Remembrances of Mama Christina Oleske

My earliest remembrance of Mama is the same as that of most children and their mothers. She was up and busy when we woke in the morning and when we went to bed at night, she was still doing things around the house. So at first we thought that mothers never slept.

Her day started around 6:00 a.m., when she got up and started the kitchen fire, got the coffee pot going and made breakfast. After Papa left she got Vin and Gertie off to school - and then fed us younger ones who were under school age, and helped us to get dressed. She seemed to be always working. I can see her bent over the wash tubs scrubbing the clothes on a scrubbing board. Sometimes she stayed at the scrubbing board too long, and her back got so cramped she couldn’t straighten up. Then she’d ask us to help her to her bed, where she’d lie down for about 5 minutes till the cramps relaxed, then she’d be up and at the tubs again. In those days every house had a wash boiler. This was a large copper oval shaped tub which they put on the stove, filled with water, and brought to a boil. They had sliced yellow soap into it. Then it was emptied into the tub for washing the clothes. I don’t remember how Mama lifted this heavy tub of water from the stove to the wash tubs. She was such a slender person, she must have had an iron constitution. After the clothes were scrubbed they had to be put through two rinses and all the white clothes got another rinse with Rickett’s Bluing in the last rinse. Between each washing and rinsing all this laundry had to be put through a wringer. The wringer was turned by hand. Is it to be wondered at, that her back got cramped? The next step was to hang all these things out on the clothesline. After a few hours of being out in the wind and sunshine, they were dry and

had to be pulled in and folded and put away - and the clothes had to be ironed. It was okay for drying in the summer, spring, and autumn months, but in the winter sometimes everything on the line just froze stiff. Then they had to be pulled in and draped all around the stove and anywhere in the kitchen were room could be found to put them. Doesn’t that sound like a formidable chore? And this was done every Monday by Mama, who was always either pregnant or had an infant, too, to take care of.

Sometime in the early twenties, somebody started a wet-wash route around our town. The driver would collect the bags of laundry one day and bring them back the next day, clean - much cleaner than home scrubbing could get them. The clothes were still damp and had to be hung out. But what a blessing it was to be relieved of all that heavy washing. It cost $1.00 for thirty pounds of washing. The first time Mama sent the wash out, she inadvertently put in a new white silk blouse. (The wet wash was supposed to be only for cotton - they used some kind of harsh bleach to get everything so white.) Anyhow, when Mama sorted the wash to hang it out, she came across something that looked like a string mop. After puzzling over what it could be, she finally realized that it was her silk blouse, which disintegrated in the strong washing solution.

Besides all the washing, ironing, cooking, caring for all us children, Mama also sewed. It seems to me that the sewing machine was always going. She could look at a dress in a shop, buy the material, and then come home and duplicate it. And then she was always making new clothes for us out of old clothes. I remember one time one of our relatives gave her a black and white check wool cape. She made it over into a cape for Gertie and when Gertie outgrew it, it descended to me. After a while I outgrew it, but that wasn’t the end of it. I used to go up to the railroad

station and run across the girders of the bridge and slide down the other side. The iron girders were covered with soot and I’d come home with my white bloomers, black with soot, and it was a terrible job to get them clean. So what did Mama do, but cut the cape up and make me a pair of bloomers out of it. I wore these for quite a long time, until one day, when playing with Helen Herzog and some other girls, my black and white checkered bloomers showed. They started making fun of me and saying I had dirty bloomers on. When I went home crying to Mama, Mama walked me over to Mrs. Herzog’s and told her I did not have dirty bloomers on. She explained to her that I got my bloomers so dirty, that she made those checked ones me to wear over my white cotton ones to keep them clean. Mrs. Herzog said what a great idea that was, and she’d make some for Helen. I think she just said that to appease Mama, because I never did see Helen wearing dark bloomers.

