September 1946, St. Luke's Monthly Newsletter - "Troop 352 A-Camping"

So Clara Matynka (our grandmother, CHM) was a Girl Scout Troop Leader!  And she took the girls camping!  Never in a million years would I have guessed this; how about you, Marty?  She never went camping with us.  She never walked across the lawn with us.

What were we, museum specimens?  Dolls on a shelf?

I'll get over my mad.  But I'll never stop being puzzled by this.

June 1946, St. Luke's Monthly Newsletter - Life and Death; Cliques and Kindness

Mom - our CAMZ -  saved several issues of this Parish youth newsletter from her high-school years.  We have two left to look over.

In June of 1946 she was having a pretty good summer as a rising senior.

 

Center, Page One, above the fold:  a retreat is announced.  Mom never mentioned Lime Lake to me, but there is a story that fits this little item to perfection.

Clara signed up for this Senior Sodality retreat.  You had to bring your own lunch, so she packed a hefty one, went to Communion, went to the breakfast at the Parish hall, and stepped onto the waiting bus.  She took a window seat.  All the other girls - all the other retreatants - passed right by the empty seat next to her, the only Kensington High School student in the group.  No one said hello to her, or tried to make her feel welcome. All the upperclassmen girls sat in a clique in the back, talking in-group talk.  Pretty soon, every seat was full except for the one next to her.

Meanwhile, the Vice-President of the Senior Sodality, Gene Zdrojewski, was busy with administrative tasks on the ground.  At the last minute he jumped on board, wearing his blue officer's sweater with three stripes on the sleeve, which I may show you if you are nice to me.

Wow!  One seat left, and it's next to a beautiful girl!  

He had no lunch, so at lunchtime she gave him a chicken sandwich.  Evil rays of rage and envy shot forward from the back of the bus, but they had no power to mess anything up for these two.  They never looked back.

Media vita in morte sumus, in the words of the Antiphon, "In the midst of life, we are in death."  This idea these clergy applied to their youth in large part to inculcate mindfulness.  Yes, enjoy your youth; have fun; have a wonderful time; but at the same time be mindful of serious things, such as charity to others.  Your neighbor may have died, may be in mourning, or just may be the outlier in the group - alone on a crowded bus - so while you are living your life to the fullest, think of and act for your neighbor.  This is the meaning of it, and this is the reason that item is on the front page right under the retreat announcement.

Page Two Staff listing credits two photographers this time:  Norman and Zdrojewski.

Page Three "Thought for the Day" presents Fr. Tomiak's reminders to Sodalists that they are to strive for virtuous behavior by modeling their own after that of Mary, their exemplar of human kindness. Mary would never join in "cliques against cliques . . . pickiness, choosiness . . . behaving childishly like spoiled problem children."

I don't know who Raymond F. Roseliep was, but it would seem that he or someone close to him lost a child to rheumatic fever.

Page Four is all sports scores, while Page Five is all sports photography.  Do Alt + or click to see it big in Preview.

Bottom right is a shot of the "Tiny Terror," Bobbie Szrama, with the "Durham Flash," Eddie Nietopski.

Page Seven, bottom right, pictures a wheelbarrow race.  One of those guys is wearing a blue PYC Officer's sweater, blue with white stripes on the sleeve.

There is a second sense here of Media vita in morte sumus.  All these photos were taken by two returned veterans.  Surrounded by scenes and sounds of life, youth, health, and joy, the young men took their images.

(Lots of them!  If you want anything done efficiently, hire a vet.)

Yet all the while, they had images in their heads of the antitheses of those things: death, decay, cruelty, and despair, which they had seen and had had to deal with.

Carrying this around inside while carrying on with life must have constituted another battle for them, one that, for many, continued for the rest of their lives.

Julie

John Peter Zdrojewski Cabinetry

My Dad, our EJZ, on a visit to Argyle in the 1980s, brought along this pretty little cubbyhole shelf as a gift.

He mentioned that it had been in his family.  I,  fool that I was,  did not press for details.  Speculation is all that I have, in consequence.  Did Eugene's father, John Peter, make this?  If you have clues, I would like to hear them.

