I Can Hold My Own

By Edward A. Nowatzki

I Can Hold My Own is a true story about what it was like growing up in New York City in the 1940s through the eyes a first-generation American, the son of Polish immigrants. As one might expect, the lifestyle and day-to-day activities of a youngster growing up in an urban environment were a lot different from those of a similarly aged youngster growing up on a farm in the Midwest. Added to the demographic differences, in Dr. Nowatzkis case, there were also differences from being a first-generation American caught in transition between the culture of his parents native Poland and that of twentieth-century America. Dr. Nowatzki describes his experiences in a way that illustrates these differences from many perspectives, ranging from his attending a Catholic parochial school and playing sports on the playgrounds of New York to his awareness of historical events such as World War II. The story comes from a period in American history when life was relatively simple and the culture was family-oriented and deeply rooted in traditional American values based on loyalty to God and country. Unlike today, there were no distractions from television, the Internet, computer games, and social networks, so youngsters had to provide their own means for leisure time activities. Some of those activities are described from Dr. Nowatzkis perspective as a participant. I Can Hold My Own will be of interest to anyone growing up in the United States at that time whether on a farm or in a large city like New York. The story will also be of interest to any first-generation American faced with a similar transition between two different cultures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466981454

Edward A. Nowatzki

Edward A. Nowatzki, PhD, was born and raised in New York City (the Bronx). He received a BA in humanities from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York, a BCE from Manhattan College in the Bronx, and an MS and PhD in civil engineering from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. He has over forty-five years of experience in academia and consulting and has written well over one hundred technical papers and reports including the coauthoring of an authoritative book in the field of off-road vehicle mobility. He is a registered professional civil engineer in the state of Arizona and holds the title of professor emeritus at the University of Arizona. Dr. Nowatzki lives with his wife, Patricia, in Tucson, Arizona.

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© Copyright 2013 Edward A. Nowatzki.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-8144-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-8146-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-8145-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013903214