After supper, sometimes Mama would sit in the rocking chair and Anna and I would climb up on either side of her. First we’d take the hair pins out of her hair to loosen the bun, then we’d undo the braid - her hair was very long then, down to her hips. Then we’d comb her hair, and while we were doing that mama would sing. Anna and I always begged her, “Mama, please sing us a sad song. Sing the one about the little pickaninny.” That was our favorite. She had a whole repertoire of these sad ballads. “She Lives in a Mansion of Aching Hearts”, “Just Break the News to Mother” were what I remember. After we’d comb her hair, we’d braid it into tiny skinny braids, (the forerunners of today’s Corn Row hair style). When Mama would realize what we were doing, she would make us stop it, because our braiding was not very neat and got her hair so snarled up she had a terrible time combing it out again.

One time when beaded dresses were high fashion, Mama and Mary Barrick went out and bought themselves

each a beaded dress. They cost $60 and at that time I don’t think Papa made $25 per week and Mr. Barrick not much more. Anyway it was on the book - a man from the store came around every week and collected a dollar or two on the bill. That was the only way poor people could buy clothes for the family. I don’t think anybody ever had their book cleared up, because before the original bill was paid, there was always something else needed, so the book went on forever.

In 1922 or 1923, Papa was the corresponding secretary for the 2nd Ward Democratic Club, which met in Eddie Beck’s Hall. They were going to have a banquet, for some celebration or other. A banquet! What glamour, this word conjured up for us children. Banquet, to us, meant a party where Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses attended - and here our own Papa and Mama were going to a Banquet! Mama wanted to be dressed up real chic, so she went to her cousin Katie Krug for advice on what to wear. Katie bought all her clothes at the Fifth Avenue stores. She and Mama were like sisters in looks and build. Cousin Katie had just the right outfit for such an occasion and she lent it to Mama to wear. It was a gown that consisted of silver lame underdress and a beautiful rose colored chiffon overdress. The dress was sleeveless with a plain bodice and a full diaphanous skirt. With it went a long, wide stole of rose chiffon, to cover the bare arms. It went around the shoulders and one end was draped around the front and over the left shoulder to hang down the back. (Mama and Katie were of the generation that did not expose so much bare skin, so the stole lent an air of modesty to the costume.)

Katie also supplied silver slippers, a necklace, and matching bracelet. And a bottle of liquid makeup, to be rubbed on the arms to make them look nice. What glamour! This was in the days before women used liquid makeup on their faces, so it was quite an innovation.

The day of the banquet Mama went out and took a very serious step for those days - she had her hair bobbed! She came home looking quite different from her usual self. Her hair was cut to just a little below her ears, and she had had it marcelled.

That evening, when she got dressed in the beautiful gown and silver slippers and long white kid elbow length gloves and the necklace and bracelet, we thought she looked like a fairy tale princess.

Next morning, we couldn’t wait to hear all the details of the Banquet. What they did, what they ate, etc. Alas! Poor Mama! As she entered the hall, the first person she met complimented her on how pretty she looked, and everyone she spoke to, said she looked pretty. These compliments made her so self-conscious that she thought everyone was looking at her. She said that when the food was served she was so nervous, that when she took up her spoon to eat the fruit cocktail, her hand shook so hard she couldn’t lift the spoon to her mouth. And so it went, course after course. She couldn’t even lift the coffee cup to her lips, so she sat through a banquet and didn’t eat a morsel.

Fortunately there was dancing after the banquet and speeches. Papa and Mama loved to dance, so the evening wasn’t a complete loss. One thing about Mama, she could always laugh at herself. When telling about this, she said, “I was a miserable bird in my borrowed plumage.”

To go back a few years, - before we were old enough to go to school, we had a beggar-woman visit us at intervals of every few weeks. We never knew her name, we just called her the poor beggar woman. She would come to the door, Mama would invite her in to sit down. Then Mama would pour her a cup of coffee, and make something for her to eat. Maybe a scrambled

egg and toast or oatmeal if there was any left over from breakfast. I don’t know if she visited any other home in the neighborhood; but it was very strange. Why did she pick our house where we were so poor, ourselves? In spite of the hard time Mama had to make ends meet, she still felt that she could spare something of the little we had, to share with this poor unfortunate woman. She came for a few years. Was she really a poor beggar or was she just and old miser who was too stingy to buy her own food?

