In February, 2011, the Cleveland Plain Dealer announced a “Most Unforgettable day at an Indians game” contest. The winner of the contest would receive a classic baseball signed by a bunch of Indian players from 30 or 40 years ago. The winner would also get 4 tickets for a game. And finally, the winner would get to throw out the first pitch at an Indians game. That was the prize I wanted most. Can’t imagine how I could ever get a chance to do that. So I entered three memory games. Right after I sent the third e-mail, a Plain Dealer reporter called me and asked which of the three entries was the one I wanted considered for the contest. He said, he was sure it was the “Nickel Beer Night” memory. I agreed. Figured if he liked my “memories” enough to call me, I might have a chance to actually win. When they started running “memories” three days before opening day, I knew I didn’t win. The four runners up would get four tickets to the game of their choice. But I wasn’t selected as a runner up. A couple of weeks before opening day, after the contest had closed, the Indians announced that the Plain Dealer would print a “memory” every day the there was a game. They would give 4 tickets to everyone who got their memory printed. A couple of days ago, I got a letter from the Indians with a voucher for 4 tickets to the game on my choice. I am thinking they might publish my “nickel beer night memory” on the anniversary of the riot. That would be June 4. Today I thought memories would be a blog. Then I decided to add one more.
Tough to pick my "most unforgettable day at an Indians game" outa of hundreds over the last 50 years. Here goes. Nickel Beer Night, June 4,1974. About a month before the game, I bought tickets for the game. For myself and my best baseball buddies, Jim and John Anderson. The team was lousy that year. Good tickets were easy to get. I got upper deck first row seats in section 23, directly behind home plate. Perfect ring side seats for the show. Didn't even know about the cheap beer until a couple of days before the game.
We expected the usual crowd of 8,000. Happy to see the big crowd of 25,000. The lines to get the cheap beer we huge, so we just bought bottles of beer from the vendors. The game was a typical Indians ass whipping....Texas up plenty. The crowd was very restless, very drunk. When that young man took off his clothes and ran across the field, I peed myself laughing. A big fat cop was chasing him. No way was he going to catch him. The streaker threw his clothes up into the stands, climbed in and disappeared. Hardest I have ever laughed in my life. Then another streaker ran across the field. This time the cops were ready and they grabbed him. Then people started climbing out of the stands and onto the field. The cops were so heavily outnumbered, they could not control the unruly people. There were people standing along both sides of the outfield. The Texas bullpen, down the right field line, was filled with people. Then, the Texas pitcher ran out of gas and the Indians started to score. But Texas couldn't warm up a reliever. The before the next inning started, some jerk grabbed Texas' right fielder Jeff Burrough's cap. The Rangers flew out of the dugout, armed with bats and the riot was on. I was laughing so hard, no sound came out. Jim was furious that the Indians were gonna have to forfeit the game. He kept slugging me in the arm.....He's a powerful man, too. That made it even funnier. Of course the Indians forfeited. An ugly moment in Indians Baseball history, a most unforgettable game for me.
My "Unforgettable Day at an Indians Game" was May 26, 1993. Day game. Indians against Oakland. I was there with my 10 year old son, Joe, my Dad, Steve Fedak and good buddy John Anderson. Nice day. We had good box seats in the lower deck, down past the Indians dugout. Kinda boring game. As he often did, Dad was sound asleep when Indians journeyman Pedro Martinez hit a high fly ball to Oakland right fielder Jose Conseco. Incredibly, the ball hit him right on the head and bounced a good 25 feet back and over the fence. Home Run!! We went wild, laughing and cheering. Dad woke up. "What happened?" he said. A couple of weeks later at a party, I walked up behind Dad as he was saying,"... and it hit em right on the head and bounced right over the fence. Funniest thing I ever saw in my life." Right, Dad. (A couple of years ago, Joe pulled up the video of the ball hitting Conseco and going over the fence for me on the computer. Loved seeing that.
October 3,1993. A sad day for me. Last baseball game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. I knew it would be the last game Joe and I would ever go to with my father. And there were dozens since Joe was old enough to go and a bunch before that. He died six weeks later, from cancer. I had four tickets way out in left field for the last three games. For the very last game ever, I took Joe (age 10), Dad and Mom’s brother, Uncle Rudy Novak. Rudy wasn’t much of a baseball fan. Pretty outspoken, grouchy old fella of 77. The reason I took him was, that as a boy, his “big brother” Uncle Louie Novak took Rudy to the very first game ever at Municipal Stadium, July 1, 1931. Thought it would be fun for Rudy to be there for the last game.
We got there at least an hour and a half before game-time. Before we even got inside, Rudy was interviewed and had his picture taken three times. He was loving it….we were all loving it. He talked and talked and we laughed and laughed. Very funny guy. Told a bunch of good, old time baseball stories we had never heard. The game was very boring. The Chicago White Sox shut us out, swept the last three games in the old stadium. During the game, Rudy got interviewed by his local Canton, Ohio newspaper and got his picture taken. I still have the article in the Canton paper with Rudy’s picture. I have some great pictures from that day. When Bob Hope sang, “Thanks for the memories” I cried, along with 75,000 other folks. Thank you for bringing back a classic family memory. Sincerely,
(I wrote this at least 15 years ago.) Monday, April 4, 1994. I had been unemployed for a while, after the Coke Plant had shut down. Dad had been gone for four months. I was semi-looking for a job and taking a class at Cleveland State. I walked over from Cleveland State towards “Indians Park.” The naming rights had not yet been sold to Dick Jacobs, Indians team owner. As I was walking, a ticket scalper offered me a ticket for $150. Later, another scalper said $250. A third scalper, near the stadium had two tickets for $500. I was prepared to pay $50 to $100. The atmosphere was festive. It was sunny and in the 60’s. A large television screen 30 feet by 50 feet was set up on the plaza between Indians Park and Gateway Arena (Gund.) I watched President Clinton throw out the first pitch of the game from the plaza, along with 5,000 others. After the second inning, I walked to the stadium gate by the Bob Feller statue to look at our Fedak family brick, in the pavement.
Suddenly, a short, Japanese lady, speaking broken English, came up and asked me if I wanted to go to the game. I told her I did but couldn’t get a ticket. She said she had been given a free ticket and didn’t want to go. She said I could have it. I was speechless, looking at the ticket. When I looked up, the lady was gone. I could have walked around the corner and sold it for $150. No way. I went right into the stadium. The seat was in a temporary bleacher in right center field. The group sitting there was the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra Chorus. They were all very nice. I sat there one inning, then walked around the rest of the game. It was a bitter-sweet day for me. I wanted to be there but I was missing Dad terribly. Joe very much wanted to be there with me and I very much wanted them both with me. On the way out of the stadium, people were trying to buy the used tickets for $25. No way. That night, my brother, Larry called from San Diego to see if I got a ticket. (It’s in a clear plastic commerative stand, sitting in the den, on the bookshelf. My most prized souvenir.)
Friday, May 6, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Vegas
(This blog was written way back in 1996 or so and has been hiding on a flash drive, waiting to get out. When I read it again, a year or so ago, after years and years, it brought back memories.)
In 1986, Uncle Walter and Cousin Doug went to Las Vegas with a group of friends of Doug's, led by Chris, our wedding photographer who was writing off the expense of his trip due to a convention in the city at that time. Doug and Walter left their wives behind, making the trip boy's only. They had a wonderful time, coming back telling us the fun they had at that fabulous city. Doug asked me to go with them for several years. I always declined, without even asking Phyllis. I just didn't think that it would be a good idea for us. In the fall of 1988, I had minor back surgery. Actually it was the removal of a hilonital hernia. (Sort of an open sore on my tailbone due to a cyst or something. Anyway, I had it removed. The incision went clear to my backbone. I determined not to return to the dirty steel mill with an open wound, so I had a six week recuperation time. By the second day that I was home, I felt fine. The only problem was that I couldn't sit down or drive a car. I could lay down and walk just fine. I could cook and eat and do anything except for the sitting. Phyllis and I talked about her taking a little trip. She and her Mom went to Las Vegas for a few days. The boys and I were fine. The girls had a great time. Two years later, when Doug asked me to go to Vegas with him and Uncle Wally, Phyllis said I could go.
My first trip, February of 1990, was doomed to be a disaster, from the start. We were delayed 12 hours when our charter flight plane broke down. When we got to the hotel, we found we had a sleeping problem. Dad had invited his good friend, John, the minister to join us, and surprisingly, he agreed to come along. I say surprisingly because John was very strongly against drinking, gambling and just about everything in Vegas except for the good, cheap food. Dad said that we would be able to get a day bed and Dad, John and I would share one room. When we got to the hotel, they said no day beds and no additional beds at the Lady Luck, (our hotel) or at any other hotel in Vegas that weekend. Dad had said that if there was any problem, I would still get a bed. When It came down to the nitty-gritty, guess who didn't have any place to sleep. Son Greg. I was able to catch a few naps for a few hours when Dad wasn't sleeping but whenever that happened, he and John would come into the room and make noise, waking me up. On Saturday, I lay down for a two hour nap. We were planning to see a show. Uncle Wally suggested a show called "Nudes on Ice," a true Las Vegas novelty. I told them to decide but that one sounded fine to me. When I woke up, they told me they decided against the "Nudes" in favor of another show. When they told me the name, I said I thought that it was a puppet show. They all said, . . "no, that couldn't be." When we got to the show, sure enough, there were the life-sized puppets. Within five minutes, Walt, Dad and John were sound asleep. They slept through the entire show. They didn't miss a thing.
From the time we got off the plane, John decided that he was the tour director, even though he had never been to Vegas before.. When we would walk through the Casino's he would hold up his arm and point in the direction he thought we should go. This particularly angered Doug. He was on the verge of really telling off John a bunch of times. Four years later we laugh about it and point like John did to get a laugh but on that trip, it wasn't funny. Also, every time John would bump into us, he would always ask how well we were doing at gambling. If we were winning, John would say, " ..better quit while you're ahead." If we were losing money that day, John would say, ". . .better quit before you lose any more money." I was so excited about being there that I stayed up all night, every night. Much of the time was spent, watching the other people play but late at night, I was comfortable playing. Doug and I were both kind of lucky at the "Four Queens" casino, not far from the "Lady Luck." We went back night after night. Dad and Uncle Walter would do no gambling except for the video poker machines and John, obviously, did no gambling at all. I particularly loved the fifty cent shrimp cocktails at the Fremont Casino and Hotel. It became a tradition for us to drop off our suitcases at the hotel and run to the Fremont for shrimp cocktails. We all also loved the $1.98 sixteen ounce New York strip steak breakfast at the Golden Nugget Casino from 2 AM to 4 AM.
We rented a van so we could take a few side trips. Walt took us to see Hoover Dam, located about 45 minutes away. That was super impressive to me. We also visited a major shopping mall and basically saw the sights with the van. They were just building the Mirage Casino and hotel. The volcano was not yet built. Neither was Excalibur.
The next year, 1991, Doug and I said that if John Mellinger was going, we weren't. John wasn't interested so we didn't have a problem. I was determined to have my own bed so I invited my friend, Sam Yannitelli, a retired LTV man and member of my bowling team, to come along ,and he did. We had decided to pay the higher plane fares to avoid another problem with a charter flight. We also decided to switch to the Golden Nugget Hotel instead of the Lady Luck. We didn't like the long walk from the room and having to use two elevators to get to the casino, even though the rooms and the hotel were very nice. My brother, Larry, was able to join us, although he came in a day later and left a day earlier. He and Dad shared a room, Doug and Walt had a room and Sam and I had a third one.
We took one side trip to Laughlin, Nevada. It is a small group of casino's, built along the Colorado river. Across the river, which was nothing but a muddy stream, was the state of Colorado. I particularly enjoyed the ride down, as I laid down in the back luggage compartment and slept the whole hour-and-a-half trip, each way. I was still very excited about being in Las Vegas and was staying up all night, every night, and not getting much sleep. Really, I still didn't need a bed. Doug called Larry, "Mister Blackjack" and "One Bet Larry" and he was extremely lucky the whole trip. Larry had never been much of a card player his whole life and I don't think he had ever gambled. He was very timid at first about gambling at all. He had not brought much cash with him and was planning to borrow from me to pay for his room . We persuaded him to play blackjack with us and was he ever lucky. He got blackjack after blackjack. And kept winning and winning. . . . two, three and finally, five dollar bets. Doug and I also won a few bucks in Laughlin, but Larry won about two hundred, with his biggest bet being five dollars. Dad and Wally continued to play the slot machines and video poker machines. It was really fun being all together, the adult male Fedak-Fedyk boys.
Sam was an expert slot machine player. He had been to Vegas a number of times and he was confident that he would win money. He played nothing but dollar slots for two days, and lost and lost and lost. He was way over a thousand behind and going further behind every time he played. It took the fun out of the trip for him. Not only that, his wife was furious about him going without her. Four years later, her voice is very cold on the phone when I call Sam and give my name.
