Stanley Daruszka

Stanley was my paternal Grandfather and somewhat of an enigma to me.  As much as I have warm thoughts and memories about my maternal Grandfather Benny, I could not say the same for Stanley.  He was not a warm man, in fact he sort of scared me.  I don't have any memories of happy times or vacations with the family.  I do remember riding in the car with him once and not wanting to be there.  It's not that he was abusive or cruel, he just lacked warmth.

What I know of his childhood could explain some of this.  He was the youngest of 9 children born to Martin and Anna Daruszka.  Anna would die in 1904, the same year Stanley was born.  Her death caused the family to be broken up with the children sent to live with different relatives until Martin remarried.  His marriage was to a woman who was characterized by family members as an "evil stepmother".  His father Martin would die when Stanley was 6.  It is easy to guess that someone who grew up without the love of a mother and father could be molded into the emotionless man he would become.  One emotion my Father said he did have was anger, raging anger.

Stanley married my father's mother Wanda around 1925.  Like her mother before her, she died when she was 41.  At some point Stanley took to drinking.  He remained employed as a railroad conductor throughout the Depression but drank most or all of his paycheck.  My father had to hide money from his part-time job in order to keep his siblings fed.  Stanley would rage and demand the money he knew my father hid.  I suspect it also included physical abuse as an inducement.  My father left for the service in World War II sometime after his mother's death.  Upon his return he discovered Stanley had remarried, and his gruff introduction of her to my father was, "This is your new mother and you will call her mother."

Needless to say the relationship between father and son was not the best.  Perhaps some of my feelings for Stanley came from what passed as a relationship between father and son.  My most vivid memory of Stanley came at one of the holiday gatherings at his house.  As kids we were accustomed to being kissed and kissing other relatives.  I went to kiss Stanley and he slapped me across the face and told me, "Real men don't kiss" or something to that effect.

At this point in his life diabetes had begun to take its toll on him.  He lost both his legs below the knees and was confined to a wheelchair.  He would eventually lose his eyesight as well.  He had been warned to change his habits to prevent the disease from ravaging him.  My father said he was too damn stubborn and knew more than the doctors.  His plight only embittered him further.

Stanley died in 1971 while I was away at college in Chicago.  I had moved off campus and we did not have a phone in our apartment.  I had left the number of a neighbor's phone to call in case of an emergency.  They never relayed the message about his death.  I found out when I got an angry letter from my mother telling me that I had missed his funeral.  I casually told her I wouldn't have come anyways.  I felt no love for the man.

Ironically the man he told to accept his new wife as his mother would be the one who would treat her as he would have his own.  My parents would run errands for her, drove her around and were constant visitors at the senior home she was in.  He did it not because he felt compelled, but because he became a better man than his father.

Ruminations on a Birthday

I came into this world in the early morning of November 1st, 1950.  I was born at Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, NY.  The hospital is gone, but I'm still here.

I'm at the point in my second or third childhood were I start thinking adult thoughts about death and adult diapers.  I have reached the age at which point my paternal Grandfather died.  I have exceeded my maternal Grandfather's timeline by two years.  I guess that makes me a winner, although I still have a ways to go to reach my Dad's expiration date.

I had no big plans for the day.  No parties, no fancy dinner, just another day.  A phone call from Mom, Facebook well wishes from my brother and a few friends, Happy Birthday sung by my wife early this morning.  Like I told an elderly gentleman I held the door for at the Post Office as he hobbled in, at least we're ambulatory and that sometimes is the best thing one can wish for.  I found out a former coworker, younger than myself, had passed away.  I'm glad not to be a Facebook post accompanied by nice things said by people who hardly knew me.  I've watched friends and family die and I have no wish to join them anytime soon.  I have some minimal choices in the matter; like trying to eat healthier in order to prevent the things that seem to hasten the demise of the male heirs in my family.  Yet there is no way to prognosticate your end, just hope that its postponed to a day that will be determined sometime in the unforeseeable future.

