Easter Sunday, April 6, 1958

My memory goes back to April 6, 1958 climbing the steps of my grandparents on what was Easter Sunday. It was also my Dad’s 40th birthday. As I climbed those steps, I was twelve years old, fresh into a personal best year in which I was on the basketball team, getting ready for baseball season and very near becoming an 8th grader and I had a new baby sister born on my most recent birthday.

​1958 was a momentous year for the world.  Eisenhower was the president, the US finally got its first satellites into space, the peace symbol was invented, the hula hoop was introduced and Elvis was inducted into the Army. Change was awaiting the future with the introduction of the microchip and later in the year the election of Pope John the XXIII. All these would shape the world in which I grew up but on this day they were as nothing to this twelve year old. In looking up events of 1958, I see references to a recession being in progress. My parents worked in the auto factories for Chrysler Corp. The auto industry always suffered quickly when a recession began. The saying went that “when the auto industry caught a cold, Chrysler got pneumonia” which meant my parents often spent more time being laid off then working. Yet, on this day, my brother and I would sport new wool suits purchased from a clothier in Hamtramck. This was a yearly purchased or perhaps every two years depending how quickly you grew. It was a time of starched shirts and itching wool suits. You knew you were dressed because you were uncomfortable. I recognize now what a sacrifice these purchases were to my parents.

​My day had begun at Easter Sunday Mass. Easter was a time of celebration of the risen Christ which is the essence of the Christian experience. It was an elaborate affair by today’s liturgical standards. The church was decorated in splendor and the priest vestments were at their best. The service was in Latin at the time but so familiar to make one think you could speak the language. I, of course, was an altar boy so I knew the secrets of what was being said. Still, there was comfort in the repetition of words said at every mass but on this day sung in all their glory. On this day, even Catholics notorious for their lack of congregational singing joined the choir in shouting the hope that came with the Resurrection. It was marvelous. I know I am out of sync with the times but I believe many churches lost something important when they loss their sense of ritual and replaced it with the common.

​My grandparents lived in the house at 9409 Mt. Elliott in Detroit along with my Uncle Edward. It was the house my mother had been born in 1922. It was like thousands of others in Detroit and other Midwestern cities built to house the flood of immigrants of the early part of the 20th century. The lots were narrow then. I suspect they were no more than 45 feet across. On the side was a sidewalk leading to the back yard. A small grocery store sat on that side and a couple more basically identical homes on the other. It had a long set of steps that carried one to the first level porch. The porch was painted gray and always had plenty of dark spots on from what was surely air pollution from the factories in Detroit. No one thought of air pollution then. Soot in the air meant decent paying jobs in the factories and that is what counted.

​The people who would really shape my life were nearby. They were my parents and brother and sister who came up the steps with me and the people awaiting me on the other side of the door. This was the house of my grandparents (Dziadzia and Grandma). For some odd reason, my family never called grandma by the traditionally polish babcia.

As you entered the house, you were struck by a distinctive odor. In fact the house and everything and everyone smelled. All the old people I knew had houses that smelled the same. In my ignorance, I just thought that was what happened to you when you got old. Later, I came to realize the house and people reeked of garlic. Everything they cooked started with garlic. I believe, my grandfather wore a clove around his neck.

The first floor of house consisted of four rooms plus a bathroom and a back porch that my grandfather, who was a carpenter, had enclosed. The front room is where we spent our visits. It consisted of an arm chair with its back to the front window with a TV set in the corner next to it. In my memory, the television (TV) was always there but in fact TV’s were new to most houses.

​Uncle Ed, who lived there, was the technology guy of the era and I suspect the television was his doing. Along the south side of the room was an overstuffed couch suitable for three people and next to it a small table with the phone. The phone was a very old style with a base that cradled the handset that to my young hands felt like 50 pounds but was still probably closer to two. Nearby was a pole lamp with what seemed a 15 watt bulb as the room was pretty dim except for the glow of the TV screen. This house was still exercising the frugalness they learned as immigrants and during the depression. Today we would call them eco-sensitive. Heat floated up from a three foot square grate that either kept the room chilly or toasty warm. The latter along with the 15 watt bulb provided my father with many chair naps as he listened to my mother speak polish to her mother. Dziadzia usually spoke English unless he needed a word that was not available in English or something little ears didn’t need to hear.

The west wall offered a doorway into the kitchen and three to four kitchen chairs that always seemed stacked with magazines and newspaper which had to re-piled somewhere for visitors to sit. Sometimes, there were Confidential magazines provided by Uncle Ed which was the racy magazine of its day but pretty tame by today’s standards. Mom was always on the alert to snatch them away from my brother and I, thus assuring our continued innocence.  It was in this room where we spent many an hour visiting.

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Uncle Ed was in his early 30’s and was my godfather. His bedroom was one of the rooms off the living room. While Uncle Ed could be a charming and humorously sarcastic participant in our visits, he would just as often stay in his bedroom with the door shut pretending to be asleep. The house was so small one couldn’t possibly sleep through all the noisy conversation. However, he was known to spend a Saturday night drinking, so it is possible. He was a friendly drinker though, so no one seemed to mind. On this day he may have been among us as he probably sang in the choir at Easter services.