One of the high points of the trip, for me was at Caesar's Palace. Phyllis' Mom had given me ten dollars to bet at roulette on number seventeen, in two separate bets. After playing a little blackjack at Caesar's, I had a five dollar chip left. I tried to bet it but was told that the table was twenty-five dollar minimum. I found a five dollar game and bet the chip, and it hit. Doug came up just as I was collecting my money. He said " . . that's great, now you're even for the trip or maybe ahead." I told him that the money belonged to Phyllis' Mom. Doug said, "You're not going to tell anyone about that!!" I gave the money to Grandma Poczebut. She was thrilled to pieces. I was super glad I gave her the money. That made my trip!!
This time, without John, we saw two girlie shows. One was "Nudes of Vegas" or something like that. I think that Dad enjoyed the nude girl shows the most. He was extremely animated and never closed his eyes at one of those shows, for a instant. I think that we all must have had our fill of the nudies because we never went back to another one. We saw the dinner show at Excalibur that year. That's the one where you eat dinner without knives or forks.We were all very hungry and the glass of beer that they gave us with dinner must have made us big drinkers a little high. They gave us Cornish hen, which is a small chicken. When I saw it, I told Dad that it was squab, pigeon. Dad started to gag and say he wasn't going to eat that. Larry almost swallowed his hand and arm to keep from laughing. Dad asked Wally what squab was and Wally told him it was pigeon. I really thought that I was going to get to eat Dad's dinner that time. Finally, I think Dad realized that I was teasing, and ate his own dinner.
The Fedak-Fedyk Vegas trip in 1992 expanded to include two of Doug's friends, Tom and Jerry. Also, Doug's brother-in-law, Al Richardson, Gayle's husband, joined the group along with Dad, Larry, Doug, Walter and myself. We again stayed at the Golden Nugget. We seem most comfortable downtown and like the Nugget. We didn't see much of Doug, Tom or Jerry the whole trip. They were off gambling by themselves. By the second night, all three of them had losses of over $1,000 each. Tom and Jerry were getting extra gambling money off their MasterCard's within 24 hours. Ouch. We saw a couple of shows and did a lot of good eating and spent time together. This was a slightly nervous trip for me. I had quit smoking eight months before. I was afraid I might smoke again around the gambling and drinking and everything. That was not the case, however.
1993 was a tough trip for me to make. I had been unemployed for about a month and had no prospects of a job. I had determined not to go up until two days before we left. My brother couldn't go because he was in the middle of a major company merger and it looked like a Dad was not going to go without me. So I went, and it turned out to be probably the best of the first four. Our group included Doug, Walt, Doug's friend, Tom, Al Richardson, Al Richardson's father, Ed, Dad and I. Tom had a single room. His friend, Jerry decided to go too late and couldn't get a reasonably priced plane ticket.
The trip was memorable, not for what we did or didn't do, but because we did it together. We casino hopped and ate and gambled and relaxed together. Walt and Dad actually started playing blackjack every morning for several hours. I did a lot more "craps" then I had ever done before. The food was great, the weather was cold and drizzly but no body minded. Tom, Doug and I went to to Palomino club, a few miles down La Vegas Boulevard from “downtown.” They were famous for fabulous nude dancers. They had Playboy playmates and Penthouse pets. All the girls were beautiful and sexy. One had “88’s”. We tipped the guy at the door for front row seats. Good move. We went there every trip. We also had a very good run at Jerry's Nugget, across the street from the Palomino. It's really a local type casino and kind of run down and scruffy. For some reason, Doug likes it. There was almost no one there. Right at the bar by the entrance were four or five dirty, smelly bum type characters, who watched us the whole time we were there. As soon as we hit the crap table, we started winning and winning and winning. There was one local guy that was betting against Doug and I as we rolled, and he lost his ass . . .and cursed and complained. Tom didn't bet but Doug and I were quickly, over a hundred ahead. I saw those bums watching us and told the boys it was time to move on. And we did. And luckily, nothing happened.
We saw one memorable show, Sigfried and Roy at the Mirage at $70.00 a ticket. Tom didn't go but Doug and Wally and Dad and I went. We sat in the very last row of the theatre, but we could still see and hear everything, perfectly. As soon as the show started, Dad fell asleep. I gave him a little nudge and he would wake up. I would guess that Dad fell asleep fifty times in the hour and a half, show. I kept a close eye on him to keep him alert, nicely, but persistent. The show was spectacular. In the end they had dozens of pure, white tigers all over the stage. They must had done 50 magic tricks and had one hundred costumed people in the act. I would see that identical show again, if Phyl or the boys were with me. It was that good, even at that price. Actually, I wanted to see Sher but couldn't get tickets. She was the only big time act in town, besides Sigfried and Roy (They are 50 year old unmarried roommates in a huge mansion outside Vegas.) The other show that I remember was Don Rickles. His show was cheap but he wasn't that good. Actually, he was a nice guy most of the show and his popularity always came from his nastiness, which was what we expected and wanted. Dad stayed awake for that show.
The only problem on that trip, from my point of view was the room accommodations. Dad and I shared a room, at the Nugget, adjoining Doug and Wally's room. The problem was that Dad and I did not fit well together. Dad and Wally were ready for bed at nine or ten at night and I was just getting started. By the time I would get in, at three A.M. or so, Dad would be in deep sleep and he snored terribly. He snored so bad that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep. A couple of times I moved him or asked him to turn over and Dad became extremely angry that I disturbed him. Dad actually cursed me out a couple of times. Then, when we would both fall asleep, Dad and Wally would be up and wide awake at five or Six A.M. and take showers and rattle the newspapers around and talk. The problem with that was that my sleeping habits had changed. For some reason, since I left LTV, I have been a super light sleeper. And, on that trip, I was not able to fall back asleep, easily. I asked Dad to read the paper or talk with Wally in the lobby of the hotel or wherever, to let me sleep. Dad was sort of irate, saying that it was his room, too. We actually got into a couple of minor arguments about the room situation. I told Dad and Wally that I would never be able to share a hotel room with Dad again because of our sleeping differences. Dad and I will not have that problem, again. After the funeral, I told Wally that I would not consider the Vegas trip in 1994, because it would be an emotional problem for me. ( As well as financial due to the job situation).. I overheard Larry tell Doug that he would like to go to Vegas in 1994 and that Doug should let Larry know as soon as they decide, when the date would be as he would like to go. There will be major changes in the personnel in 1994 with Dad and I not going and Larry back with the group.
As it turned out, the Fedak - Fedyk boys Vegas junkets ended in 1993. Although Larry wanted to go in 1996, Doug and Wally scheduled the trip for weekdays, not over the long weekend which Larry would have probably attended. I will probably never go to Vegas again, without Phyllis. With Larry living in San Diego, only a three hour drive to Vegas, possibly he will join Doug and Wally. I have told Donny and Joe that I would take them to Vegas when they are 21, so we could have a big time North Royalton Fedak Vegas junket in a couple of years.
(It happened….that’s another story.)
I'd like to add pictures to the blogs. Jean gave me one of the Vegas group. I'd like some more. Gayle & Al??
In 1986, Uncle Walter and Cousin Doug went to Las Vegas with a group of friends of Doug's, led by Chris, our wedding photographer who was writing off the expense of his trip due to a convention in the city at that time. Doug and Walter left their wives behind, making the trip boy's only. They had a wonderful time, coming back telling us the fun they had at that fabulous city. Doug asked me to go with them for several years. I always declined, without even asking Phyllis. I just didn't think that it would be a good idea for us. In the fall of 1988, I had minor back surgery. Actually it was the removal of a hilonital hernia. (Sort of an open sore on my tailbone due to a cyst or something. Anyway, I had it removed. The incision went clear to my backbone. I determined not to return to the dirty steel mill with an open wound, so I had a six week recuperation time. By the second day that I was home, I felt fine. The only problem was that I couldn't sit down or drive a car. I could lay down and walk just fine. I could cook and eat and do anything except for the sitting. Phyllis and I talked about her taking a little trip. She and her Mom went to Las Vegas for a few days. The boys and I were fine. The girls had a great time. Two years later, when Doug asked me to go to Vegas with him and Uncle Wally, Phyllis said I could go.
My first trip, February of 1990, was doomed to be a disaster, from the start. We were delayed 12 hours when our charter flight plane broke down. When we got to the hotel, we found we had a sleeping problem. Dad had invited his good friend, John, the minister to join us, and surprisingly, he agreed to come along. I say surprisingly because John was very strongly against drinking, gambling and just about everything in Vegas except for the good, cheap food. Dad said that we would be able to get a day bed and Dad, John and I would share one room. When we got to the hotel, they said no day beds and no additional beds at the Lady Luck, (our hotel) or at any other hotel in Vegas that weekend. Dad had said that if there was any problem, I would still get a bed. When It came down to the nitty-gritty, guess who didn't have any place to sleep. Son Greg. I was able to catch a few naps for a few hours when Dad wasn't sleeping but whenever that happened, he and John would come into the room and make noise, waking me up. On Saturday, I lay down for a two hour nap. We were planning to see a show. Uncle Wally suggested a show called "Nudes on Ice," a true Las Vegas novelty. I told them to decide but that one sounded fine to me. When I woke up, they told me they decided against the "Nudes" in favor of another show. When they told me the name, I said I thought that it was a puppet show. They all said, . . "no, that couldn't be." When we got to the show, sure enough, there were the life-sized puppets. Within five minutes, Walt, Dad and John were sound asleep. They slept through the entire show. They didn't miss a thing.
From the time we got off the plane, John decided that he was the tour director, even though he had never been to Vegas before.. When we would walk through the Casino's he would hold up his arm and point in the direction he thought we should go. This particularly angered Doug. He was on the verge of really telling off John a bunch of times. Four years later we laugh about it and point like John did to get a laugh but on that trip, it wasn't funny. Also, every time John would bump into us, he would always ask how well we were doing at gambling. If we were winning, John would say, " ..better quit while you're ahead." If we were losing money that day, John would say, ". . .better quit before you lose any more money." I was so excited about being there that I stayed up all night, every night. Much of the time was spent, watching the other people play but late at night, I was comfortable playing. Doug and I were both kind of lucky at the "Four Queens" casino, not far from the "Lady Luck." We went back night after night. Dad and Uncle Walter would do no gambling except for the video poker machines and John, obviously, did no gambling at all. I particularly loved the fifty cent shrimp cocktails at the Fremont Casino and Hotel. It became a tradition for us to drop off our suitcases at the hotel and run to the Fremont for shrimp cocktails. We all also loved the $1.98 sixteen ounce New York strip steak breakfast at the Golden Nugget Casino from 2 AM to 4 AM.
We rented a van so we could take a few side trips. Walt took us to see Hoover Dam, located about 45 minutes away. That was super impressive to me. We also visited a major shopping mall and basically saw the sights with the van. They were just building the Mirage Casino and hotel. The volcano was not yet built. Neither was Excalibur.
The next year, 1991, Doug and I said that if John Mellinger was going, we weren't. John wasn't interested so we didn't have a problem. I was determined to have my own bed so I invited my friend, Sam Yannitelli, a retired LTV man and member of my bowling team, to come along ,and he did. We had decided to pay the higher plane fares to avoid another problem with a charter flight. We also decided to switch to the Golden Nugget Hotel instead of the Lady Luck. We didn't like the long walk from the room and having to use two elevators to get to the casino, even though the rooms and the hotel were very nice. My brother, Larry, was able to join us, although he came in a day later and left a day earlier. He and Dad shared a room, Doug and Walt had a room and Sam and I had a third one.
We took one side trip to Laughlin, Nevada. It is a small group of casino's, built along the Colorado river. Across the river, which was nothing but a muddy stream, was the state of Colorado. I particularly enjoyed the ride down, as I laid down in the back luggage compartment and slept the whole hour-and-a-half trip, each way. I was still very excited about being in Las Vegas and was staying up all night, every night, and not getting much sleep. Really, I still didn't need a bed. Doug called Larry, "Mister Blackjack" and "One Bet Larry" and he was extremely lucky the whole trip. Larry had never been much of a card player his whole life and I don't think he had ever gambled. He was very timid at first about gambling at all. He had not brought much cash with him and was planning to borrow from me to pay for his room . We persuaded him to play blackjack with us and was he ever lucky. He got blackjack after blackjack. And kept winning and winning. . . . two, three and finally, five dollar bets. Doug and I also won a few bucks in Laughlin, but Larry won about two hundred, with his biggest bet being five dollars. Dad and Wally continued to play the slot machines and video poker machines. It was really fun being all together, the adult male Fedak-Fedyk boys.
