My Dad's Career (part 2) and marriage

It's kind of hard to talk about my dad's job without bringing my parent's marriage into it, so here goes:

My mom was a free spirit (albeit a fiery, temperamental free spirit) and up until she gave birth to my sister (at age 35) she pretty much did as she pleased. The role of wife and mother was new (and foreign) to her and didn't exactly come naturally.
My dad aspired to greatness - it was the primary focus of his life. He expected his wife and children to be perfect, the house (and the behavior of the occupants) to be orderly and to not interfere with his tennis or his work.
He also had quite the temper and would have major blowups whenever anything was not to his liking. Now, I don't think he was nearly as angry as one might conclude based on the vehemence of his tirades - he just felt he had the right to blow off steam whenever and however he wanted to (it was always our fault anyway). And mom responded in kind - she was every bit his equal in that regard.
BTW - He was not allowed to discipline my sister or I in any way - that was my mom's sole territory. I suspect he was afraid to find out what would happen if he crossed that line and (knowing my mom) I don't blame him one bit :-)

So, when dad started traveling we started leading a double life. When he was there we had to 'behave' all the time - our table manners had to be perfect - we couldn't play or make noise in the house - we always had to do whatever he wanted - and mom was stressed to the max. When he wasn't there everything was much more pleasant. Yeah, mom would freak out regularly (that was her response to responsibility) but she could be a lot of fun and we got to do pretty much whatever we wanted. Yet mom was furious with him for being away from home so much. It was a constant point of contention between them.

Now, back to the career thread:

The whole 'move to Philadelphia' thing was very strange. At first Dad was supposed to go to the Boston office but a couple of days later it changed to Philadelphia. I have no doubt that my dad requested the change - probably because an old friend of his (Carl Zimenski(?)) lived in Philadelphia. But my mom was absolutely convinced that it was because my dad had a girlfriend there. Regardless - the move to Philadelphia turned out to be the beginning of the end.

I should interject here and mention that (in my opinion) my dad was the kind of guy who really needed to have somebody in a position of power watching his back. He was absolutely brilliant but 'getting along' was not his thing. You were either 'loyal' to him or you were against him, and I suspect he alienated a lot of people along the way. He later told me that he was constantly criticized for "lack of rapport" and could never figure out what that meant. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that he was always right and anyone who disagreed with him was an idiot :-)

So a couple of years after we got to Philadelphia there was a management shakeup at his company and he was forced out. He quickly got an equivalent job (east coast sales manager) with DeLaval - that's when he sold the equipment for the ventilation system on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. But soon afterward he ended up out of work again.
This time he was unemployed for over a year. And all that time we were living (quite well) on borrowed money - keeping up appearances while running up massive debts. (I found out years later that he told his second wife that all those debts resulted from my mom's compulsive spending... Umm - not quite...)

In early 1965 my dad claimed he had a job offer in Germany and sent us ahead while he sold the house and wrapped things up. Then a few weeks after we were safely over there (staying with my aunts) he sent my mom a letter saying he wanted a divorce. In retrospect (knowing my mom), 3000 miles was probably the minimum safe distance from which dad could have dropped that bombshell and survived :-)

Over the next 15 years he seems to have done quite well. Since he spoke 6 or 7 languages he ended up doing international sales and joint ventures (and even some State Dept. trade missions). But I don't think he was ever seen as 'management material'. In one of his last jobs he reported to the CEO of a well known (but now defunct) Milwaukee based corporation. It was an advisory position (market research) with a staff of assistants, and the CEO didn't travel anywhere without him. He later held the same position at a multinational 'joint venture' involving that same company and (for reasons I do not know) ended up unemployed again (at the age of 58).
He later told me that he felt that he was fully qualified to be the CEO of a major corporation and that was the only job that he would accept - anything else was 'beneath him'. So he never worked again. (When a friend suggested that he consider the possibility of teaching his response was "I'm not going to shovel sh*t for a living!")

He spent the last 20 years of his life doing (unpaid) economic analysis and sending his findings to major universities, members of Congress and the White House. They probably had him labeled as a crackpot but they really should have paid attention - I remember him telling me 15 years ago what the result of market deregulation would be. (Like I said - he was quite brilliant.)

And that sets the background for the next 100 or so blog entries :-)

My Father's Career (part 1)

I suppose it's about time to take a step back and talk about my father and his career since it does play into everything else in my young life. (I'm going to avoid mentioning company names simply so I don't have to worry about what I say.)

He started out in the U.S. as an engineer for a company that made industrial compressors and mining machinery. They moved him from Michigan City to St. Louis when I was 9 months old.
When I was about 2 he decided that he would make more money in sales so he talked his management into letting him make the switch. It was a no-brainer - he was meticulous, confident, charismatic, and (despite English being his fifth or so language) well spoken. He had joined Toastmasters (the speaking club, not the kitchen appliance maker) to hone his communication skills - so he was ready.

What happened next is somewhat amusing:
My dad's first solo sale was the compressed air system for a massive manufacturing facility in Kansas City. None of the other salesmen wanted to spend any time on it because the plans called for really big compressors - larger than anything his company made. They figured they were tossing him a bone - he might be able to sell a couple of pieces of equipment off to the side (if he was lucky).
Since he was an engineer by training my dad was curious why the customer was planning on using such large compressors. So the first thing he did was to get hold of the plans and crunch the numbers and he was stunned to discover that it would actually be a far cheaper to supply the whole plant using smaller compressors (that his company could provide) and it would dramatically improve the overall system reliability.
The customer was duly impressed and my dad made the sale (with a healthy commission). It was one of the largest single sales in the history of his company and overnight he went from an obscure junior salesman to the regional go-to guy and 'household name' at the corporate headquarters back east.
BTW - The first time I heard this story was when my dad was in his 60's and I asked him how we managed to move from that small rental house to a big place in an upscale suburb...

What happened next is somewhat tragic:
I know that in December of 1961 my father was transferred to Philadelphia to be the east coast sales manager and it was all very sudden (only a couple of weeks notice) but I hadn't connected the dots until this morning when I was poking around on the internet:
My father's boss (and mentor) in St. Louis was the regional manager. One day they went to lunch in my dad's car. As they were pulling back into the parking lot his boss said "Back to the salt mines..." and instantly died of massive heart failure (at the age of 61). And as if that wasn't traumatic enough, my dad's boss had a (very) young wife who actually accused my dad of stealing money out of her dead husband's wallet. (My mom told me about that - my dad never talked about it - the guy was like a father to him.) BTW - I remember the wife quite well - I could not stand her.
Of course, I remembered the boss' name so this morning I did a web search and found a lawsuit that the wife had filed against the company over unearned wages (she appealed it all the way to the state Supreme Court and lost). But the interesting bit is that the boss died in my father's car on Dec 4, 1961 - just 22 days before we left for Philadelphia. (I had never connected the two events before.) My dad must have been in an impossible political situation in St. Louis (I can only imagine the rumors that must have been floating around) and the corporate execs must have decided to move him out of there within days after the death.

I think that's enough for today. I'll leave off with this observation: The likelihood of me remembering something is inversely proportional to it's relevance :-)

Flirting

Just in case it's not already evident from my earlier blog entries - I've always been incredibly fond of women. One of my earliest memories is of watching the young housewife next door hanging laundry in the back yard. She was wearing a long flowing dress and it was a breezy day and there was just something incredibly lovely about the scene. I had no idea why, but it made me feel really warm inside...

But my early preoccupation with the opposite sex did get me in trouble a couple of times when I was 3 years old:

One morning the whole family was eating breakfast at a restaurant and since the waitress was rather cute I just had to flirt with her. (She was wearing those nylons with the seams down the back. I really liked those.) Unfortunately, everything I knew about flirting came from watching Looney Tunes and Popeye cartoons so (predictably) my repertoire consisted of whistling, howling (like a wolf) and yelling "Hubba! Hubba!".
Now, if my father hadn't been there I don't think it would've been that big of a deal, but he always expected his children to behave perfectly and when we didn't it was my mother's fault. (It's no wonder she was always so stressed.) Mom tried to stop my 'flirting', but as near as I could tell I was doing pretty well with that waitress and saw no reason to quit. (Everybody else in the place seemed to think it was hilarious.) The upshot was that mom dragged me out of there midway through breakfast (and gave me a half-hearted swat or two). We waited in the car til my dad and sister finished their breakfast. That was kind of a bummer because I was still really hungry...