Trafford rev. 03/14/2013

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1   Origins

1.1   Background

1.2   Immigrants

1.3   Pop’s Early Years

1.4   Mama’s Early Years

1.5   The Start of a New Life in America

Chapter 2   Early Days in the Bronx

2.1   The Birth of a Son

2.2   What’s in a Name

2.3   Relatives

2.4   Home Sweet Home

2.5   Documented Non-memories of My Beginnings

2.6   First Memories I—The 1939-1940 New York City World’s Fair

2.7   First Memories II—The Opening of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge—1939

2.8   More Documented Non-memories

Chapter 3   Our Way of Life

3.1   A Day in the Life of Mama and Papa

3.2   Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper

3.3   Growing up a Catholic

3.3.1   Attending Blessed Sacrament School

3.3.2   Attending Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church

3.3.3   First Holy Communion

3.3.4   Confirmation

3.4   Holiday Celebrations

3.4.1   Christmas

3.4.2   Easter Season

•   Palm Sunday

•   Holy Thursday

•   Good Friday

•   Holy Saturday

•   Easter Sunday

3.5   Vacations

3.6   Other Memorable Events

3.6.1   Wuja Adam’s Death

3.6.2   World War II

3.6.3   Medical/Dental

3.6.4   House Chores

Chapter 4   Life as an Altar Boy

Chapter 5   Let the Games Begin

5.1   Outdoor games

5.1   Outdoor games

5.1.1   Street/sidewalk games

•   Stoop ball

•   Box ball

•   Box baseball

•   Ring-O-Leavio Coca Cola

•   Hide-and-Go-Seek

•   Kick the Can

•   Touch football

•   Kick football

•   Roller hockey

•   Shoe box marbles

•   Stickball

5.1.2   Field games

•   Baseball

•   Ice hockey

•   Sleigh riding

•   Marbles-Dirt

•   Rock Fights

5.1.3   Playground games

•   Basketball

•   Handball

•   Off the wall

•   Fast-pitch stickball

5.2 Indoor games

5.2.1   Board Games

•   Monopoly

•   Sorry

•   Checkers, Chess, and Chinese Checkers

5.2.2   Collecting and Trading

•   Stamps

•   Cards

5.2.3   Card playing

5.3   Miscellaneous games

5.3.1   Flying kites

5.3.2   Tops

5.3.3   Yo-yos

5.3.4   Penknives

Chapter 6   Blessed Sacrament School—September 1941 to June 1949

6.1   Background

6.2   My Teachers

6.3   Policies and Characteristics of Blessed Sacrament School

6.4   The Start of the Day

6.5   In-Class Memories

6.5.1   First Grade

6.5.2   Second Grade

6.5.3   Third Grade

6.5.4   Fourth Grade

6.5.5   Fifth Grade

6.5.6   Sixth Grade

6.5.7   Seventh Grade

6.5.8   Eighth Grade

6.5.9   Adjuncts

6.6 Graduation

Chapter 7   After-School Activities

7.1   The Dumps

7.2   The Lots

7.3   The Swamps

7.4   Diversions

7.4.1   Halloween shenanigans

7.4.2   Firecrackers

7.4.3   The Movies

Chapter 8   In the Good Old Summertime

8.1   Ice Cream Vendors

8.2   Going Swimming

8.2.1   Castle Hill Beach Club

8.2.2   Shorehaven Beach Club

8.2.3   Bronx Beach and Pool

8.2.4   Real Beaches

•   Orchard Beach

•   Rockaway Beach

•   Jones Beach

8.3   Other Activities

8.3   Other Activities

8.3.1   Trips to the American Museum of Natural History

8.3.2   Major League Baseball—New York City Police Athletic League (PAL)

8.3.3   Day-long bicycle rides

8.3.4   Caddying

Epilogue

This book is dedicated to my father and mother, without whom the story would be fiction, and to my wife, Patty, and our children, Chris, Eileen, Tom, and Joe, for their love and understanding.

PROLOGUE

A couple of years ago a good friend of mine, Dr. Ernest Smerdon, dean emeritus of the College of Engineering and Mines at the University of Arizona, informed me that he had just finished writing a book about his experiences growing up on a small farm in southwest Missouri during the late 1920s and 1930s. Ernie told me that he had written the book mainly for the benefit of his children who had no idea of the rigors of that lifestyle, having grown up in big cities. After I read Ernie’s book, I told him that my experiences growing up in New York City during the 1940s, as the child of immigrant parents struggling to make ends meet in the aftermath of the Great Depression, were a lot different from his growing up on a farm in Missouri. He suggested I write a book about my experiences. It was then that I realized my children had no idea of their origins. I also realized that my children had grown up at a time when the American economy was booming, and fortunately for them, they were able to enjoy the fruits of their parents’ labors without being concerned about where their next meal was coming from. They were able to participate in and become part of the American culture without any actual or perceived constraints imposed by their parents’ origins or lifestyles. Having grown up in Tucson, Arizona, a university town with a population of approximately four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand people at the time, they had no idea of what it would be like to grow up in a real city, like New York City where I grew up, just as they had no idea of what it would be like to grow up on a farm in southwest Missouri where my friend Ernie Smerdon had grown up. It was mainly for those two reasons that I undertook the writing of this book.

I am starting this book with a story to put things in perspective for the reader and especially for my children, who never lacked opportunities for leisure time activities. Our four children participated in organized activities such as Little League Baseball, Youth Football, cheerleading, gymnastics, scouting, etc. In fact my wife, Patricia, and I encouraged our children to participate in such activities; and we enjoyed watching them do so. On the other hand, my parents, who were married in 1931 at the beginning of the Great Depression, lived a subsistence-type lifestyle during the first ten to fifteen years of their marriage where only hard work and frugal living allowed them to survive and succeed. They had very little leisure time for recreational activities including vacations. My older sister, Rita, and I were born during those hard times; so we grew up in that frugal environment. My father, whom I called Pop or Papa as a term of endearment, was fortunate to have a job. Even under those trying conditions, because of their work ethic he and my mother, whom I called Mama as a term of endearment, owned the house where we lived. It was a three-family house with apartments in the basement, on the ground floor, and on the second storey. Our family occupied the ground floor apartment. Because tenants occupied the other two apartments, my parents worked hard during their leisure time after Pop came home from work and especially on the weekends to maintain the building since they couldn’t afford to hire people for emergency repairs or regular maintenance. Obviously, my parents’ perception of leisure time in those days was not the same as Pat’s and mine when our children were growing up.