Sam was an expert slot machine player. He had been to Vegas a number of times and he was confident that he would win money. He played nothing but dollar slots for two days, and lost and lost and lost. He was way over a thousand behind and going further behind every time he played. It took the fun out of the trip for him. Not only that, his wife was furious about him going without her. Four years later, her voice is very cold on the phone when I call Sam and give my name.
One of the high points of the trip, for me was at Caesar's Palace. Phyllis' Mom had given me ten dollars to bet at roulette on number seventeen, in two separate bets. After playing a little blackjack at Caesar's, I had a five dollar chip left. I tried to bet it but was told that the table was twenty-five dollar minimum. I found a five dollar game and bet the chip, and it hit. Doug came up just as I was collecting my money. He said " . . that's great, now you're even for the trip or maybe ahead." I told him that the money belonged to Phyllis' Mom. Doug said, "You're not going to tell anyone about that!!" I gave the money to Grandma Poczebut. She was thrilled to pieces. I was super glad I gave her the money. That made my trip!!
This time, without John, we saw two girlie shows. One was "Nudes of Vegas" or something like that. I think that Dad enjoyed the nude girl shows the most. He was extremely animated and never closed his eyes at one of those shows, for a instant. I think that we all must have had our fill of the nudies because we never went back to another one. We saw the dinner show at Excalibur that year. That's the one where you eat dinner without knives or forks.We were all very hungry and the glass of beer that they gave us with dinner must have made us big drinkers a little high. They gave us Cornish hen, which is a small chicken. When I saw it, I told Dad that it was squab, pigeon. Dad started to gag and say he wasn't going to eat that. Larry almost swallowed his hand and arm to keep from laughing. Dad asked Wally what squab was and Wally told him it was pigeon. I really thought that I was going to get to eat Dad's dinner that time. Finally, I think Dad realized that I was teasing, and ate his own dinner.
The Fedak-Fedyk Vegas trip in 1992 expanded to include two of Doug's friends, Tom and Jerry. Also, Doug's brother-in-law, Al Richardson, Gayle's husband, joined the group along with Dad, Larry, Doug, Walter and myself. We again stayed at the Golden Nugget. We seem most comfortable downtown and like the Nugget. We didn't see much of Doug, Tom or Jerry the whole trip. They were off gambling by themselves. By the second night, all three of them had losses of over $1,000 each. Tom and Jerry were getting extra gambling money off their MasterCard's within 24 hours. Ouch. We saw a couple of shows and did a lot of good eating and spent time together. This was a slightly nervous trip for me. I had quit smoking eight months before. I was afraid I might smoke again around the gambling and drinking and everything. That was not the case, however.
1993 was a tough trip for me to make. I had been unemployed for about a month and had no prospects of a job. I had determined not to go up until two days before we left. My brother couldn't go because he was in the middle of a major company merger and it looked like a Dad was not going to go without me. So I went, and it turned out to be probably the best of the first four. Our group included Doug, Walt, Doug's friend, Tom, Al Richardson, Al Richardson's father, Ed, Dad and I. Tom had a single room. His friend, Jerry decided to go too late and couldn't get a reasonably priced plane ticket.
The trip was memorable, not for what we did or didn't do, but because we did it together. We casino hopped and ate and gambled and relaxed together. Walt and Dad actually started playing blackjack every morning for several hours. I did a lot more "craps" then I had ever done before. The food was great, the weather was cold and drizzly but no body minded. Tom, Doug and I went to to Palomino club, a few miles down La Vegas Boulevard from “downtown.” They were famous for fabulous nude dancers. They had Playboy playmates and Penthouse pets. All the girls were beautiful and sexy. One had “88’s”. We tipped the guy at the door for front row seats. Good move. We went there every trip. We also had a very good run at Jerry's Nugget, across the street from the Palomino. It's really a local type casino and kind of run down and scruffy. For some reason, Doug likes it. There was almost no one there. Right at the bar by the entrance were four or five dirty, smelly bum type characters, who watched us the whole time we were there. As soon as we hit the crap table, we started winning and winning and winning. There was one local guy that was betting against Doug and I as we rolled, and he lost his ass . . .and cursed and complained. Tom didn't bet but Doug and I were quickly, over a hundred ahead. I saw those bums watching us and told the boys it was time to move on. And we did. And luckily, nothing happened.
We saw one memorable show, Sigfried and Roy at the Mirage at $70.00 a ticket. Tom didn't go but Doug and Wally and Dad and I went. We sat in the very last row of the theatre, but we could still see and hear everything, perfectly. As soon as the show started, Dad fell asleep. I gave him a little nudge and he would wake up. I would guess that Dad fell asleep fifty times in the hour and a half, show. I kept a close eye on him to keep him alert, nicely, but persistent. The show was spectacular. In the end they had dozens of pure, white tigers all over the stage. They must had done 50 magic tricks and had one hundred costumed people in the act. I would see that identical show again, if Phyl or the boys were with me. It was that good, even at that price. Actually, I wanted to see Sher but couldn't get tickets. She was the only big time act in town, besides Sigfried and Roy (They are 50 year old unmarried roommates in a huge mansion outside Vegas.) The other show that I remember was Don Rickles. His show was cheap but he wasn't that good. Actually, he was a nice guy most of the show and his popularity always came from his nastiness, which was what we expected and wanted. Dad stayed awake for that show.
The only problem on that trip, from my point of view was the room accommodations. Dad and I shared a room, at the Nugget, adjoining Doug and Wally's room. The problem was that Dad and I did not fit well together. Dad and Wally were ready for bed at nine or ten at night and I was just getting started. By the time I would get in, at three A.M. or so, Dad would be in deep sleep and he snored terribly. He snored so bad that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep. A couple of times I moved him or asked him to turn over and Dad became extremely angry that I disturbed him. Dad actually cursed me out a couple of times. Then, when we would both fall asleep, Dad and Wally would be up and wide awake at five or Six A.M. and take showers and rattle the newspapers around and talk. The problem with that was that my sleeping habits had changed. For some reason, since I left LTV, I have been a super light sleeper. And, on that trip, I was not able to fall back asleep, easily. I asked Dad to read the paper or talk with Wally in the lobby of the hotel or wherever, to let me sleep. Dad was sort of irate, saying that it was his room, too. We actually got into a couple of minor arguments about the room situation. I told Dad and Wally that I would never be able to share a hotel room with Dad again because of our sleeping differences. Dad and I will not have that problem, again. After the funeral, I told Wally that I would not consider the Vegas trip in 1994, because it would be an emotional problem for me. ( As well as financial due to the job situation).. I overheard Larry tell Doug that he would like to go to Vegas in 1994 and that Doug should let Larry know as soon as they decide, when the date would be as he would like to go. There will be major changes in the personnel in 1994 with Dad and I not going and Larry back with the group.
As it turned out, the Fedak - Fedyk boys Vegas junkets ended in 1993. Although Larry wanted to go in 1996, Doug and Wally scheduled the trip for weekdays, not over the long weekend which Larry would have probably attended. I will probably never go to Vegas again, without Phyllis. With Larry living in San Diego, only a three hour drive to Vegas, possibly he will join Doug and Wally. I have told Donny and Joe that I would take them to Vegas when they are 21, so we could have a big time North Royalton Fedak Vegas junket in a couple of years.
(It happened….that’s another story.)
I'd like to add pictures to the blogs. Jean gave me one of the Vegas group. I'd like some more. Gayle & Al??
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Steve in the 80's
When Mom died in 1985, we were all afraid that Dad would really turn into a heavy drinker, a drunk. Mom had said that even when she first met Dad, he drank heavily. He always liked to stop off at the bar after work for a drink. Sometimes, he would stay there longer and Mom would drive down to the bar to get him out. He only kept one bottle of liquor around “for company” but they never lasted long. Dad liked to have beer in the basement, but that stuff never lasted long, either. Mom and Dad quarreled about his drinking. He drank every day. Guess that made him an alcoholic, although he rarely got “falling down” drunk. That only happened at rare occasions like weddings or something like that. But, he got “lit up” as Mom called it, every day. I’m sure he spent lots of money on booze, although Mom handled the money and stayed after him about it.
A strange thing happened to Dad, the widower. He turned into a “ladies man.” He had a steady stream of girlfriends. He called them his “lambs.” Don’t know what he meant by that. When he got mad at one of them, he called her a “dizzy dame.” Not sure what “dame” meant. Dad’s knees were in terrible shape from arthritis. He could barely walk, and was in constant pain. Then he had both of them replaced, after Mom died. He worked very hard, the rest of his life to get maximum mobility and flexibility out of the replacement knees. Right after both surgeries, he had me bending the new knees. He said to keep pushing on it until I saw a tear in his eye. I did just what he said. He never complained. The doctors couldn’t believe the flexibility he had in them. Right after the surgeries, his doctor said they looked like swiss cheese, couldn’t believe he could even walk on them. After they were replaced, six months apart, Dad was a new man. By then he was living in an apartment complex near Parmatown called Regency Towers. Dad swam a mile in the pool every day. An amazing fact about that was that Dad had a torn rotator cuff muscle in his shoulder and could only swim with one arm and his legs. He swam so slowly, you could barely tell he was going forward, but he worked at it, lap after lap until he did his mile. Dad said he felt like crap every morning when he got up. Then he would have his grits or oatmeal and coffee for breakfast then do a series of stretching exercises. Then he would lift weights. He had no weight on the bar, just the weight of the bar was enough for him. Then he would go swimming, then shower and shave. After that, Dad said he was ready to go and feeling great.
Very early in Dad’s dating time, Phyl told him that I was not too happy about his girlfriends. She suggested that he not tell me much of what he was doing, and he didn’t. Guess the big thing was, I didn’t like the girlfriends coming over on holidays. He didn’t do that too much after Phyl talked to him about it. Dad’s two main girlfriends, that he talked to me about and brought around were Irvine and Dorothy. Dad liked Irvine because she had a “nice shape” and Dorothy because she had lots of money. Irvine said that Dad asked him to marry her a bunch of times and she could have “taken him for every dime he had” but she knew it wouldn’t have worked and cooled down their relationship. Dad always dated several girls at a time. He said that he only spent a few dollars a week on groceries because the girls were always cooking for him. Dad really wanted to remarry, though. Phyl says he was lonely, even with his new buddies and his girlfriends and us. He got a great deal of pleasure out of ballroom dancing. Irvine and others told us that they couldn’t keep up with him. He needed to have several girls to dance with and other girls because he wanted to go dancing every night. There was a special girl we didn’t know much about who lived at Regency. I suspect he spent part of every holiday with her and her family. I remember being very surprised at how devastated that lady was, at Dad’s funeral. Then she told be about his spending the holidays with her family. Her name was Ruth. She’s the lady who gave Dad the bottle with the red lid, that we use every Christmas for ghreme. All of Dad’s “lambs” were well proportioned and reasonably slender. Anyway, Dad danced six nights a week, and would have danced seven nights, but they were all closed on Mondays.
Dad always came over on Saturday mornings to do his laundry. He would just use his garage door opener and come in and get started, even when no one was up. I was working at Ford Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park and always had Saturday off. Usually, Dad timed his arrival for after Phyl left for work. When the boys and I got up, I always wanted to go out for breakfast. Sometimes Dad wanted to go out but he was always wanting me to make grits or oatmeal instead. I wanted eggs and meat. After age 50, I began to appreciate the grits and oatmeal. Dad’s favorite place for Saturday breakfast was Laurel’s at the corner of Pearl Road and Snow Road, in Parma. Dad loved to order potato pancakes. The boys and I loved to swipe potato pancakes off his plate. He would try to stab us with his fork but was never fast enough to get us. Don was the fastest. Dad was easy pickings. We would point at someone, and say, “isn’t that a friend of yours over there” and he would always look. Five times in five minutes and he would still look. And we would laugh. And he would say, “damn it Greg, can’t you control these boys,” and we would all laugh some more. Grandpa was not laughing, though. Sometimes I had to get him another order of potato pancakes because we snitched so many. Those were really fun times and wonderful memories for all three of us.
Dad loved the Cleveland Indians. We used to get tickets for eight or ten games a year. This love of the Indians went back to the seventies when I was working at the steel mill. I used to get bunches of tickets from salesmen myself and tickets from my bosses. Especially opening day. I would always get ten tickets and take Dad and a couple of his friends. Dad’s friend, John, the minister often came with us and Dad’s girlfriend, Dorothy. Occasionally, after Mom died, her sister Ann from South Carolina would visit. She timed her visits for Indians home games. She stayed with Dad but Dorothy was his date and John was Ann’s date. Ann and Dorothy became friends. As two single, financially secure senior ladies, they took a few trips together.
While Dad was still working at White Motors, he sometimes got tickets from work. His tickets were always almost on the field, just to the right of home plate, between there and the Indians dugout. Great seats. One time, I took good Mount Union College friend, Jim, to a game and sat in those primo seats. Jim got two foul balls, off the screen. He wouldn’t give one of them to me. One was for his sister and the other was for his girlfriend’s daughter. Never took Jim to another game in those seats.