The other time was when we were at a rodeo by the old Checkerdome.
I enjoyed the women's barrel racing - one of the women had really long blond hair braided down her back - I still remember it whipping around behind her as she rode. (That was so hot!)
But the group of teenage girls sitting behind me was much more entertaining than most of what was going on in the arena. (They thought I was way cute... It was mutual.)
As the rodeo progressed my mom got more and more irritated with me for not watching it. She kept trying to get me to pay attention to no avail. Finally she pointed at the arena and said "The horses are that way!" and I responded by pointing behind me and saying "The girls are that way!". So she dragged me out of there and walked me back to "Aunt Aggie's" house a few blocks away. I don't think she was really that mad. It was a hot and humid day and it was probably just an excuse to get out of there.
But I really wasn't done flirting with those girls yet :-)

Home and Other Places

This is one of those 'random memories' kind of blog post so don't go looking for a unifying theme :-)

The past few blog entries have centered around a small 2 bedroom house we rented on Mueller Rd in Concord, MO (outside of St. Louis). I know the exact time period because we bought a (much larger) home a couple of miles away right before my 4th birthday. More on that later. (Haha - I said moron.)
I still remember that place in exquisite detail. I can mentally walk through it and see almost every piece of furniture, every appliance, every detail down to the floor drain in the basement where the septic tank used to back up (a frequent occurrence) with one glaring exception - the bathroom. Aside from a single fleeting memory of sitting on a potty chair watching my father shave, the bathroom is a total blank. I can only assume that my mind has blocked it out due to all the potty related trauma that occurred there :-) My mom used to say that she thought I was going to end up going to kindergarten in diapers.

I remember lifting the grate off the furnace air duct in the dining room floor and tossing clothes down it (repeatedly) - I don't have any idea why I did that but it made my mom really mad.

I remember late one night during a severe storm (with tornado warnings) we were in the basement when it started flooding and we had to run next door. My dad held me under his coat to shield me from the rain and wind - the thunder and lightning were awesome. BTW - I really liked those storms but they scared the heck out of my mom.

For the sake of completeness I should include a couple of stories that my mother frequently told (I have no recollection whatsoever of these events):
One day we were expecting company for dinner so she cleaned the house and then took an afternoon nap (she took a lot of naps). While she was sleeping my sister and I decided that the living room would look much better if it were covered with 'snow'. So we took a 5 lb bag of sugar and 'decorated' all the furniture. Needless to say mom wasn't amused when she awoke to find the living room covered in holiday cheer (she didn't really appreciate it at all).
Another time I reportedly ran out into the road in front of our house and my sister ran after me, pushed me down and got on top of me so that if a car came it would hit her and not me... Yeah, her reasoning was a bit flawed but I guess it's the thought that counts :-)

As I mentioned above, that house was in Concord, which at the time was just a wide spot at the intersection of Lindbergh and Tesson Ferry. There was an old barber shop where I got my first hair cut, a Zephyr gas station, a farm equipment store with a tractor or 2 parked out front, our neighbor Mr. Cloninger's clothing store (he was a very nice gentleman) and a grocery store.

We used to spend a lot of time swimming during the summers.
There was a huge spring fed pool in White House, MO that we went to from time to time. That's were I learned to swim. I had been taking lessons for weeks and they'd accomplished nothing but scaring the heck out of me. Then some guy (who was clearly hitting on my mom) taught me in about 10 minutes. (He was really good - I remembered his teaching technique and used it on my kids.)
And the Concord Lanes bowling alley (just a few blocks away) also had a pool. We continued going there until I was 8 years old (when we moved to Philadelphia).

OK - this is funny (at least I think so):
Concord Lanes had a small round kiddie pool with 3 round pedestals in the middle with fountains on them and large main pool with oddly curved sides. When I was about 5 or 6 I remember being puzzled about why the sides of the main pool were curved rather than straight. After weeks of obsessing over it, it finally dawned on me that the main pool was actually shaped like a (really wide) bowling pin, and the kiddie pool (with the 3 pedestals) was the bowling ball with 3 holes in it! It was really quite clever and I was kicking myself for taking so long to figure it out - it seemed so obvious in retrospect. And (of course) I never mentioned it to anyone else because I expected they'd say "Well, duh!!!"
It wasn't until I was an adult that I discovered I was the only one in the family who had ever noticed the shape of the pool...

Frustration

I could probably write at least 100 blog posts on my memories from the ages of 2 and 3 but, frankly, most of them aren't particularly interesting. I suppose some day I might feel like mentioning that the basement door was locked with a red horseshoe magnet stuck through the hasp (I guess I just did) but for now I'll try and stick to more entertaining topics. Today I'm going to talk a bit about frustration. At that age it was the emotion that seemed to crop up more often that any other.

BTW - To appreciate what follows you need to keep in mind that I grew up during the mid 50's to mid 60's. That was before society started trying to take 'natural selection' out of the equation. Terms like 'child proof' and 'choking hazard' had not yet entered the popular lexicon.
Furthermore, seat belts were a rarity and car seats were non-existent, as were crumple zones and safety glass. Dashboards were made of cold hard steel with lethal decorative protrusions. Cars had hood ornaments that punctured wayward pedestrians. Playgrounds were made of iron and asphalt. Stupidity and carelessness had real (and harsh) consequences... Ah yes. Those were the good old days... But I digress...

First off - what is it with coins and electrical outlets??? Coins were clearly made to fit in slots (or else they'd be spherical) and the openings in (American) electrical outlets are clearly slots, but I could never find a coin that would fit in one of those slots... Lord knows I tried (early signs of OCD?). Every time I found a coin I'd head for an outlet and try and shove that puppy in. Of course, I had to be sneaky about it because my mom seemed to have a problem with that particular line of experimentation. I didn't understand why until I was 5 years old and plugged in a lamp while holding the prongs. I ended up on my butt about 3 feet from the outlet thinking "Oh... So that's why... That kind of sucked..."

Next on the frustration list - there's that period of time when you think you can talk but (apparently) you can't.
One day I was playing with my favorite marble and it rolled under the upright piano in the dining room. (Choking hazard? Not during the 50s...) I was pretty upset and went to the kitchen and asked my mother to retrieve it for me, but she just looked puzzled. I finally got her to follow me into the dining room and pointed at the piano while telling her over and over again that my marble was under it (I was really upset and crying by then). And all she did was check my diaper and give me a bottle of juice... It's no wonder I thought adults were stupid :-)

Finally - I don't really know how to classify this one so I'll just tell the story:
One summer day some family friends (the Rings) were visiting and we were all out in the back yard. The grownups were over by the barbecue and the children (myself included) were by the swing set. I was sitting there (minding my own business) in a folding lawn chair when my big sister Kathy and the Rings' daughter Kathy (the 2 Kathys) decided they wanted it.
I was unwilling to voluntarily relinquish possession of said lawn chair so the 2 Kathys proceeded to shove and pull and otherwise attempt to forcibly eject me from it while I held on for dear life. And all of the aforementioned shoving and pulling caused the chair to fold up, smashing, lacerating and otherwise injuring the fingers on my left hand.
My screams of pain finally drew the attention of the adults (who had been completely oblivious up to that point). They ran over and asked what had happened and the 2 Kathys (apparently relying on the fact that I was crying too hard to say anything) concocted this story:
They had been innocently playing on the swing set when they noticed me messing around with the folding chair. Sensing that I might be in danger they ran over and attempted to save me but, alas, they were too late. Their noble efforts had failed - I had already folded the chair up on my own hand.

I'm still not sure what I was the most upset about - the injuries themselves, the fact that the 2 Kathys caused them and lied about it, my inability to tell the adults what had happened, or the fact that the adults had not even noticed the 2 Kathys trying to drag me out of the chair in the first place. But I do clearly remember how extremely frustrating it was.

My father (again)

Over the past couple of months it's become clear to me that the topic I'm going to have the most trouble blogging about is my father. I really want to be fair and balanced - he was loved and respected by a lot of people - he was married to his second wife for 32 years before he passed away and they have children who are the same age as mine - I assume members of that family will be reading this at some point.

