The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1985 (12. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1985-11-01 / 11. szám
financially able, many bought any of the privately-owned houses which were usually located on Plank Road and Maple Street. Sixth Street was probably the most populated street in Vintondale. There were five double houses on one side of the street with each divided into four apartments, mainly single Croatian and Servian men boarded in these double houses. The Serbians and Croatians (Horwats, their local name), often accused of being troublemakers in mining towns, dominated Sixth Street. Boarding Houses Many of the immigrant families took in boarders, usually of the same nationality, to make ends meet. Often the boarders worked different shifts and were able to share the same beds because of this circumstance. All arrangements were made by the head of the boarking house who was called the “Boss” or “Mister”. The wife of the Boss, called the “Missus,” took care of all the household duties. She washed the boarders’ laundry, cooked their food and also served as a substitute mother with advice or scolding, if necessary. One of the early morning jobs of the Missus, after firing the stove, was to prepare the lunch buckets for her boarders. In Vintondale, the Missus would pack porkchops, a piece of pie (homemade or store bought), water, tea, or coffee, and occasionally some fruit. But she only would pack the food and drink that each boarder preferred. Most Eastern European boarders in Vintondale did not take sandwiches in their buckets, but instead took pieces of meat, preferably pork, large slices of homemade bread and green onions in season. Some boarders took salami in their buckets, but many said it was too salty and made them thirsty. Other boarders preferred homemade cottage cheese or potato salad made with vinegar and oil, not mayonnaise. Still another important daily job of the Missus was heating the water for the miner’s baths. Many boarding houses had shanties which were used as bathhouses. Sometimes the coal company would take care of the expense of building the baths if there were a large number of boarders. Many of these bathhouses had stoves which heated the bathwater and also kept the room warm while the miners bathed. A family who did not have a bathhouse used the kitchen, the basement or an enclosed backporch. Sometimes the Missus was expected to help scrub the boarders’ backs. Before 1910 the charge for boarding November, 1985 was usually anywhere from two dollars to four dollars a month. Up to that time four dollars was a large sum of money. Greater prosperity in the 1940’s meant greater charges for boarders. By that time boarders were paying forty dollars a month. In the 1960’s the last boarders in Vintondale were paying from seventy-five to one-hundred dollars per month. Keeping boarders doubled the family’s income. The Missus kept an account of how much the food eaten cost at the company store. Sometimes the boarders bought their own food for the Missus to cook for them. Mrs. Elizabeth Beres kept boarders for over thirty years Her boarders lived in a shanty on the Beres’ property which was not owned by the company. Mrs. Beres usually fed her boarders the standard Hungarian dish, goulash. Behind the house Mrs. Beres kept a large vegetable garden and a stable with a few animals which were usually butchered in the fall. The Beres, like most Hungarian, had a smokehouse for preserving the meat they butchered. To season the bacon, the Hungarians usually rubbed the bacon with red paprika and garlic. After the pig was butchered, the fat was rendered and the blood saved for blood sausage. The cuts of meat left from the butchered pig were fried and put into biscuits called “cracklings”. On butchering day a special breakfast of homemade sauerkraut and fresh pork was served. The Beres family was part of the large number of Hungarians in Vintondale who centered their lives around work and the Hungarian Reformed Church. Although Mrs. Beres is in her nineties, she still makes her noodles from scratch, hangs out her wash and attends church regularly. Emily Balch, in her book, Our Slavic Fellow Citizens, said that the two great luxuries of the immigrants were meat and beer. Her statement can be documented by life in Vintondale. For instance, my maternal grandfather, Stephen Dusza, told me that his stepfather, Mike Farkas, a Hungarian Boss with numberous boarders would only serve meat or butter at a meal, not both. Mr Farkas ate his only meal at breakfast which was one to two pounds of meat. He drank a quart of whiskey each day. Also, he often would trade his boarders a drink of whiskey for their company store scrip if he could. According to my grandfather, the boarder was useful at the boarding house for more than just his monthly payment. He was sometimes a babysitter for the house. My Grandfather Dusza said there was always someone around to entertain the children while the Missus did the cooking and cleaning. In fact, my grandfather said he owed his life to one of his family’s boarders, John King (bácsi), (bácsi is Hungarian for Mister or Uncle.) Three of the neighborhood children had been playing cowboys and indians in the mining patch of Onnalinda when his friends hung him on a tree and left him there. Bácsi came along and untied him. Later when my greatgrandmother settled in Vintondale, Kiraly-bacsi followed the family and lived the rest of his life there with the Morey family. Another boarder, the official babysitter, John Paney (Paney-bacsi) always walked up the very steep Third Street hill bringing a watermelon or a half-gallon of ice cream for the Dusza children when his Social Security check arrived each month. Paney-bacsi also gave each of the seven Dusza children five dollars at birthday time. When times were tough he bought many a pair of shoes for the children. There is a living memorial to Paney-bacsi in the backyard at my grandmother's house. The snowball flowers he once brought to her were rooted and planted. Today they have grown into a beautiful bush. Today there are no mines operating in Vintondale. The #6 mine closed in 1968. The hotels are torn down and only one grocery store remains. Gone, but not forgotten, are the colorful old bachelors like Whiskey John, Buckeye, Fat Charley, Handlebar Pete, Andy Sabo, Rudy-bacsi, and Paney-bacsi. Vintondale's last surviving boarder is Joseph Silagyi, age 88. He has lived with Mrs. Elizabeth Rabel for the past twenty-eight years and before that with her mother, Mrs. Meri Morey. Mrs. Rabel is the youngest surviving Missus in Vintondale. There are only about a half dozen women left in Vintondale who kept boarders. Thus a tradition born out of economic necessity is now dying. 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