The following story is about an incident that happened one Saturday morning in the fall when I was fourteen years old. Pop, who was sixty-two years old at the time, was outside preparing to tar the flat roof of our house in preparation for the winter’s snow and ice. He was in the alleyway between our house and the house next door. He had just attached a rope, which he had previously dropped down from the roof, to a five-gallon can of tar. He was getting ready to go back up on the roof via the fire escape ladders at the rear of the building to hoist up the can. There were five other cans waiting to be hoisted. I had just come out of our house and was on my way to a local playground to play some hoops with a bunch of kids from the neighborhood. Pop saw me walking by the alleyway bouncing my basketball on the sidewalk. He called out,

Where are you going, son?

I’m going over to PS 119 to play some basketball with my friends.

Are you any good at basketball?

I can hold my own.

But are you good enough to be a pro?

No.

Then why are you playing basketball? I need you here to help me on the roof.

I left the basketball on the sidewalk and helped Pop get the rest of the cans of tar up on the roof by attaching the rope to each can one by one so he wouldn’t have to come down from the roof to do it himself. Without being asked, I then went up on the roof to help Pop apply the tar. No questions asked, no complaining, no crushed ego or loss of self-esteem. Pop need help, so I helped him. I guess I felt I could also hold my own being a roofer’s assistant even though I had no desire to become a roofer by trade.

That incident happened over sixty years ago. In retrospect, I believe that my reply to Pop’s question about my being any good at basketball defined my attitude toward the many challenges I’ve faced in my life. I really believed that I could hold my own in anything I undertook, regardless of the challenge, and with that attitude I was not afraid to take on any challenge. I feel that way to this day. I also believe that most of the boys and girls I grew up with in the Bronx, as well as many of our contemporaries throughout the country, held the same belief. As adults, our generation achieved some of the greatest accomplishments in the history of mankind and certainly in the history of the United States. The one that comes to my mind immediately is one that I had the privilege to participate in directly—the landing of men on the Moon and their safe return to Earth. No other country in the world has been able to duplicate that feat to this day, nor is it likely that any other country will do so in the immediate future.

I can hold my own. Keep this thought in mind as you read this narrative of what it was like to grow up in New York City in the 1940s as the only son of Polish Roman Catholic immigrant parents.

CHAPTER 1

Origins

1.1   Background

I was born on February 23, 1936, in the Bronx, one of the five boroughs of New York City. I am very proud to say that I am a first-generation American. Both of my parents were born in what is today Poland. My father, Frank (Francyzek in Polish), was born on May 16, 1888, in Lomza (Łomża in Polish), a town in what is now north-eastern Poland approximately ninety miles east of Warsaw and fifty miles west of Białystok. At the time of his birth, Lomza was part of the Imperial (Czarist) Russian Empire. Figure 1.1 is a map of Europe in 1914, and the circled portion clearly shows that Lomza is in the colored zone that identifies Russia, even though the word Poland is used to designate that area of Russia. The reasons for Poland being shown as a part of Russia will be explained later. My father’s surname, spelled Nowatzki in English, is the phonetically correct pronunciation of his actual Polish surname, which is spelled Nowacki in Polish and translates into English as new things. More about this later on. My father died of a stroke on December 26, 1969, in Woodbury, New York, where he lived with me, my wife, Patricia, and our four children—Christopher, Eileen, Thomas, and Joseph.

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Figure 1.1—Europe in 1914

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Figure 1.2—My mother’s baptismal certificate

