Matynka - Haremski Mystery Photo, or "Excuses, Excuses"

Here at the Coot Hill Preservation Society HQ, work slows on occasion, such as those occasions when the Directress tends to indoor plants, following the example of her paternal grandfather, John Peter Zdrojewski.  JPZ customarily started tomato plants in cut-down milk cartons set on the windowsills at 175 May Street, Buffalo, New York.

Here we've got some cauliflower, hot peppers, seedless watermelon, and Digitalis.

There are other jobs, as well.

Nevertheless, when the Haremski Iconograph was discovered the other day (see the post itself) CHPSHQ felt that the time had come to bring to light the Haremski-Matynka trove. Here it is, exploded all over the worktable.

This stack is of things from the high-school career of Mom, Clara Adamina Matynka Zdrojewska, CAMZ.  She was a fine-arts major in high school.  See the folio?

History, literature, and religion:

One large print was tucked in with a collection of snapshots Mom (CAMZ) took at summer camp whilst a teenager.  I brought it down.

Two facts help us here:  Clara was born in 1929.  There was color film from the 1930s, yes indeed.

Verso, we see a plain but stout cardboard backing.  Not professionally done, but carefully and deliberately done.

The buildings in the background of the new find resemble the buildings in the background of the Haremski Iconograph.  Don't they?

Looks like the photographer was of shorter stature than her subject.  Did the teenage Clara snap this photo?  Did she have it developed at her school?  I feel certain she did the backing - she kept on doing that all her life, up to and including with photos of her grandchildren.

Who is this man?

Was he the hired man at the Haremski farm?

Was he a neighbor of the Haremski family, or a family friend?

Was he Clara's father's father, Adam Matynka's father, visiting his in-laws at a family party in the country?  If so, this is the only photo we have of that man, whose name we do not know.

Was he a relative of the Zientarska?  He does look like her.

Watch any Polish historical dramas lately?  That face is in there among the Polish fighters resisting the Tatars or the Teutonic Knights, in a Wajda film.

And of course the mustache is pure Pilsudski.  Wow, look at his face, also!

Suppose Clara, Mom, CAMZ, did take the Haremski Mystery Photo.  If so, then she probably took the Haremski Iconograph as well, and thus that is her shadow on the grass behind the Zientarska.

Furthermore, say she was 15 years old at the time.  

1929 + 15 = 1944.  

Clara grows up during 1939-1945, saving tin and aluminum and listening to the radio news - including news about distant cousins on the other side of an ocean.

Matynka - Haremski

Please see the page Familiae Personae Matynka for a listing of the family relationships on the Matynka side. Looking at the family tree from my own point of view, this includes my and Marty's mother, Clara Adamina Matynka Zdrojewska, and her siblings, parents, and grandparents.

Of her maternal grandparents, the parents of Clara's mother Clara, we know that they were born in Poland.  We know that his name was Haremski and hers Zientarska.

We have been told that the Zientarska was . . . a forceful personality.

And we have one photo.

Great pose, hey?  No pitchfork necessary.

Don't ask me where this was taken.  Mom and her family lived in a little town in southern Erie County at one point.  Perhaps her maternal grandparents did also.  I've no idea; it just looks like an old farm. Looks like the 1930s, doesn't it?

I like the cigar, the suspenders, her hand on his shoulder. I like her split-front dress and her brooch and her cotton stockings with open-toed pumps.  I like the shadows on the lawn, of her elbow and the photographer.

But it freaks me out to look at their hands.  Both of them have broad hands with short, stout fingers.  I have hands like that.  Human hand phenotype is highly heritable; the long tapering fingers of European aristocrats having long been remarked upon.  Well, I'm an American, so I care not a whit whether my hands are aristocratic or peasant-like.  Ha ha ha.

I "enhanced" Busi Zientarska Haremska's face in IPhoto.  It made her look so much scarier that I almost fell out of my chair.

A cameo.  If anyone finds this cameo or this pendant in a drawer somewhere, please photograph it and send the file up.  All right?

I wonder how old they are in this picture.  They look vital and healthy no matter what their age.  That bodes well for their descendants.  Check out your hands to see if you've got the mojo.

Julie

Martin Zdrojewski

Happy Birthday, Marty!

Here is the happy scene in 1951, with Zdrojewski menfolk Ludwig, John Peter, Eugene John, and Martin.  Marty seems content, nestled in the arms of his great-grandfather.

Ludwig is holding something in his fingers.  It looks like a ribbon.  Oh, I bet it's Marty's cap, the little bonnet of the Christening outfit.

Check out the gents' ties.  These men were cool before it was cool.

And those glasses are coming back into style, aren't they?

Who dusted those Venetian blinds?