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Grandma always sat at the end of the couch. She had Parkinson’s disease and her right hand shook continuously. Early memories of grandma walking about are there but in time she became more and more bent over and her gait became a shuffle before she eventually became a fixture at the end of the couch.  I am sure that she spoke English in some fashion but most of her conversation was with my mother in Polish. One could survive without speaking English in that area as it still was largely a Polish ghetto. Most businesses still had several people who spoke Polish and after all, she rarely traveled away from the house.  Later when I explored family genealogy, I wished I had gotten the chance to learn more about her voyage to the US and the early days in the coal mining towns of eastern Pennsylvania. Her father died soon after she arrived with her mother and very young sister. Eventually, she married Dziadzia (Stanley Lichota) who was said to be a boarder at the boarding house her mother ran. Early pictures show her as pretty young woman before the ravages of a difficult life and disease. What a story she would have to tell.

My favorite then and now was Dziadzia. At this time he would have just celebrated his 66th birthday. He was a carpenter and because of that a man of the world since jobs carried him all over the city. He spoke English fluently. Stanley was a short man with a strong stocky body. His strength was legendary among his acquaintances, with frequently told tales of that strength too frequent to mention here. My personal recollection of his strength came while he helped my father put an addition on our house. He would take 8 and 10 penny nails and jam them in the wood with his bare hand and they would stick well enough for him to drive them home with one or two hammer blows. I also remember him cutting with a handsaw the entire gable joists (2” by 10”) on the ground and carry them up the ladder and they would fit perfectly. This was from a man with little formal education and in his 60’s. I guess that garlic had some value after all.

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Dziadzia always took an interest in his grandchildren. He always included you in conversation and asked about how school or life was going for you.  I can remember, at  a much younger age, being taken to the neighborhood tavern and placed on the bar to be where his friends feted him on having such a good looking and strong grandson which they took as a measure of his worth. It was special for both of us. Another memorable event was being taken out to the back porch and snuck a shot of brandy. I was too young to realize that the way to drink the brandy was as a quick shot trying your darnest to avoid all contact with your throat. Of course, I don’t think I was getting the better quality of brandy because Dziadzia’s view was that if it didn’t burn it wasn’t any good. I am sure the medical community adopted this to the cauterization of wounds. In my ignorance, I sipped the brandy which of course burned like heck and ended up coughing as it took your breath away. That was when you got the big slap on your back and a loud, “good, you drink like a man.”  He said it with that kind of chesty laugh and twinkle in his eye that revealed a zest for living. It was like a being inducted into that secret society of men. I wasn’t sure I would ever breathe or taste again, but  I was secretly pleased with myself for living up to his expectations.

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My mother claimed he was mean to his children when she was a child when he drank but I never saw that. That was different time, when men got together at the bar to solve the problems of the world, exchange memories of the old country and women stayed home and waited on their man who ruled the roost. These men worked like pack animals at most of the jobs in the mines and factories of the era.

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Personally, I liked it when he imbibed because he would talk about the old country or the days in the coal mines. As a child, I liked those stories about earlier times and realized now what a wonderful incite they gave me into my grandfather as a man. Like many other immigrants he had a story worthy of a Hollywood movie.

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Dziadzia always had a pot of something simmering on his coal stove which acted like a modern day scented candle. Fortunately, no one makes garlic scented candles although I might buy one just for the memories it would bring. On this day as with many others that odor was comforting because it meant we were at Dziadzia’s house. He would make his own smoked and fresh kielbasa. We never ate it sitting at a table. The two chairs around the kitchen table always had stuff stacked on them which made sitting down more trouble than it was worth. The kielbasa was served with a sheet of a paper towel wrapped around it and eaten like an ice cream cone. I am convinced that the brand of paper roll used was specially selected to complement the kielbasa flavor.

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Two other specialties were prepared for special holidays: Golabki (stuffed cabbage) and czernina which is a Polish soup made of duck blood and clear poultry broth. I relished the golabki as Dziadzia simmered them on his stove for days which made the cabbage incredibly tender and infused with the meats, onions, rice, etc. To this date, I have never tasted czernina. Its description, duck blood soup, did not attract me even at the age of twelve. Aunt Julie and Uncle George always came earlier in the day and they and my cousins so relish it that all was gone by the time we arrived. To this day, I thank them for that. I did see it in a jar in an ethnic store one time. Its gray color just confirmed to me that that axiom about the early bird getting the worm isn’t always valid. Thankfully, there was plenty of kielbasa to go around.

There was a visit with my Aunt Bernice, Uncle Stan, and cousins  Barb, Stan, and Claudia with whom we were close. They lived around the corner on Comstock. On the way home we would stop and visit with Aunt Julie, Uncle George, and cousins, Mary Ann, Kathy, Joann, and Tom. We usually filled a 20 gallon jug of city water to use at home since our well or cistern water had so many minerals in it you could chew it. My mother was especially close to Aunt Julie and I was to my cousin Kathy. Uncle George and my Dad were best friends and helped each other on many a house project. Aunt Julie was a great baker and I always look forward to whatever treats she had made. I still claim her peanut butter cookies were the greatest cookie ever created.

​Eventually, it would be time to leave for the drive home. After we crossed Nine Mile Rd, Ryan Rd. would become a dirt road with all the bumps that engenders. At this time of year driving could be treacherous and the last two miles before turning onto 16 Mile and home had large drainage ditches on one side. While over the years, I had seen many a car down in these ditches, my Dad always got us home safely. It had been a full day and I suspect sleep came easily that night.

​So what is the meaning of this beyond the memories of that now much older boy? The Easter of 1958 was repeated in the years before and after with little variation until the death of most of the participants.

I unknowingly grew up with all the things people pay big money to a psychiatrist to find. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles along with religion gave me a sense of being important and loved. The repetition might seem boring but it was not.

Michael Edward Speare