They had been trying for the last five years to have a child, but with no success. Shirley suspected that the problem lay in Fred, who had incurred several gunshot and shrapnel wounds while stationed in Germany during World War II. But, after the test results came back, it was determined that Shirley's tipped uterus was to blame. A simple operation took care of this problem, and it was back to the bedroom. The doctor advised them to wait three months before trying again, but Shirley was never big on waiting for something that she really wanted. Three months later to the day, the rabbit died, as they used to say in those days when a woman became pregnant. The verdict from her doctor was something like "Boy, you just made it under the wire!"
On a Friday night in late July, Shirley started into a mild labor. The next evening, as the labor increased, Fred drove her to the hospital, where she suffered a hard labor most of the night. On Sunday, August 1, 1954, at six a.m., I came into the world.
I don't remember anything of this experience, but, on thinking back, I feel I must thank the doctor on the splendid job she did cutting and tying the cord, as I have been blessed with an "innie." As far as the other common procedure that was practiced on newborns in the name of hygiene, I am not sure. Which is better—with or without? This is a question that never really concerned me until it became such a hot topic of discussion on talk shows and in magazine articles in the late seventies and early eighties. I suppose it's easier this way, and a lack of sensitivity has never been a problem to me. I can live without it.
I don't remember much of my early childhood except for what I have been told. Apparently, the house on Oakdale Street had a particularly steep set of stairs leading to the basement. I managed to find the top of these stairs one day on one of my many explorations of the main floor.
In a matter of seconds, I discovered the bottom of the staircase. I sustained no breaks but suffered many bruises. To this day, I have nightmares of great steep staircases with wide gaps that have to be traversed in order to reach the top or bottom. As I got older, these dreams were altered to the point where I was sometimes able to fly over the bottomless gaps in the stairway.
We lived on Oakdale Street for only a few years before my parents had a new house built on Tapper Avenue. This was a frame house with a large corner picture window and cedar shingles. It wasn't a big house. It was a working-class house in a working-class neighborhood. The house contained two bedrooms, a small den, a good-sized living room, a kitchen, a smallish dining room, and an unfinished basement. It was just right for a family of three.
It wasn't too long after we moved to this new house, however, that we became a family of four. My brother, Michael Frederick, was also born on a Sunday, and also, coincidentally, on Father's Day, June 16, 1957. Again, I don't remember much about this day, as I was not yet three years old. But, surprisingly enough, there is the haziest fog of a memory of the day they brought him home. My Aunt Rose and Grandma Cegur were baby-sitting me that day.
Aunt Rose is my mother's age and is--and always was--a tall, stately woman with glasses and strawberry-brown hair. As far back as I can remember, she always dressed well and was perfectly coordinated. She is my father's younger sister in a family that had three children. Their brother Joseph died at the age of 13 of pneumonia. My grandmother and grandfather named her Rosella after some Catholic Saint. Later in life, my brother and I used to tease my aunt by calling her by this name, which she had shortened to Rose early in life. To this day, however, she has allowed no one to call her Rosella--except her mother, that is, who still lives with Rose under her constant care.
My Grandmother, Mary Cegur, was a short woman who put her gray hair up in pin curls each night before she went to bed. Grandma Cegur, as we always called her, was born in Pennsylvania. Her parents had come over from "the Old Country," and she still had many lady friends with whom she would converse in broken Croatian. When my brother and I were older, we would listen to her phone conversations with amazement and amusement. I can still hear her aging voice drifting from the living room over to us as we hid in the kitchen: "Yeah, yeah."--pause--"Yeah."--pause--"Yeah, yeah." Aunt Rose wasn't the only one we used to tease when we were little. When we would sit around Grandma's kitchen table, slurping down her delicious homemade soup and pierogies, she would ask us a question and we would both reply, in unison, "Yeah, yeah!" In a way that only a kindly, old woman who had raised children during the Depression could, she would laugh and flip both her hands at us and say, "Oh, are you kids making fun of your grandma again?"
Grandma Cegur and Rose were baby-sitting for me when my new baby brother came home from the hospital. I don't remember too much of this episode. I do remember sitting in the living room of our new house on Tapper Avenue. I guess they must have prepared me for this event, because I was waiting in anticipation.
What I remember most clearly is seeing my mother and father coming through the front door. My mother was holding Michael in her arms. I remember being overjoyed at seeing my mother after an absence of what must have seemed like an eternity to a small child. I don't remember how I felt about seeing my new baby brother, however. Since then, I have since seen photos of this momentous event, and I seemed happy and somewhat proud. I've always felt that I led a rather model childhood in most respects, so suppose I probably reacted in the correct manner to his arrival.
The next major event of my tender formative years came soon after the arrival of Michael. It was the brightest of all summer days. The sun shone gold on the blades of grass and the other growing things around me. The front sidewalk was an "ouch" to my tender touch. I was clad in some sort of bibbed short-pant outfit. My mother, being rather voluptuous in those younger years, was wearing a halter top tied around the back, very short, cuffed shorts, white ankle socks, and a red bandanna tied in front to keep the hair away from her face. My father was dressed in his usual summer attire: white T-shirt, blue shorts, white socks, and weather-worn leather sandals. They both had all their attention focused on washing windows. Dad was on the outside on a ladder with a bucket of soapy water, and Mom was on the inside. I could hear the squeaking of the rag against the glass and then Dad saying, "I thought I got that spot"--"I think that's on your side"--"All right, I'll wash it again!"
The sounds seemed so far away to my ears. My attention was focused on other phenomena: first on the sunlight dancing on the blades of grass and then on the cabbage moth that suddenly appeared in my line of vision. I was soon toddling after that moth as fast as my chubby little legs could take me.
