moved from Harrishoff Street to Worcester, MA, where my father tried to start a hardware store. I think I was in the third grade then. I remember school, learning the Palmer method of writing.
There was a pretty synagogue we went to. I remember the Succoth season. Also remind me to tell you of two things:
1. My sled ride down through hell
2. My shitty experience in winter.
From Worcester, we moved to Revere for a summer. Eventually, settled in Watertown where my father became partners in a poolroom. Prior to that, we lived in Chelsea for about 2-3 years. He had a little 20x20 grocery store above Clinton Street. We lived on the first floor of a cold water flat.
My father would go wholesale fireworks and leave my mother to run the shop.
That's all for now,
Love, Dad
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Letter from Stanley Zarakov to Milo Zarakov and Deborah A. Long
(from Milo's request that Stanley write down a few of his memories from growing up)
March 22, 2001
Dear Milo and Deb,
I'm in the back patio smoking one of your Cubans - it's a little cool and I'm about to continue my saga. Kesha is here begging for affection - so there is a pause - its because she requires some scratching - she's shedding now. I'm smoking the Baccarat now - it's almost black and very mild. I certainly appreciate them, thanks again.
These letters will be somewhat disjointed because I forget what I wrote in the previous installment. When I lived in Chelsea, I was in the third or fourth grade and I had to come in early to see the teacher. I came in and sat down as a second row desk. She came in and sat at a table at the head of the class - only there was no modesty front on the desk. I had a full view - straight up looking up her legs and saw an interesting array of garters, panty and slip and what ever else was there. This incident gave me a lifelong interest in finding out what is under women's skirts. I was only 9 or 10 at the time, maybe 11.
Another time I was hiding under the bed in my grandmother's house and they were having a party. There was someone else there under the bed with me. I must have been 8 or 9 at the time. We saw some woman's legs coming to the bed and they were leaning up against the bed so we eased ourselves out far enough to look up their skirts. This was prior to the first skirt incident. Very interesting. Garters, bloomers. It lasted only a few seconds, but I remembered it all my life (and I don't even feel guilty).
When I was 8 or 9 years old, I remember walking home from a park sponsored summer workshop where I had just completed a "corner what-not". It was in the shape of a Scotty dog and fits in the corner with Z shelves. I didn't realize it, but a big hurricane had passed by - it was windy - and I was oblivious. What I did see were large trees, some over 100 years old that had toppled. I found out later that it was the big hurricane of 1939? I must have been eleven.
When I was in the 3rd grade - I went to a grade school in Chelsea, across the street was a Catholic school that had Nun teachers all dressed up like overgrown penguins? Some of the kids that left there told me stories of the strictness - the rod on the knuckles - the rattan on the ass. In fact in this grade school I went to, the teach had a bamboo rattan about 3-4 feet long and wouldn't hesitate to use it.
One day as I was in the corridor, I bumped into a tough kid, smaller than me but a bully and streetwise. He said " I'm gonna get you after school". There were enough kids around the crowed corner that heard him and the word was out. "There's gonna be a fight, there's gonna be a fight." Well, being the coward that I am, I let out of school at the end of my classes and hightailed it through the path past the bleachers, but I wasn't fast enough and the ring formed and surrounded us, so I had to fight, just like in the movies. We circled each other, he was rubbing his nose with a clenched fist like a real pro - and I was scared shitless. We traded a few blows and didn't hurt each other. He hit me once and I countered with a hard right to his nose and it started to bleed. He was more startled than I was, then he stopped, picked up a rock and said "we're gonna settle it with stones. By then I was the clear winner and said, "What's the matter, are you afraid of a real fight?" At that time he realized he lost the fight, lost face and left. The crowd dispersed and I came home with one of my friends. When I reached my father's store - he had been notified that there was going to be a police raid and to have his 1cent slot machine (moved) into the back room. I helped him and then started crying like a baby. My friend said, "Why are you crying - you won?" I said, "I don't know and I can't stop."
So much for fights. I didn't have too many of them.
This is a good cigar. It is absolutely beautiful here tonight (in Yucca Valley, CA) and the sun is down and all the Joshua trees and houses are outlined against the translucent sky.
I'm enjoying this monologue - these are things I have never told anyone before. Not that they are very important or earth shattering, but it is what happened to me.
