Some 10 or more years ago I started pestering my parents to record for me some of their memories of when they were children. I was particularly interested in preserving anything that my mother, Rosa Barkanda Augustine, could remember about her life in what we always called “the old country,” Hungaria in her case. In 1977 she made me the following recording. There are a few little things in this narration that I remember differently from her stories when I was a child, and there may be things that my sister and brothers remember her telling differently, but this is the way that she recorded it. Except for moving one paragraph and putting brackets around one word that I am not sure about, this is a transcript of exactly what she recorded for me in 1977. Bear in mind while reading this that Mama refers to Elizabeth Keller, and Papa refers to Andrew Barkanji. These are my grandparents that I referred to as “Grandma and Grandpop down the country” when I was a child, The “Mama” signed at the end is Rosa Barkanda Augustine, my mother.
1977. Finally, for your birthday I am going to record the things I remember. Mostly I have total recall but we shall see how much I can remember 78 years back.
I remember my grandfather. He had a long white beard. This was Papa’s father, and Mama told me, we were living in Budapest at the time. Papa was a lime-burner and we lived right next door to the kilns. Because I remember there were the little windows all around the kilns and I liked to watch the fire burn. I could watch out of the window.
I do not remember any traffic, I remember playing with other children and walking to some railroad tracks to pick up pebbles to play with. Our railroad beds here in America are filled with bluestone, but in Hungaria where we lived, they were filled with pebbles. The farm fields were entirely free of stones.
I remember I used to run away and was always found at the railroad track gathering little stones to play with, I had never seen stones and I loved them.
I remember rocking a baby in a cradle. It must have been Julia because later on I remember we were living in the village of Mako where all Mama’s people lived, and Papa bundled me up late one night and took me to my grandmas, who lived only a few houses away. And next day I went home and a new baby was there. So this was Anna.
At this time Papa was a sheep herder. It was winter, and farming was over and he used to wear a great sheep coat and come home at night with long white icicles on his moustache. We were high in the Alps evidently on the border of Czechoslovakia and whatever it is now, Romania.
It was so cold, I remember walking to kindergarten on snow and just a narrow path through high banks of snow. At 4 years of age, I spoke German and Hungarian and everyone spoke several languages. We were peasants, farmed in the summer, wore long dresses and aprons always, even to church, very fancy ones, with a scarf tied under our chins, called bushkas, I think.
We went to church every Sunday and stopped at our grand-father's house, and every Sunday their house was full of the beautiful aroma of chicken soup. To this day, just to smell chicken soup takes me back to Grandma’s kitchen.
The houses in our village were on one level, entrance into the kitchen in the middle, living room to the right, sleeping room to the left, animal shed to the left of the sleeping room with its own entrance, but part of the same building. This was to help keep each other warm, the kitchen and the stable. The whole had a thatched roof covered with long corn stalks piled several thicknesses over all. It was an open fire to cook by, built-in oven in the living room. Storks really did build nests on the chimney, there was a screen or something over the chimney but eight inches up storks built on top of that.
I remember my grandfather’s yard, the well where water was pulled up in a bucket and all those pretty flowers in the summertime. No grassy lawns, just hard dirt that Mama used to keep swept clean. The whole thing was enclosed by a solid wall, high as I remember it, with a solid wood gate out to the front of the house.
Strange the things I recall, like the man who walked up the middle of the road shouting things, which I now know was the news. There were no newspapers.
My grandfather was a shoemaker. He measured feet and made shoes. From colored scraps he would make me a ball. The shoes in Hungaria that he made would go on either foot, no left or right foot, but either. That was one thing I had trouble with in America, I never could remember which shoe went on which foot, when I was little. Also I would sit on his bench with him, he gave me a pair of scissors to cut with. I would try to cut and always stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth and worked my jaws trying so hard to cut and he would scold me gently and tell me to keep my tongue in my mouth or I might bite it.
To me (my baby self) he was a tall very thin man. I remember Christmas only because of Kris Krindle, all dressed like Santa, used to come to each house and give little children candy. I even remember it was rock candy. It would last a long time and was so good. Papa would play the marimba and all would sing, and Papa would make the little wooden puppet dance, I do not remember presents, only fruit and nuts on the bare tree which everyone ate. I remember apple strudel Mama always made, also doughnuts, but only on special occasions.