My favorite Indians story with Dad was in the late 80’s. Dad & I & Joe and John were at an Oakland A’s – Indians game. In about the seventh inning, an Indian player hit a fly ball to deep right field. The ball hit Jose Conseco right on the top of his head and bounced over the fence for a home run. We went wild laughing. Dad, who often dozed at the games or during Browns game, woke up and asked what happened. We told him. A couple of weeks later, I came up behind Dad at a party. He was saying, “…….and it hit him right on the head and bounced right over the fence. Funniest thing I ever saw.” Right, Dad. A few years ago, Joe & I watched the incident again on the computer. Found it on the Internet.
In the 80’s we started buying tickets for eight or ten games a year. Usually, it was Dad and I and Joe and “Uncle Juan”, my very good friend from Mount Union College, and his Dad. We had tickets for the last three games in the old stadium, before they tore it down to build the brown’s stadium. For the very last game, we took Uncle Rudy Novak, Mom’s brother. He was at the very first game at that stadium, sixty some years before. His older brother “Uncle Louie” took him. That was a wonderful memory for Rudy and a great story for us. Rudy kept getting interviewed because he was at the first game there. Very sad at the end. A super famous comedian who grew up in Cleveland named Bob Hope was there. He sang his trademark song at the end. “Thanks for the memories.” Then they dug out and removed home plate. Couldn’t have been a dry eye in the place. 80,000 plus people there. Chicago won all three games. Ugg.
Dad always loved to play cards. Even when I was a little kid, we always played cards for money. Mom bid wildly in pinochle. So she often lost. “Quarter a game, dime a set.” In the 1980’s I introduced him to the game of backgammon. He instantly loved it. He taught it to everyone he knew. And played it constantly. Guess he must have been the master, beating his friends all the time because he didn’t like it a bit when we beat him. His famous line was, “how do you do that” when I would call for a roll, then roll it. And “GOD DAMN IT” when things went against him. And they usually did. That’s just the way it went. He used to get mad when we would say, “we like to play backgammon with you, Grampa, ‘cause you’re easy to beat.” But he was the one who went right to the hallway closet to bring out the backgammon board. We always played backgammon for money with Dad. It was usually a quarter a game. When the boys lost, he always made them go upstairs and get their own money to pay off. Wouldn’t let me pay for them. Said it taught them the value of money. He had Larry buy the board we always use, in the early 90’s.. He picked it out while visiting in Virginia. A really oversized one we love. Dad was always good for two games. After that, he started to get mentally tired and played badly. He didn’t like to lose. But he loved to win. He got a look on his face when things were going his way that we called “his silent cackle.” And one of us would point to him and say, “there’s the silent cackle” and that would make it even better for him. He never gloated or anything but we could see an expression on his face that he was cackling inside. He also liked to smack the table with his fist when he got a bad break. That always made us laugh. The boys and I have lots of good memories of those Saturdays.
Dad lived the last four or five years of his life at Regency Apartments. He had a very nice, two bedroom suite on the seventh floor and a space for his car in the indoor garage. It was very convenient for him. Not much upkeep needed, good location. The elevator was right outside his door and the garage was right outside the elevator door downstairs. Dad loved the pool. He got me a pool pass. The pool guards must have thought I lived with him because they never questioned my pool pass. On hot days, the boys and Phyl and I would go to the pool to cool off. We’d call Dad from the payphone at the pool. If he was home, he would come down. We just loved having access to that pool. Usually, it was empty except for us. Sometimes the lifeguard would be sleeping when we came in and still asleep when we left. The pool was 20 feet by 50 feet. No diving board but super. Big men’s and women’s locker rooms, a game room with pinball machines and exercise machines. Regency was always having parties with food and stuff at the pool. When there was food, we usually came. Dad loved it when we came with him. He knew many, many of the people after living there for years. Knew all of the management people. People were constantly walking by and saying, “hi Steve.” Super fun for him.
A strange thing happened to Dad, the widower. He turned into a “ladies man.” He had a steady stream of girlfriends. He called them his “lambs.” Don’t know what he meant by that. When he got mad at one of them, he called her a “dizzy dame.” Not sure what “dame” meant. Dad’s knees were in terrible shape from arthritis. He could barely walk, and was in constant pain. Then he had both of them replaced, after Mom died. He worked very hard, the rest of his life to get maximum mobility and flexibility out of the replacement knees. Right after both surgeries, he had me bending the new knees. He said to keep pushing on it until I saw a tear in his eye. I did just what he said. He never complained. The doctors couldn’t believe the flexibility he had in them. Right after the surgeries, his doctor said they looked like swiss cheese, couldn’t believe he could even walk on them. After they were replaced, six months apart, Dad was a new man. By then he was living in an apartment complex near Parmatown called Regency Towers. Dad swam a mile in the pool every day. An amazing fact about that was that Dad had a torn rotator cuff muscle in his shoulder and could only swim with one arm and his legs. He swam so slowly, you could barely tell he was going forward, but he worked at it, lap after lap until he did his mile. Dad said he felt like crap every morning when he got up. Then he would have his grits or oatmeal and coffee for breakfast then do a series of stretching exercises. Then he would lift weights. He had no weight on the bar, just the weight of the bar was enough for him. Then he would go swimming, then shower and shave. After that, Dad said he was ready to go and feeling great.
Very early in Dad’s dating time, Phyl told him that I was not too happy about his girlfriends. She suggested that he not tell me much of what he was doing, and he didn’t. Guess the big thing was, I didn’t like the girlfriends coming over on holidays. He didn’t do that too much after Phyl talked to him about it. Dad’s two main girlfriends, that he talked to me about and brought around were Irvine and Dorothy. Dad liked Irvine because she had a “nice shape” and Dorothy because she had lots of money. Irvine said that Dad asked him to marry her a bunch of times and she could have “taken him for every dime he had” but she knew it wouldn’t have worked and cooled down their relationship. Dad always dated several girls at a time. He said that he only spent a few dollars a week on groceries because the girls were always cooking for him. Dad really wanted to remarry, though. Phyl says he was lonely, even with his new buddies and his girlfriends and us. He got a great deal of pleasure out of ballroom dancing. Irvine and others told us that they couldn’t keep up with him. He needed to have several girls to dance with and other girls because he wanted to go dancing every night. There was a special girl we didn’t know much about who lived at Regency. I suspect he spent part of every holiday with her and her family. I remember being very surprised at how devastated that lady was, at Dad’s funeral. Then she told be about his spending the holidays with her family. Her name was Ruth. She’s the lady who gave Dad the bottle with the red lid, that we use every Christmas for ghreme. All of Dad’s “lambs” were well proportioned and reasonably slender. Anyway, Dad danced six nights a week, and would have danced seven nights, but they were all closed on Mondays.
Dad always came over on Saturday mornings to do his laundry. He would just use his garage door opener and come in and get started, even when no one was up. I was working at Ford Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park and always had Saturday off. Usually, Dad timed his arrival for after Phyl left for work. When the boys and I got up, I always wanted to go out for breakfast. Sometimes Dad wanted to go out but he was always wanting me to make grits or oatmeal instead. I wanted eggs and meat. After age 50, I began to appreciate the grits and oatmeal. Dad’s favorite place for Saturday breakfast was Laurel’s at the corner of Pearl Road and Snow Road, in Parma. Dad loved to order potato pancakes. The boys and I loved to swipe potato pancakes off his plate. He would try to stab us with his fork but was never fast enough to get us. Don was the fastest. Dad was easy pickings. We would point at someone, and say, “isn’t that a friend of yours over there” and he would always look. Five times in five minutes and he would still look. And we would laugh. And he would say, “damn it Greg, can’t you control these boys,” and we would all laugh some more. Grandpa was not laughing, though. Sometimes I had to get him another order of potato pancakes because we snitched so many. Those were really fun times and wonderful memories for all three of us.
Dad loved the Cleveland Indians. We used to get tickets for eight or ten games a year. This love of the Indians went back to the seventies when I was working at the steel mill. I used to get bunches of tickets from salesmen myself and tickets from my bosses. Especially opening day. I would always get ten tickets and take Dad and a couple of his friends. Dad’s friend, John, the minister often came with us and Dad’s girlfriend, Dorothy. Occasionally, after Mom died, her sister Ann from South Carolina would visit. She timed her visits for Indians home games. She stayed with Dad but Dorothy was his date and John was Ann’s date. Ann and Dorothy became friends. As two single, financially secure senior ladies, they took a few trips together.
While Dad was still working at White Motors, he sometimes got tickets from work. His tickets were always almost on the field, just to the right of home plate, between there and the Indians dugout. Great seats. One time, I took good Mount Union College friend, Jim, to a game and sat in those primo seats. Jim got two foul balls, off the screen. He wouldn’t give one of them to me. One was for his sister and the other was for his girlfriend’s daughter. Never took Jim to another game in those seats.
My favorite Indians story with Dad was in the late 80’s. Dad & I & Joe and John were at an Oakland A’s – Indians game. In about the seventh inning, an Indian player hit a fly ball to deep right field. The ball hit Jose Conseco right on the top of his head and bounced over the fence for a home run. We went wild laughing. Dad, who often dozed at the games or during Browns game, woke up and asked what happened. We told him. A couple of weeks later, I came up behind Dad at a party. He was saying, “…….and it hit him right on the head and bounced right over the fence. Funniest thing I ever saw.” Right, Dad. A few years ago, Joe & I watched the incident again on the computer. Found it on the Internet.
In the 80’s we started buying tickets for eight or ten games a year. Usually, it was Dad and I and Joe and “Uncle Juan”, my very good friend from Mount Union College, and his Dad. We had tickets for the last three games in the old stadium, before they tore it down to build the brown’s stadium. For the very last game, we took Uncle Rudy Novak, Mom’s brother. He was at the very first game at that stadium, sixty some years before. His older brother “Uncle Louie” took him. That was a wonderful memory for Rudy and a great story for us. Rudy kept getting interviewed because he was at the first game there. Very sad at the end. A super famous comedian who grew up in Cleveland named Bob Hope was there. He sang his trademark song at the end. “Thanks for the memories.” Then they dug out and removed home plate. Couldn’t have been a dry eye in the place. 80,000 plus people there. Chicago won all three games. Ugg.
Dad always loved to play cards. Even when I was a little kid, we always played cards for money. Mom bid wildly in pinochle. So she often lost. “Quarter a game, dime a set.” In the 1980’s I introduced him to the game of backgammon. He instantly loved it. He taught it to everyone he knew. And played it constantly. Guess he must have been the master, beating his friends all the time because he didn’t like it a bit when we beat him. His famous line was, “how do you do that” when I would call for a roll, then roll it. And “GOD DAMN IT” when things went against him. And they usually did. That’s just the way it went. He used to get mad when we would say, “we like to play backgammon with you, Grampa, ‘cause you’re easy to beat.” But he was the one who went right to the hallway closet to bring out the backgammon board. We always played backgammon for money with Dad. It was usually a quarter a game. When the boys lost, he always made them go upstairs and get their own money to pay off. Wouldn’t let me pay for them. Said it taught them the value of money. He had Larry buy the board we always use, in the early 90’s.. He picked it out while visiting in Virginia. A really oversized one we love. Dad was always good for two games. After that, he started to get mentally tired and played badly. He didn’t like to lose. But he loved to win. He got a look on his face when things were going his way that we called “his silent cackle.” And one of us would point to him and say, “there’s the silent cackle” and that would make it even better for him. He never gloated or anything but we could see an expression on his face that he was cackling inside. He also liked to smack the table with his fist when he got a bad break. That always made us laugh. The boys and I have lots of good memories of those Saturdays.
Dad lived the last four or five years of his life at Regency Apartments. He had a very nice, two bedroom suite on the seventh floor and a space for his car in the indoor garage. It was very convenient for him. Not much upkeep needed, good location. The elevator was right outside his door and the garage was right outside the elevator door downstairs. Dad loved the pool. He got me a pool pass. The pool guards must have thought I lived with him because they never questioned my pool pass. On hot days, the boys and Phyl and I would go to the pool to cool off. We’d call Dad from the payphone at the pool. If he was home, he would come down. We just loved having access to that pool. Usually, it was empty except for us. Sometimes the lifeguard would be sleeping when we came in and still asleep when we left. The pool was 20 feet by 50 feet. No diving board but super. Big men’s and women’s locker rooms, a game room with pinball machines and exercise machines. Regency was always having parties with food and stuff at the pool. When there was food, we usually came. Dad loved it when we came with him. He knew many, many of the people after living there for years. Knew all of the management people. People were constantly walking by and saying, “hi Steve.” Super fun for him.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Interview of Walter Fedyk
I found this in a closet at home on Ivy Oval in 2009. One Sunday afternoon, Joe interviewed Uncle Wally for hours. This is the 10th grade Western Civilization report from 1999, written by Joe Fedak about his Great Uncle, Walter Fedyk. In Joe's own words.