Going ahead to college. I had turned 18 and was in my last semester in my 2nd year of college. There was an announcement that they were giving a board of pharmacy exam (in Massachusetts where he lived) for Assistant registered pharmacist. My father signed that I worked in his pharmacy for 1500 hours (he fudged because I really didn't fill and prescriptions), took the exam and passed with a 90. They posted the grades then and I had the highest score. I could everything a pharmacist could, except own a store. Here I was a pharmacist and never filled a prescription in my life. How about that and I was let loose on the public. From that point on I made $ 1.25/hr about 4 times the amount that my friend made working as a clerk. I paid my own way through school after that and always had enough $$.
Well, so long for now.
Love, Dad
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Letter from Stanley Zarakov to Milo Zarakov
(from Milo's request that Stanley write down a few of his memories from growing up)
May 24, 2001
Dear Milo,
I was born in Boston at a small hospital, the Waverly Hospital, I think.
Here are the places I've lived and the places my father had a business:
Homes:
195 Harishoff Street, Roxbury, MA. From birth to five years old. I remember going to kindergarten here. We moved when I was five or six to 95 Harishoff Street, down the street where my grandmother (Ida or Chaika) bought a three-story tenement. We lived on the first floor for a short time.
Then we moved to several places. I'm not sure of the order, but they were Worcester, MA for 1 year. I remember going to school where they had pens and inkwells at each desk and we practiced the Palmer method of penmanship. It really never helped.
From Worcester, we moved to Revere and spent a few months there. I must have been nine or ten, it was summer.
We then moved to Chelsea and lived on Clinton Street. It was parallel with a tidewater creek, the Chelsea Creek. There were 3-4-5 clubs. The Jewish, Italian, and Polish Clubs. The Cuccuchcas owned the three-story house we lived in, no central heating. A kerosene stove heated the house. My father had a store close by.
We lived there for 2-3 years. Store number 1 was successful. It was about 20 feet by 20 feet and sold groceries, milk, cigarettes etc.
The landlord saw how successful it was and kicked my father out. So he opened Store number two which was a dud. I remember going there after school and practicing the violin in the back room (embarrassing).
During the firework season he would leave my mother in the store and go on the road and sell fireworks to retail vendors. He would save his leftovers and have a big 4th of July display for all the neighbors. He did this for seven or eight years (the fireworks shows) My mother hated it because she could have used the money
My father me a fellow, Mike Matloff who went into a partnership with him in a poolroom when we were in Watertown. I think we moved there after Chelsea and we lived on Waverly Ave. I went to grammar school for one to two years and played in the orchestra there. I must have been ten years old and I think I was in the fourth or fifth grade.
The poolroom was in Watertown Square across the street from the police station. This must have been in 1938 or 1939. It lasted about two years.
It closed when Mike Matloff agreed to sponsor my father in a partnership to buy the College Pharmacy at 251 Main Street in Medford. I think I was in the fourth grade when we moved to Medford because I went to Lincoln School. We lived at 16 Stanley Ave for two years before buying the house on Brooks Park.
I remember in the seventh grade, I think, going to school on December 8, 1940 (1941) when the war started. They had all the kids in the assembly hall and we heard President Roosevelt make his speech declaring war.
I remember moving into 16 Brooks Park, Medford and we lived on the first floor for one to two years until the neighbors upstairs moved out and we went up and I had a room of my own at least.
These are the places my father owned or worked at.
1. I do remember visiting his tire shop in Belmont, MA when I was very young, three to four years old.
2. In Worcester, I don't know what he did.
3. Chelsea from the third to fourth grade, he had the little grocery store
4. Watertown, fifth grade and sixth grade, the Pool Hall
5. Sixth grade on, Medford drugstore. Even when he had the drugstore, he would go on the road to sell fireworks.
I'll call Wilma and see if she remembers more. Mollie may know also.
I'll try and re-visit these places and come up with something more definite.
Love,
Dad
It is frustrating for me to try and put these pieces together and it is important to me to see what I did during these times.
We moved around a lot. I really never felt part of any community all my life, like I am an outsider always looking in but never truly in, even in Yucca (Yucca Valley, CA).
End of letters
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