Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1986. július-december (40. évfolyam, 27-49. szám)

1986-11-20 / 44. szám

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in a family bock. In Hungarian, my friends from here to Budapest would object, though they all say it at times.

Assuming that the cursing was directed at me, I Mew my top at the stupidity of an outhouse with running water. I always thought my folks had the house built, with the toilet arrangement as a slight improvement over Transylvania outhouses.

"Do you think a Hungarian would be so dumb?" Pop yelled. "Shame on you, Johnny, for thinking we did this. The sumnabitch contractor who built this house was a crook. Because he put in more rooms, he put the bathroom outside. He figured some dumb Hunky wouldn't know any better. We bought this house with the shit-house in the backyard because it was the cheapest for the most rooms."

"When you get a good job, we'll save enough money for a real bathroom, inside the house like everyone else has in this new Hungarian part of town", he said, cooling off.

Our discussion, heated and then calm, was just long enough for the hot water to melt the ice, and in a jiffy Pop had the infamous outdoor flushing john working well again.

Back in the house, he had a good shot of whiskey, and gave me a small jigger. We both felt good.

Pop gave me money to go to the Hungarian bakery on Dakota Street for doughnuts, a rare treat for us.

"Why is it called Dakota Street when the bakery, grocery, meat market, dance hall, and all the houses on it are Hungarian?" I asked.

"They wanted to become Americans over night. Petőfi Street would be a better name, since most Hungarians here are from Transylvania. You know Petőfi died , on a battlefield near our villages."

Sándor Petőfi was a great poet and revolutionary, whose writings and organization among university students inspired many to join the 1848-1849 war for Hungarian independence.

On my first Easter with Pop, I knew we could not have the traditional Hungarian feast, and since both of us had stopped going to church, it would not have been blessed anyway.

"Go out in the pen, Johnny, and kill a good, fat chicken for us," Pop said the Saturday before Easter. "We'll have chicken paprikas for Easter."

I had killed a few chickens before, but this one did not cooperate. The chicken was bruised in my bad execution attempt. Pop noticed my mishap, but neither scolded nor said a word about my clumsiness.

"Let me show you a better way to kill a chicken," Pop said, while pulling its feathers in the kitchen.

He described a technique based on tieing the chicken's legs together, hanging it on the clothes line, then slicing its throat with a sharp knife and letting it flap until dead.

"When do I say prayers over the chicken," I couldn't resist asking Pop,

"When you cook it or when you eat it?"

We dyed eggs, and my sisters Pauline and Catherine, then living in an apartment, brought over some of the Hungarian delicacies Pop could not make. He gave me money so I could buy fancy toilet water for "sprinkling," roughly like the American trick or treat, on Easter Monday.

At times there were loud family arguments and brawls between neighbors along Summit Street. There were never any in our house, and Pop, who was friendly to all, never had cross words with neighbors. He once

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO

had a business fight, though not a word was spoken.

The public laughed and got the full benefit of that dispute. Mr. Pusztay, who rented our place for a grocery, moved to a larger building across the street. To spite Pop, he arranged his store with a barbershop on one side. There was hardly enough business for one shop and it was ridiculous to have two. Nothing happened for a few weeks, with both barbers staring at each other and counting the meager number of costumers going into each shop.

Haircuts were twenty-five cents. One morning Pusztay's barber put a sign in his window announcing haircuts at fifteen cents. By afternoon the Pusztay shop went to ten cents. Pop had to agree to pay the difference for his barber to list haircuts at five cents. Both shops had been busy all day. Pusztay decided to issue the crushing blow. The next morning, his shop opened with a sign reading: "All hairduts free, including free Coke or coffee." Pop was boiling mad and expressing dire threats against Pusztay. He could have smashed him with one blow. Instead, he instructed his barber to put back the original sign: "Haircuts: twenty-five cents" and to letter the word "Quality" at the top. Two more days of free haircuts and Pusztay went back up to the twenty-five cent price.

When involved in many struggles in the labor movement years later, I followed Pop's techniques of peaceful progress to good advantage. In my second career, bank marketing, it was tempting a few times to meet competition by cutting prices. It was more rewarding to finish that career, by always resisting that temptation and relying on quality and good service for

success.