And yeah - I'm being a total whiner. I grew up white, intelligent, well educated and well-to-do in the most affluent country on earth. Maybe there was constant screaming (and the occasional flying object) plus some emotional instability, but there was no pervasive physical violence and a lot of kids would have traded places with me in a heartbeat. Still, it's impossible to talk about my life without delving into my issues with my father. So here goes:

He wasn't around that much when I was growing up - he traveled extensively on business. From the time my parents split up when I was 11 (April 65) until 1989 I only saw him 8 or 9 times. (I spent about a month with him in New York in early 1971 - it didn't end well). In 1989 he moved his family here from Sweden (and/or Germany) and that's when I finally got to know him (I was in my mid 30s and he was in his mid 60s by then).

I've already mentioned that at some point during his childhood he consciously decided that his wants and needs were more important than anything else - but that's just the 'tip of the iceberg'. He also told me that when he read about people like Alexander the Great and Napoleon he identified with them. That was his self-image - a person whose existence was of critical importance and consequence to mankind. To say that it colored his interactions with his family would be a gross understatement...

I never saw any signs that he felt slightest bit of regret for anything he had ever done. I found it hard to believe that there wasn't at least a 'twinge' of remorse somewhere inside of him, so during the mid 1990s I confronted him about a relatively benign incident that occurred when I was 9 years old:
One Saturday morning as he was about to head into the office he told me he'd be back around noon and we'd go do something together. So I sat by the front window all day waiting for him. He didn't get home until that evening - come to find out he'd headed over to the Cynwyd Club to play tennis and hang out with his buddies. I was very deeply hurt and (obviously) never forgot it.

So I told him that story (and explained how much it had hurt me) and waited for his response. I don't know exactly what I was expecting (maybe an apology?) but he just looked puzzled and said:
"Well, you should have been more sympathetic to my needs!"

For a few seconds I was trapped in a Dali painting - the entire universe melted around me as I tried to wrap my mind around what he had just said.
I was like "Uh, Dad? I was only 9?" And he was like "Yeah... so what's your point?". It was a revelation. Almost every question I'd had about my childhood had been answered by that single response :-)

I'm certainly not saying that I didn't love him - I did. And we did do a lot of things together - tennis, skiing, playing catch, etc. I have many fond memories, and those are the ones I need to hang on to. But there was nothing in my relationship with him I could rely on. And when you're a kid that's a bit tough to handle...

The Melting Pot

Even though my parents had just come to this country when I was born I don't ever recall them ever speaking anything but English to my sister and I. As a matter of fact, I don't speak a word of Hungarian. Although we were exposed to aspects of Hungarian culture from time to time it was definitely not the dominant culture in our home. We were American.

I'm going to get on my soapbox here:
For the life of me, I don't understand people that come to this country because their homeland sucked but then they try to create an environment that is exactly like what they left behind only without the sucking part. It doesn't work that way. If you're not willing to embrace a society's language and culture you shouldn't expect to get the benefits.
Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't make an effort to accommodate cultural diversity. (Or that people need to completely abandon their native cultures.) It obviously takes time to adapt and (as the child of immigrant parents) I believe we need to be generous, sympathetic and supportive of those who are struggling to make that transition. I'm just saying that if your family has been here for 3 generations and English is still your second language don't complain about cultural bias, OK?
And I'm back off the soapbox...

But despite my parents best efforts there were still 'issues'.

First off - I've never been able to understand the 'tattletale' thing. I mean, we tell kids over and over not to tattle, then when a crime is committed and no witnesses come forward everyone acts all surprised. Well, duh... What part of "don't tattle" did you not understand?? In most civilized countries being a tattletale is not just considered a good idea, it's the law. And we wonder why our crime rate is so high...

Next - I really didn't intend to blog about this but one of my daughters asked me to, so here goes:
My mom had no clue what the colloquial terms for the 'naughty bits' were so she made some up. Imagine my surprise when I started school and discovered that nobody knew what a "putch putch" or a "popochee" was. (That would be my genitalia and nether region respectively.) We even had a little song to request a 'butt cleaning'. It was set to the tune of "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!". The words were "Mommy! Mommy! Clean my popochee!" If we had company over we didn't actually sing the words - just humming the tune was sufficient.

My sister and I never spoke with accents and my parents never lost theirs. Both of their accents were as strong when they passed away as they were when I was a child.
And I would be remiss if I covered this topic without mentioning my mother's tendency to get words mixed up. She usually referred to the microwave oven as the 'rototiller' and a strainer as a 'calendar'. (We knew what she meant.)
And she told everyone my sister and I were 'genies' (geniuses - the jury is still out on me). And then there was her accent - we never stopped teasing her about it (especially when she said "third" - it came out "turd"). Good times :-)

But my whole point here is that my parents loved and believed in this country. It was a dream fulfilled and they didn't want their children to be 'culturally hyphenated'. They raised us to be Americans. And I couldn't be more proud ... or more grateful.

Toddlers and Statistics

Have you ever wondered why toddlers tend to do things over and over again?
It's simple. Kids learn by doing statistical analysis - if you don't know how something works that's the only way to draw conclusions about it. As an example, nobody (as of this writing) knows the exact mechanism by which smoking causes cancer. But the statistical correlation is so strong that we can conclude that it does. So if you've ever wondered why kids keep pushing their food off the highchair tray the answer is simple. They're trying to build confidence in the hypothesis that it will always fall (AKA gravity). Of course, children do have difference confidence thresholds - some require more convincing that others :-)

Not all hypotheses hold up to statistical analysis. Here's some examples from when I was 2 years old:

The front door of our house had one of those old mortise locks with the 2 buttons recessed into the edge of the door (you could only see them when the door was open). I was fascinated by those buttons and (other than pushing one button made the other one pop out) I could not figure out what they did...
Then one day a friend of my mother's visited and after she left my mother pushed the lower button and closed the door. That was the clue I needed! Obviously the button had something to do with company coming and going. So if you push the lower button after people leave that must mean pushing the upper button makes people come to visit!
Now, to someone with an adult understanding of 'how things work' that hypothesis is laughable, but for a 2 year old it makes as much sense as being able to pick up a phone and talk to someone who isn't there - as a matter of fact, it's a brilliant little bit of deductive reasoning :-)
So I spent the next couple of weeks running trials. When nobody was looking I'd sneak over, push the upper button and wait to see what happened. But only once did someone show up within a reasonably short period of time so I had to conclude that my hypothesis was false.
I also observed that my mother got really irritated when she discovered that the upper button had been pushed - I originally attributed that to her not wanting anyone to come over, but in the end I concluded that those stupid buttons didn't do a darn thing and it was irrational of my mother to care which one was pushed...

I went through a similar process with the little red light on the instrument panel of my dad's 55 Chevy (the high beam indicator - triggered by a foot switch to the left of the brake pedal).
It was fairly obvious that the red light, the faint clicking noise (from the foot switch) and the headlights getting brighter and dimmer were tied together somehow but I could not tell what was making it happen.
First I tried to figure out where the clicking was coming from but I simply couldn't pinpoint it. Then I watched my father intently when the red light went on and off (I was standing in the back seat like every other kid back in the day) and his hands never moved, so I concluded that it must be caused by something outside of the vehicle.
At first I though it was related to going around curves but subsequent observations failed to adequately support that hypothesis. Then I figured it must have something to do with oncoming headlights but sometimes the red light didn't come on for an entire trip so that hypothesis went down in flames also. After many months I ran out of ideas and gave up. It was simply beyond my skills to unravel that one.

If there's any point to this it's that (based on my recollections) there's a lot more going on in a toddler's mind than most people realize. If children didn't have really strong deductive reasoning skills they'd never figure anything out - and end up belonging to whichever political party you think are all clueless idiots - and I'm gonna drop that topic right there :-)

So when kids do stupid things it's not because they lack analytical skills - they're just working with flawed and incomplete data...

Orange Flavored Aspirin

I'm going to jump ahead slightly in time and tell 'the story' of my early years. You know - the one that makes people say "Well, that explains a lot!"
In the interest of full disclosure I must say that although most of this narrative is drawn from my own memories there are some details I've filled in from my mother's (repeated) retelling.

Back in the 50s there was a product called "St. Joseph's Orange Flavored Children's Aspirin" and I must say they were quite tasty. Because of the obvious hazard they posed to children the geniuses at St. Josephs developed a new-fangled pry-off 'safety' cap to replace the standard screw cap. Now, a slower child might have tried in vain to use his fingers to gain access to those orange flavored yummies, but I quickly discovered that you could pop that 'safety' cap off with your teeth in no time at all - it was actually more 'child accessible' than the screw cap. (I've always wondered how the testing for that cap went - I can almost envision them yelling at the kids: "No! No! Don't put it in your mouth! Try using your fingers! There you go! ...")

