Angel Ancestry

TRIVIA & ME – IIb MY CHILDHOOD YEARS: Around 1914, the Angel family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where the steel mill offered his father a better-paying job. August’s many memories of this time include his elementary school, a horse-driven fire wagon, juvenile court, Transylvania Hall, Romanian dancing, signs of World War I and the Armistice, family separation, his mother’s work in a sweatshop, Romanian food, Lake Erie, the Spanish flu, picture shows, his work as a newsboy, Prohibition, his aunt Victoria Lichirie and uncle Sam Hantan and the ethnic diversity of his neighborhood.

Chapter IIb: My Childhood Years, Part 2

From Farrell, PA, to Cleveland, Ohio

America’s involvement in World War I created a big demand for steel and for experienced steelworkers. One company would entice workers from another, and workers would move from one job to another. My father heard rumors that Republic Steel Corp. in Cleveland, Ohio, had a need for heaters, which was a higher-paying job with more prestige than all others, besides supervisory positions. On impulse and with full confidence, he packed our sparse family clothing and headed for the big city of Cleveland, Ohio.

I am always amazed at the perseverance of a stranger in a strange land. My father, who still did not speak English and had no friends in Cleveland, was able to locate the Romanian ethnic district without any trouble at all.

I have a lapse of memory concerning details of the actual move from Farrell to Cleveland. In Cleveland, my father rented a house on West 57^th Street, several houses from Detroit Avenue. It was big compared to our Farrell apartment. We had no furniture but made out until essential pieces were introduced one at a time. The house was next to a large fenced-in lot that had a much bigger and older unoccupied house set back from the street. A friend and I called it a haunted house, and we would climb the fence to peek through the closed windows. We never sighted our imagined ghosts.

The school that I attended, Waverly Elementary, was a distance away on West 58^th Street. I would cross Franklin Street, then Bridge. I was probably in the third grade at that time. Two events of note were the regular fire drills and the tin-pan band our class staged. The fire drill was announced by an electrically activated bell alarm. Students would line up and exit a window to an iron fire escape alongside the building. All the kids seemed to enjoy the excitement and change from routine classwork. My third-grade class was assigned the task of performing as a band in the school’s annual fair. I was selected to drum on a pie plate; the others had pseudo-musical instruments such as pots, pans, and scrub boards.

Each day on my way home from school, I passed a fire station. It was a pumper-hose station and not motorized. Two beautiful Percheron draft horses were ready for immediate response to a fire call. The pump, on a 4-wheeled, low-deck wagon, was steam-powered. The source of steam came from a coal-fired boiler that rested on the bed of the vehicle. I remember seeing the hitched horses pulling the smoking wagon as they left the fire station, the driver shouting commands, the fireman holding onto safety bars, the horizontal line of smoke, and the sparks flying from the iron shoes on the horses’ hooves as they struck the brick pavement. This has been a vivid picture in my mind ever since.

One day I had an innocent encounter with the law as it pertained to railroad crossings. Waverly Elementary had recessed for the day and another boy student and I headed north for our homes on West 58^th, running and bantering with each other, and overcoming any obstacles we encountered – circling power poles, darting through hedges, jumping over low fences. In time we approached the excavated ravines dug to accommodate railroad tracks that traversed the city from West 25^th to Rocky River. The tracks were below street level and each street bridged the tracks. My friend found a well-worn path alongside the bridge and disappeared, dashing down toward the tracks. Without thinking, I followed. Suddenly, the outstretched arms of a towering figure of a man, the railroad detective, stopped both of us. He asked us our names and addresses – we were scared but answered him honestly. He warned us not to trespass by the railroad again.

Several days later my mother and I were summoned to appear before a juvenile court judge. The judge admonished her and then gave her explicit instructions to discipline and control my activities. I now understand the railroad’s concern, but my exuberance at the time was a result of just being a boy. I translated the hearing to my mother so that she understood all that the judge said regarding my transgression of the railroad tracks.

