Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (15 page)

Michal asked for the loan. As it turned out, Uncle Joe was happy to oblige. “Finally!” Jozef began to breathe more freely as he and his father hoisted their few pieces of furniture into their new home. “Something is going right for a change!” he thought.

But within two months, Michal and Marjanna reconciled yet again, and the entire stepfamily moved into the house with Michal and Jozef at 3875 Sobieski Street. That meant seven people in the even smaller, one-bedroom house. As soon as Josephine turned 15 a short while later, she fled for good to work as a domestic servant, leaving six people in the house.

Michal and Marjanna took the bedroom and shared it with their baby. The parents consigned the three remaining children to the attic, partitioning it with a cardboard wall. Jenny slept in a small bed on one side of the cardboard. Ted and Jozef slept together in a small bed on the other side of the cardboard.

Many nights, Jozef cried in the bed. Ted was sleeping next to him, facing the other direction.

“
Do you miss your mom?” Ted asked.

“
Yes,” Jozef held the pillow against his cheek.

“
I miss my dad, too,” said Ted. “I hope he’s okay.”

Jozef would’ve felt supremely lonely in that overcrowded house if it weren’t for Ted. He was the same age. He was the “playmate.” But the deepest bond between the two boys was a bond that neither of them wanted. “I had someone who was being sacrificed the same way I was,” said Jozef.

The family lived on oatmeal, farina powder, cabbage soup, and day-old bread from the bakery. Jozef never ate pancakes or golabkis like his mother used to make in Poland. Even milk, which had been so plentiful among the dairy cows of Deszkowice, became a luxury. Jozef envied the neighborhood kids who could drink a glass of milk for the simple, sheer pleasure of drinking a glass of milk. Jozef could no longer be so profligate. He was allowed to use milk only to supplement his oatmeal or farina powder in the morning.

“
Had I known,” said Jozef, “I never would’ve left Poland.”

His family was “unpopular,” he said, among the other Polish immigrant families who belonged to Our Lady Queen of Apostles Catholic parish. The other families were stable families. “They looked down upon divorced people. We were outcasts, because we came from two families.”

He didn’t experience anti-Catholicism in Detroit. If anything, the people in the heavily Catholic, inner-city, immigrant ghetto ostracized him for not being Catholic enough. He accepted the shame. He didn’t resent those who looked down upon him. In fact, he agreed with them wholeheartedly that his family
was
shameful, and his foremost wish was that his family could be like theirs. As far as he could tell, the other fathers and mothers in his parish were much happier and healthier than his father and stepmother.

“
I learned that following my faith was not just the idealistic thing to do,” said Jozef. “It was the practical thing to do.”

He attended three schools in his first three years in America. In the fifth grade, the bilingual Polish nuns at Our Lady Queen of Apostles Elementary School helped him learn the rudiments of English. In the sixth grade at White Elementary School, the kids teased him, calling him “Polack” or “Polski Joe.” In the seventh grade at Cleveland Intermediate School, he began to catch on to English and to catch up with the other kids. At home, he studied on the top step of the stairway, because the light bulb in the attic illuminated only that step.

He began to find his own way. At Cleveland Intermediate School, his classmates voted for him to receive the class citizenship award, earning him a two-week summer camping trip sponsored by the American Legion.

“
Would you believe it?” he exulted to his father. “These Americans, they voted for me as best citizen! And that means I can go camping this summer!”

Michal was unmoved. “We can’t afford the shoes and clothes you need for camping.”

So Jozef didn’t go.

Instead, he went to work at the age of 14 selling the
Detroit Free-Press
on street corners from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. He earned a penny for each paper that he sold for three cents. When he turned 15 in January 1939, the paper promoted him to a busy intersection near a theater where he worked until 11 p.m. He increased his average earnings from 20 cents a night to a dollar a night.

Another child was born at 3875 Sobieski Street in March 1939. The baby boy shared the bedroom with his older sister and their parents.

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland from three sides: from Germany in the west, from East Prussia in the north, and from near the Slovakian border in the south. The invasion ignited World War II.

