Joe Asber was a gentleman who had a junk shop/indoor flea market/used furniture business (take your pick) in Farmersville, about midway between Easton and Bethlehem on the William Penn Highway, which was the original route of U.S. Route 22 in that area. It was in a large building that had been a nightclub at one time and which I believe is now again a nightclub, situated across the road from Glass Brothers Auto Junkyard.
Ruth Sterlachini was sort of a foster sister to my mother from the time my mother was a teenager. She and her husband Joe, whom I knew as Christian from his middle name, both worked there when they were newlyweds. Ruth waited tables and Chris was a dishwasher, I believe. This was in the years between 1935 and around 1943. They were getting ready to go in for their shift when the phone rang. A voice Chris didn't recognize told him that they shouldn't come in to work that night. They didn't go and the place was raided for some infraction. Whoever was in on the raid must have realized they weren't involved and wanted to spare them the situation.
I don't remember why we originally went there, but the place was fascinating to a young boy. Piles of every imaginable piece of flotsam and jetsam of American life were there, from old antique furniture, to 78 RPM records which I bought by the stack. Old appliances and kitchen utensils vied for space with piles of books unread in years. I would get books too if my father had the money, which wasn't that much in those days. You could go to Joe Asber's with a few dollars and come away with a treasure.
Joe told us one time that his family was from North Africa. When I remarked that he was an Arab, he told me in a nice way that he was a Berber, more related to the nomadic tribes of the Sahara that to most Arabs.
Asber's junk shop was a neat place to go on a Sunday in those days, because there weren't many places open on Sundays due to what were referred to as Blue Laws or Blue SKy Laws. Little other than food could be sold legally. I remember one incident at the Food Basket in Forks Township when we had stopped there on a Sunday to get a few itmes and Dad remembered that Mom wanted a set of plastic curtains for the window inour kitchen. They normally ahd the sections of teh store that displayed merchandise not for sale on Sundays cordoned off but apparentlyon this day missed the section where the drapes were on the shelf. Dad was aware of a man who seemd to be followinghim aroudn the store after he picked the drapes up but didn't give it much thought until he got to teh checkout. At the isntant the girl rang the drapes up, the man showed a badge adn wrote a citation for the checker for selling the drapes on Sunday in violation of the Blue Laws, even though no money had changed hands yet. I think the drapes cost $0.87!
In those days there were a few other locations in the Easton area that had used furniture shops like that. Jaffe's on 6th St. near Northampton, Ziev's on Walnut and 6th , which was run by 6 brothers whose mother was murdered in her house on the stub of Lehigh St. by the Courthouse, and whose murder was never solved. Don Ziev, one of the brothers, in later years had a used furniture business on Mauch Chunk St., west of Center, on South Side. It was from him that I bought the oak office desk this computer sits on, as well as the bookcase I have all my computer books on. I am 60 years old and I have had this desk since I went back to college at the age of 21.