Meals were one dish, goulash or soup prepared on an open fire on a platform about as high as a table, no chimney only an opening in the ceiling so the smoke would go out and up about 2 feet higher than the roof. on top of this was some sort of a grate because the storks built over this and when they fed their babies at hatching time it was not strange to have a frog drop down into the kitchen. The only reason I remember that is because Mama swept them out.
In Mako we lived in a settlement, and the farm lands were out a-ways. In nice weather we kids went along while grownups worked the fields. If it was too hot we stayed at home. The main meal was at noon, and children were not allowed at the table, we ate at a separate place. A bowl of milk with bread broken up in it for supper.
I remember the Christmas trees we had, no evergreens, just the small bare tree trimmed with nuts and apples and candy. Also Papa must have loved coffee. He made a jointed wooden doll and made it dance. Of the coffee, he talked of this all the time, and he talked of America constantly and knew when he got there he could drink coffee every day. He had been in the military ser-vice and talked of having fought the Turks, and he must have had coffee then. He did leave for America -- I cannot remember his leaving -- and sent us boat fare in 9 or 10 months.
Mama had us 3 little girls and was crippled from what we now know was polio. She was only 3 when she had polio. She only spoke German and Hungarian, but was coming on to America. Her father came part of the way, I have no idea how far. Then we were alone, Mama with 3 little girls.
When we got into Liverpool, England, and lived at the immigration center and were there a long time. Anna, our baby, was sick, she was put into the hospital at the center and I remember holding a bottle for her so she could drink milk. And about our food I remember only the horrible boiled beef and potatoes.
Mama was so clean about herself and we children and her surroundings. Her worst fears were that we would get lice. There were so many dirty people there, all waiting for a ship to America, I suppose. Papa knew where we were, but I remember no mail from him. Finally after a long time we were told we could go. We left the center on what now I know was a long street car full of people and I asked Mama if we were going all the way to Papa on it, and she said she wished that was so.
I had no idea what a ship was or what an ocean was, I had lived all my 4 years in the mountains, in the Tyrols and Black Forest section of Hungaria. Francis Joseph was our ruler and we were on the way to America. I suppose we were poor but I did not know that. Everyone I knew was just like us.
While we were at my Grandfather's waiting to come to America I remember playing with a ball and little round things which Mama made by rubbing them on the hard ground. Now I know it was what we called “jacks,” and the little round things were soft red brick Mama shaped so we could pick them up.
I remember many little girls and I used to take our geese out of the village to the green grass that grew in the summer time. Hungarian people eat geese at their celebrations. I remember Mama picking their feathers for large bed covers and pillows. And also I remember Mama sitting on the ground in the yard tucking the goose under her left arm and stuffing whole kernels of corn into their mouth to fatten them for the feast. Goose grease was used for everything, cooking and baking and rubbing on one’s chest to stop a cold or a cough.
I remember Papa taking all of us out to the fields while they worked the ground and planted. And I sat in the shade of some bushes with the two young girls. We ate our main meals in the middle of the day which Mama carried in a large basket. I don’t remember anything else except paprika chicken, also I never saw ice on or in any food. Papa used to make sauerkraut. Mama made pickled beets. They must have killed pigs but the only thing I remember about that are the delicious sausage and the barrels of meat between layers of salt. Also I remember Mama cooking pigs feet, a little sour tasting and thick aspic over them after they cooled. I remember baked bread, round and brown-ed and crusty as it could be, baked in a wall oven that was built right into the wall and could keep your back so nice and warm.
Mama had several sisters and brothers. I remember going to the dances with her to watch her brothers dance the czardas [Hung. csárdás] Such stomping and whirling and fiddling -- loud music you wouldn’t believe. Her brothers were handsome and tall. One blond, clean shaven, probably the younger, and the older one had black hair and a large black moustache. They really were handsome Hungarians. I remember going to get Papa somewhere in our village. He had a vice, he loved to play cards and never came home to eat, Mama would send me to get him, so it must have been very close. I used to stand at his elbow and pull at his sleeve. He must have been playing for money because I remember after I was older and in America he would not allow a deck of cards in our house.
Also they were a very superstitious people, they believed in all kinds of omens, also in werewolves and old folklore. They believed a person could assume the form of a wolf at will, especially Mama. She loved to tell us kids about people doing that in the old country. We would love to hear all this, At the same time, we would be scared out of our wits. I have retained some of this, I wouldn’t put on my left shoe first or walk under a ladder for anything. Also I am afraid to throw out leftover food, because I am afraid the Lord will punish me. Now I’m glad I have a dog because I can feed it to her and that don’t count, the dog has to eat too. I would walk on the same side of a post and never put shoes on a chair or a table or a bed, and I am afraid I have picked up some other things since then.