My mother, Maryanne (Marianna in Polish), was born on October 7, 1902, on a farm in Trypucie, a small village approximately six miles southwest of Białystok. As shown in the circled portion of the map in Figure 1.1, Białystok was also part of the Imperial (Czarist) Russian Empire at the time of her birth. My mother’s maiden name was Kluczyk, which translates into English as little key. During my mother’s entire life, our family and all of our friends and relatives celebrated her birthday on October 17. In fact, October 17, 1902, is the birth date on her grave marker. It wasn’t until after I had started writing this book that I found a copy of my mother’s baptismal certificate, which is shown in Figure 1.2. The certificate is obviously in Polish and, judging by the signed statement and seal at the bottom of the document, I must have requested it for some legal purpose before I was married in June 1962. For the sake of clarity, I’ll put the translations of the handwritten entries in italics, with the corresponding Polish words in parentheses, unitalicized. The signed and sealed statement at the bottom of the certificate says In witness to the compatibility with the original document (Zgodność powyższego świadectwa z oryginałem stwierdzam). The line below that line reads Certified (Niewodnica) on the date (dnia) 29 (29th) of the month of (m-ca) June (czerwiec) in the year 1962r, where the r after 1902 refers to rok, the Polish word for year. Except for the entry in the upper right hand corner of the certificate, which gives the year (rok) of her birth as 1902, the handwritten entries below the bold-printed heading contain the really important personal information. The handwritten entry on the first line below the heading is my mother’s name, Maryanne Kluczyk (Marianna Kluczyk). The line under that says Born in (urodziła się w) Trypucie (Trypuciack), on the date (dnia) 7th of October (7-go października). The handwritten entry on the fourth line below the heading is my mother’s father’s (z ojca) name Michael Kluczyk (Michata Kluczyka), and on the following line is her mother’s (z matki) first name and maiden name Maryanne Wosnicki (Marianny Wosnicków). The endings on the Polish names of my maternal grandparents signify possessives. I am unable to translate the first few words on the following line, but it provides the date (dnia) on which my mother was baptized (Ochrzczoma) as October 13, 1902, (13/X 1902r) where X is the Roman numeral for 10, which refers to the tenth month, October, and the r after 1902 refers to rok, the Polish word for year. I have no idea of why my mother remained silent about her real birth date. My sister recently told me that shortly before my mother died she confided to her that she was born on a feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary. October 7 is the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary. Also, my mother was never sure of the way her name should be spelled in English, so on some documents she signed Maryjanna (passport) and on others she signed Marjanna (citizenship certificate). Maybe it had to do with differences in endings of words in Polish to signify male, female, possessive, etc. To my knowledge, she never used the proper English translation, Maryanne. My mother died of cancer on March 5, 1965, in Westchester Square Hospital in the Bronx, New York.

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Figure 1.3—Receipt for Pop’s ticket

Although my parents were born and raised within fifty miles of each other in Poland, they did not meet until after each of them had immigrated to the United States.

1.2   Immigrants

My father came to the United Sates first. He arrived in New York City sometime in July or August of 1914. He was twenty-six years old when he immigrated to the United States. Figure 1.3 shows a receipt for $50 dated June 4, 1914, for a payment he made for his passage to the United States. Apparently he worked through an agent, Joseph S. Marcus & Sons, to book passage from Antwerp, Belgium, to New York City on the Red Star Line. Keep the June 4 date in mind since it enters into the story later on. I’m not sure about my father’s exact date of arrival, but according to the ticket shown in Figure 1.4, he left Antwerp on July 22, 1914. He probably arrived in New York a week or two later. Unfortunately, I never saw his passport, but on the ticket his profession is listed as R, which could mean refugee or railroad. More about this later on also. After he arrived in the United States, my father lived with his brother Adam and his family in the Bronx until he was able to find a job and live on his own in New York City.

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Figure 1.4—Pop’s ticket

My mother did not come to the United States until after World War I. She apparently had some difficulty getting out of Poland as well as getting to the correct port of entry in the United States. She arrived in New York City probably sometime in September 1923. I’m not sure about the month and the day, but she did not come from Poland directly to New York City. More about this later on as well. Figure 1.5a shows the front and rear covers of my mother’s passport; Figure 1.5b shows her personal information including the year of her birth (1902); Figure 1.5c shows the photo page of her passport including her signature; and Figure 1.5d shows the visa page that contains the stamp and signature of the U.S. consul in Warsaw and the stamp of the American consulate in the Free State of Danzig (the present-day Polish city of Gdańsk) and her verification signature. I will have more to say about the events surrounding Mama’s passport later on. After her arrival in the United Sates, my mother lived with her brother, Stanley (Stanisław in Polish), and his family in Bayonne, New Jersey, until she married my father in 1931.

Since I called my father Pop or Papa and my mother Mama all my life, I will refer to them by those names of endearment for the rest of this story. At his point I would like to say that Mama and Pop were devout Roman Catholics during their entire lives. They had a deep-rooted faith and trust in God that they passed on to me and my sister, Rita. I will be forever grateful to them for having done that because had they not done so, I would not have the faith and trust in God that have provided me with strength and comfort throughout my life also. I think my parents’ very strong faith will become obvious to you as you read this book.