So one morning (when I was 3 years old) my mom was busy getting my sister ready for school and I climbed up onto the kitchen counter, grabbed a new bottle of those orange goodies off the top shelf and downed the whole batch.
I probably owe my life to the fact that I wasn't yet sophisticated enough to conceal the evidence and left the empty bottle on the counter. When my mom accused me of throwing them away I reportedly responded with "I didn't! I was a good boy! I ate them all up!"
My mom immediately called the doctor (this was way before 911) and as he was telling her not to let me drink anything under any circumstances she turned around to see me chugging the glass of milk she had left on the table for my sister. That's when she started freaking out (and my 'memory device' started recording).
Now, my mom freaking out was not out of the ordinary, but this was a whole new level of freaking out. She grabbed me, wrapped me up in a blanket and ran out the back door where Mr. Kloninger was working in his garden next door. She started screaming at him incoherently, which initially evoked the classic 'deer in the headlights' response, but he finally caught the word 'hospital' and we jumped in his car and headed off.
My mom calmed down a lot in the car but I still remember the ride because I'd never been in that car before (lots of interesting stuff to look at) and I almost never got to ride in the front seat (not to mention being wrapped in a blanket in my mother's arms).
The next thing I remember is being put on a metal table in a room with green tile walls and lots of bright lights. There was a really nice nurse smiling and talking sweetly to me and I didn't realize until it was too late that she was just distracting me while she wrapped me tightly in a sheet - I could barely move a muscle. Boy, was I mad! That was the first time in my life I was cruelly betrayed by a sweet talking woman...
What happened next was far worse. A doctor wearing a mask and thick black rimmed glasses appeared above me and started shoving a rubber tube through my nose - I could feel it going down my throat. Definitely the most unpleasant experience of my young life! If I hadn't been wrapped up so tight I would have totally gone medieval on him. And that's when my memory device stopped recording :-)

Next thing I remember I was back at home - I was apparently released a few hours after my stomach was pumped and my parents were instructed to keep me awake for 24 hours as a precaution. BTW - I would advise against overdosing on aspirin just for the hallucinations - they aren't that great. The room was filled with brightly colored fish and I was unable to catch any of them despite my best efforts. And then the small black Scottish Terrier appeared. My mom humored me and put down food for it, but my aunt Annette (who was was visiting at the time) kicked the poor little thing multiple times to prove to me that it didn't exist. I was really mad at her for that. I mean, I sort of suspected that it wasn't real because dogs usually aren't translucent (notwithstanding the picture below - one of the funnier things I've seen - thank you Cate!) - but it was still not very nice of Annette to kick it ...


And, that's the story of the orange flavored aspirin - the first of many that make me wonder how I survived my childhood...

music

My earliest memories are flashes of rooms, hallways and furniture from less than a foot off the floor - there's no motion, thought or emotion (or people) associated with them. When I was about 10 I got curious about those flashes and drew up a floor-plan based on them - my mom identified it as our house in Michigan City. So it's easy to determine exactly how far back those memories go - we moved to St. Louis when I was 9 months old.

My first 'full' memory is from when I was (probably) about a year old. I was lying in my crib and my mother and father were standing in the doorway. My dad was smiling and had his arm around my mother and she was singing a lullaby. I cannot begin to describe the happiness and contentment I felt at that moment. It was perfection - it was overwhelming - it enveloped my whole being - it had no beginning and no end.
I've always been curious why I felt so content. Was it because my parents weren't yelling at each other, was it because of my mothers singing or was it because I had a fresh diaper? I'm still not sure.

Music was a constant in my childhood. When I was a toddler my mother had stopped doing full operas (she was over 40 and didn't have the time or energy) but she still did regular live radio performances in St. Louis and Chicago. (She was really good).
She played the piano and sang almost every day. Her playing style was quite distinctive - the inflection and timing were unique and easily identifiable. And it wasn't just opera and classical - she did Christmas carols and popular music as well. As a matter of fact, the one song that seemed to have the most personal relevance to her (based on how often she sang and played it) was "Don't fence me in".

I took piano lessons (and did recitals) when I was young but I never really learned to read music. I didn't have to. My mom could 'sight read' so when I got a new piece to learn I'd give her the sheet music and she'd play it a few times for me while I memorized it. (It probably would have been easier to learn to read the notes but I don't always do things the easy way.) I switched to guitar when I was 12, but that's yet another story.
But I really wished I'd inherited the voice. My sister did, but I apparently lost out in the genetic lottery on that one. I can sing, but let's just say that it's closer to 'Eric Burdon' (of the Animals) than Pavarotti - not that there's anything wrong with that - but it doesn't exactly send chills up and down your spine :-)

My dad really didn't appreciate music. He thought he did - he was very knowledgeable about classical and opera and listened to it a lot, but to him it was nothing more than background noise. I only remember one time music evoked an emotional response from him:
I was about 6 years old and my dad was on an extended business trip in the weeks leading up to Christmas. My mother and sister came up with the idea of surprising him with a piano and vocal duet of "Silver Bells". (My sister may have been only 9 but she could already put a lot of professional singers to shame.) They practiced for hours every day and that duet was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
My dad finally got home a couple of days before Christmas . We were sitting around the living room that evening and my mother and sister went to the piano and started the duet. About 15 seconds in my dad yelled "Would you knock off that racket!!!!"

So, yeah - music really wasn't his thing... and neither was sensitivity :-)

The journey to Ellis Island

The post-WWII era was a tough time for almost everyone in Germany. There weren't many opportunities for a young, ambitious foreign born engineer, so my dad decided the US was the place to be.
Although immigration from Germany to the US was heavily limited during that period, preference was given to those who had been displaced from their homeland by the war and those who were considered 'highly skilled'. As a Hungarian mechanical engineer my father ended up high on the list. To fully qualify he needed to have a job waiting for him in the US, and since he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers he was able to cultivate relationships with the defense contractors who provided equipment to the Corps. That led to a job offer in Michigan City, Indiana. I'm not sure exactly when he applied to immigrate but in 1951 (when my sister was a year old) all the pieces fell into place and his application was granted.

That was the easy part :-) He still needed to convince my mother to exchange the safety of her family for the uncertainty of life in a new country. Now, if she had been childless I don't think she would have hesitated - throwing caution to the wind was one of her defining characteristics. But the responsibility of being a new mother (at the age of 35) caused her a great deal of anxiety - she had become very cautious.
Of course, her sisters (with their apparent joint vows of celibacy) were dead set against it. My father respected Margarete (who was highly educated and usually rational) but he didn't have any use for the other two. He saw the three of them as something of a 'coven' (and we all know what that implies) :-)

Now, I must interject here. I don't know if all Hungarians are always absolutely certain they are right about everything, or if it's only the ones I've known...
Personally I'm never sure of much of anything... I'm not sure you exist... I'm not even sure I exist... Some of it goes back to my freshman year in high school when Dan Maslanka asked me "Just what the f*** is so special about you???". I'm sure he had no idea just how much psychological hell that stupid question would put me through... But I digress...
My point is that the word 'compromise' was not in the dictionary of any of the people involved in the battle that ensued. It was (by all accounts) epic.

At one point my aunt Annette said something that my father remembered for the rest of his life: "Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit getan, der Mohr kann gehen." That is a quote from Fiesco (1783) by Frederich Schiller and translates roughly to "The Moor has done his duty. The Moor can go." Which my father interpreted as "Now that you've given us a child we have no more use for you. Go away." Needless to say, he was not amused and never forgave her.

Another interjection: One of the things about going to school in a foreign country that I didn't expect was the total difference in literature. The average German knows as much about Shakespeare as the average American does about Goethe. That is because great literature defies translation - it is the wording rather than the content that makes it great. At one point I had to memorize the Goethe poem 'Erlkonig'. It's about a father and his child fleeing on horseback in the middle of the night from some invisible force that was attacking and killing the child. The English translation does not have anywhere near the impact of the original German. (Talk about nightmares!) But I digress (again)...

Long story short, my dad won the battle and my parents and sister came across from Bremen to New York on the "USS General Sturgis" (a former troop ship) in 1951. It was a very rough crossing and, according to my mother she stayed in the cabin (seasick) while my dad spent his time socializing (he worked on the ship newspaper) . The only other story I remember from the crossing is that my sister developed a high fever and the ship's medical staff isolated her in the infirmary for a couple of days and wouldn't let my mother see her - that was highly traumatic for both of them.

