I remember the time my mother, John and I were sitting on the steps leading to our apartment in Brooklyn. Mom told me that I was not yet two years old. A group of boys came along and began playing baseball in front of the place where we sat. Mom asked the boys to play elsewhere as the ball might hit someone. The boys ignored her request and continued to play. One of the boys hit the ball with the bat and the ball hit me between the eyes. I remember Mom scolding the boy and telling him that she was going to speak with his mother. The boy said that he didn’t care, thinking that Mom didn’t know his mother. I remember Mom carrying me and John trotting beside us. After walking about two blocks we arrived at the boy’s apartment. The boy got on his knees and begged Mom not to speak to his mother. However, she did speak and the boys mother corrected him as he expected.
I remember the time Pop was trying to quit smoking his pipe. We were living in the third floor apartment in Brooklyn. It was a Saturday afternoon; he gathered his pipes, tobacco, and cigarettes and threw them out into the alley. Early the next morning he went downstairs and into the alley looking for his pipes and tobacco.
I remember the first Christmas presents when my brother John and I got an orange each and a steel trolley car. We played with this toy a couple of years in Brooklyn and when we moved to the farm we brought this toy with us and played with it several years longer.
I remember walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with my mother and brother and seeing a train below puffing black smoke. Later I remember walking along railroad tracks and picking wildflowers and I can remember the smell of certain plants.
I remember visiting my father’s cousins in New York. Her name was Helen Jancyzyn Borowkowsky and her husband John. They bought a farm in Idell after Mom and Pop bought their farm and it was only about a mile and half away. They had three children. Anna, who married the local Frank Langenfelder the miller’s son, Julius, owner of a taxi cab in New York City, and Michael who bought a biplane when his parents bought the farm. He built a hanger and gave plane rides to the local people. Floyd Bennett taught Michael to fly. Later on, he took his mother up in the plane and crashed. She was seriously hurt and was an invalid the rest of her life. The hanger still stands on the farm and is used as a barn.
When they still lived in New York, and I was about two or two and a half years old we went to visit them. Father knocked on the door and I stood beside father when the door opened. Julius opened the door and there stood the largest dog I ever saw. He was a Great Dane and he stood taller than I. I was terrified as he stood next to him.
Besides Aunt Opiela, Mom had another relative who lived in New York. He was related to Mom’s grandfather Zakaluk. Early when we were on the farm, the Zakaluk cousins John and Stephen spent a month or more for several summers. Aunt Olga and daughters Mary and Anna also came at the same time.
Then there was another Zakaluk who lived about two and a half miles from our farm. They had five children, two daughters, Olga and Mary, and three sons, John, Joseph and Harry. Although they lived near Rock Ridge School where I and my siblings went, the Zakaluk children went to Warren School which was in another school district.
Editor’s Note: The young family lived in 2 of the buildings in the picture introducing this story. John and Stephen’s birth certificates and census data showed they lived in apartments 2 doors apart on Green Street in Brooklyn.
For one of the children (John or Michael), Eva sent Harry on a midnight request for pickles, something she craved during her pregnancy and by the time he returned, she had given birth.
Mom Zdepski was a short person of about 5 feet tall. Stephen turned out to be a LARGE baby of around 18 pounds at birth. He was born on 13 Jan 1918. The midwife was Hungarian and very superstitious. She recorded the date as the 12 Jan and also spelled his name wrong on the birth certificate. His exact weight at birth is not known, however he was weighed at the doctors office within the first week. The doctor commented to Mom that her baby was born 9 months old! Another feature at birth was that Stephen was born with a portion of the amniotic sac covering his head as a kind of scull cap (similar to a yarmulke). Folk wisdom in the Ukraine suggests that boys born with this feature will grow to become a priest. It was common practice to name such a son after a saint, hence Stephen’s chosen name.
The young family lived it 2 of these houses. John and Stephen have different addresses on their birth certificates.
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