Anyway now we were on the ship, 3 little peasant girls and a peasant mother. Mama always bathed us and kept our clothes clean, washing them by hand in the wash room. I remember sitting with her in a large bare room on straight chairs. She was always sewing or darning. Its strange, but I have no recollection of sleeping. I do remember walking on the street with Mama and I think we went to the zoo once while we were in Liverpool, all I remember about that were the big turtles. Also by the time we left I could speak some English. We were there many months because there was nothing to do while waiting for Anna to get well. People liked to play word games with children so I learned words, knife, fork, shoe and apple.
A lady at the center had given Mama a basket full of food for her and her 3 little girls. Mama gave me some bread and all my life I have remembered how delicious that tasted, It was fresh baked bread with butter, and it was so good.
Then the ship must have left the dock on the high tide in the night, no more than they started out I got sick. I was so sick and this lasted for several days. I am sure we must have been on the ship a long time. I remember eating at long tables and Mama washing us in a room with water that came out of the pipes just like the ones at the center and wash basins fastened to the wall, Mama standing us up in the basins to wash us.
Then I remember climbing many ladders to what I now know was the deck. I remember watching the water standing at the edge of the ship and watching great large something in the water. I remember pulling Mama to the edge because I wanted her to see whatever it was and she told me it was a big fish. Also I remember a lady with 2 big children talking to us but she was always in a chair, never walked up the ladder with us and Mama told me -- and I knew -- that she was sick. I knew what sick was because Mama was sick sometimes. She used to have terrible headaches. Before many days the lady died. We were all up top when the man slid a wrapped large bundle into the water and Mama told me it was the sick lady who had died.
I have no idea how many days it took the ship to get to America. We came into Philadelphia and into Washington by train. Papa was working on Powell’s dairy farm, southeast of Congress Heights on the Maryland side right at the District Line. We lived on the farm in a real nice two story house. Mr. Powell had a large herd of milk cows but they had milking machines.
I was enrolled in a one room school in Oxon Hill, Maryland, 8 grades in one room. We sat 2 at a desk on a little bench. Water was on a bench in the back of the room in a bucket and a dipper on a nail. A large stove sat in the middle of the room and boys were in charge of keeping wood burning in cold weather to keep the room warm. Toilets were out back behind a wooden screen, 2 for the girls and 2 for the boys. Our teacher’s name was Miss Pyles and many Pyles still live in Oxon Hill. At first Papa used to drive me each morning in a pony cart and come get me, but soon I had friends and we all walked to and back.
My teacher was so good to me, I was a real novelty -- a foreign little girl in America from Hungaria. I remember the last day of school the whole school was to have picnic and my teacher made sure that I stayed and had something to eat. I have no idea what we ate, only remember the pickles and I loved them. I remember my grandma used to pickle beets and I love them to this day, but pickles I had never had.
Also I remember one winter after this, walking to school, my hands froze and I was so little and no gloves, and my teacher put my little hands into a pan of snow to thaw them and carefully wrapped them in a heavy towel for hours. You know, I never told Mama or Papa that my hands were cold many times. I am sure we children were loved but little things like gloves were never thought of.
In Hungaria every little child is vaccinated 3 times on each arm and all little girls had their ears pierced. To this day I still have a tiny silver earring that I wore for years.
When we landed in Philadelphia I have no recollection of spending time at a processing building, I guess we were so tired after being on the ship I just do not recall any of that. I do remember Papa getting us with the horse and carriage in the snow in Washington. We came in at 6th and Pennsylvania Avenue from Philadelphia by train.
I remember Grace was born about a year after we got here. I remember going to the country store with Mama and Mama would touch or point to what she wanted, and she would always buy coffee for Papa -- Arbuckle’s Coffee, and it was 5 cents a pound. I remember that because one little store was just across the road from our house and Mama would give me the coffee bag and a nickel and I would go get the coffee.
Papa worked on the farms. We always had a furnished house to live in, and we were given all the milk, eggs and wood we needed, and Papa was paid $30.00 a month. They saved every cent they could because Papa wanted a place of his own. Finally, after many years of saving Papa rented a farm of his own. Our life changed altogether. He had always worked for someone else and we had only our chores to do like saw all the wood we needed, work our vegetable garden, go to school, wash and dry dishes. Now we worked the farm. I loved Mama and Papa and especially my little sisters, but there was never any emotion shown. We were never hugged or kissed. We had plenty to eat and clothes to wear but were never, never shown any affection. Papa was boss, whatever he said was law to all of us.
