MY ROOTS

 EASTERN EUROPEAN ROOTS

An examination of what I remember about my father and his roots in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  A difficult account to write and to read.  Apologies in advance for any and all historical and political errors.  Please forgive me my trespasses as I forgive yours.

Psychoanalysis XVIII Or XIX,

Or Whatever, Inasmuch As All Of

My Writing Is Always Related

To My Actual, Or Fictional, 75+

Years Of Personal Experience,

Living And Dreaming,

Writing, Drawing And Painting,

Acting, Not Acting, Talking And Listening,

Running Toward Conflict

And Trying To Resolve It, Or Running

In The Opposite Direction

As Fast As I Could Ever Run.

By Izzy Ess of Monkey Business

In Innsbruck, Austria, there is a street which used to be a Judenstrasse, Jewish Street.  The main street, Empress Maria Theresa Strasse comes to an end, there, at a store with a golden roof, Die Goldene Dache.  When the sun hits it, it glows and you can see it for miles around.  The street is narrow and a little curvy, supposedly for horsemen or a little buggy pulled by a horse.  The street is cobbled, still, and there are stores along the street, some boutiques and others, kosher butcher shops and grocery stores.  Since Innsbruck was a city state a while ago, it didn’t join the rest of Austria until the Empress was in power with her wishy-washy king, King Leopold, II, I do believe.  The Empress had some seventeen offspring, including Marie Antoinette who became the Queen of France with King Louis, XVII, and was beheaded with him soon after the Bastille was stormed on July 14^th, 1789.  A son, Philip, became the Prince of Spain and other offspring were exchanged for favouring the Eastern Empire, Oesterreich, or Austria, in English.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire was established with Empress Maria Theresa at the helm, who must have had a baby on her breast throughout her reign.

The Artist’s old museum in old Vienna, where the Empire was originated from the City State that was Vienna, or Wien, in Austrian, still has lots of local artists on display, like Gustav Klimt, as well as a superb collection of art works from around the world.  Apparently, Marie Theresa sent the Pope just packing as he tried to stifle Maria’s creativity by converting all to Catholicism paying homage to the Pope in Rome.  Marie Theresa would have none of it because the pope insisted that the Austrians be stern and work real hard to send the Pope their money.  Marie Theresa liked her folks to have a lot of fun and fostered dancing, singing and frivolity on Sundays in town centres, where large gazebos featured orchestras.  Vienna fostered music by Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Mahler and all the Strausses.  Judaism and all the Christian sects were left alone with their own freedom to just worship as they wished with their own folks, apparently successfully.

Incidentally, there are hardly any biographies written about Empress Maria Theresa.  I believe she would be a great subject for a PhD dissertation and a great idol and icon for the Women’s Liberation Movement.  She was obviously quite strong, though she looked small and mousy.  She was had seventeen children during which time she ruled the largest, richest and most powerful Empire in the world, in her time.  And she ruled with intelligence, creativity and benevolence, as far as I can garner from seeing her museum in the middle of Vienna.  My research shows that she is hardly mentioned in any history book, despite her powerful leadership and effect on World events.  It reminds me of the lack of credit given to Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII of Great Britain.  Here again, is a powerful leader who may have written all of Shakespeare and may have been the true author of the King James Version of the English Bible.  She would be another unsung idol and icon for a PhD dissertation and an originally truly liberated woman.

My dad was born an Austrian in 1909.  He told me in confidence later that he’d lied about his age to try and avoid being drafted into the Austrian army.  One of the big losses of the World Wars in Europe was the destruction of the birth records.  I found out much later that it was common on both sides of my Eastern European family, that birthdays were often conveniently changed to avoid being drafted, and to present more favourable family relationships, like birth order, for applications for immigration purposes, to the Western Hemisphere, “The New World.”  When I got my new and old maps out, my dad pointed to Hungary, in the northeast corner, where the borders changed “more often than a bride would drop her pajama bottoms,” as goes the old joke.  As I learned later, my father’s father was a Jewish sergeant in the Kaiser’s army in the early part of the 20^th century.  My dad recalls the Kaiser visiting his stetl in 1913, just before the World War, “to end all wars.”  He said his kith and kin came out into the streets to greet the King of Austria who honoured all the Jews by kissing the very holy Torah, The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament in Hebrew, in a scroll and embroidered, ornate silken cover, and blessed the Jews of his small Jewish stetl.