Transylvania Hall on West 54^th and below Herman Street was the social center for Romanians living on the West Side in Cleveland. I remember attending one particular gathering at the hall with my family, although I don’t recall the exact reason for our attendance. We were all dressed in our finest and the hall was a 15 to 20-minute leisurely walk from our house on 58^th Street. There was some sort of play given on the stage with Romanian men, women, and children dressed in native costumes. Afterward, the audience cleared the floor of chairs and a dance followed. Children ran in and out and among the dancers, as they rhythmically moved across the floor. Especially exhilarating was the ethnic hortā, a ring of men and women, arms on each other’s shoulders, with the ring circling as dancers wildly kicked their legs high and stamped their feet resoundingly on the floor to the tune from a clarinet. My father was considered a foremost advocate and performer of the hortā.

However, the aftermath of this dance event ended disastrously. My father had imbibed heavily at the dance and probably noticed that Mariti, too, was enjoying the dance. She was an attractive, fair-skinned young woman of about 25 with blond hair. A glance from a male admirer was frequent. At home, after the dance, an argument between my parents ensued, and I was horrified at the beating my mother received. I stood frightened and frozen during the yelling, screaming, pleading, and sounds of pounding. When it was over, my father just went to bed to sleep off his drunken stupor. My mother carefully washed her bloodied face, soothed bruised cheeks, and the swelling that closed her eyes. For days following the beating, my father showed no remorse, but instead acted as if nothing had happened. With my mother, it was different. Although she continued her household duties, she was quiet and withdrawn. I had a feeling that things would soon not be the same.

In the meantime, my parents paid little or no attention to my outdoor activities. I often wandered about the neighborhood, usually alone or with a friend. There was one locale that was very attractive – the Pennsylvania Railroad track on the ridge above Edgewater Park, at the north end of West 65^th Street and the loop of the 65^th and Denison Avenue streetcar tracks. At this terminal turnaround was also the entrance to the park through a concrete tunnel under the four railroad tracks that was frequently used by men as a convenient place to urinate. The strong ammonia odor was suffocating.

Loaded freight and passenger trains were a fascinating treat to me as they rolled east or west. During World War I, I would stand beside the tracks and watch train after train pass by carrying young soldiers. I would wave to the soldiers as they headed east to the “war to end all wars.” Often a train would stop because of the traffic signals ahead. Whenever that happened, soldiers calling out from opened windows would ask onlookers what city they were in or what lake they were looking at. Sometimes they just wanted to talk. On one occasion a soldier handed me a letter and asked me to mail it. I never felt so proud as I headed straight to a mailbox to deposit the envelope. 

It is November 11, 1919, and World War I has just ended. Armistice is announced and the streets are filling up with excited people – cheering, waving flags, and driving in vehicles all over the city while celebrating noisily. It is noon and I’m standing on the corner of West 57^th and Detroit Avenue watching a truck with a cattle rack fill with happy people. Invited to join them, I climb aboard, not knowing what to expect. The slow-moving truck heads east to Public Square, where it seems as if the entire population was congregating. The driver of our vehicle moves with other trucks toward Broadway Avenue. At East 55^th Street and Broadway, the truck I am on turns onto a side street and heads back to the center of the city. I cannot recall when and how I got home.

I was not informed of the reason for the move from West 57^th Street to a small apartment above a store building on Detroit Avenue. It was next to a small theatre and a furniture store on the northwest corner of 54^th Street. A violin hanging on a nail was the only decoration in our sparsely furnished flat. On quiet evenings, the fiddle on the wall emitted a resounding noise heard by all the family. My very superstitious father believed that a message was being sent by the devil himself. The immigrant sheepherder lacked knowledge of the scientific reason for the sound, which was simply caused by a key that dried and slipped, loosening a string.

Across the street was a husband-and-wife operated grocery store. My mother often sent me to buy single items. In time, I possessed enough self-confidence to ask the grocer to give me a job. My first task behind the counter was to package two pounds of granulated sugar into brown paper pokes, or bags. I felt big at my job behind the counter.

Moving to the smaller apartment put a strain on my parents. There was more quarreling and fighting, further loosening the bond between my parents. It was the foreshadowing of a family separation. With a little catalyst from alcohol, my father resorted to taking out his frustrations on Mariti and began abusing her, both verbally and physically. Whatever agreement was made between the two resulted in my brother Victor and my father departing in time for Farrell, Pennsylvania, and I remained with my mother.

