Hungarian Heritage Review, 1991 (20. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1991-09-01 / 9. szám
VULTURES OF CULTURE Since merging into the United States' "melting pot" nearly 40 years ago, I had often heard that Cleveland, Ohio, is the second largest Hungarian city in the world after Budapest, just as Chicago is the second largest Polish city after Warsaw. So I could hardly wait to visit Cleveland. But it was about seven years before I made my first trip to Cleveland, and when I did, I didn't meet a single Hungarian. I went to work there part-time as a consultant for a management consulting company. No Hungarians ever showed up at our meetings. After my third or fourth trip, after becoming more familiar with the people I dealt with, I mentioned my Hungarian interests to one of the young men on the office staff who knew Cleveland better than his own palm. He started to show me around. By Louis Szathmary I will never forget our first lunch on Buckeye Road at the "Elegant Pig Saloon," or our dinner, with Gypsy music, at a place in the West Side Hungarian colony. There also were memorable meals at the tiny Balaton, named after the largest European lake, located just about in the middle of Hungary. Then I began going to various churches, attending sausage dinners inbasements, concerts, bingos, Christmas sales and "Wine Harvest Day" dances. I admired the larger-than-life statue of Louis Kossuth in University Park. I photographed the bronze plaques marking historical buildings where this Hungarian patriot, who stood up against Hapsburg oppression, gave speeches or slept. I was taken to the "Hungarian Cultural Garden" in a huge park in the center of Cleveland. It was breathtaking. To me, it was like visiting a beautiful garden anywhere in Hungary. This visit was in the mid or late '60s. I already had made many Hungarian friends in Cleveland, and located several close and distant relatives and former schoolmates. I was feeling at home in the Hungarian community. I gave talks and cooking demonstrations, I appeared on television (a couple of times on the Oprah Winfrey show), I autographed copies of my cookbooks at Higb/s department store, and at a now defunct Hungarian bookstore. A couple of weeks ago I was in Cleveland again to attend the introduction of a book of Hungarian poetry by Tibor Tollas, a Hungarian poet who spent some nine years in prison prior to the uprising against Soviet oppression. He left Hungary after the Freedom Fight was lost and the dark age of the Janos Kadar regime took over. He now lives in Munich, Germany, where he is publishereditor of a Hungarian monthly. In his book, "In Whirlwind," the poems are translated into English by American and English poets. The New York-based Imre & Hona E. Landanyi Foundation published the bilingual poems in a handsome little book. Because I was involved in this publishing venture, I was very eager to make sure that it would be effectively introduced to the second largest Hungarian community, and went to Cleveland a day ahead. The committee that arranged for the affair did an excellent job. —continued next page 18 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW SEPTEMBER 1991