When you look the thing over and think about it, you realize that it is simple, but at the same time is of pleasing proportions.  In later times, various goofs would be paid to write about "human scale."  Well, literally for centuries to date, these ideas have been better expressed as ideas of proportion, brought to physical reality in architecture and sculpture and painting, and also, for goodness's sake, in kitchen-table and home woodshop projects.

For centuries in Europe, workingmen would see classical proportions in churches, courts, Parliaments, and reproductions of classical sculpture in paintings and in the round, and they would, naturally, internalize those proportions, and other aesthetic values.

What am I saying??  Workingmen built them!

Architects designed them, and workingmen built them: translated them into reality.

Their aesthetic memories and aesthetic faculties were not derailed by two-dimensional cartoon shows with screeching soundtracks.

It looks like plywood.  I think it is regular old, cheap plywood, cut by hand with one of those handsaws with a narrow blade; some perhaps with a coping saw. Then the pieces were stained and joined. It is simple work - no dovetailing - but it pleases, and it has served for near a century, I guess.

A man in humble circumstances can be Promethean if he has a skill and practices it.

He can have come over on the boat, and started life as a son of stevedores, but if he has a skill, and has been taught the patience and perseverance and the self-reliance to practice that skill, and has an aesthetic model in his head, he can make a beautiful thing.  On the kitchen table, if necessary.

What is the probable fate of a man who, in his humble circumstances, has been taught no skill because he has no father, has been taught by his culture and his government the precise opposite of patience and perseverance and self-reliance, and has in his head aesthetic models originating in violent city streets?

Who would wish such a fate for any man?  Who would promote fatherlessness and ignorance and dependency and instant gratification by any means?  And why would they do so?

Summer Camp and City Lights

 

The summer camp operated by St. Luke's Parish was called "Merrie Mill."  In the forties, saddle oxfords were the thing, apparently, at camp.

CAMZ is looking idyllic in this water scene.  But wait, is not the craft bow-heavy?  Were there only the one set of oarlocks in the thing?  Fortunately, the shore is not too distant.

Does anyone recognize the location of this shot?  I don't, but I can say that it puts me in mind of a merry-go-round enclosed within a building, such as is found in year-round amusement parks and those with ornate or antique carousels.

Saddle oxfords again.

Where is this this house?  The back yard is familiar by now, but I have no idea where it is.  Gittere Street?

Buffalo Gals

These are the right sort of photographs to have at hand on a ninety-degree day like today.

Click to enlarge to QuickView, or do Alt +  , as there are some interesting details here. Gore-Tex is in the future, so these sledders are bundled up, and in the masculine sort of tailoring that was all over the forties. I like the wooden toboggan, old-style figure skates, actual mittens on teenagers, and the babushka-baseball cap combination. 

I like the girl in back who looks like Eleanor of Aquitaine as played by Katherine Hepburn.  I'm pretty sure she isn't, though.

But it's a close call, because these lassies are into glamour for the duration.  When was the last time you saw lipstick on faces at a sledding party?  Hmmm?

These could be St. Luke's Sodality members, who play softball in the summer as "The Nylons," as per the Newsletter. In that case, this could be a local park or one of the Parish camps:  "Sky High" or "Merrie Mount."

Or they could be a bunch of girls from Kensington High, in which case this is a local park.

When Clara - CAMZ - was in parochial grammar school somewhere, she came home one day and whipped off her snow pants - old-style, padded, thick, heavy snow pants - she let on that she had been wearing them all day and was tired of it.  Her mother - CHM - asked why, and learned that to save money they had turned the heat way down and the Sisters had told them all to keep their snowpants on in the classroom.  CHM hit the ceiling as only she could do.  From then on, it was the local public school for her girls, all the way.  That little story came down, to illustrate a little thing that made a twist of fate.

Julie

Iconic Postwar Photo, with bonus Identity Crisis

Here is a scene that replayed many times in 1946:

The men who survived came home.  Understandably, they sought normality, and went after it full throttle: job, higher ed, family, tires, meet the rent and save for a house and an actual new car.

I get that; but who are those people?  Is that my mother CAMZ being godmother?  Or is it one of her friends who looks a lot like her?

Mom, look, I know that you value your privacy.  But I wish you had told us some of these things.  The photo below is you, Mom.  Is that you above?  I have to put this on the Internet to garner disinterested opinions as to your identity?  If you are the godmother, how come we don't know the godfather or the parents?