Oh well, it gave us a feeling that we were affluent enough to have something to share with a less fortunate person.

Over the years there were a few other women like this; not beggars, just people she knew casually. They’d drop in at one o’clock just after lunch, and sit around talking silly gossip and letting Mama wait on them. They never seemed to notice how busy Mama was, nor did they ever offer to help in any way. In fact, one woman, A.M., even asked Mama to put the sugar in her tea and stir it! They were just idle, friendless women. Mama may not have had a degree in psychology, but she must have known instinctively, that these women needed to have a listening ear, so she just let them chatter on, and all their silly twaddle just rolled off her. When we go older we’d say to Mama, “How can you stand to have them around?” , and she’d say, “Ah, the poor souls, Don’t be so harsh about them.”

Things eased up a bit, moneywise, when Vin and Gert finished grammar school and went to work. Gert was valedictorian of her graduating class and got a gold medal which said, ‘For Proficiency’. As soon as she graduated she went looking for a job and got herself hired as a live-in maid. The job paid very little, maybe $5.00 per week. Mrs. Cuny, whose

daughter Francie was in Gertie’s class, heard that Gert was working as a maid. She came to Mama and told her not to let Gertie do that. She was sending Francie to business school to learn typing and shorthand, and she said that she’d pay Gertie’s tuition, too, and that Gert could pay her back when she got a job as a stenographer-typist. The offer was accepted. Gert was a fast learner and soon was typing as fast as was required, and she studied her shorthand and practiced it, till she was way ahead of her class, finishing all her lessons by March - when the rest of the class would not finish until the end of June. Just before her fourteenth birthday, she went to New York and got herself a job at Belles Hess, which was a big mail order house. After getting experience as a stenographer there she started looking at the want ads in the Sunday papers and soon got a better paying job. After that I don’t think Gertie was ever out of work. Her bosses always esteemed her efficiency. Her letters were perfect, grammar and spelling correct. She could write a better letter than any of her bosses.

Sometime around 1924 Vincent joined the Navy. The recruiting posters used to say, ‘Join the Navy and see the World’. The prospect of traveling around the world, while getting paid for it, must have been attractive to Vinnie. After he had joined up and sailed away for maneuvers, Mama would sit at the piano and play and sing, ‘Oh, how I miss you tonight’. After he’d been away for several months, Vinnie wrote that they’d soon be sailing into the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Mama wanted to make his home-coming a pleasant one. One day when she went shopping, she passed a music store and saw that they sold player-pianos. She went in and bought one, thinking that Vinnie would love it. It was bought on the installment plan, of course. She bought about 8 music rolls that day and every month when she went in to pay another installment she’d buy about 4 more rolls. She chose

titles that seemed appropriate for her sailor boy’s homecoming, ‘Wait till my ship comes in’, ‘My cutie’s due on the two to two’. I can’t recall all of them. Mary probably remembers more of them.

The long-looked for day arrived and in the afternoon Vincent came home, bringing two ship-mates with him. How glamorous it seemed to us, three sailors who had been far away on a ship to parts of the world that we would probably never see! I think the two friends were from the Midwest. They had different accents from ours and that added to their exotic charm. Well, we were all anxious to show off our player piano and we all sang to the music of this wonderful instrument we were so proud of.

Mama served them supper and after supper they all left to go to New York. I think they had only the one night’s liberty and had to report back to the ship at midnight. As this was the first time these country boys had ever been to New York, they were eager to see the fabled ‘Great White Way’, as Broadway was then known. They certainly didn’t want to spend their few precious hours of liberty sitting around with a bunch of singing children. Vinnie came home whenever he had liberty and he always had a friend or two with him. He always made friends quickly and was always popular.

When I said that Mama took a very serious step by having her hair bobbed, that is putting it mildly. When short hair for women became fashionable, it raised a furor. Cartoonists made jokes about it, ministers preached against it from their pulpits, parents forbade their daughters to their hair. Many a marriage was strained over this question. Some husbands forbade their wives to get their hair cut. Some women didn’t say anything; just went and had it cut, much to the chagrin and sometimes fury of the husband, coming home to find his wife with her locks shorn. Luckily, Papa always thought that whatever

Mama did was right and he always thought she was beautiful, no matter what she did to her hair.

