Zalai Múzeum 16. In memoriam Kerecsényi Edit 1927-2006. (Zalaegerszeg, 2007)

Kovács Zsuzsa: Egy ház és a benne lakók története. A Hajgató Sándor utca 8. szám alatti kiskanizsai házból begyűjtött hagyaték múzeumi értéke

102 Kovács Zsuzsa The story of a house and people living there The museological value of the bequest gathered from Hajgató Sándor street 8. in Kiskanizsa Hajgató Sándor street is located in Kiskanizsa, 2 kilometres westward from the centre of Nagykanizsa. People living in this district differ from inhabitants of Nagykanizsa in their language usage, their clothing and also in their manners. They made their living on selling their goods on the market of Nagykanizsa and on other surrounding towns'markets. Their main products were onion, potato, cabbage, kitchen-vegetables (tomato, paprika and other seasonal vegetables). Their flower gardening, especially the pansy producing was also important among their market products - because this flower was the most common used one in the cemetery. The people of Kiskanizsa were very enthusiastic, diligent in their work but they were a very closed community. They were called „sáskák" - locusts by the people of Kanizsa. There are many explanation for the origin of this nickname, but soon they accepted this name, and internalized in their identity as a name of their diligence and good farming. The bequest from Hajgató Sándor street 8. belonged to a very particular family. Hegyi József and his wife, Jankovics Rozália brought up two children, Mária and József. This family, like everybody in Kiskanizsa, were making their living from their farming and selling their products on the market. During the war, while Hegyi József was fighting on the frontline, Rozália remained alone with the farming and the children. The head of the family tried to help his family, even while he was in Russia and he wrote them many letters. In these letters he asked his wife about the children, farming; by giving his advices he helped her in financial and farming questions. As far as possible he tried to manage the official problems of the family, for example he wrote to the administrative board to send the grant for his wife soon. These letters, which were dated from April-November of 1942, are important sources of the family's chronicle, the traditional life manners and the farming of a family living in Kiskanizsa at that age. The wife lost his husband in the war, so she had to continue the work and the children's bringing up on her own. Later her son József married a woman from „Alföld", so he moved from Kiskanizsa, but Mária stayed with her mother. She never married and she died without inheritors. After her death, the head of „Együtt Kiskanizsáért Egyesület" - Unity for Kiskanizsa Association drived our attention to her bequest and offered us to gather it for the collection of the Thúry György Museum. After having seen the material, we decided to bring it to the museum, because Mrs. Kerecsényi Edit, the musem's former director and ethnographer, has already collected some other articles from Hegyi Mária. With this bequest the previously collected articles can be completed. The particular value of the newly collected items is that they can be supplied with rich data about the family and the items themselves that increase the museological value of the collection. Almost 800 items arrived to Thúry György Museum from the family containing kitchen utensils, ornaments, religious souvenirs, photos and other family documents. The richest part of the collection is some textile material, with embroided hand-made table clothes, also hand-made knitted and crotched table clothes and other needleworks. The textiles include a huge quantity of clothes, there are among others several complete traditional costumes worn by women of Kiskanizsa in 1960's. The old women wear these costumes nowadays as well on festivals and on Sundays at the mass, and seldom we can see elderly women dressed in this costume in the town center as well. Translated by: Kovács Zsuzsa