If anyone said anything about any of them or did any small thing that I took for a belittling act I would never speak to them again.
There was a man and his wife, Americans, who lived up over the hill. Every once in a while they would walk down to our farm. One afternoon we were all in the packing shed washing and packing tomatoes for the market next day. Mrs. Kotch made a sign indicating that Mama was fat to her husband with a nasty smirk on her face and I saw it. From that day on I never spoke to them. Mr. Kotch told Papa I hadn’t spoken to them that afternoon when they came in and Papa asked me what was the matter, but I wouldn’t tell him. I never did tell him. Poor Mama was crippled and short and stout, but was a million times better than they were. Mama made many of our clothes but Papa used to take us to buy our coats and scarves for the cold weather and he always bought our shoes.
This was our way of life. We made our own fun, we played outdoors, I was the oldest so I had to do much of the work, cleaned the stable stalls, put clean straw down for the animals, fed them, took them to the wells for water. I never milked a cow, Mama always did that, but I churned butter. My school mates used to talk about parties for their birthdays and presents, but these things we never knew about. They used to ask me to come to the party but I knew I couldn’t go. I never mentioned this to Mama and Papa. We lived on the farm, no house in sight, and 3 walking miles to Congress Heights, and 5 or 6 miles around by road with the buggy.
After supper, with the dishes washed and put away, I used to read the paper to Papa. Mama learned to read but Papa could not read English so I would read the paper for him. Also I had to wash his feet every night. He wore a double truss and could not bend to reach his feet.
Mama washed our clothes on a scrub board in a tub and boiled them to get them clean in Fels Naptha soap. We always changed our clothes when we got home from school and put on working clothes. I was 12 years old before I ever tasted ice cream. We lived on Cook’s farm, and Iona Cook, the daughter, was my same age and her brother was in college, and he came for vacation and we met him at the end of the street car line in Congress Heights and he bought us each an ice cream cone.
We were never hungry. We had dresses to wear, 2 to work in and 1 navy blue skirt and 2 middy blouses for school. We children never had any money of our own. At school I had many girl friends. I was asked to their birthday parties but never went. I never even mentioned these invitations to Mama, just told the girls I couldn’t accept because we lived so far away. They all lived in Congress Heights, but that was not the reason. I accepted one invitation from my friend. I went with her to the zoo on Easter Sunday. I walked to Congress Heights to her house and when I got there she was ready to go. She was all dressed up, new dress, spring coat, new patent leather slippers, a new hat. That day I learned everyone in American got new clothes for Easter. I had on my navy skirt, my white middy blouse, the only coat I had, a brown winter one, shabby and worn and heavy high top shoes, I was so ashamed. My heart broke that day at the age of 14 that day when I went to the zoo but that was the only time I accepted an invitation.
This did something to me, I realized many years later that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I could not talk to anyone. I was afraid to be by myself. I did not want to go to school. I would go but my school marks went down. I had a very wise school teacher. She realized that something was troubling me and she made me her monitor, gave me her class to take charge of when she left the room. And I also passed out all papers and collected them for her. She said she couldn’t do it without me. In her class we did our exercise with dumbbells, she stood up in front of the class to lead them in the dumbbell routine and slowly I forgot about Easter Sunday.
When I was about 14 he finally got a farm. We walked 3 miles to school, up to Congress Heights. The school is still there -- incidentally -- 3 miles back, rain or shine, hot or cold, we walked. By now we were allowed to sit at the table to eat. In the old country children are not allowed to the table to eat with adults. At about age 10 children came to the table but had to stand while eating.
In Congress Heights School (by this time I was tall for my age) I took care of my sisters. Many children were nasty to us. We were Hunkies and wore home made clothes and not being used to any teasing were easy marks for nasty remarks. Also we had to cross a creek on our way home from school. There was a cable bridge over it, less than 3 feet wide, with a rope to hold on to. And my 3 little sisters were walking ahead of me, 3 or 4 boys made sure they got to the bridge first and would hide until my sisters were on the bridge and then jump out unto the bridge and jump up and down and the bridge would sway and swing and all would scream loud and clear, poor little girls scared out of their wits and I could hear them way up the road, and I’d fly, picking up rocks all the way. Of course the boys would leave as soon as they saw me, but I had rocks flying after them and threatened to kill them. But if I had to help after school they would walk ahead and many times I rescued the girls.