UNCLE WALTER FEDYK
MY GRANDFATHER'S BROTHER
Walter Fedyk lived through the Depression and fought in World War II. He is 78 years old and physically active and mentally alert. He is on the Internet.
He began school in 1925 or 1926 at Largemont Elementary School. The school had classes only through the third grade. At the time he started school, Walter and his family were living at 173rd Street, off St. Clair. He spoke English to his parents and they responded to him in Ukrainian. Today he only speaks a little Ukrainian.
Walter's father, Joe, worked on the Nickel Plate Railroad. He was a car repairman. He worked no matter what the weather. Walter remembers his father coming home from work in winter with a very red face. Joe was a very strong man. He was able to carry two railroad ties at one time, one on each shoulder. Once, a bakery truck got stuck in the mud in front of their house. Joe got behind the truck, lifted it out of the mud and pushed it to a place where it could get traction. Walter's mother, great grandmother Helen, worked as a cleaning lady in office buildings.
During the Depression, the family had hard times. His father was often laid off from the railroad. They never went on welfare. Walter remembers that they once gave a family who lived across the street some money in return for some of the food the family received from welfare. Both families benefited from welfare. During the Depression, his father took whatever work he could get, sometimes waxing floors at General Electric. Both parents often worked night jobs. This left Walter's older brother, Steve in charge. These two often fought. In one instance, Walter got the broom and threatened to poke it through Steve. This diffused the situation. Walter never remembers going hungry during the Depression. As he remembers, they had homemade healthy soup every day. His dad went to the market and came back with two baskets full of good food. One basket would be full of spinach which would be cooked into cream of chicken soup. There were times when Walter's father would come home with a whole, live chicken. Walter's mother would place the chicken between her knees while she was sitting and twist its neck off. She would then clean the feathers off and clean the insides out.
Walter and the family almost lost their home. The only thing that saved them was Homeowners Loan Corp, which was supported by Congress and lent money to people who were close to losing their homes. Walter believes that family was much more important when he was younger then now. They always had supper together. The family had the experience of having two Christmases and two Easters because of the two different calendars.
Buster, a Scottie dog who followed his mother home from work, lived to be eighteen years old. Walter's dog, Toby only lived to be about five. The dogs ate from the table. They ate leftovers with water poured over it. It is possible that Buster lived so long because he ate table scraps. Walter also had goldfish, which ate fish food. For money, Walter had a paper route. He delivered the Cleveland Press. At the time, the paper cost three cents. At eighteen cents a week, he got a nickel per customer as a commission. He had around forty customers, so he made about two dollars per week. He delivered the paper on foot for a year, then he bought a bike. The bike cost eleven dollars. When he had the bike he was able to fold the paper into a square and throw the paper on the porch. Even thought some of the customers were on the second floor, he never broke a window.
Walter graduated from high school in January of 1940. They didn't have any graduation parties then, but he did get to go to the prom twice. The twelfth grade was separated into an "A" and "B" section. One class graduated in June and the other graduated in January. After high school Walter attended Fenn College (Cleveland State) for one year. During the summer, he got a job at Murray Ohio, where they made bikes. He worked as a paint strainer. The job was very hard, dirty and smelly. Walter got a promotion when the assistant employment manager called people back who had been laid off, in a incorrect order. This cost the company thousands of dollars in back pay. Walter got this man's job when he was fired.
Walter remembers seeing homeless people. He recalls that many of these people traveled on the railroad. Sometimes they would come knocking on his door. Whenever his mother was home, she would give they anything she could. People back then were probably more generous then they are now. The church also tried to help poor people. Most of the neighbors would give what they could. Even in those hard times, no one locked their doors or complained of being robbed.
Church was very important in Walter's life. When his parents, neighbors and other relatives came over from Europe, they all joined the same church. When someone got married, everyone knew that person, so everyone went to the wedding and the reception. Church holidays were also important. Many saint days were celebrated.
Walter was drafted in October of 1942. He stayed in the military until January 7, 1946. For training, he went to the University of Wisconsin and studied Russian and German. After his training, he was sent to Melbourne, Australia via Long Beach and Saint Pedro. Walter was very disappointed with the way he was treated when he was on board ship, traveling to Melbourne. He had to wait in line for breakfast and dinner. There was no lunch. Often you would go right from the breakfast line to the dinner line. The food was awful. The enlisted men had to stand and eat. The officers sat at tables with white linen table cloth and were served three meals a day. Many times, there were general issue cans of steak and liver etc that weren't eaten but were dumped into the ocean. Many times men offered to buy that food. However, they couldn't. After Melbourne, Walter went to Bombay, India. From there he went by train to Calcutta. Then he went to the China, Burma, India border via truck. Walter then flew over "The Hump" and landed in China. The day he landed, a B-24 crash landed. The plane caught of fire. Everyone was able to get out of the flaming plane except the tail gunner. The pilot shot and killed the man to save him from having to suffer through being burned alive.
While he was stationed in China, Walter participated in Search and Rescue operations. One mission in particular, Walter remembers was when he was sent on a mission by five star General Hap Arnold. A very close friend of the general, who was colonel, was on a reconnaissance mission, trying to find a place to build a very large base. The plane disappeared. The general said that every possible lead was to be thoroughly investigated. The Chinese had found a piece of flight jacket leather with a colonel's eagle insignia on it. This material was found in Tibet, so Walter was sent to Tibet. He was the only American to go there. It took six weeks to get there. He ended up coming up with nothing.
Another time, he met Chinese general Chang Kai Chek. Walter and his friends had been walking along when they saw him. There were Chinese guards and American guards. the Chinese guards immediately recognized him and saluted, but the American guards didn't. The General took the time to get out of the car and reprimand the Americans through interpreters. Walter was very disappointed in this, because he should have been a bigger man then to be concerned with being saluted. Walter enjoyed China. The food there was very good. They ate Spam, but mostly they ate off the fat of the land. It was prohibited to fly in food from over the "Hump" because it was a difficult flight and there was some Japanese activity. The only problem with the food was that it had to be cooked, because of cholera. Even lettuce had to be cooked. In China, hardly any Chinese spoke English. This problem was solved through the use of interpreters. India was the most interesting place he saw during the war. The poverty there was incredible. However, there was no language problem because India was then a colony of Great Britain.
After the Japanese surrendered, Walter went to Shanghai to set up an airbase. When he first arrived, there were almost no army people there. He had to take a shower on a navy ship. The base grew quickly, though. Walter met many British soldiers in India. He didn't really associate much with them because he tended to stick with his own. He was discharged from the newly created Air Force on January 17, 1946. The closest Walter ever came to combat was when one lone Japanese plane dropped a dud bomb on the air base he was at. His rank was Sergeant. He thought he could have reached a higher rank but he moved around too much. His pay was $78 per month. He used the money to buy cigarettes and go to restaurants. He wrote home once a week. Walter also received much mail. He doesn't recall ever being afraid. When he returned home, he was treated very well.
Walter said that he never would have thought that technology would ever progress as far as it has. He recalled that there was a time when they didn't even have "white out." When you made a mistake on a typewriter, you had to use an eraser and rub it out. He said it's amazing how you can talk to anyone in the world through the computer. You can even see the person you are talking to through the cameras attached to the computer via the Internet. He says he loves the Internet. He says he has been to the Vatican and inside the White House. He likes to look at joke sites, information on health, etc. He also has made two family history books using the computer. He used a scanner and was able to include pictures of everyone as well as up-to-date addresses and phone numbers. He has lived a long life and has seen much. He fought in World war II and uses the Internet. Walter has a son, a daughter and two grandsons who live in Wooster, Ohio. He is retired and lives in Willowick, Ohio. He can see Lake Erie from his front picture window. He back yard looks like a well manicured park. I'm very proud of my Dad's "Uncle Wally."
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Walter Fedyk
I found this in a folder near Larry's printer, on his desk at the beach house in San Diego in August 2009. I'm sure Doug and his sons and Gayle and John's children have copies of this. I am posting this for the rest of us who may have not seen it. Walter Fedyk's words, as he wrote it,
MEMORIES
My cousin, John Kaminski, was born on November 19,1919 and I was born on October 23, 1920 making him 11 months older than I. We were both born in Cleveland, Ohio. He lived on East 172nd and I on East 173rd from the age of about 7 until we went into the military in 1942. We literally grew up together and shared many enjoyable times because we lived so close to each other. I've been looking back on those days so decided to share a few of our experiences with our children by putting a few of them onto paper.
John's family was Roman Catholic and my family and the Szmasgala's were Greek Catholic so we celebrated Christmas and Easter twice, according to the Julian and the Gregorian calenders. This meant we went to the Kaminski house on December 25th and on Easter then to either the Fedyk or Szmagala houses for a repeaat of the two tolidays, Christmas on January 7th and Easter, with 6 adults and 9 cousins. As with all family gatherings on holidays, we had a great time. John and I liked walking around the rim of the old style bath tubs. This was a real challenge to our sense of balance and we sure had it because we had to take our shoes off not to scratch the tub, but did not get hurt.
Us nine cousins were in four age groups, Walter Kaminski & Helen Kaminski Mooney, Mary Szmagala (Bobeczko) and Steve Fedak were the "older guys", John, Stella Szmagala (Woloshyn) and I were the younger "punks", my sister Elsie, four years my junior, almost fit in with my group and Taras szmagala was much younger, 9 years younger then Elsie, so was the "kid." The one thing I remember which, fortunately was a short lived custom, was the oldest in each family had to learn how to play the violin. They hated practicing almost as much as we younger kids hated to hear them practice. There were times when the older guys hated us, like whey they had to take us to the show, black and white movies. We often stayed to see the same movie twice. I even remember silent films and prayed the sound movies would be permanent because I couldn't read the captions fast enough when watching the silent ,movies.
John's father and mine did not own automobiles so our only transportation was via streetcars. Weekly passes for unlimited use was $1.25 and there was a Sunday pass for $.25 which permitted one adult and two children or three children to use all day of all lines. John and I and a friend, Al Klivington who was only 5 days younger than I spent all day Sunday after church and dinner "streetcar riding." One of the things we did was walk along the curb in the street looking for Wrigley gum wrappers to send away for Chief Woldpaw prizes. We also looked for any kind of aluminum foil which we removed to form a ball. We spent weeks collecting the foil to form a ball about 4" in diameter, only to find we could only get 25 cents for it at the "paparecks" (paper and rags man). Al and I couldn't understand why several women we saw on these excursions tell John "how cute he looked with the dimple on his chin."
We looked forward to winter because the city did not plow snow off the streets. As soon as it packed down we "belly slammed" on our sleds. All the houses had coal furnaces which required coal being dumped into the coal bin in the basement and hosing down the entire basement after deliveries. Our parents had to constantly check to make sure there was enough coal burning to keep the fire from going out (no thermostats). And the water heaters also had no automatic pilot so we had to light the gas under the tank with a match and make sure we turned it off so the tank wouldn't burst. We did not have refrigerators either. This meant taking the wagon to the ice house two blocks away to buy a 50# block of ice and not forgetting to empty the pan under the ice box so the water wouldn't overflow.
John and I listened to our first radio broadcast in 1925 on a crystal set which a neighbor's son built. All I remember hearing was a lot of static. My parents bought our first radio in 1928 and I remember a crowd on our front porch listening to the Friday night fights. Some of the things John and I talked about when we "grew up" was having to crank the wringer, put up the clothes line from a hook on the house to the telephone pole and back to another corner of the house and carry the wash from the basement to the back yard for our mothers to hang the clothes on the line on wash day. We had to help carry the bed mattresses and rugs to the back yard and beat them with a carpet beater every year during "spring cleaning." Remember our houses got dirtier with coal furnaces.
Halloween was a very stressful time for the adults because there was always some degree of damage done by the kids. For example, every house had a wooden front porch and we "pounded porches" which involved getting a stick, like a baseball bat, and hit the porch until the owners chased us away. We had to be especially careful to not pound any porches where the older guys lived lest we get pounded, but good, ourselves. Another prank was to wax windows. Some of the waxes were very hard to remove from the house and car windows. There was no such thing as "trick or treat" because people did not have the money to buy candy. Cabbage Night was the day before Halloween and it meant garbage cans were dumped and often on peoples porches.
I think the older guys in our neighborhood invented jogging. An airplane testing runway belonging to the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company was at the end of our streets. When the company moved to the Baltimore area, the plant was unused for several years and the runway became part of our vast playground. When John and I were about 10 or so, we started to run back and forth for the full length of the runway in imitation of the older guys who were exercising in preparation for school sports. the older guys, about 4 or 5 years our senior, got hold of an old Model T Ford and worked on it until it was in mint condition. Since none of the guys were old enough to get a driver's license, they drove up and down the runway for hours at a time. On rare occasions, they let us "kids" ride. This too was a lot of fun for us.