My grandfather joined, or was probably drafted into, the Kaiser’s army as a sergeant and fought side-by-side with Austrians who were the dominant protagonists of WWI.  The Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in the old Sarajevo of Bosnia, as I recall from reading, and the Austrians declared war on Bosnia, and then the Russians declared war on Austria, and then the trouble started when all the countries of Europe and the World took sides and sent their troops to fight.  I believe my dad and all my aunts and uncles and my grandmother moved to old Vienna with some kith and kin for safety.  My father’s cousin, then a medical student in Vienna, was recruited by the Austrians and lost his life in the military conflict.  My grandfather was lucky and survived the war, only to gather up his family and move back to the stetl where they owned two brick houses on a ranch with a ravine and horses.  My dad recalled that the houses had been taken down, brick-by-brick and that the ranch was no longer workable.

My dad related that he was the youngest son and was the fastest runner.  They had barrels of worthless currency.  They were able to survive the post war years by taking money into Russia where there were a lot of Russian Jews with treasures that could be sold, while the Russian Revolution, which had started in 1917, was turning the country inside-out when the Tsar and his whole family was murdered and the Bolsheviks took over.  My dad related that he snuck across the Russian border, and had a little money to make deals with Russian Jews for jewelry and dinnerware, cutlery and other treasures.  My dad said he had to dodge the bullets sometimes as he ran back across the Russian-Hungarian border to get back to his family who sold the jewelry to Hungarians and Austrians.

My dad related that as soon as they had enough cash,, they bought a horse and wagon and started transporting farm products from the farmers in the countryside, to the big cities for the wholesalers to distribute.  When enough cash was had, they sent my uncle Moe to Canada, where he set up a shoe store in downtown Toronto.  He sent back some money for my dad and his two sisters, Betty and my other auntie, Lily.  Lily liked the city of Montreal, where she met her future husband soon after, and stayed.  My auntie Betty was a red-head and was always laughing, dancing and singing, whenever I did visit, when she plied me with some chocolate candy, and tried to teach me how to dance.  She believed in free love and had a son who did become a chess champion and moved to California to play in major tournaments, successfully.

My dad began to work, in some of the many Jewish garment factories, and learned to operate some modern cutting tools for cutting patterns out of cloth and leather for hats and jackets.  He met and hung around with my mother’s brother, uncle Solly, who was his gambling buddy.  I believe my mother and my father met at the home of my grandmother and her children, including my mother, when he either lived there as a border, or came there as a visitor with my uncle Solly.  My folks bickered seriously quite a bit and I naïvely asked her why she’d married him.  She said it was a “marriage of convenience,” and even at my tender age of ten, I thought it was because of pregnancy.  Later, I discovered that my mother was still single at age 30 and that this was culturally not acceptable.  Apparently, a match was made in the old tradition of the Jewish culture, and a single man was matched with a single woman, “for convenience.”  They married in 1936, and I was the first-born son and child in 1938.  I have no idea if I was the first pregnancy, but it is quite likely that I was, unless there were some missed abortions in between 1936 and 1938.

I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, where my mom and dad were working in the Garment trade, my mother, as a master seamstress, and my dad was cutting cloth for hats and jackets on Victoria Avenue, at the Victoria Cap and Jacket Company, owned and operated by a Mr. Lasky.  I can still recognize the factory building, because I would visit there to see my dad, at times, but the company no longer operates.  I was aware that he played cards there with his co-workers and his friends, a frequent cause of arguments at home.  I was also aware, that in the European tradition, the break in the middle of the day was long enough for my dad to walk home for his lunch with the family and have a snooze before returning to work about 2:00 o’clock, in the afternoon.  I inherited my dad’s love of chess and cards, pleasures I still have to this day.  I remember that my dad was happiest defeating my mother’s brothers in card games, during family gatherings.

As an interesting aside, Mr. Lasky had three sons, the first two of which became lawyers, I believe.  The third became a professional wrestler and changed his name to Jack La Rue, who had a modicum of fame in Canada.  Jack would often come to the Jewish Community Centre in Hamilton and teach us Jewish teenagers how to fake your way through a wrestling match and make it look like you were really hurting your opponent.  I still remember learning to fall on my back and slapping my open hands on the mat to make it sound like you were really slammed down hard, especially if you grunted loudly.