Julia was the scared one, also she shrieked the loudest. She could out cuss any of us. But Anna was so little and mad as a wet hen. She was not a scary kid. As we grew older all of them had to help pick tomatoes and beans. Anna used to cuss every bean she picked. Grace never cussed but she never worked much either. Julia cussed everything and everybody.
The next fall I went to school in Anacostia with many new children, the same clothes and I still had to walk, which we all did. Streetcar fare from Congress Heights to Anacostia was 5 cents which none of us had. We really didn’t mind. We’d walk in groups, hurrying in the A.M. but slowed down at 3:00 P,M. because it was up hill, and we had fun though laughing and joking, and that terrible hill, it’s still there. It was Nicholas Avenue then from Anacostia to Congress Heights but now to my poor bones it seems much higher and larger and longer. Now it is called the Martin Luther King Avenue.
I was 11 years old when Papa met a Hungarian shoemaker who lived in Congress Heights. He sent his oldest son to stay with us to help Papa on Cook’s farm with the work. We had 3 bedrooms and Papa said the boy’s father could not control his boys, they were so bad. He had hopes that if he [boarded) them for the summer maybe by the time school started the boys would have learned something better than getting into all kinds of trouble in the City. The two boys had been put out of every school they attended. The boy ate with us and helped us some I guess and slept in the third bedroom. We girls didn't even know his name but Papa told us to stay away from him. Anyway he was 15 years old. I don't remember ever even talking to him and he only stayed from the middle of June until about the middle of July. I guess he didn’t like farm work and 4 stupid little girls. He had nothing to do. Papa told us that he had gone into the Navy and was somewhere on a ship. I didn’t lay eyes on him for 4 years.
Now I was 15, 5 foot, 6 inches tall, weighed about 100 pounds, beautiful long blonde curls down to my waist. His sister was friends with us girls and used to visit and we would visit their house. That’s where I saw her brother again. His navy time was over, he didn’t have a job yet. I didn’t remember him, he sure didn’t remember me. I couldn’t stand him. I had graduated from the 8th grade and was in high school and I was so shy and quiet. Also I had a boy friend -- or a beau. He was a year ahead of me in high school, but used to walk me home and carry my books and I adored him. He didn’t stay in school but went to work at the steel plant in Congress Heights after 2 years in high school. Papa made me stop so I could help him on the farm that he had rented himself.
Up to this time he had worked for someone else. Now he had a truck farm, 2 mules, 2 horses, a cow, pigs and chickens and he raised every vegetable plus corn and hay for the animals. All of us worked from sun up to dark. And, we had a colored man to help in the summer with the heavy work. My boy friend walked me home for 2 years and we never even held hands, he lost one of his eyes at the steel plant. After he went to work and I quit school I only saw him once in a great while.
Papa bought a small dark brown mare at some old auction and I used to go to the grocery store in Congress Heights. Some times I rode her and some times I harnessed her to the buggy, depending on how many things Mama needed. I also drove her harnessed to a small wagon to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the Insane up in Congress Heights with 4 barrels in the open wagon to get the swill for our hogs. Anyway my beau and I grew apart when he was in the hospital. I did go see him but I was so shy, on a Sunday afternoon, with downcast eyes I said Hello, and he reached for my hand, but I only let him have it for a minute. Several of his boy friends were there so we didn’t talk much. He had lost an eye in the accident. So we painlessly drifted apart and I settled in to farm work. No friends, only each other. In our house there was never a verbal assurance of love, we never got birthday presents or cake or anything, just work, eat and sleep. We were never sick except occasionally a sore throat or a headache.
Into this lonely existence came this shoemaker's oldest son again. He had been a Western Union messenger for a while. His younger brother was in the Navy. His father sent him to us because he couldn’t find or did not want a job, and he didn’t know a thing about the work on the farm. I was 17 now and I had seen him quite often in the couple years he had been home. Everyone called him Johnny, I didn’t call him anything. I really had no feeling about him at all. We all used to play catch and pitch horseshoes and he talked about his ship and shipmates. I talked about my little horse. He had bought a horse for himself, and we went riding several times.
I was a child, a girl child, but I worked like a man. After a 12 inch log was sawed stove length I could split it with one blow. 3 or 4 inch limbs I could cut stove length with no effort. I could help lift a barrel of potatoes up on a wagon, all afternoon. No man ever worked harder. As far as I know there was no child labor law 60 years ago. I was solid muscle and 118 pounds, calluses as big as dimes on each palm.
