Isadore Remembers Trying a Tomato

• Isadore Remembers Trying a Tomato

  
  

  Isadore Samet recalls trying a tomato for the first time after immigrating from Poland to America in 1914 in this excerpt from his Ellis Island oral history interview.

  Credit / Author:

  Ellis Island Oral History Collection

  Date created:

  10/14/2020

 

Isadore Remembers Trying a Tomato (Transcript)

Interviewee: Isadore Samet
Date of Birth: September 23, 1898
Date of Interview: September 6, 1991
Interviewer: Paul E. Sigrist, Jr.
Immigrated from Poland in 1914 at age 16
Ellis Island Collection: EI-87

Isadore Samet (First Tomato):
My brother took me over and wanted to give me a treat. So he said, "There are some peddlers around the street coming out from here. There are some tomatoes." I never had a tomato in my life. I didn't know what sort of a tomato looks like. (He laughs) So he gave me a tomato and I eat the tomato. I spit it out. I couldn't take it. (He laughs) I said, "What is this, what they give me to eat?" He started laughing, so we kept going there, no tomato.