The Pribish Boys Go To War

It is difficult to imagine the scope of World War Two.  The war that began nearly eighty years ago enveloped millions and spread misery across the entire Earth.  No family was left untouched as sons and fathers, uncles and cousins were called into the service.  Two of my family members who found themselves in this maelstrom of terror were my father and uncle, Stafan and John Pribish.

PCF John Pribish

My uncle John Pribish, referred in my novels as Vanya, immigrated to the United States in 1933.  He obtained his citizenship in 1940 and was shortly afterwards drafted in early 1941.  While his term of service was to be only one year, declaration of war in December of 1941 changed that.

John as a Tommy gunner in the ETO

John was stationed stateside until 1944 when he participated in the Normandy invasion.  As a lineman, his mission was repairing communication lines cut by the enemy.  It was a job without much chance for longevity.  He received several combat decorations while battling across Europe and remained there as part of the Allied occupation forces until 1948.  John returned to Rockdale with a war-bride and started his career with Caterpillar.

Seaman Stefan Pribish

Stefan quit barbering when the war broke out and found employment at a defense plant, thus ensuring him a deferment.  With a one year-old son and a daughter on the way, he could have ridden out the war at home, but instead joined the Navy at the age of 31.

Sefan during shore duty on Kwajalien

After boot camp he was assigned to the cruiser USS Chester as a ship's barber and gunner's mate.  Stefan saw action in the Sought Pacific and the bombardment of Iwo Jima, where he claimed his gun crew was responsible for downing several Japanese aircraft.  Stefan was discharged in 1946 and returned to Rockdale to resume barbering.

USS Chester

Fourth of July

Celebrating our independence from Great Briton with fireworks has been an annual American tradition since 1777.  I used a July Fourth event from a century ago to illustrate the growing fear of foreigners.  Just as today, dire predictions of terrorist activity were projected by the government and like most warnings, nothing occurred.

Celebrating the Fourth of July

* * *

The Independence Day explosions came as predicted but not as the American Protective League anticipated.  Massey did not understand America's fascination with firecrackers, aerial bombs or any other device that shattered his midsummer's peace.  It seemed every schoolboy and yahoo with a few pennies wreaked havoc upon Rockdale.  Whether launching wizz-bangs at neighbors, sending pinwheels dancing down the streets or tying strings of ladyfingers to a mangy cat's tail, there was no end to the mischief the holiday evoked.  Thankfully for Massey and the rest of the Russians, none of the perpetrators of the July detonations were Bolsheviks.  Attorney General Palmer's dire warnings of violence on the Fourth passed without incident.  However, the same could not be said several weeks later.

* * *

The anticipated explosions did occur in early August. They were not from terrorist bombs, but rather from a volatile mixing of races.

Climate Change

A century ago, world concern dwelt on many of the same topics that trouble us today.  War, immigration and terrorism were splashed across yesterday's newspapers. While climate change worries were not as widespread as today, there was ampprehension.  Following the hostilities in 1918, the world suffered through the coldest winters on record and my characters in Siberia felt the effects.

Ohio weather follows no pattern

I introduced the subject of climate change in the first half of my novel Slogans: Our Children Our Future.  Just like the present, my characters offered diverse and conflicting theories on the cause of the sudden dip in temperatures.  I tried not to take a stand on the cause of climatic fluctuation, but offered several scenarios that people of that period may have put forward, sometimes in a humorous manner.

The Ohio River near Paducah, Kentucky - 1918

The Old Believer Theory

Simon Petr, leader of the Old Believers, placed the blame for weather conditions squarely on the shoulders of the village's Polish Catholics.

* * *

It was the coldest February in memory.  During the day tree limbs burst like rifle shots and at night the stars whispered their deadly song.  Simon Petr greeted the phenomena by again donning sackcloth and parading through Unkurda announcing yet another sign of End Time. He attributed the temperature's plunge to divine wrath.  “Tis,” he proclaimed in a deep, Biblical tone, “more of God's displeasure with the unbelievers' Christmas Tide and the daily blasphemy of the Catholics.” 

* * * 

The Ohio River frozen over - 1918

The Orthodox Theory

The followers of the Orthodox religion blamed the cold on Red and White atrocities.

* * *

The Orthodox believed the reasons for God's punishment were legion.  The Tsar and his family, “may God have mercy on their souls,” had been slaughtered, churches defiled, uncountable innocent men hanged, women outraged and children starved.

* * *

Armored Czech Legion Train - 1918

The Catholic Theory

Unlike the other religions, the Catholics did not single out one group, but laid the blame at the feet of mankind.

* * *

Even the Catholics agreed the cold was God's doing, though they did not point an accusing finger.  The depths of man's sins they said, were vast beyond forgiveness.  However, instead of sending down fire and brimstone like He had on Sodom and Gomorrah, The Almighty was sending down ice and snow.  

* * *

 

The Front

The Freethinkers

Those who chose reason over religion found the source of their misery in scientific facts.

* * *

“God's wrath?  Ridiculous,” the freethinkers of the village responded.  “We may as well wear animal hides and sacrifice virgins like our prehistoric ancestors.  True, man is responsible for the horrid weather but not by sinning.”  Their explanation was scientific.  It was the war.  The smoke and dust from tens of thousands of cannons and uncounted burning farms, villages and cities had clouded the sky and was shielding the sun's warmth.

* * *

I couldn't find a suitable climate change cartoon online, so I created my own.

Original by Me

Rockdale, Illinois

My trilogy, Ikons, Banners and Slogans, weaves together the tale of two villages; Hutava, Belarus, and Rockdale, Illinois.  In my previous posts I provided background stories of Hutava.  In this post, Rockdale, Illinois takes center stage.

