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

1986-10-09 / 38. szám

Thursday, Oct. 9. 1986.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO

9.

a little information but I was often rewarded by my visit. She gave me patched, wearable hand-me-down clothing salvaged from my cousins. Delicious Hungarian food, cookies and other goodies were additional rewards for visiting Aunt Mary.

Mother baked bread in our large wood and coal stove. Though this was about 1919,

I can still smell the hot bread coming out of the oven. When it cooled a bit, she buttered a slice and I can still taste that.

Her hair-washing ritual was something to observe with awe. I marveled how she could manage it. Her hair was dark and almost to her knees, with braids to undo, and took forever to dry. From comments heard at church, I knew she was unusually beautiful.

"Why didn't you give us our Saturday night baths?" I asked Pop.

"You remember it was in a big wooden tub and it was a big fun night for all of you. By the time of your turn the water was pretty dirty and your mother slowly added a bucket of fresh hot water, making sure it was not too hot. As kids climbed out she, wrapped you in a big, warm towel and dried you with hugs. I would have cracked your butts for playing around, so you were lucky I didn't give the baths." It must have been the winter before she died, when I was three, that Bessie bundled me up with blankets while Mother wiped the snow off our sled. It was extremely cold and a blizzard howled for the coldest night that winter. Though I remember my face getting cold until Bessie covered it with a scarf, the middle of the night trek to the doctor's house seemed like fun. They would not give up pounding on the doctor's door until he let us in. He was Hungarian so I understood his scolding them for taking me out on a night like that. Mother shut him up with a succession of "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," in the religious sense of course. Seems I had a dangerously high fever. Bessie and Mother would never be intimidated by a mere doctor.

Further proof that we, Székelys descended from the Huns was my nomadic nature, exhibited first at age three. The family was upset and neighbors mobilized when I came up missing. The search was from basement to attic, sheds in the backyard, nearby alleys and levees of Wolf Creek. Search parties worked from mid-afternoon to late night until someone went through the cellar for the third time. In a corner sat an old, large trunk in which worn shoes were kept. The lid was ajar and when lifted, it revealed a sleeping boy. Carried upstairs, still groggy, I was passed into my worried mother's arms and never felt better all day.

She was so happy that she forgot the scolding or spanking I deserved for that caper. Relieved to be safe, I never confessed walking along the railroad tracks near our house most of the afternoon.

When the Gojacks paraded to Holy Name Church on Sundays or holidays, our friends stopped briefly to exchange greetings. Strangers often smiled and were rewarded by Mother introducing the lot, one by one. We all felt proud in our new, nearly-new and neat-even-if-patched Sunday suits. When Father Voynich patted me on the head, there was an extra kiss from Mother when we got home.

One punishment at my mother's hands is recalled as a delicious feeling. Barely three, I was instructed to place newspapers next to the heating stove, then spread cold ashes from the tray. Wearing shorts and with my knees bare, I was ordered

to kneel on the ashes and recite prayers for my punishment. More bored than hurt,

I complained, my knees were hurting. Each complaint brought her response of "nem", and "tiz".

I knew "nem", meant "no", and "tiz" meant

ten. So in a few minutes my ten minutes were up. She picked me up, wiped my knees, checking to make sure they were not scratched, and gave me a big hug and lots of kisses. I felt so good I wondered how to get that punishment again.

The memory which tells the most about the drive, energy and amazing initiative of this peasant from Transylvania was her commercial laundry service. She was working at the rag shop or cigar factory, paying a woman to wet nurse Mickey, the baby. Pop had a good steady job paying well for an industrial worker. This was not enough for Mother's goal. She had Andy, my older brother, not yet six, pile a large wagon with sideboards with washed, stretched and folded curtains for the Miami Hotel, Dayton’s second-largest. Barely old enough to walk, I was placed on top to keep the high pile of curtains from falling into the street. Andy, a strong boy built like our father, helped Mother pull the wagon for over two miles to the hotel. Returning, we had a tougher job keeping durty curtains on our wagon.