Some years later, the Great Depression hit, adding Pop to the ranks of the unemployed. He missed his job, even though it was tough. He belonged to a strong union, with twenty-seven craftsmen. I never tired hearing his stories on the union meetings.

"How did the union meeting go, Pop? Anything important come up?" I'd ask.

"Everything is important, Johnny. But those Irishmen always vote together; they stick together like glue. So every vote is three Irishmen against twenty-four Hungarians."

During the Depression years, I was either living with Pop, or a few blocks away with my sister Pauline and her husband. There I baby-sat and ran errands for my keep. Over half the homes in the neighborhood suffered from unemployment. Help came in the form of Work Relief and later, the federal WPA, the Works Progress Administration.

I described the Work Relief program to Pop. It meant raking leaves in the parks, bagging surplus foods, or doing other work for the city, in return for which you were given food and other help.

"No, not for me," Pop said.

When the resources were gone, except for his large four-family house which produced no income at that time, Pop was still unwilling to apply for Work Relief.

My sister Pauline worked out a program to make sure Pop had adequate food. Her husband had a good job, so each day she prepared a huge, tasty stew, or casserole, or delicious Hungarian speciality. My task was to carry a large kettle of this, with bread and other side dishes, in a large wicker, basket over to Pop. There was always enough for another meal or two on the following day, until the next basketful. Pauline lived

Thursday, Nov. 20. 1986.

on Negley Place, across the street from the Wolf Creek levee. Wider than many rivers, it was pleasant walking on the levee three blocks to Pop's.

"We need another player," the neighborhood kids frequently yelled to me.

"Not now, I have to take supper to my Pop," I would answer proudly, pasing up the invitations.

Once in a bull session with the gang, one df the kids we considered a wise guy popped off.

"Your old man's not too smart, being out of work for a long time and not going on relief."

"How does that make him dumb?" I asked sternly.

The kid rattled off a list of families in the immediate neighborhood that were on relief.

"You're dumber than shit," I exploded. "Anybody out of work has a right to go on relief, and my father has the same right not to take charity, and nobody is dumb for doing what they think' is right." The gang agreed with me and, like a jury making its decision, that ended it. A long time earlier we had agreed there would be no fighting within the gang. Disputes were heated, but always kept verbal.

Pop was simply too proud to ask for public welfare, eventhough he would have worked for it.

"Would you like to come over for breakfast and hear some good music, Johnny?" asked my sister Elizabeth. It was the food that enticed me, since she was a great Hungarian cook, and now into Greek and Roumanian dishes learned from her husband. The delicious Sunday brunch was the first of many.

"Let's move into the living room. Johnny, would you crank up and take care of the victrola?" asked my brother-in-law Adam.

A breakfast guest was Bill Petrie, a moulder at Dayton Malleable, a strong, bull-like man full of stories and good jokes. Tonas, a boarder, worked as a custodian at National Cash Register.

They would request records to be played, many of them operatic arias by Enrico Caruso. At times Tonas brought in a new record, which cost him more than a week's wages. I handled each record carefully. We would listen to classical music for two hours, then Adam would ask for "The Volga Boatman". That was the signal for the end of the concert, until the next Sunday. All were industrial workers who loved good music. Years later I realized how fortunate I was to be exposed to culture, and to learn music appreciation, compliments of those immigrant workers.

With music lessons on Sundays, there was education on bootlegging the rest of the week. I earned extra money running errands for neighbors who had a thriving bootleg business. With a lot of rotgut around, their corn whiskey from Kentucky was highly prized.

"Johnny, would you take our wagon and go down to the hardware store?" asked my neighbor lady. "Buy a case of half-pint bottles, a bag of corks, and twelve shot glasses. If any men in suits stop to talk to you, tell them you're buying it for some rich people in Dayton View."

The brains of this lucrative business was the shrewd Mother of my pal. She always tipped me fifty cents, around holidays, a whole dollar. If their boys were seen by the Feds on such an errand, a raid would take place soon. We lived about ten feet from our bootlegging neighbors, so when a raid was on, we heard the yells and the