The story of Father of The Captain (FOTC) is a pretty cool one. Some day I may write about it at length in a serious vein with great pride and admiration. For the sake of this blog, here’s the reader’s digest version. He was youngest of three children living on the family farm with his Mom in the village of Mengusovce (population 700); his father had already been in the states for several years – in Torrington, CT, of all places – sending money back home to pay for passage to America for his family. My Uncle John was the oldest sibling, followed by my Aunt Sue and finally Father of The Captain, who reportedly was well acquainted with trouble and who had a habit of sneaking into the woods to visit the gypsy camps. Then came 1939 and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, so my Grandmother decided she could tarry no longer and packed up the family possessions on a pony drawn cart and headed to Bremen to catch a ship to America. At the time, my Uncle John was 17, my Aunt Sue was 15, and FOTC 11. A year after the arrival, a fourth sibling was born in America – my Uncle Milan.
The transition to a new country, culture, and language is much easier for an eleven year old than for teenagers. Whereas my Uncle and Aunt never were able to completely shed their old country ways, FOTC assimilated faster than shit through the geese he used to force feed back in Europe. So growing up in Torrington, I was a normal American lad ( as normal as someone can be spending his formative years in Torrington).
In the subsequent years, people started dying, which happens. First my grandfather, then my Uncle John and then FOTC. My Grandmother outlived her two oldest sons, but just barely, as exactly one week after my father’s funeral, my Aunt Sue went to visit her in a nursing home; she’d brought her some Kolache (a Slovak pastry) leftover from FOTC’s funeral reception. It was a little dry and my Grandmother choked on it and died on the stop. I gotta say that I give my Aunt Sue a lot of credit as to this very day she has never felt even the slightest pang of guilt. God bless her.
So there was my Aunt Sue this past weekend, sitting next to me in a lawn chair. For the record, she was sitting in 95 degree heat wearing a smart polyester pant suit. She’s 87 now and walks with a cane and sometimes thinks I’m my father, which is really a bad thing because being me I can’t help playing along at times. It took a good twenty minutes to convince her that I was not her little brother and that I was just kidding about spying on her as a child when I caught her doing the nasty in the tall grass with the handsome gypsy rover. Please pray for my soul. Any way, as she watched the younger generations playing volleyball, she suddenly blurted out that watching us makes her want to sing. Of course, my younger sister heard this and, just like when we were kids and my older sister was in the same room, she started to boss me around, demanding that I get the video camera and record my Aunt singing her song. Someday I will be a man, but that was not the moment, so I did as I was told, as I spied my older sister watching me to see how I’d react.
So Aunt Sue began to sing a sweet folk melody in Slovak. Everyone gathered listened quietly, mesmerized by the simple folk melody. We all guessed that this was a lullaby that was sung to her by her mother. She ended and we all sat quietly, until yours truly opened his mouth and asked her what the song was about: a mother and her son, we were told, and we all, or at least some of us, envisioned a mother suckling her pure and innocent babe. But wait, there’s more… the son was in fact a young man and the song was a plea for him to sleep at home tonight. Confused, I asked for clarification. And Aunt Sue clarified. The son was apparently quite virile and was in the habit of cohabitating with numerous young village maidens and spent more nights in haylofts than in his bed at home. “You go dog!” escaped from my mouth and was not particularly well received, especially by Mother of the Captain, whose hearing is still sharp. I was dying to ask if this was a song that my grandmother ever sang to my father, but thought better of it.
Right about then my cousin Arnie, a 50-something virgin who lives alone, shot up out of his chair and he and his polyester slacks abruptly departed without saying goodbye. Never a dull moment at the Slovak family picnic! Now there are times when even the most strident atheist has to admit that there is an undeniable and mysterious balance and symmetry to life. And this was one of those moments, because no sooner had Arnie left than cousin Sharie, another 50-something virgin, arrived some 3 hours late, as she felt it more important to spend time with her flatearther Christian cult friends than her own flesh and blood. The void of a fifty-something virgin is not so easily filled, but there stood Sharie, filling it in all her glory in her freshly printed Christian retreat T-Shirt informing one and all that we’re a bunch of no good sinners and that Hell is anxiously awaiting our arrival.
And I did I mention that MOTC still has eagle eyes? She saw that I was about to open my mouth to comment and knew from years of experience that no good could come from it; she glared at me and gestured to my sisters to get ready to pounce. I looked MOTC straight in the eye, gave SsOTC a wink, and said…”Hi Sharie, nice to see you.” Oh, did I mention that the Slovak side of the family doesn’t drink? Some nonsense about the Devil’s brew. With my six-pack drained, it was time to go. But before I departed, I told my Aunt Sue that I would love to record her singing more folk songs. As I bent down to kiss her goodbye, she must have thought that I was her brother again because she whispered in my ear, “I’m so glad you never told Ma about me and the gypsies.” It was “gypsies” plural!!
Believe The Captain when he says: You go Aunt Sue!
Yours wondering if the Slovaks sang folk songs about birth control,
The Captain
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