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.

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."