67 isn't really old, unless you're in your twenties or thirties.  Then it seems ancient.  I never imagined myself being 67 when I was younger.  Both my Grandfathers died before I was 21.  I could not contemplate or imagine finding myself at that point.  I couldn't have imagined spending 30 years at the railroad.  I always wanted to be an artist of some sort, and I was fortunate enough to have a crack at it a few times.  Those are times and memories to be cherished.  The railroad part of my life came in two pieces.  The first came out of a desire to live out a young boy's fantasy that lasted 12 years.  The second came out of desperation when the art career never quite panned out.  That lasted until I retired at 62.  I enjoyed that work too, and I was good at it.  The hours were long and I sacrificed much of a life outside of work to do it, but the reward of a decent pension make that sacrifice seem worthwhile.  I am four years into a new life where I can pursue the creative parts of me that the railroad couldn't kill.

Along the way, even with the railroad, I was able to keep the flame of creativity going.  I was always able to do something that fed that fire.  I have a great deal I am proud of and can look back without regret and say that I did the best I could, not matter what I did, given the circumstances.  We all have regrets about the other choices we might have made, but I prefer to think I played the best game with the cards that were dealt.  I married a decent, loving and understanding woman who has tolerated and supported me.  What more can one ask for.

Tomorrow I will go the breakfast with a group of railroad retirees, many who are significantly older than me.  Its nice to hang out with a bunch of old railroad farts who can tell stories and laugh about the life they left behind.  I hope to be going to many more breakfasts as our ranks are replenished by new retirees and I can become an old fart too.

Uncle Leonard

Uncle Leonard (actually my Great Uncle) was my Grandfather Arendt's brother, and is the man on the right in this photo.  I didn't know Leonard, and only met him once by accident.  My brother and I spent a great deal of time at my Grandparent's house due the fact that both our parents worked.  Their house backed up to Houghton Park, with a yard was filled with my Grandfather's roses.

One summer day my brother and I were in the back yard when a man came up to the fence and motioned us to come to the fence that separated they yard from the park.  Before we got to the fence my Grandmother came storming out of the house and yelled for us to get indoors.  She went to the fence, spoke briefly with the man and he went away.  "Don't ever talk to that man again", my Grandmother warned, "he's a bum."

We knew all about bums.  Bums were men who lived by the railroad tracks at the far end of the park.  They did horrible things to little boys who wandered in to their wild domain of overgrown weeds and trees.  We would get all sorts of dire warnings from my Grandmother.  We couldn't go to bathroom when she took us to the movies in downtown Buffalo.  Her reasoning was that black boys lurked in the bathroom and would cut the "pee pees" off little white boys.  I'm always amazed how much of my childhood revolved around the terrible horrors that lurked in the shadows and would befall unsuspecting little boys.

Needless to say we never saw the bum again.  The truth to his identity would not be revealed until I started family history research.  Leonard was a happy guy by all accounts.  When he came home from military service in World War II he was a changed man.  He turned to alcohol in what today would be considered a classic symptom of self-medication for PTSD.  Leonard was not a bum who lived in the mythic hobo village that existed to scare little children.  He lived with various relatives and friends around Kaisertown.  My grandparents fed him and gave him money.  He would show up at the fence for hand-outs periodically.  We happened to be in the yard when he made one of his visits.

Leonard died in 1966 and there was never any mention in the family about his death.  I don't know if anyone from our part of the family attended the funeral.  He was not among the collection of mass cards my mother kept of family members who passed.  My mother, who claims to remember very little about family history, doesn't have much to say about him.  My family is full of mysteries and conveniently forgotten stories about the people who came before me.  Much of the information I have gleaned has come from other relatives outside of my immediate family.

I often envy people who have kept intimate records of their family's history and can trace their lineage back for many generations.  In our family, forgetting the past seems to be like a band-aid put over the wounds of painful memories.