1978

Three Sisters
Julia, Kata, Dóra  ca 1940

April 2006

I try to remember what my earliest memories are, and am always distressed because I don't remember much from when I was very young.  I do have some memory of pushing a doll carriage along a path and looking over a railing; my sisters say that must have been Gellert Hegy in Buda, because our governess used to take us walking there.

I was born in August of 1938, and I understand that my sister Rika died at age 14 in January or February of that year.  She died of pneumonia after having gone skiing.  I am told that my mother pretty much withdrew at that time, and my sisters Kata and Julia  and I were cared for by a governess. 

Kata and Rika ca 1934

The governess must have been with our family for quite some time, because I remember my mother corresponding with her even after we were in the States. The family was well to do, although I understand that some of the wealth was lost after the first world war, and of course the rest was left behind and lost at the end of the second world war.  

By well to do, I mean that we lived in a large house in a wealthy part of Buda (Pest is across the river) with several servants, my father was an architect and a minister in the Hungarian government.  We had a summer home in Leanyfalu by the Danube. 

My father drove a Mercedes, we all had the best clothes, all custom made for us; we were in the upper tiers of society in Budapest. I remember a room called the "pipazo" (smoking room is the literal translation) in which the Christmas tree stood.  We were not allowed to see the tree until Christmas Eve, but I remember peeking through or around something, and watching the servants decorate it. In Leanyfalu, I remember having a goat, and the goat having twin kids.....I loved to play with them. 

We also had a donkey that pulled us in a cart, which was our transportation to the Danube to go swimming. 

There was a huge tree at the back of the house and we had a play house back there.  Further back on the property, there were cages of rabbits and pigeons.  The house had a large, covered front porch on it, with dormer windows from the bedrooms upstairs.  I understand that my parents did  summer entertaining on the porch, which opened into a living and dining area. 

There are stories from that time, for instance:  we had a pet squirrel in a cage.  He got out one day when my parents were having company and ran up the leg of a guest, under her dress.  The next day we had to take the squirrel to the forest and set it free.  I also remember a story about my father getting a baby pig to release at a new year's eve gathering, and of course we made a pet of that, too.  So.....lots of animal memories.  I remember very little about my parents from that time, or of my grandmother, Bumi, who lived with us.

We lived in Budapest, and had a summer residence was in Leanyfalu (translates "young girl village").  In October of 1944,  we children and our mother  were still at Leanyfalu, because of the bombings  in Budapest.  

Leanyfalu ca 1940

My father would go into the city to work and go to Parliament and come to Leanyfalu when he could. 

Api  1945

One day my mother went with him into the city....I'm not sure why.  We children were left in the country with our governess.  We received a phone call from our parents some time during the day,  telling us that we should pack belongings in three suitcases, one for each girl, because we were going away that evening.  None of us knew where or for how long. 

The governess became quite flustered and worried, so the three of us, ages 5, 9 and 13, did most of the packing.  We packed minimal clothing and our favorite dolls and doll clothes.  That evening when my parents arrived to get us, they loaded our suitcases and their own, and we drove away in a hurry.   That was the last time we saw Leanyfalu or Budapest.  We were put on a political train in Sopron, and left the country under attack and while being bombed.  We made it safely to German, where we remained for five years......with a few clothes, our dolls and doll clothes which we had packed!  My grandmother, Bumi stayed behind and managed to live several more years after we left. 

What I remember about the train trip is minimal.  I remember the train stopping when the planes came to bomb us, and we all ran to the forest to hide.  Then we would return to the train.  The trip took several weeks, because  our train spent a fair amount of time on sidings to allow military trains to get by.  My sister Kata talks about the fact that she and other teenagers spent most of their time in a baggage car, doing whatever teenagers did at that time.  When we arrived in Waldkirchen, in Bavaria, the train stopped and we were told it was not going any further.....so we got off. 



We ended up being housed in a nearby village called Neureichenau, in a farm house that rented out rooms.  The five of us lived in one room......for five years.  The room had two bunk beds and one regular bed, a stove for heat and cooking and some kind of table and chairs.  We brought water in from a pump outside and used an outhouse that was shared by the farmer, his family and the residents of two other rooms that were let out.   The farmer had geese, and I remember being chased by them on my way to the outhouse.  I hated those geese!  There was a barn behind the house, and I have some memories of cheese being made in the barn;  the stuff  cheese is made of was put in some bags and hung  from the ceiling, dripping out the liquid.  I remember making butter in a wooden churn.  There must have been a garden, because I remember my favorite meal being mashed potatoes and fresh baby green lettuce. 

I don't remember how we bathed, but I know laundry was done with a scrub board in a tub of some sort.  The laundry included such unimaginable things as dirty handkerchiefs and soiled sanitary napkins that were essentially pieces of cloth.    I remember our family getting "care" packages from America.  The packages contained toothbrushes and paste, and I remember a can of Crisco that we thought was margarine and spread on bread.  I believe that is when Mother learned to make what we refer to as Morning Bread.  The whole thing must have been a huge shock to her, never having had to cook or do laundry in her life.



I do not know how we replaced outgrown and worn out clothing, but Kata talks about going to Waldkirchen on errands, so there may have been things available there.  I know that Kata spent a lot of time knitting sweaters and even undershirts for us.  My father always loved Christmas, and somehow they continued the tradition with hand made gifts;   I received a stuffed bear someone made out of a piece of blanket.....Rika has that now.  

Sweaters knitted by Kata

My father met a Hungarian man named Bicserdy in Neureichenau.  Bicserdy had a philosophy that my father espoused that included being a vegetarian; and not only not eating meat, but also having some strict rules about not eating milk and cheese at the same meal and some other pretty strict rules.  He also believed that our system needed to be cleared out on a regular basis, which meant enemas on a regular basis.....weekly, I think.  How I hated that!  I have the English translations of Bicserdy's teachings, if anyone is interested.