"Mother had three stretchers going most of the time and even did curtains for other people," Bessie told me. She was eleven and was drafted for much of the laundry work. "At times Pop helped on the scrubbing board to wash filthy curtains, after a hard day on the drop forge hammer at his factory," she added.

For this considerable amount of labor, on which most of the family helped, the Miami Hotel paid Mother twenty cents a pair. Considering her goal, it was a labor of love.

"Why do you work so hard?" a neighbor once asked our mother.

"I want to save $800 for each of my children."

I asked Pop and this was news to him.

"She hid the money. I never saw it," Pop said. "As hard as she worked and made every penny count, I'll bet she wanted you to go to college or start a business. Only rich people went to school in the old country."

One winter we all had colds and huddled around the hot kitchen stove watching Mother prepare a large stack of toast from her home-baked bread. Butter on toast I knew. Rubbing it heavily with garlic was new. She kissed us when we each ate two big pieces. The garlic and the kisses cured the colds.

My last clear recollection of my mother brought tears to those who witnessed it. In those days the Hungarian custom was to bring the deceased into the home for three days of viewing. The casket was placed in the living room, banked with flowers. It was closed during the day and opened in the evening for visitations. When the casket arrived and was opened, Bessie screamed and ran out of the house, screaming up and down the street in a state of shock. The funeral home had prepared Mother's body with her eyes wide open, and that was more than Bessie could stand at age twelve.

Just before taking her body to Holy Name Church for a funeral Mass, Father Voynich came for a brief ceremony. The room was full of women mostly, with much weeping and chanting of rosary beads. In the middle of the ceremony a small four-year-old boy

came into the room, holding a live chicken by the leg.

"Mother, look, here's a chicken for you."

That increased the sobbing and for a long time after brought me words of sympathy from ladies in the neighborhood.

In her. recollections, Bessie, who was twelve when our mother died, sheds more light on the magnificent struggles taking place in our home.

"Mother had guts. She wanted her children to have all the milk they needed, so she got Pop to buy a cow. We milked it twice a day and Mother made our own butter, cottage cheese and sour cream."

The peasant girl from Sárköz had many talents.

"She taught me to make homemade noodles before girls my age were starting in school," Bessie said, smiling.

"Little by little we were getting ahead. After the cow, Pop bought chickens, three turkeys and white rabbits I had to clean up after once or twice a day. Then some big shot came around and gave us a paper about a city ordinance. We couldn't keep the cow in the city limits."

"City limits is across the railroad tracks," •Pop said. "So let's move it to the Janko- vichs next door and we'll be in the country."

That didn't work., so Pop, already ready to wrestle tigers for his family, decided to open a store in the living room. Bessie could be the sales manager, at age nine, if she promised to keep the plan a secret.

"We went to auctions to buy fixtures, large shelves, a candy case, a wrought- iron ice cream table with a marble top and four wrought iron chairs," she recalled with her phenomenal memory. "We also bought a large icebox for soda pop, and cases for the ice cream."

She was also secretary-treasurer of this tightly-held family enterprise, keeping the financial records. It was important that she remember every detail.

"Every payday we bought tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, candy and pop. Then just before opening we bought fifteen gallons of ice cream, five vanilla, five chocolate and five strawberry - the only flavors they had then* she recalled.

Our parents had courage to open a new business and faith in their nine-year-old daughter to keep track of the funds and manage the store.

"We opened one bright sunny day in summer and soon learned it was not easy," Bessie said. "We sold a lot of chewing tobacco and cigarettes all week to the workers at the Simonds Knife Works next door. Large ice cream cones, at five cents, sold well on Friday evenings, Saturday and Sunday. In this working-class neighborhood no extra funds were available during the week for kids."

Our gutsy peasant mother was also creative. The dry ice would not last until the next Friday. So, motivated to nourish her active children, she put the melting ice cream to good use. She added fruit to it and made a rich, delicious cold soup for her six kids. A kind of fruit vichyssoise that one would find only in a gourmet restaurant today, with a fancy name and at a shockingly fancy price. Here were six hungry kids calling for more by fancy Hungarian names.

( To be continued.)

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