There were some hidden dangers of the Martin plant property. For example, one of the kids in the neighborhood was curious to see what was inside a 55 gallon drum at the abandoned plant so he lit a match and the highly explosive material in the drum exploded. Eddie Fitzpatrick, about 10 was seriously burned over his upper body and especially his face.
A small swamp was located across the railroad tracks which ran alongside the runway. At best, the water in the swamp was never deeper than 18 to 20 inches. We found an "abandoned" plaster mixing box (about 4' x 6' and about 12" deep) which we used as a boat. We spent hours paddling and also getting out pf the "boat" because it got stuck in one of the many shallow spots. This was a real thrill for us kids because we never had any access to ride on a real boat of any kind.
Another thing which we did was go to the Blue Stone quarry to swim. The quarry was no longer being used and was about three miles from home up the single railroad track. The water was 30' or more deep and this was where most of us learned how to swim. The older guys were always there and several times saved kids from drowning. Our biggest worry was making sure our hair was dry before we got home so our mothers wouldn't know where we had been.
My mother used the steamer trunk which she brought from Poland to store photographs in. One summer afternoon when I was about 8 and no one was home, John and I went to the attic to see what was in the trunk. After a few minutes of looking at old family photos, we saw one which scared the living hell out of us. It was of a lady in her coffin which was evidently was a custom for some people to do. This brings up the subject of funerals, etc. It was the custom to have wakes in the home which lasted three days and to let the neighborhood know that someone in that home died, they pout a wreath on the door: purple for an older person, white for a child and pink and blue for others. We heard many stories of men who stayed up all night with the corpse getting "stoned." It also was the custom to have the coffin open in church and I also remember, as just a kid, seeing the coffin opened at the cemetery.
Our parents could not afford to buy us many toys so we learned how to make some ourselves, one was scooters. John and I made ours together. We got wooden orange crates to use as the scooter upright to which we nailed a piece of 2" x 4" for the base to which we then nailed the wheels from a pair of roller skates. we then nailed the two small pieces of wood on either side of the top of the box to use as handles. They were a pretty good imitation of store bought scooters and gave us many hours of fun.
Shopping for groceries was absolutely nothing like it is today. We took a wagon to one of two grocery stores about three blocks from home. One was a small A & P and the other was Joe's delicatessen. Both stores generally had only one person waiting on the customers. You told him what you wanted and he brought it to the counter because you did not handle any of the products. He then added up the cost of the groceries you selected by writing the amount on a brown bag and then put the groceries in the bag. We had about 1/10 of one percent of the items we now have in grocery stores to choose from and the cash registers did nothing but hold the money. Many items were not prepackaged, like beans and ice. No precooked foods, no cake mixes, no margarine, etc. etc. All meat, however was bought in the butcher shop, like all medicines were bought in the drug store. Our mothers bought chickens from a poultry store about four miles from home, requiring going via streetcar. They often bought live chickens requiring killing and cleaning them at home.
And clothes; boys wore knickers until about 12 and had to put rubber bands on their knee high stockings to keep them up. Since John was older, I remember how I envied him because he got long pants before I did. And the clothes were not made of wrinkle free materials and required pressing. All the guys had to learn how to press their pants when they went out with girls. Boys wore white dress shirts to school so their mothers spent many hours each week boiling them in the washing process to make sure they were a clean white, then ironing them. These were the real "Good old days."
John and I were both scheduled to go into the service in November 1942. John to Chicago to the Air Corps and I to the army at Camp Perry, Ohio. John suggested we take a vacation in October before leaving. We decided to go to the Jack & Jill Dude Ranch in Montague, Michigan. It took us a day and night to get there, all night to cross lake Erie by boat, several hours by train to central Michigan then by bus to the ranch. We had a wonderful week there. This vacation was memorable for several reasons: one of which was John & I took our first plane ride by flying home across Lake Erie in a six passenger single engine prop plane. What took eight hours by boat going was 20 minutes by plane coming home. Another memorable occasion was John meeting Marcella Batz from Chicago, who was there with her sister, Pearl. Shortly after arriving in Chicago for meteorology training, John called Marcella and they started dating. They were married on June 12, 1943.
The following is almost a "believe it or not" story. I was in Calcutta, India in 1943, waiting to be shipped to the 14th Air Force's 315th Air Service Command in China and had nothing to do for about three weeks but wait for my shipping orders. One of the letters that I received from home from my sister Elsie said that John was possibly going to be shipped to the Pacific area. All service personnel were prohibited from telling anyone when they were being moved and almost never knew where they were being shipped overseas, but could let their family know, in general terms, where they were when they got there. For some absolutely no explainable reason, I decided to see if John was possibly somewhere on the very large base I was on in Calcutta. I walked from one outfit to another all day long for two days, asking almost every GI I met if he knew a John Kaminski. I finally met a guy who knew John and he told me where I could find him. At about 9 PM in the dark of a moonless night, I approached a candlelit table where a bunch of guys were shooting craps and John was at the head of the table running the game. Needless to say, John was absolutely speechless when he realized it was me. We then spent two days together before he was shipped out. Both of us wrote home about this so I have document evidence that this is the truth.
John and Marcella settled in Lombard, Il, close to Chicago, after he was discharged from service. Until they moved to California, we were able to visit each other with our growing families. Until John's tragic death caused by Pancreatitous on December 7, 1979 at age 60, we maintained contact with each other via mail and the phone.
Walter Fedyk
January 2001
MEMORIES
My cousin, John Kaminski, was born on November 19,1919 and I was born on October 23, 1920 making him 11 months older than I. We were both born in Cleveland, Ohio. He lived on East 172nd and I on East 173rd from the age of about 7 until we went into the military in 1942. We literally grew up together and shared many enjoyable times because we lived so close to each other. I've been looking back on those days so decided to share a few of our experiences with our children by putting a few of them onto paper.
John's family was Roman Catholic and my family and the Szmasgala's were Greek Catholic so we celebrated Christmas and Easter twice, according to the Julian and the Gregorian calenders. This meant we went to the Kaminski house on December 25th and on Easter then to either the Fedyk or Szmagala houses for a repeaat of the two tolidays, Christmas on January 7th and Easter, with 6 adults and 9 cousins. As with all family gatherings on holidays, we had a great time. John and I liked walking around the rim of the old style bath tubs. This was a real challenge to our sense of balance and we sure had it because we had to take our shoes off not to scratch the tub, but did not get hurt.
Us nine cousins were in four age groups, Walter Kaminski & Helen Kaminski Mooney, Mary Szmagala (Bobeczko) and Steve Fedak were the "older guys", John, Stella Szmagala (Woloshyn) and I were the younger "punks", my sister Elsie, four years my junior, almost fit in with my group and Taras szmagala was much younger, 9 years younger then Elsie, so was the "kid." The one thing I remember which, fortunately was a short lived custom, was the oldest in each family had to learn how to play the violin. They hated practicing almost as much as we younger kids hated to hear them practice. There were times when the older guys hated us, like whey they had to take us to the show, black and white movies. We often stayed to see the same movie twice. I even remember silent films and prayed the sound movies would be permanent because I couldn't read the captions fast enough when watching the silent ,movies.
John's father and mine did not own automobiles so our only transportation was via streetcars. Weekly passes for unlimited use was $1.25 and there was a Sunday pass for $.25 which permitted one adult and two children or three children to use all day of all lines. John and I and a friend, Al Klivington who was only 5 days younger than I spent all day Sunday after church and dinner "streetcar riding." One of the things we did was walk along the curb in the street looking for Wrigley gum wrappers to send away for Chief Woldpaw prizes. We also looked for any kind of aluminum foil which we removed to form a ball. We spent weeks collecting the foil to form a ball about 4" in diameter, only to find we could only get 25 cents for it at the "paparecks" (paper and rags man). Al and I couldn't understand why several women we saw on these excursions tell John "how cute he looked with the dimple on his chin."
We looked forward to winter because the city did not plow snow off the streets. As soon as it packed down we "belly slammed" on our sleds. All the houses had coal furnaces which required coal being dumped into the coal bin in the basement and hosing down the entire basement after deliveries. Our parents had to constantly check to make sure there was enough coal burning to keep the fire from going out (no thermostats). And the water heaters also had no automatic pilot so we had to light the gas under the tank with a match and make sure we turned it off so the tank wouldn't burst. We did not have refrigerators either. This meant taking the wagon to the ice house two blocks away to buy a 50# block of ice and not forgetting to empty the pan under the ice box so the water wouldn't overflow.
John and I listened to our first radio broadcast in 1925 on a crystal set which a neighbor's son built. All I remember hearing was a lot of static. My parents bought our first radio in 1928 and I remember a crowd on our front porch listening to the Friday night fights. Some of the things John and I talked about when we "grew up" was having to crank the wringer, put up the clothes line from a hook on the house to the telephone pole and back to another corner of the house and carry the wash from the basement to the back yard for our mothers to hang the clothes on the line on wash day. We had to help carry the bed mattresses and rugs to the back yard and beat them with a carpet beater every year during "spring cleaning." Remember our houses got dirtier with coal furnaces.
Halloween was a very stressful time for the adults because there was always some degree of damage done by the kids. For example, every house had a wooden front porch and we "pounded porches" which involved getting a stick, like a baseball bat, and hit the porch until the owners chased us away. We had to be especially careful to not pound any porches where the older guys lived lest we get pounded, but good, ourselves. Another prank was to wax windows. Some of the waxes were very hard to remove from the house and car windows. There was no such thing as "trick or treat" because people did not have the money to buy candy. Cabbage Night was the day before Halloween and it meant garbage cans were dumped and often on peoples porches.
I think the older guys in our neighborhood invented jogging. An airplane testing runway belonging to the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company was at the end of our streets. When the company moved to the Baltimore area, the plant was unused for several years and the runway became part of our vast playground. When John and I were about 10 or so, we started to run back and forth for the full length of the runway in imitation of the older guys who were exercising in preparation for school sports. the older guys, about 4 or 5 years our senior, got hold of an old Model T Ford and worked on it until it was in mint condition. Since none of the guys were old enough to get a driver's license, they drove up and down the runway for hours at a time. On rare occasions, they let us "kids" ride. This too was a lot of fun for us.
There were some hidden dangers of the Martin plant property. For example, one of the kids in the neighborhood was curious to see what was inside a 55 gallon drum at the abandoned plant so he lit a match and the highly explosive material in the drum exploded. Eddie Fitzpatrick, about 10 was seriously burned over his upper body and especially his face.
A small swamp was located across the railroad tracks which ran alongside the runway. At best, the water in the swamp was never deeper than 18 to 20 inches. We found an "abandoned" plaster mixing box (about 4' x 6' and about 12" deep) which we used as a boat. We spent hours paddling and also getting out pf the "boat" because it got stuck in one of the many shallow spots. This was a real thrill for us kids because we never had any access to ride on a real boat of any kind.
Another thing which we did was go to the Blue Stone quarry to swim. The quarry was no longer being used and was about three miles from home up the single railroad track. The water was 30' or more deep and this was where most of us learned how to swim. The older guys were always there and several times saved kids from drowning. Our biggest worry was making sure our hair was dry before we got home so our mothers wouldn't know where we had been.
My mother used the steamer trunk which she brought from Poland to store photographs in. One summer afternoon when I was about 8 and no one was home, John and I went to the attic to see what was in the trunk. After a few minutes of looking at old family photos, we saw one which scared the living hell out of us. It was of a lady in her coffin which was evidently was a custom for some people to do. This brings up the subject of funerals, etc. It was the custom to have wakes in the home which lasted three days and to let the neighborhood know that someone in that home died, they pout a wreath on the door: purple for an older person, white for a child and pink and blue for others. We heard many stories of men who stayed up all night with the corpse getting "stoned." It also was the custom to have the coffin open in church and I also remember, as just a kid, seeing the coffin opened at the cemetery.
Our parents could not afford to buy us many toys so we learned how to make some ourselves, one was scooters. John and I made ours together. We got wooden orange crates to use as the scooter upright to which we nailed a piece of 2" x 4" for the base to which we then nailed the wheels from a pair of roller skates. we then nailed the two small pieces of wood on either side of the top of the box to use as handles. They were a pretty good imitation of store bought scooters and gave us many hours of fun.