When I was two, we lived in Toronto.  My dad owned and operated his own kosher deli which had a refrigerated all glass viewing thing, which contained cuts of kosher meat that my dad had to slice with his circular, spinning meat cutter.  I had figured out the grabber for the boxes on the top shelf and had successfully knocked down a box of Kellogg’s corn flakes, only to get a lecture from my dad on messiness.  He gave me no credit for learning how to use the grabber.  In fact, he indicated that I was a bother for him.  Later, I realized that I was.  He was a neat freak and a perfectionist.  He would have liked to chuck his apron and get dressed up neatly in his fashionable fedora and go to join his gambling friends.  My presence as a two year old requiring attention at every turn, was not his cup of tea.  He wanted freedom from his family, who demanded food and shelter and all those things which he was very proud of having provided, as he stated forcefully to me when he was 80, when I asked him why he hadn’t come to see me play high school basketball, when I was very proud of having made the Varsity team.  He became red-faced and very angry, that I didn’t give him credit for his excellent job of keeping all of us from getting hungry and getting cold.  He blurted out what he must have blurted out many times to my mother, “WHO can LIVE with YOU?!”  My brother was present at his dinner in a kosher restaurant, to which my brother had treated my dad and me.

I apologized to my brother for causing what he called an upsetting thing to say to my father.  Much later, after my dad had died, I had never visited his gravestone or my mother’s gravestone, something which my brother did frequently.  My brother borrowed a cigarette from a stranger and bought two double-double Tim Horton’s coffees for us.  He didn’t tell me he was taking me to the graveyard where my folks were buried side-by-side.  He talked to my dad and mom, as if he were a small boy, and then poured the coffee on each grave, and knocked the ashes off his lit up cigarette on their gravesites.  I sobbed.  Both my parents were double-double Horton’s drinkers of a lot of coffee and smoked a lot of Player’s cigarettes, the unfiltered, uncorked variety.  In fact, my dad used to roll his own, in retrospect, imitating John Wayne out on the range, when he would with one hand retrieve his pouch of loose tobacco and roll a cigarette with one hand while he held the reins of his horse with the other hand.

These days I quip that I was born addicted to nicotine, caffeine and overeating, inasmuch as my mother gained a lot of weight during her pregnancies and still drank two pots of syrupy coffee daily plus she smoked two packs of unfiltered, uncorked Player’s cigarettes, actually quite typical behaviour for pregnant women in 1938.

At 75, living with my cat and quite impeccuniary, on a fixed, under poverty level of income from the Canadian and Provincial Government and what’s left over of my US Social Security pension, after my daughter successfully sued me for 75% of the sizable USSS monthly income for unpaid child support which had grown from $20,000 to over $100,000 with the courtesy of Illinois’ Cook County’s punitive attacks on “dead-beat dads,” a situation I was advised by Canadian legal pundits, could “NEVER” happen.  I’ve forgiven both my parents and wished that I could have said, “I love you, daddy!” and “I love you, mommy!” like my brother does, frequently, at their gravesites.  All my three children have abandoned me, claiming it was I who abandoned them.

My 18 month old cat likes to sit on my chest, as she’s doing, right at this moment.  She is purring and expects me to pet her while I am typing.  I’m thinking that I’ll never abandon my cat, as long as I am able to care for her.  The purring on my chest is therapeutic and delightful.  I feel her love for me is unconditional, as far as I can tell.  “I love you, kitty,” comes forever to my mind.  While it’s true that the tradition amongst Eastern European parents is not to swell their children’s heads with compliments, some re-assurance about love would have been nice, on occasion.  My sister, who is two years younger than I, told me quietly one time that my mother told her I was not smart enough to make it through medical school and that my first wife was not the woman for me.  My father was silent on the eves of both my marriage and my entering Medical School and suggested to my sister that it didn’t matter to him what I did.  He expressed to her that I should have quit high school at 16, when it was legal to quit, and start working to make money for him and the family.

I learned how to forgive my folks with the encouragement of an older friend who listened carefully to all I said and quietly admired me for getting through Medical School and staying married for some fourteen years.

I remember wanting to stay married and working to resolve our differences.  My wife apparently had another secret agenda.  When we parted, quietly, I might add, she said I was finally making enough money for her to make it worth her while to sue me for divorce.  She did add, that though I was difficult to live with, there was never a dull moment in our household environment.  I felt betrayed, but happy I had provided some entertainment for her and our two brilliant boys.

I’m tired and ready for sleep.  I’ve been working at this essay on my European and Jewish cultural beginnings.  Some of it has been tough to put to paper, so-to-speak, but I feel much better, at this moment about my two marriages and my relationships with my mom and dad.  Thank you for listening, my dear reader.  I hope you’ll find this, not only, informative, but also, entertaining.

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada

November 7, 2013