Nothing like using the Internet cloud to demand answers from above the clouds.

There's a recent novel, Next to Love, that uses the story of three women during this period to illustrate social changes in the USA before, during, and after WWII.  It's heavy-handed and a bit cliché-ridden, but thought-provoking nonetheless.  I recommend it, to be read with a couple of grains of salt.

And I ask you, dear readers, to recommend your favorite novels or memoirs dealing with the home front during the war, and the various social changes afterward.  I would be happy to post mentions or reviews.

Julie

The Ladies of Clara's Drapery Shop

Clara Matynka, our CHM, was an entrepreneurial sort.  Her shop for the custom manufacture of draperies and slipcovers was quite successful and ran for decades.  Her business premises were a building with one huge room with ceilings clear up to what would have been the ceilings of the second floor of a house.  Big picture windows in front let in light; a refrigerator in back held cold drinks and the ladies' lunches.  The walls were light green; the air smelled like fabric and sewing machine oil; the floor was scuffed linoleum.  But everybody's hands and dresses were completely clean at all times.

Huge heavy solid wooden tables - three or four - took up most of the space.  Each one was something like, let me guess, 20 feet by 30 feet.  Each one was fitted with a cream-colored canvas top, permanently ruled with lines 1 inch apart running across the table, and stuffed or lined with firm batting 1 or 2 inches thick.  On these tables large bolts of fabric could be unrolled and precisely cut, for draperies that were sometimes quite large and also lined.  Into these tables pins - giant stout pins with crossways handles to them -  could be stuck.

You have to pin fabric down securely in order to cut precisely.

Under these tables and against all the walls were bolts of fabric, as well as the cardboard tubes left over once the fabric was used up.  I don't know what Clara's Drapery Shop used those tubes for, but Marty and I used them to try to breathe through when hiding from bad guys under blankets (the breathing didn't work, but we did escape the notice of the bad guys.)  Famously, one of those tubes became the mast for the Santa Maria in the Marilla production of Columbus Proves the Earth is Flat, starring Sharon Stroinski as a benignly inebriated Christopher Columbus.

But I digress.

Besides the cutting tables there were of course several specimens of sewing machine scattered around the back of the big room.  Some had long tall arms to accommodate giant draperies for sewing.  There were always two or three ladies employed at these machines, and my guess is that the two ladies on the right below are two of them.

So left to right we have CAMZ as a young teen, CHM boss lady, and two of the ladies.

One lady was introduced to me as Pani Edna.  She had a brilliant smile and a warm personality.

CAMZ, likely in 1943, but where?  Are those rosebushes on the right background?

Obviously Clara and Gertrude spent time there and picked up skills.  Gertrude much later took the helm of the business.  Clara was always tailoring.  She must have been taught by those ladies, as well as her mother.  Where did her mother, CHM, learn the art?

It just occurs to me that those ladies knew CAMZ as a girl, and so that explains some of the twinkle in their eyes when they greeted her daughter as visitor to their shop.

Julie

Are there any photos of the furniture refinishing shop owned and operated by Mazurowski, Stroinski, and Stawicki?  What was the name of it?  Would someone like to write up a history of the enterprise?

May 1946, St. Luke's Monthly Newsletter - Sports Issue, and the Veterans are Home

One time I asked, "Mom," how did you start to get to know Dad?"

Replied she: "At a retreat."

I expressed doubt: "How? At a retreat, don't you just pray and meditate and go to Mass?"

She said, "Well, you also spend all afternoon walking around the gardens with no interruptions."

I objected:  "But you couldn't talk, could you?"

She said, "Not a lot.  But then at a certain stage you don't have to talk a lot."

Our JPZ is at left. Next is a mystery person; then Fr. Tomiak, mystery lady, Fr. Fimowicz; Al Mazikowski who coached the basketball players and went with them to Chicago; four mystery persons.

"Your Day . . .by Us" means "You Humans as Perceived by Us Churchmice."  The feature starts out with a variant on the opening line used in hundreds of Catholic-Protestant jokes.  I had forgotten all about Catholic-Protestant jokes; they were funny but I don't remember any.

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