Luck of the Polish

My grandfather walked to and from his job in a coal mine.  When the shift was over, women in the area would be out and about to meet up with some potential boyfriends/husbands.

Alice was Polish, poor, and miserable. Her mother previously made a match for her with a man she never met and didn’t love. After a few months of sleeping with a man who wet the bed, she divorced, moved back home, and took a job in a sewing factory. Her mother wove rugs and took in boarders. 

Money was scarce, the home was dreary, and Alice was lonely. She was one of the women out and about when the 3 o’clock shift let out. She met and eventually married my widowed grandfather. My mom was 12 at the time.

Alice had four sisters. The youngest had a baby out of wedlock – a stigma back then. She needed to find a job to bring some income into the already struggling home. At the age of 13, my mother was chosen (conscripted) to look after the baby while she worked.

My mom said the basement of the home was ground level.  Even so, the small windows made it a dungeon atmosphere. Alice’s family lived there.  The upstairs consisted of the bedrooms rented out to the boarders. They were men from Poland, who spoke no English and also worked in the mines.

My mother admitted to not being the best babysitter. She hated being there and knew nothing about babies. To top off staying with the little one in what she described as a house Frankenstein would feel comfortable in, there was no indoor plumbing. They had an outhouse.

As dreary as it was, that home was lavish compared to the shack they occupied when Alice’s father was alive. He was an alcoholic.

One late night while staggering home, he was struck by a car and died. “Lucky for him”, my mom said, because “back then only the rich had cars”.  And the substantial settlement paid for their upgraded “luxury” dwelling.