Here's a picture taken on the ship:


I think the man to the left of my parents is Romildo Bianchi who would later become my godfather. (Yes, I have a real Italian godfather.)

My parents landed in New York and were processed through Ellis Island. My mother found the whole experience (especially the medical inspection) to be degrading and also worrisome - some people were denied entry for medical reasons. But everything went according to plan and shortly thereafter my parents settled into their new life in Michigan City where I was born in 1953.

my parents after WWII

I know very little about my parents lives in Stuttgart after WWII. All I have is a picture album full of people and places I don't recognize.

After the war my mother lived with her three sisters and her mother. She sang both classical and light opera. She also recorded quite a few 78RPM records during that time (roughly 40 or so). My aunt had the complete collection the last time I visited her. (I don't know why she didn't give them to me before she passed away. I really need to ask my cousins if they kept them.) Here's a couple of pictures of my mom from that time period.

This appears to be in some type of restaurant or nightclub. There is (of course) no microphone. (Real singers don't need them.) It was my mother's opinion that if your unamplified voice is too darn weak to be heard at the back of a concert hall over a full orchestra you need to find a different line of work. (I'll have more to say about the volume of her voice in a future post.)

This next picture is in full costume. I don't know what opera it was from. (I also have some stage photos - she was definitely a prima donna.)

Personally, I like the first picture better (I'm not a big fan of theatrical makeup)...

Next - my dad was an engineer, educated at the Hungarian Royal Air Force Academy. He had been a fighter pilot near the end of the war and had spent some time in a POW camp in Germany. After the war he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers - I'm not sure exactly what he did. Here's a picture of him at his desk.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that my dad was very meticulous about his appearance. (A characteristic I did not inherit - presentability is pretty low on my priority list.) He wouldn't even come down to breakfast in the morning until he had washed and shaved. His suits were always tailor made and (unless he was playing tennis) he rarely wore anything but a suit. I'll have lots more to say about him as the blog progresses.

I vaguely recall that my parents met at a nightclub. That makes perfect sense. They were both very social people - attractive and charismatic. I'm not surprised that they were drawn to each other (despite their obvious incompatibility).
I'm not sure how long they knew each other before they got married. My mother already had a husband at the time (a Mr. von Lasko) but they had been separated for years. And based on the dates, it's possible that my mother was pregnant with my older sister when she married my dad (1949). The pregnancy was a huge deal because my mother was in her mid 30s and thought she was infertile. (As a result she wanted children more than anything.) Her divorce from von Lasko was almost simultaneous with her subsequent marriage to my dad.
In public they were quite the couple. When I was growing up they usually went out for the evening in a tuxedo and an evening gown (dad and mom respectively - would have been much more interesting the other way around).
Here's a picture of them together. I'm not sure exactly when it was taken. It looks like the early 50s.


You may be able to tell from this picture that mom was 8 years older than dad. She claims she was unaware of that until they filled out the marriage application.
And she was seriously not amused that his second wife (my stepmother) was 30 years younger than she was... My dad always could 'charm the pants off' the young ladies... I may or may not elaborate on that remark in future posts :-)

In the next post I'll talk about the events leading up to their arrival at Ellis Island in 1951.

Posers

I've been looking at a lot of old pictures lately and the memories are really flowing. :-) Here's a story my kids have already heard a bunch of times but I personally think it's funny enough to repeat a whole bunch more times :-)

As I've mentioned many times by now, my mother's life was a 'performance'. Hence it should come as no surprise that there are very few true candid pictures from my childhood. When the cameras came out the posing started.
This story is from Easter 1960. (Process of elimination - there is a 1960 Chevy in the pictures and 1960 was the last year we lived in that house.)
The occasion was the obligatory Easter Sunday pre-church photo shoot. At one point my mother said "Look up in the tree!" Here's the picture:



As you can see, my mother and my big sister (who obviously understood what was going on) are pointing up into the tree, and I'm standing there with my hand on my hips because I don't see a freaking thing other than bare branches. Is it a bird? Is it a plane?? Is it a squirrel??? I don't know!!! I was confused and irritated at the same time. Sometimes I don't catch on very fast :-)

Now here's another picture taken later in the 'session':


As you can see, I'm still looking up into that freaking tree because I can't figure out what's up there and it's driving me nuts! And my mother and sister are apparently trying to figure out what my problem is. (I think I was supposed to be looking at my sister as mom gazed adoringly at us.) BTW - I still can't believe the way she used to dress me...

When we were on our way to church I finally asked my sister about it. I don't remember the verbatim conversation but I think it went something like this:
Me: What was in the tree?
Sis: What??
Me: Mom said to look up at the tree. What was up there?
Sis: There wasn't anything there. We were just pretending there was.
Me: Oh ... ... Why???
(Now I'm even more confused.)

Those of you who are not into cars can stop reading here. The rest of you may wonder how I know that the car is a 1960 Chevy and not a 1959 Chevy, which (of course) is quite similar from the front and the sides but has very different taillights:

Cars have always been my thing. My earliest dreams (3 years old) were of having my walls covered with steering wheels (I loved the emblems on the horn rings.) At the time these pictures were taken I could identify the year make and model of any (American) car built since 1954.
My dad got that 1960 Chevy at the start of the model year - it was the first one I'd seen. I liked the taillights on the 1959 but thought the 1960 ones were butt ugly. I was really irritated with him for not getting a leftover 1959 model...
Of course, I was even more irritated when I found out that my dad had people working for him who drove Cadillacs. I couldn't believe he was satisfied with the new Chevy his company bought him every couple of years... I guess cars just weren't his thing...

My Aunts

My mother had three sisters. Annette was the oldest (and rumored to possibly be my grandmother), Ilona was the middle of the three, and Margarete (a few years older than my mother) was the youngest. After WWII the sisters all lived together in Germany, and when my mother and father emigrated to the US (in 1951) the sisters moved from Stuttgart to the Bonn area. None of three ever married, none had children (unless you consider the rumors about my mother's parentage to be true) and they all lived to be 80+ years old.

During my childhood the sisters took turns visiting us for the summer. It didn't happen every year, but each of them visited more than once before I was 11 years old. When my parents split up in April 1965 (another story) my mother, my sister and I lived with them in Germany (although most of the time my sister and I were away at boarding school). We stayed there until we emigrated from Germany to Canada in September 1966 (yet another story). So I knew them all fairly well.
BTW - Margarete was (at that time) the dean of a Catholic girl's boarding school. In a future entry I will talk about serving as an altar boy there. It's not a particularly interesting story. It was just a religious experience for me :-)

Annette was 20 years older than my mother. By the time I got to know her she was already retired. She had spent the last number of years working for a large freight company in Germany. She was the personal secretary of the owner, but in actuality she handled most of the day to day operations. One day her boss told her she needed to remember who was in charge. She replied that she was in charge, and he needed to darn well remember that :-)
She was incredibly knowledgeable (one of those 'walking encyclopedia' types) and incredibly well organized. Her room looked cluttered but she knew exactly where everything was. She was also a serious talker. I am not joking about this. She literally did not stop talking while she was inhaling. (I probably should have spent more time listening.) She was the only one of the three who seemed comfortable around children. (I suppose it was from having so many younger siblings.)

Ilona was about 10 years younger than Annette. She supposedly had some sort of congenital heart condition and her entire life everyone around her always did everything she wanted and nobody ever disagreed or argued with her. She never went to college or worked. And she didn't particularly like kids - I had to be quiet when she was around (like for the entire summer when she was visiting). Personally, she struck me as being in pretty good health and managed to live into her 80s (but what do I know)...
She did have an amazing stamp collection and enjoyed showing it to me. That's about the only interactions I remember having with her (other than her constant complaints to my mother that I was spoiled and badly behaved - I had those same complaints about her).

The rest of this entry is about Margarete, the youngest - roughly 5 years older than my mother and by far the most interesting of the bunch. At the time I knew her she taught Mathematics and Phys Ed. She was incredibly intense (just look at her eyes in the picture below) and seemed to have boundless energy.