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Figure 1.5a—Covers of Mama’s passport (right-front; left-back)

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Figure 1.5b—Mama’s passport

(left—personal info; right—destination and validity dates)

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Figure 1.5c—Mama’s passport (left—photo; right—reissue dates)

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Figure 1.5d—Mama’s passport (left—visa granted by US consul in Warsaw; right—stamped by U.S. consulate at boarding in Danzig)

1.3   Pop’s Early Years

To this day, I regret not having spoken with my parents more about their childhood and the years before their marriage in 1931. Therefore I don’t know much about Pop’s upbringing. He was born in Lomza, which was a center of trade since its founding in the fourteenth century. Especially dynamic development took place in the years 1867-1915, when Lomza became the main town of an administrative subdivision of the Imperial (Czarist) Russian Empire. Without going into the historical details, Poland was partitioned among neighboring nations (Russia, Prussia, and Austria) at least three times between 1772 and 1795. The last partition put the Polish people under Russian control. In fact, with the last partition in 1795, the independent nation of Poland ceased to exist until after World War I! That is why it is included as part of Russia on the map in Figure 1.1. Lomza’s importance was the result of its location on the Narew River, which put it at the intersection of two important trade routes that cut through Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Pop was apparently a city boy. He told me that he had some technical training in high school, which was rare in those days. He also probably learned to play a musical instrument while he was in high school. Pop was proud of his musical abilities and, although I never heard him play a note, I have in my possession some sheets of music in his own handwriting dating from the time of Pop’s service in the Czar’s Army 1905-1914. Excerpts from these sheets are shown in Figure 1.6a through 1.6d. As further proof of Pop’s musical abilities, Figure 1.7 shows a picture of him in a military band holding a tuba-like instrument. Why a military band? That story follows.

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Figure 1.6a—Sheet music dated 1914

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Figure 1.6b—Sheet music dated 1914 with Pop’s name in Polish

(rectangle)

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Figure 1.6c—Sheet music

dated 1908

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Figure 1.6d—Sheet music

showing notes

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Figure 1.7—Pop (circled—top row, second from left)

in Russian Army Band

Because he grew up in a big city environment, Pop must have been aware of what was going on in the world at the time he was a teenager. Indeed, he was soon to become a part of that period of history as a soldier in the Imperial (Czarist) Russian Army. Figures 1.8a and 1.8b show photos of Pop and some of his buddies in uniform. The uniform Pop is wearing in Figure 1.8b must be his dress uniform. It looks like he is a Cossack, but he never told me that he was one.

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Figure 1.8a—Pop (right) and buddy in uniform.

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Figure 1.8b—Pop and buddies in dress uniform.

I don’t know the exact dates of the photos or the names of Pop’s buddies, but they were probably taken soon after he joined the army. All I know from Pop is that he fought in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Most Americans probably never heard of the Russo-Japanese War. Outside of hearing about the war from Pop when I was a kid, I too had never heard of it. It was only within the last few years, long after Pop passed away, that I became interested in knowing more about the Russo-Japanese War mainly because Pop had fought in it.

Most of what I know about the Russo-Japanese War comes from my reading an authoritative and well-documented history of the war by Denis and Peggy Warner (1974) entitled The Tide at Sunrise: A History of Russo-Japanese War published by Charterhouse, New York City. Briefly, the sea battles were fought mostly in the waters of the Yellow Sea and the Straits of Tsushima, which divide Japan from Korea. The land battles took place in the mountains and plains of Manchuria, which actually belonged to China at the time, but the Chinese were too weak to interfere having been soundly beaten by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). As pointed out in the book, the Russo-Japanese War was the biggest, most stunning war the world had known to that time, dwarfing the wars of antiquity, the holy wars of the Middle Ages, and even the Napoleonic campaigns. It was the first war fought with modern weaponry, from barbed wire and machine guns to huge dreadnaught-type battleships. It is too bad Americans didn’t know more about the Russo-Japanese War in the late 1930s because they could have learned a very important lesson from it. World War II started for the United States on Sunday, December 7, 1941, with a surprise attack by aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Fleet on elements of our Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. The Russo-Japanese War also started on a Sunday, February 8, 1904, with a surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Fleet on the Russian Pacific Fleet anchored in the harbor off Port Arthur, which is located at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula, in southern Manchuria.

