Frey's hairdresser's store and Klein Creamery (in Alsatian, Käslädel). In December 1934, around my 14th birthday, I accompanied my father to the family hairdresser, "master Frey," on the "New Street" (now Rue Clemenceau) that leads from our house to the post office. The modest "modern hairdresser's store" is located next to the dairy-creamery adjoining the old hickory of our "Jew-of-the-hoods." This is the "Käslädel," where in winter we cater to delicious pickled herring, expertly marinated in sour cream and flavored with thin slices of fresh onion. The shopkeeper fishes them out with a long fork, extracting the smooth, unctuous, iridescent, bright-white fillets from a barrel jammed at the bottom of a small underground room, accessed directly from the sidewalk, down a few stone steps. Frey the hairdresser is an old family friend: his mother, "s'Kättel" (short for Catherine), had once worked as a helper-cook at my grandmother Coralie's house. In Bischwiller, human relationships are often rooted in a distant shared past. Pickled herring, potsherds or barber plates, the collective memories include several generations.