At this time a very silly song was popular:

‘It ain’t gonna rain no more, no more. It ain’t gonna rain no more; So how in the heck can you wash your neck? When it ain’t gonna rain no more!’

Everybody sang it, wherever you went you heard it. You sang the first two lines and then made up your own silly little two or four line jingle, and finished up with ‘It ain’t gonna rain no more’. One day Vinnie was plinking away at his ukulele and sang the first two lines and then sang:

‘Whenever you go to Oleske’s In the kids you do get mobbed Miz Oleske’s like the kids herself, Since she got her hair bobbed. Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more, no more.’

etc.

We were all delighted with this, Mama especially. We thought Vinnie was the wittiest and cleverest person to makeup this jingle. We all sang it for years afterward.

Mama was terribly frightened of lightning storms. Every time there was a storm, Mama would light the holy candles and with each thunder clap and lightning flash, she’d pray aloud, “Oh, God, spare us”, or “Oh, God, help us”. We children were a little frightened but not as panicky as Mama. She probably had hypoglycemia, but who knew about it then? If it was known, there was no way to find out, because she never thought she could afford the two dollars a visit to the doctor’s office cost at that time. Very often when she came home from shopping, she’d say, “Oh, I had heart palpitations and my body trembled, and I was so weak, I didn’t think I could move my legs to get my

foot upon the trolley steps.” At first we were frightened for her, but after a few years of hearing about it, we got awfully hard-hearted and cruel. As soon as she’d start to tell us about it, we’d chime in, “Oh, my heart palpitated so hard.” And we’d tease her. But fate, as it usually does, caught up with us. As we grew older some of us had the same thing and we realized than what she had gone through. We just said we had the ‘Oleske shakes’. and I don’t think that any of us ever had sense enough to mention it when we went to the doctor’s. Fortunately it seems to go away with age, because I’ve not had it for the past 20 years.

In the days before everybody had a radio in the home, people wanted entertainment. Many clubs and churches put on a yearly show. They were of the revue type or minstrel show, all local talent, of course. And then there were dances. The church would have a dance in the church hall, and the Democratic club would have one in Eddie Beck’s Hall, or the firemen would have a block dance in the summer. The old Tonnele Avenue was paved with smooth blacktop and that’s where the block dance was held. They roped off one block, and strung up lights, Japanese lanterns or electric lights, and hired a band, and sold hot-dogs and sodas. We liked these. It was a special treat for us, because Mama and Papa could take all of us to a block dance. There would be the baby and the next youngest in the carriage and all us other children trailing along to watch the dancing. Mama and Papa always loved to dance, and so did Mary Barrick, but Mr. Barrick didn’t like to dance, so Papa would dance with Mama and then Mary Barrick, and when he got tired, Mama and Mary Barrick danced together. Now after al I have said about what hard working women they both were, you’d wonder where they got the energy to dance. But they both loved dancing, and when you love dancing, I guess you’re never too tired for it. They both wore the old fashioned corsets with long

steel ribs in them. This held their backs very straight, but in dancing it tended to give their backs a strange look with their fannies sticking out.

When Anna and I got to be teenagers, we noticed this and it caused high mirth in us. By this time, we had a radio in our home and when dance music came on we’d dance, and if Mama and Mary B. were there they’d dance, too. Then Anna and I put on our act. Anna would say to me, “Mary, would you like to waltz with me?” and I’d reply, “Oh, yes, Tina.” Then Anna and I would get into an exaggerated version of their stance. Anna would say to me, “Does my behind stick out, Mary?” and I’d reply, “Not so bad. Does mine, Tina?” Then we’d be bent over from the hips dancing around like that. Mama and Mary Barrick would just laugh about it. They should have walloped us for our impertinence, but they just took it as the joke we’d meant it to be. Weren’t we lucky to have two such tolerant women as our Mother and courtesy Aunt? It’s only as I grow older and look back, that I see what special, good natured women they both were.

