Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1986. július-december (40. évfolyam, 27-49. szám)
1986-11-06 / 42. szám
Thursday, Nov. 6. 1986. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 7. JÓCSÁK AND SON BY JOHN F. GOJACK I was afraid that falling over or fainting would be another sin which would bring more punishment!" "Did the nun say anything to you after the service?" asked Adam. "When she motioned me to see her outside the church, I looked around for a way to escape, thinking she was going to hit me again. She didn't, but told me the next time I wore a cap in church, she would knock my head off my neck." My head ached for weeks and would ring at times. Before entering church I would double-check to make sure my cap was in my hand. Bessie and Adam were so shocked at this that they planned to -complain to the Mother Superior. They insisted on hearing about the beatings in the office, which I explained "were only when we ran away and she. only beat me because I talked Mickey into coming along." They wanted a detailed account of the punishment, but I passed up telling them that the Mother Superior drew blood when she beat my hands. I was afraid of the Mother Superior's wrath if my family added this to their complaints. "What else is bad?" asked Bessie. "I don't know of anything else." "What about the sheets?" asked Mickey. "What can be wrong with the sheets?" asked Adam. "When it's cold, there are three or four of us in the boy's dormitory who wet the bed sometimes. We must show wet sheets to the nun in charge of the dormitory and then stand up and hold them so the other kids can see." "Not stand up by your bed. You have to stand in front of the door to the dining hall, so every kid in the orphanage knows who wets the bed," added Mickey. "That's right. It's terrible because some kids make mean cracks like, 'Good morning, piss-ant,' or 'We knew you were full of piss,' or You're dumb enough to piss your life away,' and worse things." Bessie thought this was a cruel way to cure bed-wetting and promised to make some suggestions to the Mother Superior. This visit brought other news. When a very young girl, Bessie had the responsibility to care for Mickey. He was a heavy, chunky baby and a burden to carry around. Her husband saw that she felt a deep need to care for Mickey, the baby of our family. He made Bessie happy by taking Mickey home and adopting him. They cared for Mickey, seeing him through school, even after having two children of their own - all this on one industrial worker's earnings. Another surprise was a present of a new white suit from Bessie and Adam for my Confirmation ceremony. For devout Catholics there is Baptism, then First Communion, the Confirmation, an important ceremony calling for white dresses on the girls and neat clothing on the boys. I studied and worked hard to be ready for Confirmation which was a fraud on Rome. One must first be baptised in the Catholic faith to take Confirmation. I assumed that, with the rest of the family, I was baptised at the Holy Name Church. Wrong! Before my birth, Pop had a feud with Father Voynich concerning the fund-raising Garden Festival. It was not resolved by the time of my birth, so to spite Father Voynich, Pop took me to the Greek Orthodox Church for baptism. No wonder I learned to love feta cheese, black olives and moussaka! Few people like to travel alone, so with Mickey gone, I planned to ask Andy to run away with me. It seemed a long-shot chance since he had refused earlier. Finding him in the chicken house, I popped the question but he cut me short. "Are you crazy? I like it here. I'm running this chicken house, and no one else in St. Joe's has it half as good," he barked. Andy was big and as strong as many men, and I never dared cross him in any .way. "Look, Johnny, my Sister treats me better than a son, and horses couldn't drag me away from here, so just knock itt off. I don't blame you for running away, but why do you keep coming back and taking those whippings?" he asked. "Bessie is busy with Mickey and her own two babies, so I can't stay there. Catherine and Pauline don't have enough room for a dog in their tiny apartment." "Shit, there's Pop, with all those rooms empty now, he could put up half of this orphanage," Andy laughed. "Pop is your best bet. Next time you run away, stay with him." That's exactly what happened. I ran away, stayed at Pop's, and no one came after me. Andy, in love with the orphanage, stayed on for some years. He might still be there expect for j the eighteen-year-old limit and a strange sleep-walking experience of four boys from the West Side of Dayton. The orphanage buildings were spread over a large