My mother and I moved to an upstairs apartment on the south side of Detroit Avenue, one building east of 57^th Street. There were two storefronts on the street level with two 4-room apartments above. A restaurant occupied one store and the other was empty. Across the street was a barbershop where I sat and waited while men were shaved after a hot towel softened their beards. My hair was cut with scissors and hand clippers for 5¢. After a number of tonsorial trimmings, the barber excitedly showed me his newly acquired hand-held electric haircutter. Its use would increase cuts to 10¢; otherwise, the original nickel price prevailed.

For income, my mother worked in a sweatshop setting; her job was with clothing. During winter weather the apartment was so cold that the food on my plate congealed. There was very little – and at times nothing — in the way of food except bread and milk. The aroma from the cooking done in the restaurant below was tantalizing, but neither my mother nor I ever ate there. I must have received some sort of ethereal subsistence from the odor to exist between the sparse good meals – mostly mamaliga and stuffed cabbage – that my mother prepared after she received a paycheck!

One of the staple lean-time meals was burned bread. Store-sliced bread was not known at the time. Homemade bread, baked by my mother, would be sliced rather thick, pierced by a fork, and held over the gas flame of the kitchen stove. Instead of being toasted, the bread would be parched or burned almost black in appearance and emit a peculiar strong scent. While still hot, the bread would be smeared with a copious spread of lard that would quickly melt, followed by a sprinkling of salt. My mother often remarked that this was a peasant’s buttered toast. I rather liked the flavor and it was nourishing and filling.

A favorite meal of mine was a sandwich of salted fatback or belly bacon. It was prepared as follows: The white bacon was boiled in plain water until it lost its salt taste and fat. After removing it from the water, the bacon was dried and sliced deep to the rind in several parallel cuts. Fresh or raw garlic cloves would be inserted in the open slices, and the entire piece of bacon would be heavily covered with paprika. The bacon was then cured until the flavor of the pungent garlic permeated the white bacon – that took several days in or out of a refrigerator. Then a sandwich was made with the bacon for a delicious taste treat.

Cleveland Schools and Escapades

My brother Victor attended Watterson-Lake Elementary School at West 74^th and Detroit Avenue. He walked west, while I walked east to Detroit Junior High at West 49^th Street, where I was enrolled. When I was in the seventh grade I took a new IQ test called the Stanford-Binet test developed in California. Several days later a teacher talked to me about the test and asked many questions about my home, parents, school, and play. All answers I gave had a favorable outlook. But there was one inquiry that has been with me these seven decades. I was asked if I had eaten anything for breakfast and if there was any food at home. Reflecting back, I must have been chagrined to give any answer, except that my mother and I had enough food to sustain us.

However, had the teacher followed me during my lunch period, she would have gone to the auditorium instead of the lunchroom. She would have observed that my lunch hour was not spent on food, but on viewing the fascinating beauty and activities outside the building. I would sit on the back row of the auditorium seats and look out through huge windows at the expanse of Lake Erie and waves billowing over the concrete breakwater. When the lake was liquid I watched ore boats navigating the waters from my high perch, or grasshopper arms reaching into the bowels of a vessel alongside the docks and depositing the red earth into piles near gondolas on railroad tracks. In winter, the white surface of the frozen lake was a picture of the Arctic without the polar bears. I was as enthralled with the view as I was saddened by the loneliness it portrayed.

An incident of note was the time I answered aloud in a geography class. The teacher asked a question about annual rainfall and I alone volunteered the word “snow” as contributing to the amount of precipitation. The reason I mention this is that during all my years of education, including college, I was seldom vocal in class. All my participation was written and mostly on true and false tests. (Regretfully, I do not recall the name of any teacher, instructor, or professor.) But I was momentarily pleased when all eyes were on me as I sputtered, “Snow!”

….

A picture-show house was located a couple of blocks east of our apartment. As on every Saturday, we paid our 5¢ entrance fee and patiently awaited the start of the show. Kids packed the house to see the weekly serial episodes depicting our heroine Pearl White. She escaped decapitation by a lumber mill circular saw one week, only to be saved from dissection by a runaway train the following week. Other film notables at the time were the Gish sisters, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, “Fatty” Arbuckle, various cowboys, and Tarzan. For a sign of social change, there was the adulterous “scarlet woman” smoking a cigarette on the screen right before our eyes … and for deeper pondering, we saw D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation – all the fantasy and entertainment a kid could want for a nickel and located right around the corner.

