Phyllis Ruth and Jenny Okrasinski

00:04 My name is Jenny okrasinski. I'm 47 years old today is June 8th 2013. We are at the Chicago Cultural Center and I am interviewing my mom Phyllis Auto.

00:21 My name is Phyllis Otto. I'm 70. Today's date is June 8th 2013. We're at the Chicago Cultural Center. And my partner over here is my daughter Jenny.

00:36 So we talked before about the reason I wanted to do this is because you are basically our family Storyteller. You have been telling us all about our past and keeping track of the family history for us, but you don't really ever talked that much about your own past. So I wanted to get your story on the record and find out about your family history about your personal growing up that sort of thing. So I would I guess the first question to ask is what you remember about your grandparents. If anything with the most vivid memory you have about your grandparents.

01:19 My I never knew my paternal grandfather whose name was August Otto as I understand if he left his family his wife and his 10 children when they were all very young. You didn't know that I didn't took off and I had another life and married another woman and had other children.

01:43 Handle, my paternal grandmother Amelia strike Auto raised as family of 10 children. I don't know how she did it. She was she had an amazing story. I only met her once in my whole life. And that was probably when I was I would guess maybe seven or eight years old and we were living on Orchard Street in an apartment and she came from Canada to visit us. She lived in Canada. She was a they lived on a farm and I remember very little this was so this was Grandpa's

02:22 Parents. This was Grandpa's mungro Grandpa out of his mother and I remember sitting at the kitchen table in the apartment.

02:33 And having her tell my mother how to make proven and that's all I remember about her. And so now you still make Peruvian what is proven proven is like a dumpling this made with a noodle doll that you make my hand and then stuffed with a mixture of dry cottage cheese is what they used and then an egg and you then fry it and first you boil it and then you fry it and butter and then when you're ready to eat at you bike the ends off of it and pour heavy cream inside of it and it is absolutely horrible for you, but it is talk about it, or is it a that's a good question to we want war not 100% sure where

03:21 They originated it was they are definitely German cuz her name was idle and but they they lived before they came to Canada they lived in it could have been rush. It could have been Poland. It could have been Germany and when you somewhere in the Ukraine, and then they emigrated to Canada in the early nineteen hundreds. So so some kind of Eastern some kind of Eastern European Dumpling House and sword.

03:50 So that's what I remember about Grandma Auto grandma sehgal on the other hand who is my mother's mother we lived with her from the time. I was about 10 until she died when I was about fourteen, but even before that we spent a lot of time with her.

04:10 Live in Chicago at that time and I remember I have very fond memories of Grandma Sagal. I remember especially if you want to know like specific things. I remember I remember sitting on the couch with her watching your Hit Parade on Saturday night TV, you say would somehow or another come up with the 10 songs were most popular that prior week that were played on the jukebox the most it were like the Billboard top Billboard top 10 and they would go down the list from 10 down to one and they had cast of four or five people who were always there and would sing these songs and this was our favorite show my grandma and I and we used to sit in the couch and watch that show on Saturday nights. That's very fun and sing-alongs and they want which must be how you know,

05:10 Singing started to hunt could be although I'd also could have come from my father cuz I think that my father had some very good for a latent musical. Really. Yeah, I never knew I never knew that about him. Yeah, he's saying he's saying I remember him singing a lot. Of course. He played the harmonica really? Well. I didn't know that either accident now, I think John has it has the harmonica has has her grandpa's harmonica.

05:40 That's amazing. So, yeah, and I remember at the end of the show. I remember the song that a little jingle that they would sing at the end of your Hit Parade. It went like so long for a while. That's all the songs for a while so long to your Hit Parade and the songs that you picked to be played so long

06:12 For another week. I also remember grandma grandma Seidel took me on a trip one time when I was also about that age. I don't know exactly I was very young but just you or me, we got on the Greyhound bus and went to Bemidji Minnesota Bemidji Bemidji, Minnesota other places along the way. I don't remember but that's that was our final destination Bemidji Minnesota. The only thing I think it has going for it is it it's the home of this giant Paul Bunyan statue with his blue ox babe funny. And is that why you went by mid-year? What was the I think central? I think I think it might have been like a little bus tour and we probably stopped.

07:00 I mean that various random, you know destination to do and you know, I know it was it wasn't by today's standards. That was not a very exciting trip, but for me, it was a huge Adventure. Yeah. I've never done anything like that before, you know, especially just with my grandma Yeah, and we stayed every night somewhere they did. They really didn't have many motels back in those days. We ate all of our meals and restaurants, which was very unusual. You know how unusual for me now, but that's a wonderful memory. So why why why was it just you where it was there? Just because you were older with the other two weren't Judy and I would expect I'm too young or some I would expect to Dean's time. We're too young and she probably could only handle one.