Nestled along the banks of the Des Plaines and abutting the city of the city of Joliet to its east, lies the village of Rockdale.  In the early 1900's it was a small mill town that owed its existence to several industries including the United States Steel's Wire Mill.

Map of early Rockdale

The Wire Mill

My main character, Massey Pribish, was one of the thousands of Eastern European immigrants drawn to the labor intensive factories dotting the northwestern Illinois landscape and and one of the hundreds that gave Rockdale its Slavic flavor.  His story in Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, is told through the heat and glow of molten steel of the wire mill.  Six days a week Massey trudged to this basilica of modern technology as its smokestack loomed over him like a modern Colossus of Rhodes.  Ten hours a day he labored in that hell driven by a single goal -- bring his wife and sons to America.

Rockdale Wire Mill - 1910

The Old House on Fisher Avenue

Massey, as did most immigrant men, lived in the cramped quarters of rooming houses clustered around on Moen and Otis Avenues.  It wasn't until the late 1920's that Massey saved enough to purchase a multi-family house on Fisher Avenue.  The basement's dank confines is where each of my novels began.

Massey Pribish's home on Fisher Avenue in Rockdale.

This picture clearly shows the style of homes of early Rockdale.  Note the stone foundation supporting the first floor.  Rockdale's limestone substrata made raised basements a necessity.

The Rockdale Streetcar

In Ikons, the long-gone Rockdale streetcar played an important role gliding along its single track from the village to the city.  I was fortunate to work with the nephew of the car's conductor.  He introduced me to the intricacies of the trolley operation and thus put a human touch on this rather mundane mode of transportation.

The Rockdale Streetcar

Rockdale Taverns

I would be remiss if I left out another of Rockdale's bustling industries--taverns.

Typical tavern in early 1900

I'm not sure how many bars and taverns existed in Massey's period, but during mine in the 40's and 50's Rockdale sported nearly forty, one for every twenty-five residents.  It was from these free-flowing taps I populated Massey's world.  Since my father partook of Rockdale's establishments of relaxation, I experienced the Jockey Club, Brosman's, Eniche's, Schmik's, and the 400 Club.  But the place that impressed me the most was Bill's Tavern.  Bill's was owned and operated by the Tallman family and young Buddy Tallman was my grade-school best friend.  It was my memories of Bill's that supplied the inspiration for Tallman's Tavern, my character's favorite watering hole.

Instead of William Tallman, I created the proprietor Wilhelm Tallman, a German veteran of the American Civil war.  Old Wihelm's past allowed me to decorate his bar as I recalled Bill's back in my day.  I furnished it with racks of civil war rifles, photos of old Union regiments and batteries, and bearded generals.  But the one imposing item I still vividly recall and would never forget was the barroom's lithograph of Custer's Last Fight.

While not historically accurate, the lithograph was spellbinding

To our gang of eager eight-year old boys, this battle scene depiction was the source of many arguments and reenactments.  I was naively optimistic that the horde of riders on the right were reinforcements coming to rescue Custer.  No one else agreed. But what I could never have imagined was that sixty years in the future, this image would still fire my mind and find itself in my first novel, Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker.

Help From the Beyond

Some authors believe their works are a singular accomplishment; their work the result of sitting alone at the word processor and turning glorious thoughts into prose. They are convinced they and no one else should get credit for the finished novel. I was one of those authors and I was wrong. My story is a collaboration of too many to count or even remember. There are those I know helped me out, but others who are lost in time provided those seeds that grew into sentences, paragraphs and chapters.

In addition to those people who helped, I received aid from other sources. Some may even say, help from beyond. I believe my constant attention to my dead relatives opened a portal between their existence and mine. Bare with me here. There were several incidents that cannot be explained by coincidence. Such as information I obtained concerning Massey's second trip to America.

During my original research for Ikons, I found Massey’s citizenship application where he claimed the ship he came to America on was called the SS Ventura. I found a book in the Dayton library listing steamships and their history. It turned out the Ventura was a lumber boat hauling wood between Yokohama, Japan and Spokane, Washington. This caused me to wonder, what the heck was a Russian immigrant doing a lumber boat?
I also noted that Massey’s date of crossing was very close to the date of the Titanic sinking, 14 April 1912. I figured I could add the Titanic sinking to my story by placing the Ventura in the shipping lane and have it look for survivors. So I dug into the library’s basement and looked for old volumes about the Titanic. I wanted to get a book from that time period so I could write about the sinking using the language of the period.

I found a book on shipwrecks, took it home and started reading about the Titanic.  For some reason, I set the open book down on the kitchen table and went to get a drink of water.  While getting my water, the pages of the book started turning.  I stood there and watched the pages flip until they stopped.  The hair on my arms rose (really) as I walked over to the table and looked at the section where the pages stopped.

The chapter read, “Disaster on Immigrant Ship.”  The story told of a ship called the SS Volturno, which caught fire and sank in the Atlantic in 1913 killing over 136 people.  The story said the Volturno was an immigrant ship running between Rotterdam and Halifax.  Massey’s papers said he came in through Halifax.

I wrote to the Port of Halifax and asked if it was possible Massey came in the Volturno in April of 1912.  A month later I got a package from Canada verifying Massey had indeed landed there.  They sent me a copy of the ships original manifest listing Massey and a few other Russians on board.  It said it was his second trip to America and was headed to Rockdale, Illinois.

SS Volturno

For the longest time I thought it was Massey helping me out from beyond the grave.  But the more I thought about and remembering my father telling me Akulina had the “gift,” I decided it was she assisting the grandson she had never met.  There may be more logical explanations, but I prefer this one.