Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1986. július-december (40. évfolyam, 27-49. szám)
1986-10-09 / 38. szám
8. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ Thursday, Oct. 9. 1986. foods. Large weddings were the custom in those days. Volunteers would waltz her by a hat or basket and conspicuously drop in a large bill, helping pay for the wedding. Elizabeth's honeymoon was spent as it was the day after she arrived in Dayton, sorting filthy rags in a filthy shop. For a nickel an hour raise, she took a speed-up job making cigars, in a shop filthy in a different way. Being good Catholics, they had children, six in nine years. The first was Elizabeth, next Catherine, then Pauline. For immigrant workers as well as peasants in the old country, it was important to have boys. "I was teased on the job every day for having three girls and not one boy", my father said. Then he always added, "If the next one is not a boy, I'm going to quit." "It's a good thing that Andy came along and saved my life," I said as we both laughed. Andrew was the fourth Gojack, I was fifth and Michael was sixth. Most of the information about my mother I garnered from my Aunt Mary, neighbors and my sisters, especially my oldest sister Elizabeth, who remembers the most. My father was very strong and lived to be eighty- three despite losing an arm and leg in a railroad accident. He rarely mentioned my mother. But at times when he was aglow with whiskey, I would ask him questions and be rewarded with marvelous stories and many tributes to the only woman in his life. "Our mother felt she had to work to pay off the debts for travel expenses to reach America", my sister said. Some immigrants were stuck in the Colony, a company town stockade, for years while our folks were there but a year. The emancipated Hungarians began moving to the West Side of Dayton, which was fast developing as an ethnic community. "Buying or even renting a house outside the Colony was an act of freedom," Pop said. The main difference between plantation slaves down South and the Hungarians locked up in the Kossuth Company Town in North Dayton, Ohio, was that my parents and others knew they could leave once their bills to Labor Recruiter Mosonyi were paid. While a few termed Mosonyi a benefactor, most called him a tyrant or an unprintable Hungarian name that loses a lot in translation. For years the local papers carried historical articles on Kossuth Colony, a unique part of Dayton's past. One lady told the paper of the rule requiring Colony people to buy everything at the Company store. She reported, "The first to break the rule was a woman who found a hole in the fence. She went out to buy groceries on Troy Street. Coming home, she pushed the fence in and there stood Mr. Mosonyi. Her husband lost his job and they had to move out. She was the first to go out. She was braver than the rest and none dared follow her example." Next to freedom, the main benefit of paying your bills and moving out of the Colony was the ease of getting another, higher-paid job. "Leaving the Colony was like getting out of prison," Pop told me. "We never expected to be locked up until paying for our train and ship tickets, and then cheated by being paid company funny-money, which had to be spent at the company store with its high prices." "When you paid up and left the Barney & Smith Car works and their Company Colony, how did you get another job?" I asked. < Pop laughed. "I settled up morning after payday, then walked a few blocks to the Dayton Pipe Coupling Company. At nine o'clock I was working on their drop-forge hammer job." Pop held this hot and demanding drop-forge job for many years, until the Depression layoffs. He earned a pin with two small diamonds for loyal service. GOJACKS - 1918-1919 Pauline, Elizabeth, Catherine John and Andrew With fellow-workers helping, Pop moved their meagre furniture out of the Colony Stockade. They settled temporarily in one of the original Hungarian homes on the West Side of Dayton. It was brick but tiny, with one bedroom. A few months after their first baby, Elizabeth, was borns our mother hired a wet nurse and went back to work at the rag shop. Big mortgage payments required two payrolls in the family. Other children came along in record time. Mr. and Mrs. Janos Jocsak, now Elizabeth and John Gojack, had to move into a larger house with their growing brood and greater ambitions. Their next and last move was to Summit Street, where Hungarians had flowers on their porches and in their front yards that stopped traffic in season. Every inch of their spacious back yards was utilized with sheds, barns, chicken and pig pens and ample garden space. In other words, Transylvania farmyards. "We saved two hundred dollars, a lot of money in those days for the down payment on a house", Pop said. "Your mother had big plans. She made us buy the corner house because it was a four-plex, three rooms up and three rooms down, on both sides. One for the Gojacks and three to rent! Imagine! In the country only a few years, and thanks to your mother, we were already landlords." For the dozen years after their first child was born, my parents were extremely busy. Never any vacations, and Sundays and Holy Days off from work only because they were devout Catholics. Cooking and diaper changes knew no holiday. When one child was old enough to help out, others came along to provide more chores. The midwife forgot to register my birth, causing a serious problem for me in later years. In those McCarthy years I might have been deported. Thanks to an affidavit from Bessie, (we always called my oldest sister Elizabeth "Bessie") testifying that she witnessed my birth at 513 North Summit Street, Dayton, Ohio, and an affidavit from a non-relative who also swore to that fact, I was granted a birth certificate. My mother was extraordinarily busy and often ill. While working in the cigar factory, she joined a group of other Hungarian women to clean Rike-Kumler, Dayton's largest department store, in the evenings. Who cooked supper? The girls and none of them were ten yet. Other times, with vacant rooms available, she took in Hungarian boarders. One time meals had to be prepared for the nine Gojacks and three boarders. The girls cooked. One bright October day, my mother cleaned house, finishing at dusk when it grew chilly. I watched her scrubbing down the cement back porch and steps. She was soaking wet in her bare feet. The next day she was in bed with a bad cold. She was worse the day after. An ambulance was called to take her to St. Elizabeth's Hospital. She had pneumonia and penicillin was not yet discovered. She died on October 10, 1920, the day after her 32nd birthday. At 4:30 in the morning, Bessie, then twelve, answered the phone. The message was blunt. "Your mother is dead." Bessie ran into the street, screaming, "My mother is dead! My mother is dead!" Having a mother whom you deeply believe to be a saint or an angel and losing her when you are only four years, two months and five days old, you treasure every recollection of her. Eleven are indelibly imprinted on my mind. At seventy, I forget many things, including my glasses, but never will any moment of these memories be forgotten. "Nagynéni" or "Aunt Mary," could tell me more about her younger sister, my mother, so I visited her every chance during my teens. Unfortunately she cried every time I asked about my mother. "Jesus and Mary, what will become of Johnny? Please take care of him. I'm afraid he will not live long," was my mother's last request of Aunt Mary, which she recited to me every visit. They worried because I was extremely skinny, weak and often sick as a child. It took hours to pry out