I really didn’t have much time for him. I worked like a man, helped lift heavy crates of tomatoes, potatoes, and cabbage up on the wagon body. Slept from 9 to midnight, got up, and dressed, helped harness the double team and drove to the produce market, helped unload the wagon and stayed there all day on Market Day, got home about 3:30 or so, went to bed and was wakened to eat in about 3 hours, came to the table with my eyes open but I assure you I was asleep and went right back to bed and fell into a deep sleep until sunup. I weighed a hundred pounds and was solid muscle. I was always glad when school started so I could rest. I drove the 2 seated surrey to church every Sunday, not because we liked going to church but so glad to get away from the farm.
I will go back to our coming to America, I have some things here that I remember that I forgot to put in. When we came in to Philadelphia and then took a train to Washington -- as I said the station was at 6th and Pennsylvania Avenue, N,W, at that time and Papa came to pick us up with a 2-horse carriage, and it was glass enclosed, and it was snowing hard, and it was December 4, 1903. And it was just, some time the first part of December that Mrs. Powell, the wife of the man that owned the dairy farm, some-how or other talked mama and Papa into letting them trim us a Christmas tree and buy us presents. Now there were 3 little girls, and they came down in the night after we were asleep on Christmas Eve. They trimmed a tree and they brought us each a bisque-headed doll that opened and closed its eyes. They bought us cook stoves and other things, bean bags, and balls and just everything that a little girl would want. And they came and watched us in the morning. We got up, they were there, and they watched us to see what we would do with our beautiful toys, and our beautiful Christmas tree.
Also we had never seen black people. The very first ones were here on the dairy farm. The black children did not go to school with us. Some farm hands were black and we were a little afraid of them. Mama and Papa never gave us any Christmas presents and we seldom had a tree, only after I got to be 12 years old going to school did I find out about trees for Christmas, and I used to trim and fix a tree up for the children.
Now back to the shoemaker’s son. In 1915 girls wore riding skirts, not jodhpurs. Our skirts were ankle length or longer. If you showed anything above your ankles you were not a nice girl.
We started going around to the movies and to church. We built a dam across the creek and made a swimming hole. My three sisters were always with us except if we went horse back riding or in the evening, sometime after supper they went to bed and we sat outside on the porch steps.
I never knew I was pretty. No one had ever told me and there was so much work to be done to allow a girl to think that she was pretty. It was many years later after I had been married long enough to have 4 children before anyone told me that I was pretty, and that was my husband’s Aunt Louisa. I looked into a mirror for a long time when I was alone after she told me that. I tried to see what she saw. I had always cared well for my hair. This was my only vanity, it turned darker each time I had a baby and I kept neat and clean, but I was still quiet and shy. My neighbors thought I was a snob. I spoke to my priest about this and he was so kind and told me just to be myself, not to worry about what people thought, that perhaps they were jealous of my babies, my beauty and my youth. For the second time I looked long into the mirror. I was 5 foot 6" weighed 118 pounds but I could not see anything else.
On September 29, 1915, we were married. Now as I think back over our 60 years of marriage to this same young man I married so long ago, with 4 precious children, 14 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren, I know we have been happy. I’ve always been a happy go-lucky person but I would not presume to have anyone think it all has been a bed of roses. For 60 years my husband has been first in my mind. Everything I’ve done I’ve done for him, but he has been a hard man to live with.
There are many, many things that I remember that I wish I could forget because they make me sad. We have made a complete circle, we started out just the two of us. After 30 years, after rearing 4 children, we are back to just the 2 of us. I feel tears burn when I remember the poor little peasant child who worked like a slave and then jumped into marriage that she was not ready for, didn’t even know the meaning of the words that were put into her mouth.
Honey, this is only a partial of the complete notes that I have. I should have numbered the pages when I was writing, which I failed to do, consequently they need to be reedited, maybe some day I will get around to it. Having been sick since last June I really do not feel like myself, but Happy Birthday to you and many, many more.
Love, Mama
March 13, 1977
My name is Rosa Barkanda Augustine, born in Budapest, Hungaria, May 4, 1898.
Note: All of the place names in Maryland are near Washington, D.C.
One thing that I remember differently that I think is worth noting is the business of the vaccinations, As I remember, Mama had 4 vaccinations on one arm and 5 on the other, She told us that every border that they crossed on their way to America they were given a vaccination, even though the one that was given them at the last border was still not healed. As a consequence of this the youngest girl, Anna, was very sick with small pox when they reached Liverpool, England.