The farm house next to ours belonged to a family that had a daughter about my age.  I know my parents did not like me to spend time there, but I do remember being there and playing with her. I really got in trouble one day when my mother or father came looking for me and found me in their house, having lunch with them.  The lunch consisted of home made bread dipped into a communal bowl of clabbered milk.  I think it was the fact that we all dipped our bread into the same bowl that infuriated my parents.  I remember finding a chicken egg in a shallow ditch.....which seemed to be a very big deal, I think because eggs were scarce.  I helped the farmer's son to herd cattle and to stay with the cattle all day, by a beautiful little creek.  I think the cows needed to be watched because there were no fences, and then to be brought in  in the evening for milking.  I loved doing that, but my parents objected, because they did not like the farm boy.....I have the impression that they thought he was slightly retarded.  I remember the day my father was absolutely furious with me because I wanted to help herd the cows and it was raining.  I remember us standing at the door and he was holding my arm very tightly, showing me how hard it was raining, while I screamed hysterically that I wanted to go.  Actually my parents did not really like me associating with any of the "peasants" which made me pretty rebellious.  They were my friends and I could not understand why my parents looked down on them.

   

We spoke German because we had a German governess who had taught us "high German".  In Bavaria a slang of German was spoken that my parents did not like us picking up.  Of course I picked it up right away because I went to school in Neureichenau.  The school was a couple of miles away. 

We moved from the Harvard Ave house to another rental house, and eventually Api and Mami bought the house at 248 Ave F in Billings.  I understand that it was a barn at one time, and someone converted it to a two story house. My room had a slanted ceiling, so that if I sat up in bed without thinking, I bumped my head.  It had a large window that faced to the back yard, and I could hear birds and get lots of fresh air, which I liked.  My parents bought me an unfinished chest of drawers, on which Api drew a Hungarian pattern, and I was to paint the pattern according to his directions.  We had many fights over that, and I don't know if I ever finished it, or what happened to it.  I know I had a little green plastic radio in my room, and I liked to listen to it when I was in bed.  I listened to stories mostly.  Julia and Kata had rooms upstairs, too, while our parents had one downstairs.  Julia was known for playing classical music late into the night; Nagyapa solved that problem one night by going down in the cellar and turning all the electricity off !  In the cellar we had a coal furnace, and for years had coal delivered to heat the house, until eventually it was replaced by a gas furnace.  The washer was down there, too, and you had to go down on very narrow, curving stairs.  The clothes were dried outside, hung up on lines.  Mami did all of our laundry for us, and cooked all meals, so I never learned any of those skills before I was on my own. 

The house was just a few houses away from Pioneer park, which was a lovely, hilly, rambling park with a creek running through it.  It had tennis cours, a large wading pool, softball fields and, in the winter, they flooded an area for ice skating.  There was a little warming hut at the edge of the rink, and we had grand times skating, day and night (under flood lights) and playing "crack the whip".   We were about a mile or two from downtown, with regular buses running close by.  My Jr High school was Lincoln High, which was toward downtown, and the High School was Billings High, the only high school in town at that time, and right across Pioneer park from our house. 

Pioneer park was an important part of our life.  It was about  six blocks square, with the eastern half devoted to playground, tennis courts, wading pool and flower beds, while the western half was hilly, with a creek and paths running through it. There were many trees.  First of all Api played tennis there, pretty much on a daily basis.  The courts he played on were right at the end of our block, where Ave. F ran into the park.  Api was known to shovel snow off the courts, so that he could play.  He wanted us girls to play tennis, also, and since my sisters did not want to, and I was the youngest, the pressure was on me.  I did play a fair amount, went to a state tournament during my high school years, but it never became a passion for me.  Some of my friends and I walked across the park to go to high school, and my friends would know to stop by my house when Mami baked bread, so that they could have a bun, with butter and honey, to finish their walk home.  We used to kid that they could smell the bread on baking days.   There was a small, neighborhood grocery store across the park, where I used to walk, and buy two hot dogs, and eat them on the way home.  We were strict vegetarians, and so this was a form of rebellion for me. 

During Junior High I began to establish a group of friends, who would remain friends through high school.  That is also where I aquired my nick name:  A friend was drawing cartoons in class one day, Disney type cartoons, and he slid some pictures toward me and pointed to Porkie Pig, grinned, and said "that's you".  I have no idea why, I was not heavy, nor was I offended by his comment, and from then on I was often called "pig".  It sounds terrible, but it never felt bad or anything other than funny to me.  My parents were not so thrilled with it, when we would be downtown and someone would holler "Pig", and I would respond without giving it a thought.  None of the others in our group had a nick name, so I can't explain it. 

We did not have much money, and my clothing was pretty basic....I remember getting one new outfit at the beginning of each year, and one year especially stands out in my mind, when I got a blue corduroy, gathered skirt, a white blouse with a blue scarf, and saddle shoes (think early 59's).  I began to date in the 9th grade, and Julia and I dated the Morledge brothers, which I thought was really cool, because I was dating the older one!  I remember the four of us riding around in a convertible, with Julia sitting up on the back of the car, wth her feet on the back seat. 

Julia had a very neat closet, with good quality clothes, but not many of them, and I was risking my life if I went to look in the closet, much less borrow something.  Kata had more clothes, and I remember going in there and borrowing things without getting in trouble.  I did not have a closet, so I don't know where my clothes were, except in the chest of drawers I was to paint.  The whole family shared one bathroom, on the second floor.  I don't remember that being a problem.   Of  course we had not had anything more than that, that  I could remember.