By September 14, Warsaw was surrounded. Three days later, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, but they didn’t challenge the Germans. They simply waited at the neat demarcation line along the rivers Bug and San in eastern Poland as the Germans crushed the Polish resistance. A Fourth Partition of Poland was taking place. The Germans and the Russians had secretly agreed to carve up Poland once again.

Warsaw surrendered on September 28.

“
You see,” Michal wagged his right finger at Jozef, holding the
Detroit Free-Press
in his left hand. “By bringing you to this country, I saved you from the Nazis.”

A third baby was on its way to 3875 Sobieski Street in January 1941. That would mean eight people—Jozef, his father, his stepmother, his two stepsiblings, and his three half-siblings—all living in the one-bedroom house. At about this time, according to Jozef, his sympathetic stepbrother, Ted, started “keeping company with the wrong crowd, drinking, and getting into trouble.”

Jozef couldn’t take it anymore. This was not why he had come to America. He decided to get the hell out of the house as soon as possible. He didn’t hold his father responsible for the misery of the household, but Jozef could no longer live there.

He needed to be at least 17 to join the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)—that New Deal incubator of environmental conservation, community service, citizenship, and employment opportunity. At last, on January 22, 1941, he celebrated his 17th birthday and vowed to strike a new deal of his own.

Seven days later, he enlisted in the CCC. He dropped out of the tenth grade and reported for duty at Camp Evelyn in the Hiawatha National Forest on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The immigrant kid who’d won the class citizenship award made it to camp in his own way after all.

Camp Evelyn was a little city of teenage boys in the middle of the forest. The camp had a library, a wood shop, a radio station, a hospital, an orchestra, a store, a mess hall, and a recreation hall—all managed and maintained by the teenage crews when they weren’t working in the forest six days a week. For Jozef, Camp Evelyn signaled an entirely new beginning.

The bugle sounded at 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday. By 8:10 a.m., the recruits had to be in formation and ready to board their work trucks. Anyone late was marked “absent without leave,” did not get paid for the day, and had to peel potatoes for dinner.

The 200 recruits slept 50 beds per barrack. Each day, U.S. Army lieutenants inspected the beds and footlockers to make sure each one was neat and organized.

“
Now
this
is how things should run,” Jozef gazed in awe. The CCC had liberated him from the chaos of Sobieski Street. He relished the order and discipline.

He also earned $30 a month. “That’s $9 a month more than a private earns in the U.S. Army!” the army lieutenants made that perfectly clear.

Jozef and the other boys planted and pruned trees, constructed dirt roads, and fought forest fires under the dual guidance of army and forestry personnel. The boys learned that the wealth of a nation depends upon the conservation of its natural resources.

When Jozef and his unit narrowly prevented a forest fire from burning down a liquor store in the village of Wetmore, about three miles west of Camp Evelyn, the store owner was so grateful that he loaded up the teenagers with bottles of booze to take back to camp. Jozef enjoyed the congratulatory booze, but he was even more impressed with another beverage that was readily available at every meal.

“
We had milk!” he sighed. Morning, noon, and night, he took his time savoring a full glass of pure, creamy, silken milk. Maybe even two glasses. “It was the first time since coming to America that I ever had it so good!”

A photograph of Jozef in his work clothes in front of a CCC truck at Camp Evelyn in April 1941, just two months after his arrival, shows a boy uncommonly serious for his 17 years. He dips his head, furrows his brows, and folds his arms in front of him, as if shielding himself from dangers. The sun shines on his face, which can explain the dipped head, but the sun cannot explain the deep worry line that runs down the middle of the youthful forehead. His mouth unbending, Jozef looks disturbingly guarded for his age. He leans back against the front of the truck, as if drawing from its strength.

Each recruit enlisted for a six-month term. Near the end of Jozef’s term in June 1941, an army lieutenant performed his daily routine of inspecting the barracks. He sized up Jozef. Shoes polished. Shirt ironed. Bed made with crisp military corners. The lieutenant needed to promote an experienced corpsman for the next six-month term.