area, connected with passageways and doors. The boys dormitory was in the northeast part of the complex, and the girl's dormitory was in the southwest end. To go from one to the other required passing through the school rooms, the dining room, the recreational room, the church, and other rooms. A young lady in her teens from our West Side neighbordhood lost her parents in an auto accident. With no one else to care for her, she was placed in the orphanage. "She's hot stuff and puts out," reported one of the boys from the West Side. So one night after lights out, four West Side boys, including Andy, made their way through the maze of buildings to the girl's dormitory. Unfortunately, one of the boys made the mistake of approaching the bed of a young lady who was frightened by boys. A great, noisy fuss developed, and the four boys were caught. I told Andy of some of the rumors about the four boys. "That's a crock. The lights were turned on before we got to the West Side girl. We just wanted to talk with her," Andy insisted. Called into the Mother Superior's office one at a time, they all had the same alibi for being so far from their own beds - sleepwalking! That didn't satisfy Mother Super s and it ended brother Andy's long caret- charge of the chickens at St. Joseph's ^ oMnage. There is one otl: nhappy matter that I recall of importance during my years there. These points were never made in school, but in talks on the playground and when playing Mass in the recreational room. Two of the nuns taught Ur that "the Jews killed Christ" and this was embellished with other anti-semitisms. From their teaching, I also believed for years that "Luther" was another word for the devil. Nevertheless, I attribute these hatreds to the ignorance and bigotry of a few nuns from Germany. I recall nothing of the food, which must have been satisfying. The spinach was not bad, it was horrible. There were lots of friends, games, chores and other activity for time to speed by. The beatings only hurt at the time. The one hurt remaining over sixty years was the punishment for speaking Hungarian. I could never forgive the few anti-Hungarian nuns who beat my mother-tongue out of my brains. Having loved ones, my father and sisters, living a few miles away and visiting when they could, eased many pains. The orphanage was a learning experience in human relations. As Benjamin Disraeli put it: "There is no education like adversity." TRANSYLVANIA BACKYARD After running away from St. Joseph Orphanage for the twelfth time, no one bothered to return me. Taking big brother Andy's advice, I moved in with Pop. The next five years or so that I spent with him were among the busiest and most positive times of my life. "I'm not going to tell you what to do, Johnny. You've got good sense. Just ask me if you're not sure about something," he said. "That's a deal Pop. I'll move into the upstairs bedroom above the coal stove register." T see they taught you how to clean house at the orphanage. You made this one ready for the Priest," Pop said the first night home after work. He added, "Let's keep it clean, so you won't have to work so hard next time." "Thanks, Pop, I'm going to work on the yard tomorrow." He nodded in agreement. Next day I dug a huge hole to bury the garbage and trash. The city trash collector rarely remembered the Hungarian neighborhood. I raked the yard clean and spaded it ready for spring garden planting. Life with Pop was never boring. In no other five-year period of my past can I recall more vital episodes than during the years we shared our big house together. Pop practiced all the good social habits of a proper Hungarian father. He never missed work, did all the maintenance about the house, was law-abiding, loved his children, supported Hungarian affairs and businesses and got drunk only on Saturdays. Yet he was a non-conformist in many ways. With the courage and pride of a Hungarian fighting for freedom, this peasant mastered the ways of his adopted land. He loved independence and hated injustice. I'm grateful to have learned his traits. Many Hunkie kids in our neighborhood spent summers reading nickle magazines or playing games. I considered both a waste of time. There were chores to do and money to be earned. Every week he invited me to go part of the way to work with him. This meant getting up at 4:30 in the morning and walking six blocks to Third Street where we caught a streetcar to downtown Dayton. An all-night restaurant on Third Street was our stop for breakfast, always pancakes and bacon for me. Everyone knew Pop and made over his little boy with the wicker basket flmost as .large as he was. Downtown, there was a farmer's market, and IV.