Frankly, I don't understand why she wasn't a nun. She never had a boyfriend, went to church every day and had very few possessions (aside from a house large enough to hold a dozen or so relatives).
Her life consisted of church, teaching and taking care of her relatives. Over the years she gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the families that remained behind the iron curtain. She paid for houses, cars and appliances and the bribes necessary to acquire them. She also took care of the two sisters who lived with her and provided some of my mother's financial support in her later years. She even gave my sister $10,000 for a down payment on a house.

When my mother was 12 Margarete dragged her into a church and made her promise before God that she would never be with a man. My mother (obviously) didn't keep the promise and she remained freaked out by that incident for the rest of her life. She had no clue what led up to it and never asked. It was truly bizarre when you consider that the three sisters were celibate. It's as if they had a pact amongst themselves, and that simply doesn't jive with all the stories about their parents' perfect marriage... I did always wonder if it was somehow related to the rumors of my mother being Annette's illegitimate daughter but my mother could not accept that as a possibility.

When I was growing up, Margarete always treated my sister and I as if we were her students. She firmly believed that all children should be educated in Catholic boarding schools (there will be more about that in a later entry). Although she wasn't exactly threatening she was very demanding. She visited when I was five years old and one day decided that I should be able to do a hand-stand. For hours she simply wouldn't stop cajoling me until I finally did it. (She was the kind of person you didn't want to disappoint.)

When we stayed with her in the mid 1960s she was quite well off financially but didn't own a car, television or refrigerator. Every morning before work she hopped on her bicycle and brought back the food for that day's meals. In 1978 my wife and I visited her. She went for daily walks in the nearby forest and despite the fact the she was almost 70 and we were in our mid-20s (and I was active-duty military) we could barely keep up with her. (Hence my 'boundless energy' comment.)

The last time I visited her was around 1995, a couple of years before she passed away. She was 85 and in an 'assisted living' facility. By then she had given almost everything she had to the relatives and they were still fighting over the few scraps that remained - she was very hurt and disappointed by that.
She told me that in all those years I was the only one who had never asked for anything and she felt bad that she had nothing left to give me. I kind of chuckled and told her I really didn't want anything - I was just thankful that she had helped to support my mother for all those years. (She also asked me why I didn't become a priest. I had no comment on that one...)

So the story of my aunts is somewhat inexplicable and seems even stranger when you take the time to write it down...

My next post will talk briefly about my parents in Stuttgart after WWII and then I can finally start in on my favorite topic - Me...

A Totally Strange Autumn

The title of this blog post is actually a pun, but you don't know why yet :-)

It started a couple of months ago when my son (a plumber) was on a rural road in his work van going the 50MPH speed limit. A car coming the other direction turned in front of him so close that he didn't even have time to hit his brakes. Amazingly enough, nobody in either vehicle was seriously hurt. Needless to say, the vehicle was totaled.

Then a few weeks ago my sister-in-law (who lives with us - I consider her part of the family) was on the interstate minding her own business when a semi coming the other direction jackknifed and hit the center divider so hard that a section of it broke loose and swung into her lane. She barely had time to hit the brakes before she slammed into it. Amazingly enough she only suffered a broken arm and some nasty bruises. Needless to say, the vehicle was totaled.

Then a few days ago my youngest daughter lost control of her car, spun and rolled. (There was a truck partially in her lane in a turn.) Amazingly enough, she only suffered minor bumps and bruises. Needless to say, the vehicle was totaled. This was her second rollover/total. She walked away from the first one too. I hope she appreciates how lucky she is...

So in the past couple of months half of the people in my immediate family have been in collisions that totaled their vehicle and they all survived relatively unscathed... This is totally not helping with my anxiety issues (pun intended) - things that don't make sense really annoy me :-)

BTW - I'm working on the blog entry about my aunts. It should be forthcoming within a day or two...

Odds and Ends

I'm going to take a short break from telling 'the story' and toss out a few tidbits I've run across while poking around recently.

The first one is just too funny:
Today I discovered a web page selling "pre-dynastic Egyptian healing rods". According to this web page there had been a 17 generation injunction against the teaching of pre-dynastic Egyptian healing secrets, and the injunction was lifted by (sic) "Rumanian Countess Olga Marie von Lasko" when the 'vibrations of the planets' became high enough.
I haven't mentioned this yet, but my mother (Olgamaria) had a second husband named "von Lasko" and she often used that name when doing psychic readings (it sounded cool). She also claimed to be Romanian (she was born in Transylvania) and a countess (she was one briefly by marriage). So this is obviously a reference to her.
Now, as I mentioned before, my mom could spin an amazing story, and she often talked about the 'vibrations of the planets', but this is a bit out there even for her :-) Unbelievable... The ghost of my mother lives on :-)

Second:
In my blog entry titled 'long division' I mentioned being an honor student in the 5th grade at Waldron Academy. Well, today I was poking through my files and I actually found the proof, signed by none other than 'Sister Mary Patrice' herself:


Yes - I know this is the first time I've published my name. I figure most everyone reading this knows it already, and if they don't it's really not that hard to figure it out...
And about that 'deportment' thing (bottom line on the card) - it's not something that I came by naturally. Those nuns just scared the bejeezus out of me. To this day whenever I see a woman near a door I run and open it. (You don't want to know what happened if you didn't open a door for a nun).

Next - I found some early pictures of my mother:




The picture on the left was taken when she was teenager. I know her name is on the picture and it's definitely a bad idea to put your mother's maiden name on the web, but I don't think you can possibly get it from the signature. Here's a hint: It's not "Vifufefna" :-)

You can't tell from these photos, but she had dark red hair and hazel eyes that turned mostly yellow when she was really angry. It was as freaky as it was frightening.













The picture on the right is (I think) from her first communion (it's a Catholic thing). It's the only childhood picture I have of her...









I also came across the photo below - yeah, that's me. I remember when it was taken all too well - my father had bought a new 57 Chevy BelAir and he plopped me down on the hood for a photo-op.



Now you may think I'm hollering because of that outfit my mother had me wearing. (What was she thinking???) But that wasn't it at all.

Here's a bit of advice is for all you parents with small children: If you put your 3 year old down on the hood of a car ... and he starts hollering ... and you can't figure out why ... don't just stand there taking pictures:

Check the temperature of the hood!!!!

My Uncles

Here's everything I remember my father telling me about his brother Julius:
Julius was evil, my father hated him, and once when they were going to church Julius pushed my dad out of the car into a mud puddle. Period.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, the rest of this blog entry will focus on my mother's brothers. (I'll cover my aunts in a separate entry.)
I expect that you'll find some of this stuff hard to believe. That's perfectly understandable. It just means you haven't known very many Hungarians :-)



This picture was taken at my grandfather's funeral. He died of a heart attack soon after his middle son Mathias was killed in combat. From left to right are:
My mother Olgamaria - the youngest - about 28 at the time
Julius - the oldest - a full colonel
Annette - the oldest daughter - about 48 at the time
Janos's wife - I don't recall her name
Janos - the youngest son, a surgeon and recent military inductee
Ilona - the 2nd daughter
Missing from the picture is Margarete (the 3rd daughter), who was teaching in Germany at the time.

Julius was the oldest. He was (obviously) heavily decorated. It is unclear whether all those medals were the result of bravery, stupidity or insanity - from what I've heard it was a little bit of each. Despite being a career officer he wasn't exactly the military type. He had issues with authority and often bent the rules - sometimes past the breaking point. If he had not been demoted so frequently he would have probably been a general. My favorite story:
During WWI he was a junior officer on the eastern front. One day he was on patrol with a few men when they heard gunfire in the distance. As the patrol got closer they saw a Hungarian unit pinned down by a superior Russian force next to the road. While his sergeants were debating if there was anything they could do my uncle got up and walked down the middle of the road towards the Russians. When he got close enough he started jumping up and down waving his arms and screaming obscenities at them. Then he ran like hell... The Russians (figuring he must have a sizable force behind him to dare to pull a stunt like that) retreated under fire. And that's how my uncle got one of those medals.
My mother also recalled going to a track and field event with Julius when she was a child. They were watching some high jumpers and he wasn't impressed. He told her that (based on personal experience) when people are firing machine guns at you anyone can hurdle a 6 foot obstacle...
He died in combat near the end of WWII.

