{Letters from
Cass Dryovage to his granddaughter Sara Youngman - typed as closely as
possible to the handwritten letters, spelling intact]
April 22, 1976
Dear Sara,
....Next week I should make a beginning with my
earliest childhood recollections. I
don't think I was a likeable boy having an independent and a negative
disposition. For that reason
I was a loner, an introvert who never learned till later in life the
meaning of love and never missed it.
I remember Budapest Hungary when I was about five. We were in a beer garden built in a peach orchard and to this day I can be nostalgic from the smell of peaches. It was a modern city then in 1906 - five lane highway - tunnel under the Danube river - beautiful churches - nice apartment - (a half block square which had a beautiful court in the center). I remember near drowning in the Danube (my brother saved me) and eating white bread which was better than the coarse black bread we had in Poland. Those were my two years of luxury in Budapest.
-----------------------{Undated}------------------
Dear Sara,
The older I get the faster time flies.
Last week I began my childhood narration in a very strange way; in
a strange country of Hungary and speaking their language which I had long
ago forgotten with a few exceptions like an endearing phrase "Idesz
mom ednzunek kenied" which
means "sweetest mother give me some bread".
To make some sense and order to the story of my life
I must begin with what little I know of my father's father. He owned a small farm (in the partitioned part of Poland
occupied by Austria-Hungary) in the village of Kobytanka. My grandfather was accidentally killed by a cave-in while
digging a water well, leaving a widow and three children - Mary, Kate and
Peter. Mary was married long
enough to bear four children before losing her husband; Kate never married
for reasons religious; and my father Peter married and brought home a
beauty from the adjoining village of Zagorzany adding to the overcrowded
farmhouse of impoverished peasants attempting to eek out a living from
about 30 acres of land and three cows.
So Peter ventured out on foot across the Carpathian Mountains
in search of work. He found
one in Budapest as a laborer on a construction job.
In time he imported his family - wife Jadwiga - sons Frank and
Casimer - and a younger daughter who failed to survive some childhood
disease. All went well as I
described in my first letter, until his job expired and [he] failed to
find another. I can
sympathize with his frustrations, but I have mixed emotions when I think
of his drastic steps of abandoning a pregnant wife with two boys to
struggle with the harsh realities of life.
My heart goes out to her whenever I think of it.
Struggle she did by tackling a job as a mason tender until her
strength and condition failed her. She
managed somehow to get us back to Poland.
Her baby died at birth and she followed shortly after - having
contracted tuberculosis; tragic and sad but it's a fact of life that my
father did not share in, he was already working in Detroit at Scotton
Dillon Tobacco Factory at $1.50 a day trying to save up enough money for
his family to emigrate to America. He got his financing to travel to this land of opportunity by
selling his 1/3 share of estate in Poland which amounted to $90.00.
I was seven when my mother died. My brother Frank who was two years my senior made it to
America two years ahead of me. It
took my father that long to save enough money for the passage fare - ˝
fare under 12 years.
My last four years in Poland I lived with Grandma on my mother's side. It was four years of living a life of extreme poverty with Grandma who owned nothing but the clothes on her back. She boarded with a childless couple who must have been the poorest farmers of the Zagorzany. Grandma was truly a serf picking up an occasional job in the field to earn 35˘ per day.
{Undated}
Dear Sara,
In letter #2 I made a sketch of a poor man's cabin
Grandma and I shared. He and
his sickly wife owned about 10 acres of land, two cows and a few chickens
and unlike his wealthier neighbor, he had no horse - wagon - of form
equipment - aside from wheelbarrow, etc.
It was the ultimate of backwardness.
He was too poor to enclose the outdoor privy.
Two cows occupied half of the kitchen which had no wooden floor and
no ceiling. The floor was
hard packed clay. For heating
and cooking it had a raised area for an open wood fire under a tripod
covered with iron cooking kettle. Having
no chimney the smoke found its way up to the straw roof rafters and
finally found an exit out the side of the cabin - an 8" hole in the
wall about 6' above the ground level.
This was primitive living under unsanitary, unhealthy conditions
which I at that age did not realize.
I do recall my dislike for cows - they made such a mess and stench
in the kitchen - but it was not my job to wheel out the manure and dump it
over the outdoor manure pile and privy.
I don't remember being useful around this household except the
service I gave tot he cows during the grazing season.
It was my job to walk them to feed along the public roadway.
This poor farmer had no pasture land so I had to lead the cows tied
together on rope and restrict them from trespassing (these farmlands had
no fences) over neighbors' property.