Mama never seemed to be sick enough to stay in bed. There must have been times when she was very sick, but she toughed it out, because there was no one to take over her tasks. The only time she ever was in bed was when she had a baby. Then she had to stay in bed for ten days - that was the custom of the time and the one thing the Mrs. Schmidt, the mid-wife, insisted on. So it was a terrible shock to us when Mama was sent to St. Mary’s Hospital, in the late autumn of 1925. She had hung out a line of clothes, and before they were dry enough to pull in, a freezing rain came up and the clothes started freezing. Mama tried to pull them in, but they were so heavy, because of the weight of the rain and ice on the clothes, that it was a most arduous task. The result was that she strained herself so badly, that that night she had a miscarriage and it probably turned into peritonitis

and she was terribly ill. (Of course, we children were not told any of this. We were told that she had blood poisoning). She was in the hospital more than three weeks and it was a time of terrible worry to the family. Mama sick? We children couldn’t understand it. Anna was not yet fourteen years old, and in the eighth grade. She had to stay home and take over the care of the house and family. I’d come home from school and help her, and I suppose Joey and Andy did their best to help and to mind the younger children. I seem to remember that Anna and I concocted such meals as a big pot of spaghetti to which we added a chopped onion, grated store cheese (cheddar) and two cans of Campbell’s tomato soup. And stews - 50 cents worth of beef or lamb and lots of potatoes and carrots and some onions. We never made regular hamburger. We’d get some chopped meat and add to it lots of bread and chopped onion and thyme. These were made into meat cakes and fried. I guess Gertie and Papa came home most nights to a house filled with smoke and smelling of burned meat cakes. Anyhow, that’s how I remember it.

One morning at school as we were about to say our morning prayers, Sr. Hilda announced to the class that they were all to offer up their prayers for the recovery of Anna and Henrietta Oleske’s mother. She went on to say, “Yesterday, I visited Mrs. Oleske in the hospital, and she was as white as a sheet. She looked as cold and white as a marble statue. I thought she was dying.” I never had such an awful day. I felt like I had been hit with a sledgehammer. Mama dying? Unthinkable! Somehow I got through the morning and at lunch time I rushed home and burst out crying as soon as I got in the house, and told Anna what Sr. Hilda had said. She cried too. The younger kids were coming in for their lunch and had to be fed and got off back to school - so Anna said, “We’ll have to pray harder”. We had great faith in prayer.

At last Mama came home to us, thin and weak, but she was Mama and she was home with us. Everything was right and rosey and our fears were eased. Anna had stayed home from school for a month, and the first day she returned to school, Sr. praised her for being such a good girl to her family.

In June, when it was time for Anna to graduate, Sister told her to wear a nice dress for graduation, as she was going to receive a medal for highest average of the class. Mama made Anna a pretty dress of white crepe, with a large bertha collar trimmed with lace. On graduation night there were all kinds of medals given out, but not one was awarded to Anna. The next day Mama asked Sister why she had told Anna that she was to receive the valedictorian medal, then disappoint he that way. Sisters reply was that as Anna was absent for a whole month, she gave her a zero in every subject for that month. Even with 9 month’s marks, divided by ten, Anna’s average was 89 - so she really was the valedictorian. Why they made such a cruel decision, I don’t know. Even after almost 60 years, I still feel a sense of outrage. When Mary graduated, she had the same kind of dirty trick pulled on her, too. But Mama found it hard to believe that a nun would do an unkind act, such as this. We often thought it was Fr. Mahoney, who did the finangling; for some reason he detested our family. Perhaps he was just born a curmudgeon, and would have been a square peg in a round hole, no matter what career he was in.

One summer it was the fad for young girls to wear cretonne coats. Cretonne was a light cotton drapery material, of bright colored flowers, birds, or other designs. Well, Gertie was on her first job as a stenographer in New York, and she always liked to wear the latest style. She got a length of material patterned with bright parrots and tropical flowers. All you had to do was to tell mama what you wanted and

she could create it without a pattern. She had a great talent in this. She made Gertie a short boxy coat which Gert wore to work every day. One day Mr. Hynes took Fr. Mahoney to a baseball game in Yankee Stadium. They returned home on the six o’clock commuter train on which Gertie, too, was and passenger and she was wearing her parrot coat. When Mr. Hynes got home, he told me they had seen Gertie. Then I heard him tell Mrs. Hynes that Fr. Mahoney was outraged at her outfit. He and Mrs. Hynes were laughing about it. Of course, when I got home I told the family and they just laughed it off. I guess he was afraid that one of his parishioners was getting to be a ‘Flapper’.