So here's Marty in 1953 most likely.  It looks like a studio portrait, but I bet JPZ did the whole thing at home.  I wonder what he suddenly held up to catch the lad's attention before tripping the shutter.

And what's not to love about those bells on the shoes??

I would be delighted to post birthday posts for all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  It's up to you, dear readers, to send in your chosen photos and the complete birthdate.

Stolat!

The Portrait in "Wartime"

In an earlier post called Wartime (that's a link to that post), there is a photo of JPZ in his living room, and on the wall is a framed photo of his eldest son Eugene.  Here is a print that looks similar, if not quite the same, as that photo on the wall in the photo:

Help me Rhonda!

1.  What is that insignia on his shoulder?  How can I identify his unit?

Somewhere in the boxes are, I hope, a metal bracelet with paratrooper insignia, plus a photo of his unit in Basic, plus his discharge papers, and some other things.  Until those items surface, can anyone suggest a good website for checking out these US Army insignia from WWII?

2.  There's a book in print called Finding Your Father's War - A Practical Guide to Researching and Understanding Service in the World War II US Army.  Before I buy it, can anyone give an opinion on its reliability and utility?

3.  I believe I shall start a page on this site listing favorite history books, to include Polish histories, World Wars I and II histories, and biographies of Polish immigrants to America.  Would people send in some of their most recommended titles?  Would people write little reviews as posts?

Julie

Janek and Julia and Eugeniusz and Casimir

These two are the same lady, posed and photographed by the same photographer:

The face, features, and expression are the same, to my eyes.  As for the other changes, I could easily see them as the work of time and placek.  I mean no disrespect to my Grandma, here; au contraire, I fantasize about having conversations with this grandmother I never met in which we confide and laugh about many subjects.  But to go on . . .

Here she is again.  I think.

My current skill set allows us to zoom in this much:

Shape of face, nose, and mouth encourage me to run with this some more.  Let's say these are Julia, Victoria, Ludwig, Frank, and the young Casimir.  Why not?  Gene is at Orchard Lake and Casey basks as the only child at home.  Here he is a little closer in:

Surely this is the same cute kid, with the same cute ears and all, a couple of years later:

Gene and Casey on the front porch. The college man and the young teen. This is May Street in Buffalo, right?

If we accept this chain of evidence we no longer need feel we must search NYC for long-lost relatives.  We can still wonder quite entertainingly what-all Frank did on those trips to the City, besides take pictures.

Janek and Julia

This studio wedding portrait is a large print, 12" by 18", hand-cut, on the heavy stock that JPZ typically used.  It was somewhat bent and a little torn when it came out of the storage carton.  Still, it scanned all right - in four parts, which Peter Ehrlich then PhotoShopped into unity, integrity, and suavity.  Thanks, Peter.

Remember, a click on the photo will open it nice and big in Preview.

I think we can agree that this lady

and this lady

are the same, can we not?

They are Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska.  Therefore, the groom is John Peter Zdrojewski.

And since this must be JPZ (the only groom she had),

this must be JPZ as well:

But I'm not done rocking JFZ's world for today!  The next post will add Eugene and Casimir to this controversy.  

Remember, "labels" for posts are listed on the right sidebar.  For example, if one wanted to review Julia photos, one could click on the "Julia" label there, and be rewarded with all posts having that label loaded onto one new page of Gene and Clara's.

Juliana

More on "Wartime"

     JFZ, aka Johnny Electronics, writes as follows:

     "Julie,

I believe this is May Street. Dad and I tore out the archway perhaps in the early sixties. The door to his right is the hallway to the front door on the porch. But that hallway also served as his darkroom. Remember?"

     Bingo! John, that solves the mystery of my puzzlement about that archway.  May Street was familiar, but the archway I never saw when I was old enough to retain memory of it.  Have you read much Agatha Christie?  There's a short story in which the heroine, visiting a house for the first time, as she thinks, absently gets up and starts to walk into a wall.  At the end of the tale - once they've found the body buried in the garden - she figures out that she visited the house as a child, when French doors were in that wall.  This is a kind of converse of that story!

     That was heedless, tearing out that archway.  Not only was it the product of good American craftsmanship, it is a classic design element.  You can see those lines in the Parthenon.  Look, if you concentrate on the outline of the entire arch, you can reverse the image in your mind.  When you do that, you see the outlines of one half of each of two columns, one on the left and one on the right.  It was all done on purpose, to make pleasing masses and pleasing spaces between the masses.  There are galleries of these all around the porches of classical temples.

    You can enlarge this image quite easily if you are viewing it with Safari or Mail on a Mac.  Click on it.  Specifically, left-click once.

     And that ain't all.  Look at two the lines of sight - perspective lines -  that emanate from the top and the bottom, respectively, of the case clock.  Follow them as they converge to their focal - or vanishing - point.  They converge on John Zdrojewski.   

