OK. Yes, what ... Now they're going to record
the film of what we talk to each other about.
Yes. But what we tell each other about, right.
What would be easiest for us?
What are we going to talk about . . . this language.
I'm just saying, when we teach children early,
then it's easiest.
Because it isn't easy for old folks to learn the language anymore. But...
Oh, let's just start talking about back home now.
We both grew up in a village ...
lived there.
You grew up there.
I was only 6 years old.
In a big village ... in Gottschee.
Yes.
And it was called Lienfeld.
There were about 70 houses,
so... almost a little city.
Yes.
And we had... There was a school,
and a church
and two small shops.
Well... in the village, we had our own life as kids
Yes, that's true, yes.
... and the customs and everything,
and the whole year, we did the same thing.
We weren't so developed, in commerce,
that we would have thought beyond our circumstances.
We were very happy with our neighborhood.
That's why, when people nowadays say
that it was hard for us ...
why say it was hard ...
We didn't know that there was anywhere else in the world where
things were better than they were for us.
Well, back then there wasn't so much money.
The people didn't have much money,
but the people were self sufficient.
Every house... each one had a few chickens...
they had eggs... a few animals... a cow or two... a pig.
Each had a field, and apples... grain.
They had everything.
So, the people didn't need so much money.
One can't automatically say that
they were poor for that reason.
They didn't use that much money in commerce.
Of course, many ...
they didn't throw anything away.
No.
But that was good too. Everyone learned
how to take what nature provided
and make a living from it, right.
And so, it wasn't so bad for those people
who couldn't afford to buy much.
That's really something...
we didn't throw anything away. Everything was ...
like we say nowadays, "recycled."
Everything was re-used.
When someone had a piece of clothing...
when it didn't fit anymore...
Then they would...
... Could still take a piece of it to use...
Yes... or they could make clothes out of it for little children.
Nothing was thrown away.
And finally, when nothing else could be made of it, then they made a rag doll.
Yes, they had those too!
And from rags they made little rugs...
little rugs...
woven and all.
And from grain... from wheat...
... the stems, they braided them,
then they wove them;
they made bags out of them...
nice bags.
Yes, of course... but not only that.
I mean, the straw bags back home...
they slept on them... right?
There weren't that many horse hair mattresses.
Or, the best mattresses were the field mowings.
Right? ... the warmest.
Even nowadays they're among the best.
What's that?
Mowings... from the field.
Oh yeah?
That's the best mattress, but it's warm.
Really?
Oh yeah. But it disintegrates in the end and gets to be like flour,
so they have to... It doesn't last that long. Right?
Some people had sacks of straw too.
Well... So, our world was small.
We didn't know if something happened in the world.
So long as the misfortune didn't happen to us, we didn't know anything about it. Right?
That's true.
Nowadays, sometimes I think, just once more,
I'd like to see a sky where I can see all of the stars
Nowadays, you don't see any stars
because there's light everywhere.
But the sky that I can remember from when
I was back home, it was full of stars.
Yes, of course.
That was beautiful.
Yes, that's true.
No light at all.
Because the nights were cooler... clearer, right?
When the wind came from the East.
That's to say, the [bear?] wind.
We only had petroleum lamps.
There was no electric light.
No.
Yeah, we didn't have any electric light.
We had a lamp ... petroleum ...
and that was it.
That's just the way it was.
The people got up with the sun and just about went to sleep with the sun.
Because, in the evening, there was only one light... the pertroleum lamp.
And that's where the entire family would sit together around the table, right?
There was only one lamp, and it stood in the kitchen...
and the people sat around it... and ate...
and then things were cleared away...
and then they took the lamp and went into the parlor...
and the whole family went along with it into the parlor...
because they all only had one lamp,
and they all followed that lamp.
Until they were all under their blankets,
and the mom would blow out the lamp,
and then it was dark for everyone. Yeah.
Well, we first immigrated... my sister ...
my older sister ... in the year 1950.
50? 50, yes.
All right. Then we lived with our uncle.
We had two uncles here,
the brothers of my father,
who had families here, who had been in America for many years;
and a sister of my mother's ... Minne over there... right?
And besides that... we had our grandfather
on our mother's side, who had already died in
1913, in Cleveland. Right?
So, like we used to say then, we were already half in America
before we even came here. Right?
And our Mom always used to say, "Go to America. America."
Otherwise, perhaps we wouldn't even have immigrated.
Because our mom had lived in America as a young girl .
So, we all came over...
on my mother's side...
Aunt Minne was here;
on our father's side, two brothers... right? ... of my father.
So, we weren't strangers in America, so to say.
Even our mom, our mother, she was already
here after the first World War.
Young girls in Gottschee had the custom
that they went to America...
either for a short time and then back home or they stayed.
Our mother too, in 1921... right?...
she went to America.
She was here in New York... down in Brooklyn.
and when she came back home...
and then stayed home...
then she always used to tell us about it. "America!"
She loved it so much. She worked here.
She always told us about Coney Island.
How she went to Coney Island.
Where she worked, they had two children... that family...
and those two children... she took care of them... minded them...
and then they all went together to Coney Island. Wonderful!