Why he had this resentment towards us is hard to fathom, because we were the ideal Catholic family that they preached about. We were a large family and still growing. We observed every rule of the church. It was unthinkable for any one of us to ever miss Mass on Sunday or Holy Days. We said morning and night prayers, said the Angelus three at noon and six p.m., and even at six a.m. if we were awake. Every fast day and day of abstinence were observed meticulously. Our only fault was that we were poor and could only contribute a minimal amount of money - and he was trying to raise lots of money to pay off the new church and school building which was under way at that time. Vinnie aptly named him Fr. Grabmoney.

Henrietta Marie MeyerJanuary 1985

REMEMBERING

Trips we made back East

Granny and Ann DuVernay returning with us on one trip. Granny asking why it was that we had gone so many miles without a stop-light.

Wehn Ann and Granny were ready to go home, my folks took them to Sioux City to catch their plane. I was extrememly uneasy, because goodness knows I wouln’t have flown in that Plane, but the letter we got back was astounding. With EXCLAMATIONS - Now, you know she had the shakes - doubts - and whatever else - but she only passed on to us the beauty of it all.

When she flew into Denver from California, we were so delighted to be meeting her, since we were in Denver for a special occasion for Sister Christina.

So good to hear that wonderful New Jersey - New York accent.

She never seemed to have any grey hair.

Watching Granny by our back porch door in the early morning sunshine - thumbing through her prayer book and special remembrance cards. (What a lesson in Faith).

She would have loved to give me a badly needed lesson in cooking, but no, she just always bragged about my efforts.

We were so happy that she seemed content with us - then just as Elizabeth predicted, it happened. First to me. then to Andy. “Somebody needs me - I must get home for it is time to help Gertie get kids clothes

fixed for school”. We drove her to Omaha to catch the plane and she was home before we finished eating in Fremont, Nebraska, a few miles away from Omaha.

Christina remembers Granny taking several kids to the kitchen sink and in spite of the mess it made, showed them how to blow bubbles.

I am and always will be so thankful for the spoken and unspoken love I have experienced from all the Oleskes.The good book says ‘There is a time for everything’.

And so it is.

Vanessa Oleske McConaugheyJuly, 1985

IMPRESSIONS by one who was lucky to be married to Andrew Oleske more than 25 years.

I always wondered why Andy never wanted to double-date with friends, until my first visit to the Oleske home.

Never saw so many newspapers being read before.

Why did Granny always take orange juice to those girls before they ever got out of bed?

Whey did everyone sit around the table and let Mama wait on them? Love - Love - Love.

Was that tea with lemonade or lemonade with tea? But it was good-good.

Papa going through the house in his nightshirt at bedtime, winding the clock. I’ll bet he knew Theresa was hiding behind that table.

No one ever knocked at the door at 107 E 96th Street.

10,000 ways to play solitaire.

Andy not knowing Billy when he hadn’t seen him for a long time. I’m not convinced that Billy knew Andy either.

Political conversations = especially Auntie Mary’s view that Trumie was putting it all in his pocket. Harry S Truman, that is.

Louie, the Entertainer almost convinced me that he was playing that piano.

Granny’s story about taking Auntie Mary down town - Mary complaining that her feet wanted to go one way and her brain telling her another, only to discover that her shoes were on the wrong feet.

Granny coming by train to Calicoon to see Gertie and me with our new babies, and telling the young priest who was visiting Gertie that she had wasted all those rosaries on the train because baby Ann had already arrived when she got there.

Granny never tiring of being kissed by everyone, even if they only went into the next room.

I was amazed that everyone said inside for the next room, and going out, but never said where.

Vanessa Oleske McConaughy