My mother often visited a family she said were from her village in Romania and related to her as cousins. Their home was set farther back from Herman Avenue than others and had a wide porch across the entire front of the house. A scalloped design decorating the entrance of the house distinguished it from others on the street. The cousins had continued a practice of stringing beans they learned in the old country. The porch ornament was merely green beans sewn along a string and hung outside for the sun and air to dry!

I actually did not care to visit this family for several reasons: one, in particular, was that children were to be seen and not heard. That meant sitting quietly while elders talked at length in Romanian about persons and places unfamiliar to us. ….

On the corners of intersecting main streets were two to four widely frequented saloons. Men used front doors and a second side door was the usual entrance for women. One day, while walking with my mother, I saw a man so inebriated that he could not control his walk or even stand upright. His fall to the ground in a state of altered consciousness caused me to cry, and may have been one of the causes for my lifetime aversion to alcohol – though there have been a few times that I’ve been drunk in my eight decades.

Home to me was only a place to eat and sleep. I was subject to very little discipline or supervision. Most of my waking hours were spent outdoors, aimlessly wandering from one area to another, just as an untied animal would be free to move. My routine for leaving the apartment would be sliding or scooting down the edges of the steps to the door at the street level. I often wondered why the racket I caused did not result in a reprimand from neighbors in the adjoining apartments or the restaurant.

There were only a few families in the business area of Detroit Avenue. For a period of time a large family of Gypsies rented the empty store space next to the restaurant. Although the group was out of the ordinary, the business people and neighbors accepted the Gypsies as interesting and colorful.

I remember the time of the “Spanish” influenza, summer and fall of 1918 – especially when I was on other streets in the neighborhood. The deadly flu was first recorded on March 1, 1918, in America. It was estimated that one-quarter of the U.S. population fell ill and that a half-million died as a result of contracting the flu. Walking along Tillman and Herman Avenues, I observed a wreath with long, broad, black ribbons on about every third or fourth door, indicating a death within the house due to the illness. As young as I was while strolling the streets during this epidemic, I sensed an uneasy quietness, a fear of the unknown, and an absence of people outdoors. 

Roaming Downtown Cleveland

Many times my wanderlust involved a trip downtown. I’d either walk the distance from West 54^th Street or hitch a ride on a slow-moving truck. Mack trucks with hard rubber tires and chain-driven rear wheels would lumber slowly along Detroit Avenue. Kids wanting a lift to town would run behind the truck, hop on it, and sit on the tail end of the truck bed. I was an expert at this activity that provided easy access to downtown and a faster way to traverse the high-level bridge.

Once downtown, my roaming would include window-shopping on Euclid Avenue and a walk through Woolworth’s five-and-dime store. This block-long store, from Euclid to Prospect Avenue, sold nothing costing more than 10¢. … The higher-class May Company and Bailey’s were also downtown and on hand to be explored.

On the east corner of the first street east of the May Company, between Euclid and Prospect, was a music store specializing in the sale of sheet music. A piano player was given a piece and he would play the notes, as a crowd of people – store customers or just the curious – listened to the song. I was among the onlookers who had no intention to buy, no particular interest in music, and no natural ability for music. But I stood there and watched the nimble fingers skirt over the ivory keys, playing a requested piece or merrily improvising to the joy of the audience. Two songs that I have never forgotten were: All Alone by the Telephone, Waiting for a Call From You and Yes! We Have No Bananas. In my youth, telephones in homes were a rarity and bananas were seasonal – so both commanded attention.

Downtown trips often included a long walk to the pier end of East Ninth Street to see the passenger boats, C & D and C & B docked, waiting for their next scheduled trips. The lakefront area east of the pier was a city waste disposal ground. Either alone or with a friend, I would scout the dump just looking at men, boys, and an occasional woman scavenge piles of refuse just unloaded from a truck or horse-drawn wagon (the few that were still being used in the city). This entire area, as far as the eye could see, was pockmarked with mounds of burning trash, each emitting smoke with a distinguishable scent – at times quite objectionable. When I walked the area it was a city dump: Today in the 1990s, it is the mile-long Burke Lakefront Airport. … It is overlooked by Interstate 90, which was later named the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway (Ed.: in honor of Cleveland ‘s WWII veterans).

When the Terminal Tower building was being erected, I was curious enough to enter the main structure and walk around unencumbered. There were no security guards, no barricades, nor would a worker shoo me out. ….