Shopping for groceries was absolutely nothing like it is today. We took a wagon to one of two grocery stores about three blocks from home. One was a small A & P and the other was Joe's delicatessen. Both stores generally had only one person waiting on the customers. You told him what you wanted and he brought it to the counter because you did not handle any of the products. He then added up the cost of the groceries you selected by writing the amount on a brown bag and then put the groceries in the bag. We had about 1/10 of one percent of the items we now have in grocery stores to choose from and the cash registers did nothing but hold the money. Many items were not prepackaged, like beans and ice. No precooked foods, no cake mixes, no margarine, etc. etc. All meat, however was bought in the butcher shop, like all medicines were bought in the drug store. Our mothers bought chickens from a poultry store about four miles from home, requiring going via streetcar. They often bought live chickens requiring killing and cleaning them at home.
And clothes; boys wore knickers until about 12 and had to put rubber bands on their knee high stockings to keep them up. Since John was older, I remember how I envied him because he got long pants before I did. And the clothes were not made of wrinkle free materials and required pressing. All the guys had to learn how to press their pants when they went out with girls. Boys wore white dress shirts to school so their mothers spent many hours each week boiling them in the washing process to make sure they were a clean white, then ironing them. These were the real "Good old days."
John and I were both scheduled to go into the service in November 1942. John to Chicago to the Air Corps and I to the army at Camp Perry, Ohio. John suggested we take a vacation in October before leaving. We decided to go to the Jack & Jill Dude Ranch in Montague, Michigan. It took us a day and night to get there, all night to cross lake Erie by boat, several hours by train to central Michigan then by bus to the ranch. We had a wonderful week there. This vacation was memorable for several reasons: one of which was John & I took our first plane ride by flying home across Lake Erie in a six passenger single engine prop plane. What took eight hours by boat going was 20 minutes by plane coming home. Another memorable occasion was John meeting Marcella Batz from Chicago, who was there with her sister, Pearl. Shortly after arriving in Chicago for meteorology training, John called Marcella and they started dating. They were married on June 12, 1943.
The following is almost a "believe it or not" story. I was in Calcutta, India in 1943, waiting to be shipped to the 14th Air Force's 315th Air Service Command in China and had nothing to do for about three weeks but wait for my shipping orders. One of the letters that I received from home from my sister Elsie said that John was possibly going to be shipped to the Pacific area. All service personnel were prohibited from telling anyone when they were being moved and almost never knew where they were being shipped overseas, but could let their family know, in general terms, where they were when they got there. For some absolutely no explainable reason, I decided to see if John was possibly somewhere on the very large base I was on in Calcutta. I walked from one outfit to another all day long for two days, asking almost every GI I met if he knew a John Kaminski. I finally met a guy who knew John and he told me where I could find him. At about 9 PM in the dark of a moonless night, I approached a candlelit table where a bunch of guys were shooting craps and John was at the head of the table running the game. Needless to say, John was absolutely speechless when he realized it was me. We then spent two days together before he was shipped out. Both of us wrote home about this so I have document evidence that this is the truth.
John and Marcella settled in Lombard, Il, close to Chicago, after he was discharged from service. Until they moved to California, we were able to visit each other with our growing families. Until John's tragic death caused by Pancreatitous on December 7, 1979 at age 60, we maintained contact with each other via mail and the phone.
Walter Fedyk
January 2001
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Greg Fedak II
Mom and Dad decided to move to the west side, when I was about four years old. They bought a lot on Crossview Drive in Seven Hills. Dad hired subcontractors to do the work of building but he did a some of the work himself . I remember Mom picking up Grandpa Joe and then going to White Motors to pick up Dad. Then we drove out to the new house. I remember it as just a hole in the ground on up. One of my favorite things was to hammer nails. I used to spend hours trying to hammer nails in a board. I think that everyone got a laugh out of the little kid trying to hammer. Bill Dodge helped Dad with the carpenter work. I loved to listen to Bill Dodge tell stories. He could tell the greatest adventure stories anyone could imagine. Mr. Dodge had a terrific, deep, resonant speaking voice. One of my fondest childhood memories was of sitting with Dad in the basement of the Dodge house on the hill in Parma, overlooking Ridgewood Dr, with Mr. Dodge's pipe smoke drifting in long, fine streams across the room. And the pipe smoke smelled great, too. Bill Dodge lived with the Mormon's and was a cowboy and lived in the south and traveled through Mexico and a bunch of other things. He was extremely successful with investments in the stock market. I remember him once saying he was a quarter-millionaire. Somehow, I think he was a full millionaire long before he died. He was a little bit funny in that he never bought a new car, that I knew of. He just liked to get a "good deal on a used one." Over the years, I heard a lot of the stories four and five times and they never changed a bit. That always told me that he was telling the truth.
Right around my fifth birthday, the family moved into the new brick ranch Dad built for us in Seven Hills. I was very excited and scared about the move. Sometime during the first night, I peed the bed. Mom was really mad. I said it would never happen again and that it was because of the new house and all...and it never did.
A few weeks later my life really changed with my first day at Broadview Elementary School. I was very nervous but didn't cry because I was with my "big brudder, Worrie." He took really good care of me on the bus and into the school and over to my room but then he pushed me in and said, "bye." I was super scared and started to cry a little even though a teacher or mommie helped me into the class and showed me where to go to play for a while. There was a huge pile of blocks and all kinds of other toys and a bunch of kids playing. I kind of stood around until a friend came up to me. It was Billy Dodge, the son of my Dad's friend, Bill. Once I got together with him, I was OK. We played together and sat together.
I really loved to ride the bus. My bus was called the yellow bus because it had a big piece of yellow paper in the window next to the door. I never missed it. Got to be really good friends with a girl named Gayle Storm. She lived really far from me, in a big, white colonial on Hillside road between the new Elementary school they were building and Broadview Road. We played and played. She loved horses. We played horsey, and I was the horsey. We played doggie and I was the doggie. We always sat together on the bus. She had short, very dark hair, turned under, all the way around. She was a little bit chubby but cute. I think all the boys liked her. She moved away two or three years later.
School was always fun for me. Kindergarten for us was only half a day. We were in the morning session. The teacher was Miss Summer. She was super nice. There was one kid that I just hated. He was constantly peeing his pants. By the end of the morning he really stunk! I think we called him stinky. He always had sunflower seeds with salt on them and you could smell them too. He didn't stay in class with us all year. I think they sent him back home again because of the pee thing. I enjoyed writing the letters and numbers in rows on folded pieces of paper. I was a terrible drawing student. Never could draw a bit from day one. One time, however, we were supposed to practise printing our names over the weekend. Anyway I forgot. When Billy Dodge reminded me, I didn't know what to do. I knew that there wasn't enough time to learn. I wrote my name on a little piece of paper. When it came time for us to be tested to see if we could do it, I looked at that little piece of paper and then wrote the letters. Felt really bad about that and worked real hard to be sure that would never happen again. Also, I had a terrible time with my colors. I just couldn't call them by their right names. Gayle Storm tried hard on the bus to teach me the colors but they were tough for me.
Our next-door neighbors were the Golden's. They had a boy named Timothy. He was about a year younger than me. They also had a daughter, a couple of years older than me. Timothy and I played together a little but were not great buddies. When I was five, the Golden's moved away and the Di Angelos moved in next door. The oldest Di Angelo, Ray was in the same grade as Larry. He was always tall and skinny. He tried to play little league baseball for a couple of years and gave up. We almost never had anything in common with him and did little with him. The Daughter, Donna, was a year younger then I was. She had a dark hair and a very dark completion. For some reason, she never appealed to me as a friend or as a girl. Donna was great friends with Frances Brezina who lived right across the street from her. They also had a little brother , Johnny, who was three or four years younger than me, way too young to be considered. I don't even know who he played with. Bob Markovich's little brother, Jimmy, and Frances Brezina's brother, Gary, were both about the same age, but neither hung around with Johnny. As the years went by, Mom and Dad gradually cooled to the Di Angelos to the point that neither of the families spoke to each other.
The Bryan's lived across the street. They had two boy's. Chuck was way older than my brother and Clayton or Clay who was a year younger than Larry. They also had two older daughters, Amie and Cookie who were way older and a baby sister, Sally. Clay was my brother's pal. They were in the same grade in school. Once in a while, I tagged along with them., but they usually did their thing without me. For a number of years, Clay was a very good friend of Larry's. I remember that Clay and Larry would lift weights and talk together every day. When Clay was in the third grade, there was a fire and explosion in their garage caused by Clay's brother, Chuck. Clay was seriously burned on both of his legs. For a while they didn't know whether he would even live. He got better but the third degree burns left terrible scars on both his legs. Clay missed so much school due to the accident that he had to repeat a grade of school, falling one year behind Larry. Still, Clay prospered. He became quite a good looking young man. He had blond hair and blue eyes and a pleasant personality. He also was a weight lifter with a terrific build, although not grotesque. The girls just loved him. They hung all over him. He was always surrounded by the best looking girls in the school.
I attended my first Cleveland Indians baseball game, the first of thousands, with my friend, Billy Dodge and his mother, Agnes. I was only six or seven and didn't know the first thing about the game. The thing that was fun was all the hot dog, pop, crackerjacks, popcorn, ice cream and everything. It was an afternoon game against the dreaded New York Yankees. Billy and his Mom knew everything about the game and the players and batting averages and pitching records and were surprised that I didn't, too. They yacked and watched the game, I ate and ate, happily. I remember being ready to go long before the game was over. I asked several times,"....is it time to go, yet?" The outcome has long since faded. The year was probably 1955. It was a day game. I remember playing at Billy's house with trains or something until it got dark when Mom and Dad came to pick me up.
When we moved to Crossview Road (they changed the name of the road to Cricket Lane about a year after we moved in), my parents became instant farmers, We had a huge backyard, and most of it immediately became a garden. That garden had to be at least eighty feet wide and fifty feet long, no it probably was one hundred feel long. The soil was extremely poor, all clay and rocks and shale. After a rain, it would turn hard as concrete. And rocks would pop out. For at least five years, whenever we got into trouble or it looked like we didn't have anything to do, we were sent out to pick rocks out of the garden. Hated that. Mom believed in cultivating the soil between the rows. She had a hand cultivator that consisted of a large steel wheel and an axle and frame connected to two handles, with three little prongs attached. The idea was for one of us to pull the damned thing while the other one pushed down on the wooden handles which made the prongs dig into the concrete, I mean soil. Because the soul was so poor, we always had to put all our garbage in the garden, to build up the soul. And we always put the garbage in the rows between the crops. We had to hoe around each individual little plant. Boy were you ever in trouble if you ever chopped off a plant. If you got one, you propped it back up and hoped nobody noticed.
We planted lettuce almost when the snow was still on the ground. We had leaf lettuce and endive and several other types of lettuce, from the end of March until the end of September. We had salad every day for dinner. I hated salad. The part I liked was the salad dressing and the other junk that got put in there. The one I liked best was the little bacon bits. I was big on the colesteral stuff, even back then.
One of Mom's big crops was tomatoes. We had tomatoes and tomatoes and more tomatoes. And Mom canned hundreds of jars of tomatoes. After eating fresh tomatoes all summer, which I hated, we had stewed tomatoes all winter from Mom's canning jars. I was really bad about eating regular, sliced tomatoes. I never had to pick tomatoes. Probably, I never saw any good ones or ones I wanted to eat. Anyway, Mom or Dad picked them. I would eat them reluctantly, with a pile of sugar on a slice or sometimes some salt, if sufficiently threatened. I flat out refused to eat stewed tomatoes. They would make me sit there until I ate a bowl of them, and I would just refuse. They would smack me and yell at me and threaten me, and I would refuse to eat those stewed tomatoes. Sometimes I would take a mouthful of them and gag and almost throw up and sometimes they would let me go. Usually, it was a major hassle. If they had only known to call it "sausa", and serve it as a delicacy or treat . .. Actually, it took thirty years for me to start liking tomatoes a little bit. A black co-worker named Andy Bizzell brought in some beefsteak tomatoes, and I tried them and liked them. Then another coworker, Ray Zabrecky, brought in some cherrystone tomatoes, and I liked them. Them, five years later my stomach problem cropped up and the doctor advised me not to eat fruits with high acid, like oranges and tomatoes. Not a crushing loss in my diet, though.
We grew thousands of carrots and beats and rows of beans and tons of peppers. Now there was something that I liked. Loved fried peppers. Probably, it was the stuff Mom fried them in ... bacon grease or something. To this day I love fried peppers. We had them a lot. Yum, yum. Mom used to can a few jars of pepper. Not that many, though. They seemed to lose a lot when they came out of the jar. Hated picking those green beans. That was a job we all shared, except Dad. As I remember it, the only big garden work I remember Dad doing was digging up and planting. Mom and Larry were the big gardeners. Mom really loved the gardening. She had spent quite a few years of her childhood on a farm, and enjoyed having her hands in the dirt, I believe. I was a rock picker and hoer..that doesn't sound too good... bean picker and digger around the little plants and weed puller. However, every year, the garden got smaller and smaller. It shrunk by a few rows every year. The smaller it got, the better I liked it, even if I did love corn on the cob picked fresh from the garden, swimming with butter and cucumbers with sour cream.