[Cass
told the story of how, when walking barefoot in winter, he would jump from
one cow pie to another to keep his feet warm.]
I don't remember suffering from hunger or privations but
we all must have suffered the effects of malnutrition.
We ground our own breakfast on the hand mill I described.
It was like oatmeal; but the other meals were anything but
appetizing and far from nutritious, mostly potatoes in one kettle and
cabbage in the other placed in the middle of table without individual
settings except for the individual long wooden spoons for dipping food.
My heart goes out to Grandma when I think of her
helpless frustrations on seeing her scrawny and shivering grandson in want
of shoes and warm clothing. I'm
sure she did her best by me. I
remember her getting me a large cookie - in the shape of St. Nicholas -
one Christmas; and it was no easy job to keep me clean and free from lice.
It was easier in warm weather when we sat outside in the sun on the
clay curb of the cabin with my head in her lap and she combing thru my
hair with a fine tooth comb. She
kept me out of school in the winter time because I had no shoes. I don't remember any one else noticing on speaking to me
until word came from my father in America that I would soon be joining him
which mad me someone of importance - some one the neighbors could use as a
hopeful link to make their own emigration possible.
I remember being invited by the neighbors to play cards with their
boys and tripping sparrows, wringing their necks and boiling them for a
delicacy. It was something
new to be recognized!
In due time my father sent enough money for shoes,
long pants, coat and best and a tall cone shaped cap (fez) and money
enough for passage to my promised land of AMERYKA.
I must have looked like a young Turk; a rich one - I carried the
balance of money around my neck in a red draw-string bag which Grandma
made. She loaded me with a
large basketful of food - bread, cheese, tobacco, etc., for my father.
I was basking in my regalia and also in my importance in the eyes
of my newly acquired friends who wished me luck.
I must have looked sickly and needed luck because I still remember
the shaking of heads by the old timers and a one of them saying "he
will never make it". But
I did make it with some assistance to get as far as Bremen, Germany, by a
woman with two boys of her own who too was heading for Ameryka.
She abandoned me at the end of our train ride to Bremen.
From that point on I was on my own with my basket and a ticket
looped in my coat lapel designating my destination.
I boarded a ship named Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grasse, which accepted me
tagged as any other third class baggage - steerage - cheapest
accommodations.
The voyage was eventful enough to always
remember - an eleven year old orphan enjoying an unsupervised
freedom and adventure to roam throughout the whole steerage area,
encumbered only by a basket of food he carried around from place to place.
I wanted to be alone to enjoy my independence so I found my niche
in the protected prow of the ship where like a cat I would spend the nite
(a true introverted recluse). All
was fun till we hit the high seas of the Atlantic and faced a terrific
storm. The German sailors
chased me out of my niche and cussed me down into the hold below as I was
heaving everything that my stomach could part with.
Sick as I was I dragged myself to an empty 4 cot cabin, climbed the
top bunk ready to die. A day
or so later a sailor found me who sent for a nurse who did not disturb me
in my misery. All I remember
is tossing and tossing for days and
days until I heard much shouting and great commotion. I had strength enough to investigate and recognize the yells
of joyful immigrants, America! America!
I didn't know at the time that I was viewing the Statue of Liberty
and Ellis Island - New York's port of embarkation where I was detained for
2 weeks for insufficient funds to go any further.
(I must have been naive - or a poor manager of finances.)
My 2 weeks at Ellis Island was fun, good food and
good beds. Eventually Dad
scraped up enough cash to complete my train ride to Detroit.
They put another tag on me and literally shipped me off to Buffalo
where the train stopped long enough to view the Niagara Falls; being
ignorant I never got off to see it. Via
Canada I made it to the GARR station in Detroit safe and sound but far
from clean (I don't think I washed myself since I left Poland).
My father did not know me but Frank recognized me thru the dirt; I
must have been a funny looking Turk on that balmy evening in April of
1912, boarding a summer street car with a happy father and brother and
then tripping and spilling a bag full of oranges all over the car. Before reaching my new home on Addison Avenue near Junction
Avenue, I was getting initiated to the English language - joyfully and out
loud my brother was singing ”Rings on my fingers and bells on my
toes" and also "In the blue ridge mountains of Virginia".
Sorting thru my memories and emotion in my early time in Detroit from age 11 to 15 could be short story in itself which I may write about some time in the future or share with you in person... [he never did]
Grandpa Cass