Leaving Public Square, I’d walk to West Third and Sixth to see Chinese men in native garb, either sitting around tables or lying in wooden double bunks, smoking opium. 

After the routine tour of the downtown sights, smells, and sounds, I’d head for home. The return always involved walking the entire distance, because truck traffic at that late hour was not heading west. My route took me over a high-level iron bridge, the eastern part of which was entirely concrete and directly over the Cuyahoga River. …. From there I would lean over the rail and watch the boats on the water. After spitting from the rail and watching it float downward, I would resume my journey – a very long walk back home. 

More Family Stories

For some reason or other, my mother thought that I needed cultural training. She revived the fiddle that sent messages to my father when it was hung on a wall. I was sent to a teacher, practiced, and achieved some mastery of the violin. My interest in music abruptly came to an end when a change in instructor resulted in a long streetcar ride for me. I had to board a streetcar at West 54^th Street, ride to Public Square, wait for and transfer to a Broadway car, board and ride to East 66^th Street. The new violin teacher gave lessons in the clothing store that he owned and we were often interrupted when he attended to customers. Then, one Saturday when traveling to a lesson, I was overcome with motion sickness while riding the downtown streetcar. I was too nauseated to continue, so I paid 10¢ to see a Western movie in a show house located on Detroit Avenue where the Cleveland Hotel is now located, adjacent to the Terminal Tower building. The teacher, the long streetcar ride, and the carsickness were the probable reasons that I did not become a prodigy of the violin.

I do not remember how I was recruited to hawk The Plain Dealer newspaper – but for a summer, at 6:00 a.m. or earlier, I appeared at the corner of West 54^th and Detroit Avenue to sell up to 50 copies of the morning edition. My stand was in front of the entrance to a saloon and at the stop for streetcars bound for downtown Cleveland. Customers were both travelers headed for work and neighborhood residents. Papers were sold for 3¢, of which one penny was mine. I stayed with the pile of papers until about 9:00 a.m., when traffic to town dwindled off. Unsold papers were retained until the next day, when accounts were settled with the new delivery of 50 newspapers. ….

One day I used all my sales money to buy a bright yellow raincoat that I truly needed to wear during early morning rains. I was harshly reprimanded for not having a dollar for the previous day’s sale of 50 papers. However, I had a raincoat and did pay the back dues in allotments.

….

I must insert the three following incidents at this writing, though I am not sure of the exact time of their occurrence – except that they preceded our move to 65^th Street.

My father and my brother Victor left Cleveland together and spent some time in Farrell, Pennsylvania. No doubt their move to an area that was familiar to my father was a result of the marital problems he had with my mother. Victor later related to me that he stayed with the Luca family and came to know their daughter Victoria quite well. Victor also told of visiting with Constantine and other friends and relatives of my father. In all his stories, he stated that he and my father were treated well.

The second incident was that my mother and Victor spent some time in New York City. The two stayed with a family who were the friends of Cornelius and Josephine Lichirie. Victor and my mother remained in New York City for half a year or more. Who financed her travels and upkeep is unknown to me. Victor seemed to have enjoyed his Big Apple stay.

The third incident was a trip that I made, probably by streetcar, to a detention center in Warrensville Heights for a visit with my father, who was committed there by the Cuyahoga County Court for spousal abuse. I was a bit sorry for my dad being in jail, not thinking about why he was incarcerated. My father was jovial all the time we were together. How long he spent in jail I do not know, perhaps not more than a few months, because in those days spousal abuse was considered a private matter and not necessarily a concern of the legal courts.

During visits with my father in following years, he would confirm his serious pursuit to emulate Jesus Christ by showing me his calloused knuckles and knees as a result of constant kneeling to pray to his deity. He was a faithful reader of the Bible, as printed in the Romanian language. An onlooker could easily see how much of the Bible he had read by the thumb-soiled pages or the lower right-hand corners that were curled, while the unread sheets underneath remained flat. His habit of licking his fingers prior to turning a page resulted in a distinctive two-part used and unused volume.

When my father attended a church service he was very vocal. When the priest blessed the congregation, Dad’s voice could be heard above the rest in the reciprocal blessing of the priest. I believe he would have been adulated as a cantor, because, during singing sessions, his voice resounded above all others. However, it was not always in correct musical pitch, which often invited annoyed glances from fellow parishioners. 

