Grondo & to Ellis Island (a short, two part story; 1916)

Grodno
[Part Two: to “From the Baltic”/the Milk Bottle and the Taylor—1901]




He did not know it was a restaurant at first, he was only ten-years old, it was 1901, and his father had taken him to Grodno, a small town close to the boarder of Poland in Russia. But he’d not forget that day, walking through those doors the first time, and his father outwardly being known by all the patrons there, all saying:
“Hi, Mr. Siluk, how’s it going?” just nice old fashion greetings, that’s all it was, but they made for lasting memories. It was his first trip to Grodno, as I mentioned prior, and of course, his first time in the restaurant he was now standing in.
Most of the folks in the restaurant were having soup, a few with a bottle of vodka hidden under their coats, pouring it into their coffee. Mostly they were older men, a few business types, no children; Anatolee (also known as Tony or Anton) was the only child he could see in the place. His Papa pulled out a cigar, and like a few of the others in the eatery, lit it, and helped to fill the restaurant up with smoke. The tables had very solid looking wood to them—hard oak, but his papa didn’t sit at the table, he pulled out a stool for himself and one for Tony, and Tony imitated his father as they both sat down, he putting his elbows on the long stretched out wooden bar like counter.
“Milk and pie for the kid,” Tony’s father told the person behind the bar (in Russian), as the barkeep told the waitress down a ways from the bar, “And for me, just coffee with a shot of vodka on the side, that’ll do.”
Tony noticed the waitress pull the milk from under the counter out, it was warm milk in a bottle; it was how they drank it normally. Then she took the top off and poured it into a glass, and cut the pie in sections, giving him no more or no less than the other pieces, pulling out a fork, and then delivered it to the barkeep, and onto the boy. The boy’s father had already gotten his coffee and vodka.
All of a sudden approached a short fat little man, half bald, cigar in his mouth, “So this is the youngest, the one you told me about, the tailor to be?” the fat man said.
“Sure is Ivan,” said Mr. Siluk with a smile, and then introduced his son to his friend properly. Anton was a bit taken back, he didn’t know he was going to be a tailor someday. He thought what a good surprise, ‘Papa was thinking of me.’

It was a trying time for the country, a revolutionary spirit was in the air, and work was not plentiful, and a trade was the best way to insure the boy could make a living and Anatolee would practice at this trade in years to come.
This day would remain in Anton’s head all his life for some reason it had taught him if anything, that one had to look at long term goals, instead of short term gains; that is to say, one must not grab, but rather plan.


Note: A Chapter Extract from the story “From the Baltic” written July, 2006, extracted reedited for inclusion, 9-2009. Anatolee, Tony and Anton, is all to be considered the same person (No: 300); story is about the author’s grandfather (1891-1974). Part one of two parts. Revised and reedited, 1-2010.


Voyage to Ellis Island
((Part Three: ‘From the Baltic’ 1916) (an Elegy & Epitaph))

WWI - 1917-1918



Slowly the ship plowed through the last part of its voyage, through the Atlantic waters, to New York City’s harbor, whereupon, the youthful and somewhat willful Russian lad Anton Siluk (also known as Anatolee, or Tony), saw for the first time the famous, Statue of Liberty, and nearby Ellis Island was at arms length, the two most celebrated pieces of gossip onboard the ship, it would be where he’d process through, he—likened to thousands of others coming to America (he had surely thought also about his brother, who was at this very moment on another ship heading towards South America, they’d never see each other again.)
As he would go through the processing at Ellis Island, he would take a physical first, at which time, to his surprise, he would find out he had a rash on his stomach, legs and upper portion of his arms. The authorities, were taken back a bit, and ready to return Anatolee back to the ship and back to Russia—dismayed, Anton yelled in what little English he knew, and had picked up on the ship from the Jews: “No, si ck, excited, excited, no si ck, no scik!” (He insisted, and screeched out, in a near panic-stricken way.) Yet somehow he maintained a smile on his face through all this, that stretched from ear to ear, which might have been the deciding factor for the Captain, whom was one of the doctors in the facility. He looked suspiciously into his eyes, Anatolee almost froze when he did so, and a tear filled the rim of his lower left eyelid: “Ok-ay, O.K.,” said the doctor, a bit unsure, and waved him on through to the next inspector. It was an electrifying event, a moment not ever to be erased from his mind’s eye.

[August 3, 1916] And then came August, it was August 1, when Anatolee arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota by train, from New York City. He had witnessed his father’s death a year prior (who had fallen off a roof (born in 1874 died in 1915); endured a trip across the Atlantic, to New York City’s Ellis Island, and a train ride from New York City, to St. Paul, Minnesota. He would never move again, and never return to Russia (but sent to his mother money occasionally, now living in Warsaw). Matter-of-fact, he would never leave Minnesota other than going back to Europe, to fight in WWI in 1917-1918, with the American Army. He would marry twice, divorce his first wife for being a drunk, and have nine-children with his second, who would die at the young age of thirty-three years old. He’d live his days out in Minnesota (never driving a car, never leaving the state, never complaining about the hardships in America). At the age of sixty-three-years old he’d help raise two grandchildren, and die twenty-years later, and one of his grandchildren has written this.


Written, July, 2006 (reedited for publication, 9-2009) taken from the Manuscript (an extract), “From the Baltic” Revised and reedited, 1-2010.