     He's stoically bearing up under the prick of Time's arrow.

JFZ continues:  "You have a great picture here. It makes me very nostalgic for the way America used to be, quite united in both peace and war."

     "By the way, Casey did not attend Orchard Lake. And during WWII he may have been in his early years at St. John Kanty in Erie. But, he did spend his freshman year at Kenzington High."

     Thanks, John.  I wonder what year Casey was at Kensington High.  My Mom, Clara Matynka Zdrojewska -  let's now dub her CAMZ for this blog - graduated Kensington in 1947.  Let's see, would that have been about ten years after Uncle Casey's freshman year there?  Wish we had more dates.  I have a CAMZ Ken yearbook and some prom stories.  So keep reading. 

     

Paul Zadner has written thus:

     "This is May Street. All the photos are taken in front of that window and he had a dark room for photos to the door on the right. I also remember the radiator but not the archway but those arches were very common, because I remember wall papering them."

     Thanks, Paul.  Indeed that front window appeared in the very first post on this blog.  (That's a link:  Go for it!)

     The door on the right I recall as the way to the front entrance of the house.  It led to the front porch on the one hand, and on the other hand it ought to have led to the front stairs to the upstairs apartment. Did the darkroom equipment obscure those stairs?  Not so good for fire escape!

     I do not recall the darkroom at all. Maybe I was too short, or maybe I was kept away from it for fear that proximity to lab equipment would shrivel my ovaries; who knows.

     Description of the darkroom - where did that enlarger come from that Marty had in Marilla? - would be wonderful.  Stump up, John, Paul, Marty!  Skip over to blog website, then click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post, and run wild.

Little Joodgie

"Wartime"

     JPZ was a man always ready to set up a photoshoot.  This print has no labeling, so we study and infer.

     Is this the downstairs apartment on May Street?  I don't recognize or remember that archway.  Was it the house on St. Louis Street, which I never saw?

     John Zdrojewski, our JPZ, is alone in this photo.  He has posed himself as the only human figure, but not prominent. The objects surrounding him are prominent.  They define and describe his situation.

     He is seated quietly, studying a scrapbook.  He is relaxed in an armchair, yet he is formally dressed and exhibits sober attitude and posture.  So, his situation is a bit formal and sober, even though domestic.  I think I recognize the scrapbook as the one that has come down to us, of his son Eugene's own photos of his Second World War service experience.  The photo portrait on the wall is of Gene in uniform, right there by the Flag.

     The other framed item, a religious print, features light streaming in through the window of a church.  That image is used often in paintings to symbolize the Holy Spirit, the "Light that Shines in the Darkness."

     All that is in the background.  The vast middle ground consists of empty living room.  JPZ is showing us how empty the house is.

     I wish we knew some more dates.  Were there years during which Julia was dead, Gene was at war, and Casey was away at school St. John Kanty's?  Empty living room, indeed.

     The grandfather clock is the star of the foreground, and perhaps of the entire scene.  Time certainly rules this space for this man.  He has to make it through - how much time?  for the war to end, and then - what will life be like then?

     JPZ, cabinetmaker and descendant of cabinetmakers, made that clock.  He was just finishing it up on the kitchen table of the house on St. Louis Street when his firstborn, Eugene, entered the world.  Now he and the clock wait for the return of that child.

     Julie

Eugene Zdrojewski at the OSS Language School

My Dad told me that when he was drafted, he told Them that he spoke English, Polish, Latin, and French.  On his way out the door he thought to turn back and say, "Oh yes - I'm an experienced photographer."

Eventually he ended up in the Office of Strategic Services, which sent him to the University of Chicago.  Language experts listened attentively as he spoke English and Polish; they made recordings on each side of a white vinyl 45rpm record.

He kept the record.

Click here for the first track.  It is in English only.

My reaction is that I surely do recognize his voice, but his speech is different from what I always heard.  His speech is closer to Polish.  He is twenty years old, and has attended bilingual grammar school, high school, and college (2 years.)

Click here for Track B.  It is in English at first, then in Polish at the end.

What did those experts think?

Did his English sound too Polish?

Did his Polish sound too American?

Had they judged differently, would they have sent him to Europe?  What would have been his fate then?

As it was, they kept him in Chicago studying Japanese for six months, then sent him over the Hump, to western China.  He jumped out of the airplane, camera in hand, snapping photos of terrain on the way down.

Future posts will delve into the war years.  For now, many thanks to two of Gene's grandsons, Andrew Ehrlich and Peter Ehrlich, for teaching me Audacity and Soundcloud.  Dziękuję, panowie!

Julie

Uncle Stanley and Eugene - closeup