For many years my father had a deep desire to dedicate his life to becoming a monk. He wrote several letters of inquiry to the Greek monastery at Mount Athos (Ed: the spiritual center of the Greek Orthodox Church). I believe he had a “conflict of interest” with becoming a monk who would have to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, instead of enjoying worldly possessions, pleasures, and freedom of movement. He must have chosen the latter.

This next episode of my childhood starts with recollections of living in each of the first two houses on the west side of West 65^th Street, just north of Detroit Avenue.

After my mother and Victor returned to Cleveland from their stay in New York City she rented a two-room upstairs apartment from Mrs. O’Malley, an Irish immigrant. Mother was now living close to her sister Victoria, brother-in-law Sam, and her son August, yours truly. (I had been residing with Aunt Victoria and Sam while she was away). My mother was now more comfortable and looking forward to being part of the American mainstream.

Mrs. O’Malley was a widow with a daughter my age, both living in the more spacious quarters on the first floor. I do not recall ever being invited into the O’Malley residence, but I did observe the amount of traffic entering and leaving through her kitchen door. Mrs. O’Malley was operating a “speak-easy,” a place where she sold liquor, contrary to the Prohibition laws in effect. (These laws were later repealed in 1934 with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as U.S. President.) Mrs. O’Malley managed a prosperous business and, in time, was financially able to build a new home on a lot she bought in a new residential West Side section of Cleveland, bordering Lakewood. ….

My mother’s two rooms were just that. One was adapted as a kitchen with a small sink and one spigot with only cold running water; there was no splash board or drain shelf beside the sink. A two-burner portable gas range set on a small table served as the kitchen stove. My mother outfitted the room facing the street with furniture that served the dual purpose of sleeping and living area. As for a bathroom, we had to leave the upstairs two-room apartment, walk to a porch at the rear of Mrs. O’Malley’s quarters, and use a commode there that was also used by her guests and customers – plus a family living in a couple of shed rooms attached to the main house. The toilet was of primitive assembly, consisting of a sewer pipe set upright and covered with a makeshift wooden seat. It flushed manually from a faucet alongside the pipe.

In time, I found a more convenient and comfortable place to relieve myself. On the second floor of the new arcade building at the corner of West 65^th and Detroit, and across the narrow alley from our abode, was a restroom for the professional and business people renting rooms. The restroom was never locked and I had free access whenever necessary. ….

Victoria and Sam Hantan

Sometime before my mother moved to Mrs. O’Malley’s two-room apartment, her sister Victoria and brother-in-law Sam Hantan rented the first floor of the house between O’Malley’s and the Arcade building. It was set back from the street and had a long, narrow front yard. …

When Aunt Victoria first arrived in New York City from Romania, she went directly to live with her brother Cornelius Sr. and his wife Josephine, where she was a quasi-guest housekeeper. Because the Lichiries were doing well as immigrants, they could afford to keep Victoria in their home. During her stay, Cornelius and Josephine had two sons, Cornelius Jr. in 1906, and Fredrick in 1908. Victoria was a babysitter for the two boys for several years, and she later told me stories of their antics while in her charge.

Exactly why Victoria left her brother’s home I never learned, but here is a possible scenario. While still a young boy, I overheard my mother and Victoria often talk about her stay with Cornelius and his family. In addition to hearing of ordinary family doings and events, the following surfaced. Victoria had given birth to a stillborn child. Whether she was married I do not know, but in time she left the Lichiries in New York City and came to Farrell, Pennsylvania, to be with her sister Mariti. In Farrell, Victoria met Sam Hantan and they were married. Sam was a likable person – easy going and a good, hard worker. He obtained employment with the Farrell Steel Mill, advancing from catcher’s helper to catcher, then to heater.

The job of heater was a prestigious one. The Farrell Steel Mill specialized in the manufacture of huge steel plates. Iron ore from Minnesota was shipped by boat to lake ports and by rail to Farrell. It was then smelted in a blast furnace and poured into a 2-foot by 5-foot long ingots. The ingots were delivered to a rolling mill, reheated, and then squeezed between rollers into sheet-like plates of various thicknesses, widths, and lengths. It was the heater’s job to control oven or furnace temperatures during the reheating of plates, prior to rolling for exact thickness. The heater judged readiness by the color of the heated plate – it should be white-hot and glowing. When the plate was ready to be pulled out of the furnace, the heater signaled the catcher, who was aided by his helper. Then, with special long tongs, they pulled the plate out of the furnace and put on a conveyor belt leading to rollers that processed the plates to exact thickness.