Pop was sixteen years old at the time of the Japanese attack at Port Arthur. It wasn’t long after the attack that Pop was conscripted into the Imperial (Czarist) Russian Army to fight in the Russo-Japanese War. Makes sense because when he was growing up, Lomza was part of the Imperial (Czarist) Russian Empire as noted previously. Although Pop was too young to be a soldier by today’s standards, in those days he was not too young because a military career was one way for a commoner to advance socially and economically in an imperial society. Besides, he had probably already completed a couple of years of technical training in high school by then, and his above average education made him a valuable wartime asset to the Russians. Therefore, it is no surprise that he served in the engineering corp. His unit was assigned to construct a rail connection between Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railroad’s southern Manchurian route and Port Arthur, the bastion of the Russian forces during the war. Permission to construct the section of the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Manchuria to Vladivostok was obtained from China in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War as part of a secret agreement (1896) between Russia and China. Two years later, Russia extracted a further agreement from China to allow the construction of the extension of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Port Arthur (Lüshun) and Dairen (Dalian) on the Yellow Sea. Apparently, Pop’s engineering unit was sent to Manchuria to work on this so-called South Manchurian Railway. Pop told me of the hardships his unit endured traveling to their duty station on the Trans-Siberian Railroad—extreme cold and lack of food. I don’t know whether or not Pop saw frontline action during the war. He never spoke of it, which is understandable even if he saw action because the Russo-Japanese War was one of the bloodiest on record. In a little over a year, Russia suffered 125,000 dead in a losing effort while Japan suffered more than 85,000 losses in victory. Oddly enough, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt mediated the peace by getting the warring nations to agree to the Treaty of Portsmouth to end the war. The peace settlement was signed in Kittery, Maine, on September 5, 1905.

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Figure 1.9a—Photo of Pop (seated) and buddy in Hiroshima, Japan (see Fig. 1.9b)

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Figure 1.9b—Photographer’s trademark in Russian and Japanese on back of photo in Fig. 9.1a.

As near as I can tell, Pop stayed in the army after the war. Although he never told me so, a number of memorabilia suggest that he did. Figure 1.9a shows a photo of him (seated) in uniform taken in Hiroshima, Japan, as indicated in Figure 1.9b, which is the backside of the photo. There is no date on the photo, but apparently Russian soldiers were able to visit the land of their conquerors after the war. The photo of Pop in a military band holding a tuba (Figure 1.7) was taken on May 29, 1913, according to his handwritten inscription on the back of it. Also, the sheets of music in Figures 1.6a through 1.6d contain his handwritten comments with dates from 1908 to 1914. Again, to my regret, I never asked Pop nor did he ever really tell me exactly where he was or what he was doing from the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 to his arrival in America in 1914. However, judging from the dates on his passage ticket (Figure 1.4) and the photographic evidence that he was still in the Russian Army in 1914, he must have done something drastic and moved very fast. Perhaps there is a hint in the photo shown in Figure 1.10a. The photo is on the face of a postcard. It shows Pop still in his Russian uniform complete with epaulettes. The intriguing thing is that the greeting on the framing wreath is in German, and it translates as Cordial Congratulations or Good Luck. This suggests that Pop must have been garrisoned somewhere near Germany. What is more intriguing is the handwritten message in Polish on the back of the postcard shown in Figure 1.10b. It translates as:

This is my photo, which did not come out very well. I’m advising you that when I’m out of the service I will board a train. I’ll write you a letter to let you know when that happens. I also wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Judging from the uniform Pop is wearing and the log-type structure in the background, this photo seems to have been taken at the same place where the photo of the military band shown in Figure 1.7 was taken on May 29, 1913. However, the fact that Pop was wishing the intended recipient a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year suggests that the postcard was written later that year even though the photograph itself may have been taken earlier, perhaps at the same time as the band photo. If Pop actually sent the card to someone, he must have enclosed it in an envelope because there is no address or postage stamp on the card itself. Unfortunately, there is also no date on the card and no indication of the person to whom he may have intended to send it. If you read the translation of the inscription carefully, Pop doesn’t say he is going to take a train home or that he is expecting to see anyone in Poland. The fact that he was wishing the recipient a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year suggests that he did not expect to be home for Christmas and New Year that year, assuming that he meant to send the card to someone in Poland. The question in my mind is that if Pop actually sent the postcard to someone in Poland, how come he still had it in his possession when he came to the United Sates and was able to leave it to his heirs? What is even more intriguing is that he was booking passage to the United States on June 4, 1914, as shown in Figure 1.3. That’s probably less than six months after the time he wrote the note on the back of his picture postcard. So what can we make of all this?