Pretty soon I was three houses down from the couple busily trying to make the windows sparkle. Then, before I knew it, I was all the way to the busy corner of 173rd Street, a rather busy artery in the city of Hammond. My parents had taught me well not to cross the street, so--since there was traffic to my left and traffic directly in front of me--I turned right, heading toward Calumet Avenue, a four-lane street that led to almost everywhere in town. I imagine that I was still involved in smelling the flowers along the way, chasing moths, or just enjoying the workout that my pudgy little legs were getting, because I didn't even realize that I had strayed so far from home. I certainly didn't know that I was headed toward Calumet Avenue. I guess I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was lost.
Eventually, a car pulled up with two women in it. They had been slowly following me for a short time as if they weren't sure who I was. Then, suddenly, they stopped and both bolted out of the car and toward me. "Bruce--Bruce Honey!" they both cajoled. The two women surrounded me as if trying to herd me into a pen. One came toward me while the other one came around behind and snatched me up into the air, taking my breath away.
It was Grandma and Aunt Rose. They were just on their way home from one of their very regular visits to the cemetery, where my father's younger brother was buried, when they saw me toddling along the busy street without a care in the world. They didn't recognize me at first and began to wonder what kind of parents would let their small child roam around unattended like that. Aunt Rose remarked that the small child looked a lot like Bruce. Suddenly it clicked--It was Bruce! God knows what kind of exchange ensued when they got me home to my parents--who, by the way, were still at work on the windows with no idea that I was even missing. I can only imagine. My mother always tried her damnedest to get on the good side of her in-laws, and I'm sure that this episode sent her back several paces.
There was always somewhat of a division between my father's and my mother's families. They were as different as night and day. Though both of my parents were raised during the Depression, a point that my father emphasized as often as possible during our childhood, they grew up in two different worlds.
My father grew up in the type of Dickensian environment that is often portrayed on television miniseries. He recounts such experiences as chopping wood for the stove, shoveling coal for the furnace, walking 10 miles to school through mountains of snow, jumping on ice trucks, and talking with the many tradesmen who came door-to-door collecting rags, sharpening knives, or pedaling their wares.
He almost never recounts stories of his father Frank, my grandfather, who mysteriously dropped out of our lives. At least it was a mystery to me for many years.
The earliest recollection I have of Grandpa Cegur is in the living room of my grandma and Aunt Rose's house. He was throwing me up in the air and then catching me. I remember him from a child's eyes. He was a large man with broad shoulders and a gray flattop hairstyle. His hands were large and masculine with pronounced veins. He always wore a suit or sport coat. There was an uneasy feeling in the air, one that I couldn't as a child understand. He didn't live with my grandmother anymore, and I didn't know why. No one would talk about it. I would ask questions and everyone would give me answers that didn't satisfy me. Grandpa Cegur would give me ten dollars and then he would disappear again. He didn't send me birthday cards like my other grandpa, and he didn't give me Christmas presents. In fact, he was never at any of our Christmas gatherings.
Frank Cegur died in January 1989. I had, of course, solved the mystery long before this--the reason why my aunt Rose never married and why, in later years, my grandmother and aunt wouldn't even allow him into their house. He used to get drunk and beat my grandmother. When my father or aunt did something wrong, he would spread uncooked rice out on the floor and make them kneel on it for hours. My father would try to fight back and defend his mother, but he was only a boy. This is only one of the stories that I have been allowed to hear. There are many more locked away in the memories of my father and my aunt that they refuse to tell. My grandmother, after years of abuse, finally got a divorce.
When our country was first going to war, my father was attending Hammond Technical Vocational High School. He soon knew what he had to do. He joined the Army. That was quite the trend in those days. People felt an actual threat. There was a monster called Hitler on the move, and it was the only thing to do! There were no atomic weapons in those days, no balance of power.
Looking back, it almost seems as if that war was made up of a bunch of dysfunctional, squabbling children, shooting popguns that killed. I certainly don't say this, however, to diminish my father and his decision to fight in the war. I'm Proud of my father for defending his country, and I'm proud of his achievements during his time of service.
All I know of his time in the army are the stories he has told me. He was with a battalion of men overseas. They were attacked by the Germans. It was a slaughter. All of the American troops were wiped out. His whole battalion was dead. As I mentioned before, Dad received a gunshot wound through the arm and shrapnel from a grenade in the groin. He suffered a great loss of blood and drifted in and out of consciousness. He knew that the Germans would be looking for survivors to take as prisoners. He had only one choice. He pulled himself over the body of one of his countrymen who had bled to death. Dad's blood mingled with his friend's.
When the Germans got there, they kicked Dad in the head and gut to determine if he was alive or dead. Dad kept his wits about him, holding his breath and not moving a muscle. This happened several times. Dad was so delirious that when the American troops finally arrived and began looking for survivors, he thought they were speaking German and continued to play dead. Luckily, an American soldier bent down to test his vital signs and found him to be alive. "We've got a live one here!" he called to his superiors. And dad was taken on a stretcher to an army hospital.
After Dad's wounds healed, he was reassigned as an M.P. in France. It was here that his triumphs were not against the opposing forces but against the opposite sex. I first heard of these conquests when I was old enough for one of those "father and son" talks. He didn't tell me what sex was or how to do it. He merely stated, in a rather gruff and embarrassed tone, "When you go out with a girl, just make sure you wear one of these." He then proceeded to reach into the middle drawer of his dresser, scrounge around under his underwear and other personal effects hidden there, and pull out a condom.
"When I was in the army, I always carried around one of these for protection," He said.
"Protection from what?" I asked.
"It keeps the girl from getting pregnant and it keeps you from getting diseases," He answered matter-of-factly.
He then continued to tell me a few short stories about his stay in France.