Mom and Dad also planted lots of fruit trees around the back yard. There were apple trees, peach trees and plum trees. We planted shade trees all around the yard, too. All the big trees on the lot were probably planted by Mom or me. The fruit trees along the north side of the lot, next to the DeAngelo's yard, never did well. They were shaded by the neighbor's scruffy but tall pine trees, growing along the lot line. And we planted our trees too close to them. Along that side of the yard, we also planted strawberries and raspberries. For about five or so years we had bountiful crops of them, then we sort of grew tired of them and didn't pick em that much, or transplant. The raspberries lasted the longest. We probably had them growing there for fifteen years.
On the south side of the back yard, on the Kozak's side, Mom planted grapes. She had about a dozen plants, spread over about twenty feet. The Kozak's had planted pricker bushes all along our side of their back yard. Those prickers grew into and around the grapes, constantly. At least twice a year, one of us had to trim the pricker bushes away. Those bushes were really obnoxious. Just beyond the grape vines was a wonderful, small, ugly crabapple tree. Larry and I and the neighborhood kids loved to throw them around, and mostly at each other. They would really fly a long way. They weren't too big, so when they hit you, it wasn't a critical injury. We never had a major injury. Mom would get really angry when she would see us throwing them around, so that kept our crabapple wars to a minimum. Someone got the brilliant idea to get a sharpened stick and jamb a crabapple on the end and wing it. That would increase the speed and distance that they would travel. Very clever!!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Steve Fedak
Stephan Fedak was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 18, 1916, to Helen (Kaminski) and Joseph Fedak. Steve didn't remember a lot about his first brother, Walter. He wasn't a newborn or infant but Dad didn't think he was old enough to walk. He remembered rocking the crib to rock his brother to sleep. The baby died in the influenza (flu) epidemic of 1920. The funeral was at home. Dad remembered the black wreath nailed to the front of the apartment building. He also remembered someone asking him, "who died?", and answering, " ... my brother."
Dad remembered the day that he got his tonsils out. He was three or four years old at the time. Dad remembers walking over the Abby Street bridge, which was made out of wood. The bridge had big cracks between the boards and he was scared about crossing because he could see far below. Grandma took him across anyway. In the hospital he suspected something was wrong. He smelled the mask and didn't like it and fought like heck to get it away from his face. But he got the mask and his tonsils out anyway.
In 1922, Steve started kindergarten at Tremont school on West 10th street and Jefferson. At that time the family was living in an eight suite apartment house on Literary Ave. A grown-up boy who lived downstairs, took Dad to Tremont school for his first day. He took Dad right into the school and classroom. Dad was scared and he cried. He remembers having a new straw hat and refusing to leave it in the cloak room. The boy took out a piece of "roll-your-own" cigarette paper and put it in the brim of the hat. He said that Dad would be able to find his own hat easily because of the paper. After that, Dad was OK in school that day.
The family later moved to the Collinwood area on East 173rd street. They and the Szmagala's went in together to purchase a double house. Steve and his family lived on the first floor. One evening, while Steve and Walter were in deep sleep, they were awakened by Aunt Bertha Szmagala. They complained like heck. Aunt Bertha got them up anyway and took them upstairs to sleep on the couch. And then, the two little boys had a baby sister, Elsie. Steve’s mom, Helen, and Aunt Bertha Szmagala were sisters. For one year, while Steve was in the fourth grade, the family lived in the Buckeye area.
While living in the there, Steve realized that he wanted to become a Boy Scout when he was older. Dad thought that it would be wonderful to go camping and do all the boy scout things. Unfortunately for Dad, there was no scouting in the Collinwood area. Dad didn't get his chance to get into scouting until my brother Larry became a scout in Seven Hills in the 1950's. Dad became a Cub Scout leader and later a Boy Scout master. Steve’s son, Larry became an Eagle Scout.
While living in Buckeye, Steve’s Dad, Joe that year, Grandpa Joe took him to the neighborhood bath house to learn how to swim. That was when Steve learned to swim, a hobby he took up again in his 70's while living in Regency apartments. There was a neighborhood community center near where the family lived. As part of the activities, they had a plot of land that was divided into little ones that individual kids could cultivate and grow their own gardens. Dad remembers that the gardens on the upper part of the hill where the plots were, had the best success. Unfortunately, Dad's plot was on the lower part of the hill and didn't do too well. Dad remembers that his father sometimes came to help him with his garden plot.
The fall of 1926 while living on Buckeye Road was when Dad discovered baseball. He remembers the New York Yankees, led by Babe Ruth who hit .372 with 47 home runs and 145 RBI's, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and Bill Musiel. They were known as Murderers Row. They beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the world series. In those days, they didn't even have radio broadcasts of the games. Newspapers would come out every two hours and they would have "extra" editions that would have the updated score, through the fifth inning or whatever and another "extra" that would have bold headlines, declaring the Yankees World Champions again. And Pop was correct because I checked the 1926 records in the Baseball Encyclopedia. Pop was in the fifth grade at the time.
Dad attended William H. Brett Elementary School in the third, fifth and sixth grades. The school is located on St. Clair Ave, down the road from East 173rd street where the family lived, past Graphite Bronze. The school was built, divided into two halves. The front half of the building housed the first, second and third grades. The back half housed the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. The school was divided by the auditorium in the middle. Between the auditorium and the classrooms, on both sides were wide hallways, which served as the gyms. Dad remembers playing kick baseball in the hallway, gym area while in school. Behind the school was a large playground area. Unfortunately, the school put up two temporary buildings there which ruined the playground area.
While in the sixth grade at Brett Elementary, Dad began walking to the Cleveland Public Library on East 152nd street, a distance of about a mile. That's very near Collinwood High School, which all the cousins attended. He remembers spending many hours there at a time and going there frequently. That really helped to make him the super reader that he was his whole life.
When Dad was ten years old, his half-brother, Kazimir (Carl) Kaminski came from the old country to live with his mother and her family. He was sixteen years old. Carl was the illegitimate son of Helen Kaminski. She left baby Carl behind, in the old country when he was only two or three years old. Helen paid for passage to bring her brother and sister to America but left her baby son over there. Carl never went to school in the United States. He had learned the blacksmith trade from his grandfather, John, in the old country and was always able to find work throughout the depression. He always managed to quarrel with his mother. Behind it all was probably because he was left behind as a little boy when Helen came to the United States. Before very long, Carl wore out his welcome in the Fedyk home and moved in with Uncle Mike Kaminski and his family. After that, he stayed in the neighborhood, renting at the Szmagala's double house.
My most vivid memories of Uncle Carl were of his holiday visits at Christmas, Easter and all the big family gatherings. I remember that he would always show up much later than everyone else. He never had his family with him, and he was always drunk. He and his mother would talk very loudly in Ukrainian in the kitchen, and then start yelling and then Grandpa would go in and everything would quiet down, and then Carl would leave. I never heard anything about who Carl's father was, why he was left behind or any of that stuff. When I was younger, Dad would just lie about it and say Grandma's first husband, in the old country just happened to have the same family Kaminski name. When I was older, he would just said he didn't know.
Steve started taking violin lessons as a child and joined the school orchestra in the seventh grade. He learned to play the cello in the eighth grade. Steve was a member of the school string quartet for three years. He was also a member of the All Cuyahoga County High school Symphony Orchestra for two summers. The orchestra was based at Severence Hall. Their final concert was broadcast nationwide on the NBC Radio. Steve sang in the boys glee club and the school acapella choir. He had a livelong love for music. Whenever he babysat his grandsons, Don and Joe, at his apartment in Parma, Ohio, Steve always played classical music for them.
While walking around downtown Las Vegas at 4 AM, Dad told me about the first time he ever saw the game of blackjack. As a little boy he remembered his fathers buddies (who probably included Uncle Dymetro Szmagala and Uncle Mike Kaminski who were really uncles, and Uncle Joe who was a first cousin of Dad's Mom and who had lived with Dad's family for a while after his mother died) sitting around playing cards . As Dad remembers it, they were playing blackjack. They called the game, "21". They all wanted to be the dealer because the dealer won the most money. A player could remain the dealer until another person got blackjack. Then, that person became the dealer until another person got blackjack. Dad's father never played cards. He always wrestled on the floor with the kids. As soon as they got over the house they were visiting, the kids would grab Grandpa Joe and start wrestling. The one who liked to wrestle the most was cousin Stella Szmagala. Dad said that they stopped playing "21" and started playing poker when he was in his late teens or early twenties which would have been the mid or late l930's.
The guy who really loved to play cards was Uncle Mike Kaminski. When he was playing cards, the time didn't matter. Cousin Helen Kaminski remembered that one time Uncle Mike and his friends were playing cards at a bootleg joint right across the street from Saint Peter and Paul's Church on West 11th street. Uncle Mike's wife, Aunt Mary went right into the bootleg joint and knocked the cards and money off the table. She broke the game right up, right there and then..
Dad thinks that Uncle Mike's card playing was one of the big reasons that the family moved away from the Ukrainian neighborhood of the Church and the West 11th street area . The church, St. Peter and Paul's, was on the corner of West Seventh and College streets. Dad thinks that it would have been a lot more fun growing up in the Ukrainian community. In the Collinwood area there were gangs of "Dagos'" waiting around to beat up Dad and his cousins. There were also gangs of "Protestants" who liked to beat up the "Catholics."
Dad was in the third grade when they came to Collinwood. Cousin Helen was in Dad's class at William H. Brett Elementary school. Helen was one of the smartest kids in the class. Dad said that he wasn't in the group with the smart kids. Helen was one year younger than Dad but she had skipped a grade, a practise that was common in those days and continued to my time. I haven't heard of that happening for many years. All through the years, Helen and Dad were in the same grade and were friends. Helen always gave her free baseball tickets from school to Dad even though she had an older brother, Walter and a younger brother, Johnny. While Dad participated in sports in high school, Helen was very interested in girls athletics and participated in everything she could. All through school, Helen's grades were always straight .
hen the families moved to the Collinwood area, it took one and a half hours by streetcar to get to church. Wally remembers that on holiday's, and often on Sundays, his mother would stay home and cook and Joe and his sons and daughter would go to church. It was a really big deal when Uncle Dymetro got his first car, a big Buick, and gave Joe and his family a ride to church.
Holidays rotated among the three families, the Fedyk's, the Kaminski's and the Szmagala's. Michael Kaminski was Helen Fedyk’s brother. Bertha Szmagala was Helen Szmagala’s sister. When the family gathered at the Szmagala home for the holiday, Father Gresko, the Pastor of St. Peter and Paul's Church, and Uncle Dymetro's great friend often joined them. Father Gresko liked to tell dirty jokes. Before he got started, the kids would get kicked out of the room. Uncle Wally remembered the men roaring with laughter. I remember Uncle Dymetro liked to tell jokes.
The families always had two Christmas holidays and two Easters, the American and the Ukrainian which had two different calendars and occurred on two different days. When the holidays came, the families came together to celebrate and they always stayed overnight. Dad loved staying overnight and the good food. The kids always slept on the floor. Dad loved to talk with his cousin Walter all night long. The grownups would yell to the kids to go to sleep. Dad and his cousin would wait for a few minutes, then start talking again. The family get-togethers continued into the early 1940's when cousins Helen and Walter and Mary got married and with their spouses and in-laws, the get-togethers got too big.
Wally remembers walking home one time down East 173rd street with his family after a holiday get together. Walt remembers that Grandpa Joe had been doing quite a bit of drinking. Along the way, Joe stopped. Helen asked him , "...why are we stopping." Grandpa Joe answered, " I think I'll just wait here for the house to come by." All the pictures of the family show them extremely serious and in stern poses. Really, though, there were lots of laughter among those people.
Steve played football, basketball and baseball. No kids ever played, who wore glasses. Steve wore glasses. Back then, whenever a football player came out of the game, he was out for the rest of the half. All players were two-way players. Only about 12 guys a year got letters. Steve’s good friend, George Suki was the star. In basketball, after every basket, they had a jump ball. And they used the push shot, which is the easiest shot to block today. Nobody uses it. But Steve loved sports. Dinner was long over by the time Steve got home from practise or Ukrainian language classes, which Steve took for many years. Dinner was whatever was left over. So Steve didn’t eat very well. He only weighed 145 pounds when he graduated from high school.
Steve graduated in 1934, the heart of the depression. His first job was in the heat treat department at Midwest Forge, a company that exists today, in it’s same location on East173rd and St. Clair Avenue. Steve’s job was to use a long pair of tongs to turn the axels just after they came out of the reheat furnaces. Really a miserable job. Just the thing to weed out new employees. Steve’s supervisor was Uncle Joe Kaminski. After one day, Steve told Uncle Mike, “You’ll never see me around here again.”
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