07:48 Child of Time and maybe could only afford to do what was one and I again, you know, maybe she had intentions someday of taking Judy and Tom on a trip to butt.

07:58 Like I said, she died when I was fourteen, so maybe that never happened. I don't know. I don't know she was going to maybe and she never got around to it yet. What she was she was an interesting woman. She her husband my grandfather who I never knew died right after World War I think of dysentery from the was he in he was in the service and it was right before the depression. She lived in the house on Hurley Avenue, which you know, this is the house that was built by her Grandpa by her parents and then when her parents died, they left it to her and then when we lived in the same house to so 3 generations live for Generation has been that house, but she had three little children and had no income. I don't know how she managed to raise those children.

08:47 But you did well during a depression. I think she worked I know for a fact that she worked at the fair store. Did you ever hear the fair storm now downtown Chicago O'Hare it was one of the early department stores, like right on the name of the name of the store at Marshall Field's down icy.

09:15 South of Marshall Field's by a block or two, maybe one of those big department stores and she work there for a long time. Which back in the

09:24 30s and 40s not too many women worked. I don't think yeah.

09:31 But that was

09:35 That was the story of my grandmother right. Now. You said that the house that you grew up in the same house that three generations of the family had grown up in so where where was the house? The house was 1273 early Avenue on the north side of Chicago 5700 North and 1200 West and I it was when the house was built in 1900.

10:02 Age or something like that. Yeah, Lakeshore Drive had not been built that that that far out of that far up north. And so the lake was very close to the house. It was within a couple of blocks of the house. And then of course later on they build Lake Shore Drive and so then it was a little bit further from the lake but it still was pretty close to the lake and I have also very fond memories. We had a front porch and looking back on it. It seems like it was a really big front porch, but I've been back and looked at that house and it was a pretty small front porch to use at the time. We had no air conditioning, of course in that house. And in the summertime, we would all sit in the front porch the five of us are family, and I'm Judy me my mom and dad my grandmother.

10:50 KK and Uncle Jack and sometimes Uncle Don. Yeah, we all sit on the front porch and wait for a breeze from the lake to cool us. That was that was our air conditioning Lake Michigan. So I'm pretty funny. So the house is still there. The house is still there. That's pretty so what other memories do you have of going about 50s when you originally asked the question, you mentioned that the perception we have a growing up in the 50s is that everything was

11:28 What did you say it was a time of time of prosperity and etiquette fences. He portrayed now. Yeah, right and what I would say to that is that for me.

11:42 It was a lot like that. I think of the 50s that 10-year span between 1950 and 1960.

11:51 Especially for

11:54 And you're talking about in Chicago to especially for a little white girl on the on the Northside of Chicago that. Of time was like a bubble of

12:07 Peace prosperity and Picket Fences between the depression in the war.

12:14 And the turbulent 1960s

12:17 And I felt like I was I grew up in a time where I wasn't constantly bombarded by terrible things happening or war is or being murdered. Her television was the only technology with that. We really had the end that we didn't have a television until I was probably close to my teens. Oh, yeah.

12:44 So, you know, I was really unaware of what was going on in the world or even in the city of Chicago around me and I'm not saying that it's a good thing to be oblivious to the pain and suffering that's going on around you but for an 8 or 9 or 10 year old child growing up it was

13:06 A very unstressful and peaceful way to grow up and I'm glad I had that opportunity.

13:14 So did you think that because when you grew up you stayed in the city, so do you think that there was was there any kind of big shock or moment where you kind of sort of looked out of your neighborhood? And so maybe things weren't exactly what we got the lunch probably actually 1960, but you actually left the city to go to the cup you had to leave and go out to the world. Where did you go to college and university in Bloomington, Illinois and arrived in 1960, which was

13:54 The very beginning of the turbulence I mean Judy.

13:59 Who is five years younger than I

14:02 I lived in a different era a totally different area than I did we have what it's like we lived in different Generations Because by 1966-67 the world was a much different place than it was in 1960 that that 567 years made a huge difference in my sister who is 5 years younger than I

14:29 But that's that's a because I went away to school and and things that the Vietnam War had not yet started but it was I mean it had started. I actually I think it had but it wasn't in the Forefront yet. But there were a lot of young men at the college who were concerned about being drafted and having to go away to war now and

14:55 So yeah, that was that was a time that really opened my eyes.