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Figure 1.10a—Pop on postcard—caption in German says Congratulations.

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Figure 1.10b—Message in Polish on the back of postcard and its translation.

According to what Pop told me, he was aware that the stability of the imperial government and the overall socio-political situation in Russia deteriorated very rapidly after the Russo-Japanese war. A quick search of the Internet today verifies that what Pop had told me when I was a boy was true. The following excerpt is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia

"With the defeat of Russia by a non-Western power, the prestige of the government and the authority of the autocratic empire were brought down significantly. Defeat was a severe blow and the Imperial government collapsed, with the ensuing revolutionary outbreaks of 1905-1906. In hope to frighten any further contradiction many demonstrators were shot in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg; the emperor’s Uncle, Grand Duke Sergei, was killed by the bomb of a revolutionary in Moscow as he left the Kremlin. The Black Sea Fleet and a railway strike developed into a general strike which paralyzed the country. Tsar Nicholas II, who was taken by surprise by the events, mixed his anger with bewilderment. He wrote to his mother after months of disorder:

‘It makes me sick to read the news! Nothing but strikes in schools and factories, murdered policemen, Cossacks and soldiers, riots, disorder, mutinies. But the ministers, instead of acting with quick decision, only assemble in council like a lot of frightened hens and cackle about providing united ministerial action . . . ominous quiet days began, quiet indeed because there was complete order in the streets, but at the same time everybody knew that something was going to happen—the troops were waiting for the signal, but the other side would not begin. One had the same feeling, as before a thunderstorm in summer! Everybody was on edge and extremely nervous and of course, that sort of strain could not go on for long . . . . We are in the midst of a revolution with an administrative apparatus entirely disorganized, and in this lies the main danger.’"

Pop told me that things kept getting worse in Russia as time went on with more and more social unrest and worker revolutions taking place. Units of the Czar’s Army were being called upon to put down the unrest. He recalled that starting around 1910 or 1911, the frequency and intensity of strikes by Bolshevik trade unions began to grow. I found out from history books that an alliance was made between Great Britain, France, and Russia at about the same time to offset an earlier alliance that had been made between Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary as the various countries tried to protect their interests in the Balkans. Russia naturally saw Germany as its main potential enemy, even though Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were cousins. Pop must have known what was going on because I remember him telling me that when he was in the army he was fearful that Russia’s relations with Germany could lead to a war between the two nations. At the same time he knew that Russia was about to explode internally. With all of the uncertainty of the political situation at home and abroad, I’m sure Pop felt that the worst place to be at that time was in the Czar’s Army stationed near the border between Russia and Germany. If war broke out, he would be on the front line immediately. If a full-scale revolution occurred at home, his unit would probably be called upon to help suppress it. He knew that the Bolsheviks were too strong for the Czar’s Army to overcome. In short, Pop would be on the wrong side if the Bolsheviks started a full-scale revolution.

Pop then told me a most remarkable story. He said that because of the events taking place in the world and in Eastern Europe in particular, he put in for and received permission from his commanding officers to enter Germany with a forged passport in order to obtain as much intelligence as possible about German troop movements, especially those directed toward the Russian-German border. In short, he became a spy. As Pop said, once he got into Germany he was able to acquire forged papers through his espionage contacts there that allowed him to keep right on going until he reached Antwerp, Belgium. As indicated on his ticket to the United States shown in Figure 1.4, Pop left Antwerp on or about July 22, 1914. World War I broke out between Germany and Russia a little more than a month later on August 1, 1914. Whew! That’s cutting it close.

Unlike Mama’s passport, I never saw Pop’s passport to the United States. In fact, he even suggested to me that he did not have a legitimate passport when he came to this country. If that were truly the case, his entry into the United States may have been illegal, i.e., he may have been an illegal alien. In today’s politically correct terms, he would be called an undocumented immigrant, but I prefer to think of him more as a political refugee based on the story I’ve just related above, which, by the way, he told me more than once when I was young.

Getting back to the postcard in Figure 1.10, in view of the story related above, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pop had sent the card enclosed in an envelope to his brother Adam, who had already immigrated to the United States and was living in New York City. That would explain how Pop was able to retrieve the card and why I have it in my possession today.