Mathias was definitely my mother's favorite sibling. I wish I had paid more attention to her stories about him. A couple of entries back I mentioned my mother jumping out of a loft and landing on a pig. After mulling it over a bit I now recall that Mathias had made a set of wings and talked my mother into trying them out. The pig was just in the right place at the right time. (I guess it was the wrong place from the pig's perspective...)
Another story:
Mathias and his fellow officers used to play this drinking game. A number of them would go to a small dark building where they'd go to the center one at a time, pull their service pistol, announce where they were going to shoot (e.g. the northwest corner) count to five (as everyone cleared that location) and fire. Then they'd all take another drink. When it was Mathias' turn, he said he was too drunk to have any idea where he was going to shoot and started counting. Five seconds of pure chaos ensued - people were cramming themselves through the doors and jumping out of windows. And he wasn't kidding. Nobody was hurt, but he wasn't allowed to play anymore :-)
He was the first of the brothers to be killed in combat.

My mother never talked much about her brother Janos. He was a few years older than her and I suspect that he was too serious for my mother's liking... I have met both of Janos' children and I know his son quite well. His daughter and one of his granddaughters are doctors, and another granddaughter, now a nurse, spent a year with us in Oregon when she was in high school.
My father apparently knew Janos (who specialized in athletic injuries) during the war and had a tremendous amount of respect for him. He told me that a Nazi official (whose job it was to 'recruit' high profile Hungarians) came to Janos to see if he could get his support. The exchange went something like this:
Nazi official - "If you could have any position, what would it be?"
Janos - "I'd like to be the head of the sports medicine society."
Nazi official - "But... you are the head of the sports medicine society..."
Janos - "Exactly."
As I mentioned in my prior entry, Janos stayed behind with his patients during the Russian advance and was never seen again.

So the sisters (who were all childless at that point) fled the Russians while all of the wives and children of the brothers stayed behind. I suppose the thought of walking 500 miles during the winter with children would have been a bit much... And that's how it ended up after the war. All the sisters in Germany, all the brothers deceased and their families remaining in Hungary andRomania.

fleeing hungary

Both of my parents considered avoiding communism a matter of life or death because their families were 'intellectuals' with a history of challenging authority - not good communist material. And indeed, a few of the relatives who remained behind disappeared and were either never seen again or returned with broken minds and disfigured bodies. (You only need to look at the 1956 revolution to understand what a bad idea it is to mix Hungarians with Communism.)

In September of 1944 my mother, my grandmother and 2 of my aunts fled Timisoara just hours ahead of the advancing Russians. They begged my uncle Janos (a surgeon, and the only male member of her immediate family still alive) to go with them, but he was treating soldiers at a badly understaffed field hospital and refused to leave. (He was never seen again.) Their intended destination was Stuttgart, where my third aunt had been teaching mathematics for many years.
For the next three months they fled on foot through Austria and into Germany. I'd rather not go into the specifics (which are graphic and disturbing). There were hundreds of thousands of refugees in columns that went for miles and the winter of 1944 was particularly harsh. There was death and destruction all around them - freezing and starvation and bombing and rape and murder. They had to steal food from local villagers (many of whom were starving also) to survive and many died in the violence. And when they reached Germany the concentration camps awaited them.

The stories my mother told me were of indescribable cruelty and kindness and of destruction and beauty - the absolute worst and the absolute best of humanity. Those of us who've grown up in a safe and insular society cannot begin to comprehend that level of chaos and horror...

Once they reached Germany my mother's family was placed in a group that was headed for Dachau, where food and shelter supposedly awaited them. At that point in the war the German military was fighting the Battle of the Bulge and refugees were left largely unguarded. Most of them stayed with the group because they didn't have anywhere else to go. But on Christmas Eve 1944 my mother and her family sneaked away and sought refuge in a nearby church. They remained hidden there until the Allies arrived a few months later.
And they finally made it to Stuttgart where my mother continued her opera career and met my father.

One evening during the flight my mother grabbed some clay from beside the road and fashioned a small sculpture of my grandmother resting. When my grandmother passed away in 1952 they commissioned a larger stone replica of that sculpture to be placed by her grave. It remains one of the most moving pieces of art I've seen. It could not be more perfect...

my mother's early years

My mother was born in Timisoara (a city in Transylvania). At that time it was still part of Hungary - it got 'moved' to Romania in 1920.
BTW - Even though Hungarians are the ethnic minority in Transylvania the area has great historical significance for them (it was once the seat of the Hungarian monarchy). Needless to say, after having spent the better part of a millennium fighting the Turks over it they were not happy that it was simply handed over to Romania. But I digress...

The exact date of my mother's birth is uncertain (no birth certificate) and there was a rumor amongst some relatives that she was the illegitimate child of her oldest sister and a Jewish-Hungarian composer. That rumor is plausible - when my mother began her opera career in Budapest it was the 'purported father' who mentored her and opened all the necessary doors. But back in those days an illegitimate child would have been a huge scandal and her siblings always denied the rumors, so I guess it will remain a mystery. Hence I will describe my mother's family as she knew it.

Although not 'noble', the family was well connected and respected. They were descended from ethnic Germans who migrated to Transylvania during the 1700s to teach (the Turks had been driven out for the umpteenth time and there was a dire need for educators)... BTW - there's a lot of professors (and physicians) in her family...

Her father (Julius) was a Physics professor and her mother Elizabeth was (by all accounts) a wonderful and gentle woman. According to my mother, her parents had the 'perfect marriage' - moonlight walks every evening, etc. (I'm not sure I buy all of it, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt).

My mother was the youngest of 7 children. Two of her three brothers were career military officers and the third was a surgeon. Her father and brothers did not survive WWII. One of her three sisters was a Mathematics professor, one was a business exec and the third never worked because of an unspecified 'medical condition' - she only lived to be 80-something :-). None of her sisters ever married, and after WWII the three of them lived together in Germany until they passed. (I'll write more about my aunts and uncles in a separate blog entry.)

Here's some of what I remember being told about my mother's early years:

There was an incident (I don't recall all the details) involving her brother Mathias (who was a serious prankster) that ended with her jumping out of a hayloft and landing on a pig. She survived. The pig didn't.

When she was 7 she asked her siblings where babies came from. She was told that if you swallow watermelon seeds they turn into babies in your tummy. Having recently done just that my mom went to her mother and confessed that she was pregnant. Her mother sat her down on the couch and asked her how it happened. When my mom explained about the watermelon seeds her mother covered her face. My mom thought she was crying but, of course, she was actually laughing. Her mother reassured her that despite having swallowed the watermelon seeds she was far too young to have a baby and needn't worry...

My mother was always surrounded by animals. The ones she talked about most were her pet bat 'Lilly' and her German Shepherd (I forget his name). She and the German Shepherd used to play catch with the bat but he got a little too rough with it one day (no more Lilly). BTW -That same dog bit off the top of my mother's ear when she 'surprised' him one day. Personally, I think the dog needed a 'permanent attitude adjustment' but my mom loved him anyway.
Sidebar: My mother had an amazing effect on animals. Squirrels would climb on her - birds would eat out of her hand. She got our retriever (Bozo) from the pound. He was going to be put to sleep because he attacked everyone who got near him - except my mother. And when I was 10 I remember watching her chew up a worm and 'mouth feed' it to an injured robin. Just one of the many things about her that defied explanation... :-)

As a child she spent a lot of time hanging out with the local gypsies. That's where she learned astrology and fortune telling. That it still doesn't explain how she was able to 'read' people the way she did. (I don't think it can be explained...)

She was educated in opera and piano at a conservatory in Budapest - I don't know the details. She also studied art at some point.

She had spinal meningitis as a teenager. The mortality rate for meningitis was close to 90% back then but she survived (obviously).

She married a Count when she was 17. It didn't last long. He was intensely jealous and use to lock up her shoes so she couldn't go anywhere without his knowledge. She ran away barefoot one night...

Early in her career she mispronounced some lyrics while performing an Italian opera. Afterward she was informed that during her dramatic solo she was singing about a duck's ass.

I think I'll defer the story of her flight from Hungary (ahead of the Russians) for another entry...

my mother- intro

I've really been wrestling with how to describe my mother - anyone who knew her would understand why. And I sincerely doubt that anyone who met her could ever forget her.

She was an opera singer, a concert pianist, a painter, a sculptor, an astrologer, a psychic, an advertising exec, a yoga instructor, and a lot more I can't begin to describe. Her life was a 'performance' from beginning to end. She was (literally) a prima donna and drama queen.