14:59 And how you know, do you remember any specific instances that really just for like eye-opening for you at that time? That's another question that we were going to talk about one of the question you want to ask that question about the Epiphany you have you ever had an epiphany? You know, when when she first asked that question I said I said, no, not really. I I can't think of having any true Epiphany. I mean, I think that's a huge thing and I don't think there are many people in life who actually have a life-changing experience that

15:33 It only stays with them for them. Maybe have had many small Tiffany's maybe some that. I thought were big and then they turned out it kind of fizzled out and really wasn't much and maybe some of Tiffany's it ended up being bad choices in my life. But so I want to hear about one of those let's let's finish this out with this one, but then I started thinking about in college. I said one of the small epiphanies that I had in college was in 1961 when I was a sophomore Martin Luther King came to Illinois Wesleyan University, and this was

16:16 Before he was

16:19 A well-known figure right. He was still a Baptist preacher.

16:24 And he came to Illinois Wesleyan and I was taking a Sociology class and he came and spoke to my class and then he went to and spoke at a bank with that evening and listening to that man. It just it was awe-inspiring and that was the first time that I had ever.

16:44 Come face-to-face with what?

16:47 What's going on in the country with segregation and racism?

16:53 And I know that that experience.

16:57 Formed my for the rest of my life.

17:02 And so then I got to think about I guess that would be an epiphany wouldn't it? Yeah, I absolutely yeah.

17:09 Then after that was done, I wrote a letter to my mother and father and I still have a copy of that letter was she kept it until she died and then I found it after she had died.

17:21 It was written on April on February 15th 1961. And it said dear Mom and Dad. I just heard a man speak in my class today by the name of Martin Luther King and he he was such a powerful person inside has such a wonderful message that I just project that he will be someday as famous as Gandhi. That was what I thought was pretty amazing and I was thinking I've kept thinking I should send that letter to the King Family. Yeah, but I haven't yet.

17:58 That's pretty interesting.

18:01 So so you went away to school and then came back and then came back and said he got married one month after I graduate and do you think you were changed? How how was I changed by then? I was I really was those four years, Illinois. Wesleyan probably had the biggest impact on Mia's of any time in my life because I went away.

18:29 A very sheltered

18:32 Yeah guy.

18:35 Not much self-confidence

18:39 Person and came back

18:42 I am with Westview no great confidence in myself, and it was a wonderful experience and then

18:52 That's that's what he had to say about that. That's what I have to say about that. So if you if if we're if I like your great-grandchildren, would you hear this interview, you know 50 years from now, what would you want them to know? That was one of the hardest things?

19:15 I thought about that and that's what was one of the hardest. I don't I'm not really sure what I would want them to know.

19:22 Other than

19:25 That I love them.

19:28 And I wish I would could be there to see them grow up and make cookies for them because I'm not sure what you what you can say about.

19:42 I'm not. I'm not very I'm not very good at

19:46 Giving Sage advice. I don't think I don't I don't feel like I've have I don't even have to be Sage advice. Just you know who we are.

19:58 Who we are and who we are the people our family our family or this era our family our family then we are just an average American loving family.

20:12 I think we're actually I think we're pretty smart pretty good. Looking a little more than average.

20:24 So why didn't your grandmother live with you? We are going to live with her live with her. It was her house now and after the war.

20:36 My father

20:40 We had a hard time finding a place to live in okay housing was on my father was not in the war because he was too old. He was 35 when he married my mother who was 20 when she got married. So there's a big difference between the two of them. And after the war they couldn't they had a hard time finding a new place to live. So he finally finally found this house on this apartment on Orchard Street, which at that time. You know, what Richard Street kind of near North sword in

21:10 Expensive area to live in now with his and it wasn't it was it was nearly swamped quality let living

21:21 And but that's all we could find that we had a pot belly stove of some sort in the living room. That was our only source of heat, LOL. Yeah, I think it was not gas but like gasoline or I don't really like I don't I don't remember what happened. But anyway, so we lived there for a couple of years.

21:50 A few years and then he had an opportunity to start his own printing business with a business acquaintance that he had worked with in Chicago. His name was Mister Bagel in and was moving to Austin Minnesota to start a printing business and asked if my father would like to come work for him there and he said yes, so we left Chicago and move to Austin Minnesota and we lived there for only one year now and then it just didn't work out between my father and mr. Big yulin.

22:28 Remain friends and business acquaintances for many years. It was a strange name land at

22:34 Then we came back to Chicago and at that point I guess.