1.4   Mama’s Early Years

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Figure 1.11—Photo taken on 09-27-21—(left to right) Mama, her younger brother, Anthony, her older sister, Bertha, and her older brother, Peter

Between the time she was born and the time she left Poland, Mama’s hometown, Bialystok, was under the control of three different nations: Czarist Russia when she was born, Germany during part of World War I, which lasted from 1917-1919, and then Russia and Poland after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which stipulated that the eastern border of Poland would be subsequently determined. It wasn’t until the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921) that the final eastern boundary of Poland was determined. Mama was in Bialystok during World War I and during the course of the Polish-Soviet War. During World War I, a major battle was fought on the outskirts of Bialystok on August 27, 1915. The Austro-German invading army soundly beat the Russians and went on to drive the Russians out of Poland completely. I remember Mama saying that the German soldiers treated the conquered Poles much better than the Russians had for many years beforehand. Figure 1.11 is a photo of Mama and her siblings taken on September 27, 1921. Shown in the photo from left to right are Mama (seated), her younger brother, Anthony (Antoni in Polish), her older sister, Bertha (Bronisława in Polish), and her older brother, Peter (Piotr in Polish). The inscription in Polish on the back of the photo says: Sending you dear brother this remembrance of all the family. The brother to whom the photo was sent was undoubtedly Stanley, who had immigrated to the United States at least six or seven years prior to Mama. He is the brother that my mother lived with in Bayonne, New Jersey, after she arrived in the United States, as noted previously. As an aside, I believe it is ironic that shortly after Mama’s brother Stanley had immigrated to the United States, he was conscripted into the U.S. Army and sent back over the Atlantic Ocean to France to fight in World War I. Therefore, he must have arrived in the United States before 1917 and became a U.S. citizen, which explains why he was able to sponsor Mama. Figure 1.12 is a picture of Mama’s brother Stanley taken before he left Poland to come to the United States. Stanley is standing next to his father, my maternal grandfather, whose name was Peter (Piotr in Polish). Notice the strong resemblance between the father and the two sons shown in Figure 1.11.

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Figure 1.12—Mama’s brother Stanley (standing) and their father, Peter.

Getting back to Mama’s immigration, the political upheavals taking place during that time may explain some of the notations on her passport. The stamp marks and notations on Mama’s passport shown in Figures 1.5a through 1.5d indicate the following chronology:

This chronology suggests that it took Mama a year, almost to the day, from the time she obtained her passport until the time she actually boarded a ship in the Free State of Danzig to come to the United States. At the time of her passage, she was two months shy of her twenty-first birthday. To my knowledge, she made the trip unescorted. She did not speak English and had the equivalent of only a primary school education. As indicated on the left page of Figure 1.5b, her profession was listed as agriculture, i.e., she was regarded to be an agricultural worker. Sounds similar to what is happening today along our southern border, except that she had proper documentation. Mama’s trip to the New World was not without incident. You must remember that she had never been out of Bialystok before. It must have been frightening for her as a young woman to travel alone to Warsaw and then Danzig and to put out to sea not knowing anyone aboard the ship with only a hope that her brother would meet her when she got to New York.

I do not know how long the voyage took, but Mama told me that the ship encountered a major storm at sea and was thrown off course. Instead of landing in New York, the ship was diverted to Boston, and the passengers were required to disembark there. Unfortunately, my uncle Stanley owned a tailor shop and was not able to leave work in time to meet Mama as the ship docked in Boston. So there she was, landing in a strange country, in a strange city that she had never heard of and with nobody to talk to even if she could speak the language. She didn’t know what to do but wait. There were no cell phones in those days, and even making a long distance call to her brother the old-fashioned way by going through an operator was well beyond my mother’s ability at that time since she did not speak a word of English. So according to Mama, she decided not to go through customs but stay right there at the terminal until her brother Stanley came to get her. I cannot help but admire the courage Mama displayed on that occasion. Apparently there were no social service organizations at the dock to greet her and guide her to safe accommodations until somebody came to get her. Fortunately, she did not have to wait too long for her brother to arrive—maybe a day or so. You can just imagine the joy when she and Stanley were finally reunited.

1.5   The Start of a New Life in America

As noted previously, I know very little about my parents’ activities during the years immediately after their arrival in America and before their marriage in 1931. Pop told me that he really enjoyed his newfound freedom from the military and a bachelor’s way of life in America when he first got here. Don’t get me wrong, Pop was not a carouser, but he did like to go out at night occasionally and tip a few brews with the boys. Pop