“
Would you like to be the canteen steward, recruit?” the lieutenant asked Jozef.

“
Yes, SIR!” Jozef jumped at the opportunity. The canteen steward had a premium job. He managed the Camp Exchange, which sold everything from toiletries to batteries, and he maintained the adjacent recreation hall, the most popular place at camp.

“
You’ll be responsible for inventories and receipts,” the lieutenant ordered.

“
But I have no experience,” Jozef admitted.

“
I’ll teach you!” the lieutenant commanded.

Jozef couldn’t believe his good fortune. Being the canteen steward meant that he would spend the next six months controlling the inventory of the camp store, establishing the retail value of each item on the shelves, auditing the sales, translating performance into dollars and cents, and calculating any “shrinkage” to ascertain exactly how much had been broken or stolen. It astounded Jozef that a U.S. Army lieutenant would offer to teach such a powerful job to someone who was still struggling with the English language.

The job came with remarkable benefits. Jozef got a 33 percent raise, from $30 a month to $40 a month. Better yet, he was in charge of managing not only the candy, tobacco, stamps, toiletries, and batteries but also the Ping-Pong tables, a pool table, and a snooker table. “That’s where I learned to play!” Best of all, the canteen steward had his own bedroom adjoining the canteen. “Ooh! It was great! That was the happiest part of my life in the U.S. up to that point!”

Another photograph of Jozef, this one taken during his second term, shows a different kind of young man. He stands in front of an immaculate barrack and wears his formal CCC uniform, with his tie tucked into his shirt beneath the second button. He stands perfectly upright, with his arms relaxed at his sides. At ease. Confident. Proud. Outgoing. The sun once again shines on his face, but he holds his head high regardless. He boldly exposes his smooth forehead to the elements. He smiles contentedly. He appears to have gained a few pounds. He has grown from fearful to grateful.

During the final month of his second term, Jozef was hanging out in the camp canteen with the other guys from his unit. It was a Sunday, their day off, when they heard the news over the portable radio on December 7, 1941: The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Jozef knew then that the United States was at war not just with the Germans but also with the Japanese. He also knew right then that he’d be fighting in the war one way or another.

He turned 18 the following month, in January 1942, and found a job as a stock clerk at Murray Corporation of America, a defense-related offshoot of a Detroit automobile plant. He rented a room, opened a bank account, and saved his money. He worked for eight months, but the work was unfulfilling. He didn’t think he was doing anything really worthwhile for the national effort.

“
I decided to enlist in the Marines,” he said, “because that way I knew I’d be doing the most I could. I’d be sacrificing the most.” He knew the Marines fought at the heart of the battle. He knew he’d be fighting not only for the United States but also indirectly for Poland in its fight against Germany. He didn’t know if he’d be fighting in Europe or in the Pacific. But by helping his adopted country in either overseas theater, he knew he’d be helping his native country as well.

He also knew that he would undeniably earn his U.S. citizenship by fighting in the war. It was extremely important for Jozef to
earn
his citizenship. Legally, he didn’t need to go to war to gain his citizenship. In fact, he already had his citizenship. On September 24, 1940, the fifth anniversary of his arrival in the United States, Jozef had qualified for “derivative” citizenship by virtue of the fact that his father had been a U.S. citizen when he brought Jozef to America in 1935. But Jozef didn’t want to derive his citizenship from his father. He wanted to qualify for it on his own merits. He wanted his citizenship to be “naturalized,” not “derivative.”

“
I felt that U.S. citizenship was a treasure,” Jozef explained. He wanted to belong to that good and strong country that could protect itself from nefarious countries like Germany and Japan. “I wanted to become an American in the fullest and truest sense of the word.” As an immigrant, he had been made to feel like an outsider, an alien, “the Polack,” or “Polski Joe.” He wanted to be an insider. He wanted to shed the feeling of inferiority that he had experienced in school. He wanted to feel just as worthy and deserving of being an American as anybody else.