Sam and my father married sisters and the two men became close friends. Evidently they discussed job opportunities in Cleveland, Ohio, and the fact that it would be a good move to relocate to a city that was the main topic of conversation whenever ironworkers got together. It was also the main discussion between my father and his friends, dwelling mainly on jobs and the large ethnic Romanian concentration in the city – one located on the West 65^th and Detroit area, and the other on the east side and Mayfield district. Each of these districts had a larger Romanian population than any village, town, or city they emigrated from. They would feel at home and among friends in Cleveland.

Although Sam and Victoria were living comfortably and considered well off by their friends in Farrell, they nevertheless set their goal for an even better life. The work skills Sam acquired in the steel mill gave him enough confidence to feel that a move to Cleveland with my father was prudent.

In Cleveland, Sam had no problem finding employment. He readily obtained a heater’s job with Republic Steel in the flats area along the Cuyahoga River. For transportation to work he used the Detroit Avenue streetcars. He was a good worker, reliable and knowledgeable, which earned him top wages.

Victoria and Sam quickly assimilated into the mainstream of the American way of life. Both came to this country as teenagers who picked up English idioms, slang, and dialects with ease. Because they spoke both languages, they were smoothly absorbed into both Romanian and American working-class social and cultural groups.

Sam rented the lower floor apartment in the house set back from West 65^th Street and in the lot adjacent to Mrs. O’Malley’s residence. I do not know who owned the house. The apartment had four rooms and a bathroom complete with tub, toilet, and hot and cold running water. Sam and Aunt Victoria slept in the larger of two bedrooms. The simply furnished living room had a coal-fired, pot-bellied stove with small isinglass windows for heating in winter. The kitchen had a sink, hot and cold water, a table and four chairs, gas stove with oven, and a dish cabinet. The bedroom I used was very small, just big enough for a single bed and a set of drawers for clothes, of which I had little. The room was not heated in winter, and on cold nights I would put on coats, extra socks, and pants to ward off the frigid cold.

Sam and Aunt Victoria’s apartment was directly across the street from a bakery and the Romanian Catholic Church. The baker and his wife were immigrants from Transylvania, as were my parents, but despite that fact, visitations with them were only to purchase an occasional loaf of bread.

Though my mother was brought up in the Catholic faith, I only know of her attending services on church holidays – and never taking my brother Victor nor I along. To commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, I once participated with church members and circled the church edifice three times at midnight, with the sound of the church bells proclaiming the Ascension, and the congregation uttering, “Christos a inviat!” as they greeted each other.

My mother used the church social functions to meet with friends and to vainly show off her American costumes. I distinctly recall her conversations with other women about who wore what … and, “I didn’t like this or that piece of outfit.” My father, on the other hand, was a more religious person. He attended church services frequently, but participated in no extra church social functions. I did attend a service with him at the Romanian Eastern Orthodox Church located on Detroit Avenue and about West 59^th or 60^th Street. We sat on a bench along the wall in individual partitioned cubicles reserved for members buying the space. There were no pews – attendees stood during the service. As long as I knew my father he attended church fairly regularly in any city where he lived – the denomination was of no concern to him. God was God under any roof!

The West 65^th area north of Detroit Avenue was ethnically composed of enclaves of Italians, Irish, Romanians, isolated Hungarians, and Eastern European families. The area was also interspersed with second and third-generation Americans who were mainly “mom and pop” business entrepreneurs. The area from West 49^th Street, north of Detroit, including Tillman and Hermann, to the Lakeshore Boulevard, and west to 65^th, had a distinct Romanian character, but speckled with many Irish families. The dividing line was West 65^th Street, where all three nationalities, plus Americans, resided. West 67^th and 69^th were truly Italian areas.

I played with boys of all four backgrounds and learned many phrases in each language, especially cussing. Why I still remember how to utter a blasphemous oath in four languages after 75 years is beyond my comprehension!