So, she taught us a few songs... songs in English.
When I was little...
six years old... five years old ...
she sang a song for me that she learned here in Brooklyn.
And one of those songs - do you still remember it -
That's how she sang it ...
"Jimmy said to Simmy,
'Where do you live?'
Simmy said to Jimmy,
' 'cross the bridge.'
Jimmy said to Simmy,
'That's too far.'
Simmy said to Jimmy,
'Take a trolley car!'
That's how my mother said it.
Yeah... alright... So, that's the reason we emigrated to America.
And we immigrated first, and you stayed behind... mom, dad and you.
But Hilde and I... my sister... we came here.
I went to Uncle Henry
and Hilde she went back down there where mom used to work...
in that area, right?
Down by Prospect Park?
Down by Prospect Park. Yes, that's where she used to work. Alright. So...
that's how it started, and then you didn't follow us until '55.
And so then we stayed here.
For us, there was no going back.
We couldn't go back. There was no longer a place for us to go back to... So we ...
Alright, we didn't even want to go back.
We actually were happy to stay here, because this was our life now.
We started over with nothing, and it worked out. Right?
Here in Ridgewood, here in Queens County,
there were already all the Gottscheers who came earlier...
who already came after the First World War.
They settled here.
And then we came and we settled here too.
That's why Ridgewood was like a little Gottschee...
with lots of Gottscheers.
On every street, you saw and heard Gottscheers.
All of them spoke Gottscheerisch.
Not just that ... in the evening, if you went walking on Myrtle Avenue,
you could hardly walk on the sidewalk, because of all the women walking with
baby carriages.
Yes, they had the giant baby carriages.
Yes, it was nice.
Because, it was mostly young people who immigrated.
And they got married here.
When you went to Church here on a
Saturday afternoon... like today...
any Church in Ridgewood,
there were three or four weddings going on.
One after the other.
Of course, of course.
One after the other, because so many
people were getting married...
starting families....
Yes, of course, they were reestablishing themselves here.
Before, they didn't get married... everyone was fleeing.
Here, though, they found "dry land," so they....
each with the intention, naturally, that they would
stay here in America... because America, then,
of course, was the greatest country...
anyway, at least after the war. Yes, so we stayed here.
Alright. You followed then. I had a job.
First, I didn't have any. But then, I got a job.
And every year, when I had vacation,
then I started a new job during the vacation....
and I slowly improved my life.
I didn't have a vacation for 10 years,
because every time I had vacation, I would look for a new job.
If it was a good fit, then I stayed...
but if it wasn't, then...
at the end of the vacation, I would go back again.
That's the way it was. Alright.
And... It was such that...
when our parents immigrated...
our father still worked too. He went out to Long Island and he...
Our father was 61 years old when he came to America.
Yeah, for four years he ...
Mom was 55 years old.
... for a good four years he worked.
They both worked. Yes.
The women all worked in the knitting mills.
Oh, they worked in all of them.
On every street, there were knitting mills and the women all worked in them.
Some of them knew their way around a sewing machine...
so they sewed with the machines.
The others did other jobs.
But there was knitting mill after knitting mill.
And as a result the people made more money...
because the women worked.
The women in Gottschee didn't work outside the home.
They would have tended to the family...
Well, for the family, back home, she had to cook and everything...
Yeah, it was a lot of work.
In America, suddenly she had a "second job," as they say.
Yeah, when the men came home from work, then the women went to work,
and then the men looked after the children. That's the way it was here.
That's what they learned in America.
Of course. Of course.
There was a story once...
that when the people... the Gottscheers...
came to Ridgewood...
especially the older people...
they were homesick.
They would always think back ... ah, back home... back home...
and then they went... up in Ridgewood, there's a park...
Grover Cleveland Park...
(Still there today!)
there they got together in the afternoons, the old people
and then they would cry... they would weep...
"Ah, I'm homesick, I'm homesick!"
Then a few years later...
They were working. In America, things were good then.
1950s... America... wonderful... The economy was good.
The immigrants had it really good then.
So, after a few years, they had all suddenly earned some money...
and they bought themselves a house... a six-family house...
and they felt good. And then they went up to that park, and they would boast...
they would build themselves up.
And then it was no longer the "crying park,"
"Joecken" means cry,
...to weep...
and "Proellen" means brag.
(So, suddenly, the park was no longer
a "cry park." It was becoming something where people were bragging.)
Yeah, yeah. OK. Alright.
So then, children were born... and then they started to go to school,
and that's how the the family stayed here. Right?
Back when our mom was originally here,
then it was still the custom that they went back and forth, like you said before.
And besides that, many of those who got married here sent their children back ...
when they were very young. And they left them with their grandparents in Gottschee.
And then, when the time was right... they called them back here...
once they had reestablished themselves a little here.
Or, with boys, they had another reason too.
They stayed over there and went to school,
but before they had to enlist in the military over there,
then they would come back to America. They didn't want to have to enlist.
That's one thing that the Gottscheers never wanted... the military...
they never wanted it.
Even the Roman historian said that...
that they were bad soldiers.
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