The path she followed was based on pure emotion and inspiration - the words "rational, safe and prudent" were not in her vocabulary. Being around her was like walking a tightrope without a net. She was beautiful, incomprehensibly gifted, brilliant, fearless, lovable, adorable, high strung, maddening and sometimes downright infuriating. As an example - at the slightest hint of ingratitude from me or my sister she would launch into a 'dramatic performance' that started with "What did I do to deserve this?" then progressed through "I gave up my opera career for you children!" and ended with "I should have never been born!". (You have to imagine the Hungarian accent to get the full effect).

She was a hopeless romantic who wore every emotion on her sleeve. And she could not survive without admirers - she had the type of personality and charisma that attracted an almost cult-like following. (Twenty years after she passed her devotees were still tracking me down wanting to talk about her.) She had an ability to take a grain of truth and spin it into a vastly more interesting yet totally convincing story. (The world is lucky she wasn't a con artist - she would have been the best.) And her ability to read people was beyond anything I've encountered - it really defied rational explanation. (Author and conservationist James A. Swan describes his psychic readings with her in his book "Sacred Places".)

My friends all adored her and told me how lucky I was to have her for a mother, and they were quite right - I couldn't have been more fortunate. Her devotion as a mother was beyond reproach. But that role clashed with her fundamental nature (as did the role of housewife in the late 50's). My childhood was like being caught in a hurricane without anything to anchor yourself to...

So, this is the background behind a lot of what follows. I just hope I can tell the rest of the story the way it deserves to be told...

My father's early years

I'm mostly writing down these (somewhat random) observations for my children and grandchildren so they won't be forgotten. Others may find it interesting (or not). And I'll probably revise it from time to time as I remember (or decide to forget) things.

My father usually identified his birthplace as Hungary, although it was technically Yugoslavia due to the 'carving up' of the Austro-Hungarian empire after WWI (shortly before his birth).

His paternal ancestry (and hence mine) can purportedly be traced back to the Hungarian Order of the Dragon (leaders of the crusades against the Turks during the 1400's).
BTW - The Hungarian word for dragon is dracul, and the father of "Vlad the Impaler" was a member of the Order, hence the name Dracula. So, apparently one of my ancestors used to hang with Dracula's daddy. But I digress...

His mother's ancestry purportedly included Michel Ney (AKA the Prince of Moscow and Napoleon's Field Marshall at Waterloo). I don't recall if the ancestry was directly from Ney or from his parents or grandparents, but it was 'close'...

Although he occasionally talked about an aunt and an uncle, I cannot recall my father ever mentioning his parents (my mother told me their names were the same as her parents - Julius and Elisabeth). He only mentioned his older brother (also Julius) when talking about how much he hated him. (The brother died at age 30.) And he had no contact with any of his remaining relatives in Hungary after WWII. So there was obviously some deep-seated issue but I have no idea what it was.

In the first grade his teacher told the class to try and draw a straight line without using a ruler. He was incredibly proud of his freehand line but when the teacher saw it she smacked him in the back of the head and said "I told you not to use a ruler!".

His happiest childhood memories were the summers he spent sailing on Lake Balaton. My stepmother spread his ashes there after he passed away in 2000. It was a symbolic 'returning home' since he never returned to Hungary after WWII. (He was in Romania on a trade mission for the State Dept during the 1970s but didn't cross the border. I think he simply couldn't bear to see what the Communists had done to his homeland.)

When he was 13 he built his own sailplane and a couple of years later spent over 30 hours aloft (almost a world record at the time).

As a child he used to hang out at his uncle's factory. The uncle gave my Dad a motorcycle for his 16th birthday. He made it 2 blocks before wrecking it and breaking his leg.

At his high school graduation his math teacher told him that he'd never amount to anything. Personally I think the teacher was trying to motivate him, but my Dad thought he was just an *sshole.

Part of the admissions test to the Royal Hungarian Air Force Academy was to run an obstacle course as many times as you could. One of his friends ran the course 7 times and figured that was enough. On my Dad's 3rd pass he couldn't get over one of the walls. He kept trying until an administrator stopped him because his hands were torn up and covered with blood. My dad got into the Acedemy and his friend didn't. He graduated late in WWII as a mechanical engineer and fighter pilot.

When the Americans and Russians were closing in from opposite directions my father managed to get captured by one of General Patton's 'spearheads'. (I think it was one of those 'unauthorized' incursions Patton was famous for. One mile left or right and dad would probably have ended up in Russian hands - a less than desirable outcome.) He was a great admirer of Patton for the rest of his life.
He ended up in a makeshift POW camp for officers in southern Germany. The situation was somewhat chaotic and the local Germans who were paid to supply the camp were mostly 'faking it'. A lot of the prisoners (particularly the non-German ones) who had been there the longest were underfed and in poor health (some had lost toes to rats). My Dad and a few others would sneak out under the fence at night and steal food and supplies to bring back to the ailing prisoners.

After the war he ended up working for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Stuttgart, which is where he met my mother.

There's one more thing that my father told me in his later years that explained a lot. It was (in my opinion) his 'tragic flaw':
A some point during his childhood he consciously decided that his 'wants and needs' were what mattered most in life. Everything else was secondary.

That's pretty much the exact opposite of my philosophy... And that's my 'tragic flaw' :-)

long division

This story probably reveals something interesting about me. I just have no idea what it is...

I'll start with some (mostly irrelevant) background info:
In Dec. 1961 we moved from St. Louis to Philadelphia. My most vivid memory of the road trip was the turnpike through Western Pennsylvania. My retriever (aptly named Bozo) was 'having issues' with the tunnels - he barked and bounced all over the interior of the car jumping back and forth between the front and rear seats all the way through. I thought it was freaking hilarious. My father (who was trying to drive) was not amused. (We're talking some REALLY long tunnels.) I remember spending New Years Eve 61/62 in the George Washington Motor Lodge in Valley Forge before moving to a Marriott Hotel the next day. (We lived in the Marriott for a month while we got our new house set up - that was cool.)

I assure you I will get to the long division story eventually, but I just remembered something vaguely related (Have I mentioned that I'm an associative thinker?):
My new school was Waldron Academy in Merion, PA. In the corner of the Waldron gym there was a stairwell (inside a cinder-block structure) that jutted out pretty close to the edge of the basketball court. One day during basketball practice the coach had us practicing running backwards. I was at the very end of the line, the coach wasn't paying attention and I ran into the edge of the stairwell and got knocked silly.
Fast forward to 2001 - I was flipping channels and I happened across a scene filmed in a school gym that looked REALLY familiar to me - then I recognized the Waldron emblem. My eyes immediately went to that @#$!! stairwell and there was a HUGE foam pad covering the corner! I'm sitting there thinking "@#$@#$@!!! WHY wasn't that pad there when I knocked the s!!t out of myself back in 1963????" BTW - the movie was 'Wide Awake' with Rosie O'Donnell playing a nun. She's not nearly scary enough to pass for a nun. But I digress...

So here's the actual story:
I arrived at Waldron halfway through the the 3rd grade. By then they were already doing long division and I was lost.
Now, I could have just told Sister Mary WhateverHerNameWas that my prior school had not covered long division yet and ask her to show me. Or I could have asked my parents or sister to explain it to me. But instead I decided to 'wing it'. And within a couple of days I had figured out how to 'guessimate' the answers, and since we had to show our work I'd just write some random numbers below the problem so it would look like I knew what I was doing.

Believe it or not I got away with that for 2 years. Seriously! It wasn't until midway through the fifth grade that I finally got a remainder wrong on a test and the teacher checked my 'work' and realized it was total gibberish. She called me up, pointed at the problem and said "Can you explain this?" I said "Yes. I don't know how to do long division." Now, to fully appreciate the expression on her face you have to be aware that I was an honor student and ranked 3rd in the class in math. It was as if she had seen a UFO...
As one might expect, I had pretty much figured out how to do long division by then - I was just doing it in my head. Turns out that it's a lot easier when you write it down :-)

Now, my initial reluctance to ask for help might have been reasonable. I was afraid people would think I was stupid, or might laugh at me - like when I was 3 years old and my Dad was on a business trip and my Mom and Sis put a dress and wig and makeup on me and call me Felicia. But that's another story - one that I shall never mention again :-)
But how can you explain keeping it up for 2 years?? That's got to be a world record for either stubbornness or stupidity. I'm not sure which (probably a bit of both)...

I've always suspected that I'm either a really smart dumb*ss or a really dumb smart*ss - I've just never been able to figure out which...