Sam and Victoria had no problem making friends in the neighborhood. Sam was a slender, well-built, and good-looking man. By nature he was pleasant and a bit of a dandy who would show off his success in America through a somewhat Bohemian and dissolute lifestyle. His job as a heater enabled him to splurge on parties that enhanced his image with newly found friends and bolstered his ego. Their frequent parties were held on Saturday nights and lasted long into the Sabbath morning. Music from the hand-wound phonograph and the foot-pumped player piano caused not only my sleeplessness, but also that of the neighbors upstairs who would bang on their floor at the noise. The partying friends were Irish, who had, by this time, gained respectability in the United States by acquiring prestigious positions as politicians, policemen, and train and streetcar conductors. Sam and Victoria associated with Romanians occasionally on high-church days and special celebrations.

I would be up bright and early on Sunday following a party and begin emptying the cigarette ashtrays, cleaning up the tables, emptying the beer bottles, washing the dishes, and sweeping the floor. Victoria generally would spend the day with her head wrapped in a vinegar-soaked towel to ease a bad headache she had acquired. In time, this party lifestyle with its wild and drunken revelry would have a profound influence on me. I abhorred Saturdays and would shun any sort of merrymaking or boisterous festivities. Also, it would end up affecting Sam and Victoria’s health. My mother, in her two-room flat, was much more sedate and more likely to have Romanian friends.

Victoria and Sam not only partied at home, but also frequented a Chinese restaurant next to the Gordon Theatre on 64^th and Detroit. Often, they bragged on the chicken or pork chow mein and other dishes they ate. Many times during their Saturday night partying with their Irish friends, the midnight snacks were Chinese dishes. However, there was never a sample of the then strange and exotic food left for me. I had only the labor of scraping the dishes of dried bits and soy sauce the next morning. 

Once, after a visit to their favorite bistro, Sam and Victoria highly praised the Masonic Order, and especially the Shriners. I believe they had no concrete idea of the meaning of the Masonic bodies, but may have admired an organization that they heard was secretive and exclusive. (Years later, in 1933, I became a Third Degree Mason – but that fact never became known to Victoria and Sam.)

Uncle Sam was earning a decent wage as a heater with Republic Steel Corp., so it was not necessary that Aunt Victoria seek work – but she did, and had several jobs to satisfy her strong desire to be a part of the business workforce. One employer was the Folberth Auto Specialty Company that manufactured automatic windshield wipers for automobiles, an innovative and much sought after invention that replaced hand-operated wipers on vehicles. Victoria was a good production employee and must have been liked by management, because her job lasted for several years with the company – until competitor wipers powered by electricity replaced the Folberth wipers. (The Folberth wiper was a vacuum or suction-type machine that operated by tapping into the vehicle’s manifold via a narrow rubber hose and taking advantage of the reduction of pressure.) ….

One summer during school vacation I, too, was an employee of the Folberth windshield wiper company. I accompanied Aunt Victoria to the small factory of several dozen men and women, and assembled and packaged wipers. We would walk from West 65^th at Detroit Avenue to West 75^th where Clinton Avenue would fork to the right off Detroit. The Folberth factory was on Clinton at about 80^th. I must not have been any older than 12 or 13 at the time. I do not recall ever getting paid, so Aunt Victoria must have attended to the pay envelope. I wasn’t much in need of money, nor did I care to have any in my possession. 

My mother was as ambitious as her sister, but she also needed to work, because she was separated from my father. She found employment as a painter on samples of wood that were systematically displayed and exposed to the outdoor elements. She recorded time, color, paint mixtures, methods of application, and other facts pertinent to a sales pitch for the paint. The factory was located at the north end of West 72^nd, or thereabouts. 

For a second source of income, my mother also cleaned the office of the paint company. The job entailed sweeping the floor, dusting the desks, and emptying the wastebaskets – the task to which I was delegated. Several hours each evening was all the time necessary to get the office in order for the following day’s business.

Why my mother left these two sources of income, I do not know. But I do remember visiting her and Aunt Victoria at their jobs in a knitting factory on Superior Avenue at about East 36^th Street. … Both sisters were very talented and had skills as fabric and garment workers. Their job was to stitch intricate designs portraying flowers or animals onto knitted sweaters. Both Aunt Victoria and my mother were pleased with their jobs and seemed happy to go to work each day.

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