22:39 I don't know the reason but my we decided to move in with my grandmother at that point, so we moved into the house on Hurley Avenue.

22:47 And it was the five of us my grandmother.

22:52 And KK, so there were seven of us living in this house on Whose. KK KK is my mother's sister k

23:02 Sago Sago after she married it was Shelby, but she was unmarried at that time. And so should we all live together? There were seven of us lived in the three bedroom one bath house.

23:14 And

23:17 I never finish that it was a kind of common. Maybe I think it was extremely common. I thought that we would have thought that we lived very well. I didn't feel cramped. I didn't feel deprived. I didn't feel like I needed privacy and it was the way it was to this day. I don't remember where my brother slept and I slept in the bedroom together. My grandmother had her own bedroom and my mom and dad had their own bedroom. So where was Tom? I don't know that we're going to have to ask him when he's left.

23:50 I don't know videos in the basement.

23:54 Very funny so but yeah, and we won bathroom was fine for 7 people because we only took a bath once a week. So we really had that room one day a week. Yeah, we didn't even know what the rooms what the word family room meant there. What was no such thing back in 1955 as a family room now because you are all just all together all the time. Anyway, who's the living room dining room kitchen three bedrooms and one bathroom.

24:27 Elevate Lincoln was a wonderful house and loved the house. So so never go to Canada to visit the other grandmother. She was. She died and probably 1957 or 58. I remember my father going up there for the funeral.

24:48 But we did go back when I was in high school once or maybe twice we went up to Winnipeg where we had were some of his brothers and sisters still lived one of which had a farm up there and we went up to up to the farm between Christmas and New Year's and spend some time on their farm at which was something I I grew up in Chicago to call look like when they first came her son's first cuz I always smell reeks other than my tip 2 minutes Bemidji Minnesota. I probably saw him, if at least a big blue ox anyway, but yeah, they taught us how to milk a cow.

25:34 And we went on some sort of like a hayride kind of thing with the horse pulling this little wagon. I actually I do my brother Tom who was probably 11 or 12 or something at that time.

25:51 He wanted to know the the movie The Christmas Story what he wanted a gun and he got one. Oh, yeah, cuz we're going we're going up to Canada and that he would probably have an opportunity to go hunting the boy cousins and uncles and so far and so we went up to Canada and he took this rifle with him and he shot a rabbit. I know and then they had that they made him and I can I can still see that rabbit hanging from a wire or something like that with no fur on it was really gross.

26:36 What town was happy he had his gun on and I think that's the only time that street lights out in Chicago when he was a teenager. That's funny cuz that would have an hour right as intelligent as ism.

27:02 Young young man. He says he's straightened out. So, you know, there's something made out of trouble down at the basement. Probably actually he owns my father's business my father who was a printer. He eventually did start his own business. My father did and Harry Otto printing company in Chicago down on Madison or right downtown here somewhere. My father died in 1972 and my brother took over his business at that point and has made a real success out of it and it's still running. T's in a long long time, but

27:49 He still running a printing business.

27:53 So and I was going to say something else about

27:58 Oh, yes, the other the other story was two of my two of my father's Brothers.

28:05 Add Uncle Ed and Uncle shoot. I can't remember. His name wasn't Charlie was one of the other ones.

28:13 They were uranium my miners in the Northwest territory of Canada.

28:19 And in 19, I would guess it was 1959 or 1960 Uncle Ed who has has had lived in the Northwest Territories all of his life.

28:32 Barely spoke to anybody during the year. He was just all by himself. He actually came to Chicago to visit us for Christmas. And I remember going down to Union Station with my mother and father to pick him up. It was December and it was a cold winter and we were all bundled up in our winter coats Uncle Ed gets off the train in his shirtsleeves because by his standards this was bound and he came home with us and stayed in our 3 bedroom 1 bath house with all 7 now. There's eight of us and I don't know where you slept either but he managed I think for 3 days and he just couldn't stand it the noise of the city and the car is in the traffic in the people. It was driving him insane. He had to leave he had to get back on the train and go back up to the Northwest Territories. That's funny.

29:28 Wow.

29:30 That's pretty crazy.

29:33 I do remember the other.

29:37 One of one of the brothers right is the one that had the candy store who had the candy store. That was Uncle Charlie Uncle Charlie had a candy store in Vancouver Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie when you were very young. We took a trip to Vancouver and visit the relatives up there.

29:56 And you were you and your sister Karen we're absolutely is in a candy store like his fortune missed out on that one. He wasn't born yet, but I'll wait a little too late.

30:15 That's funny.

30:19 So what else do you remember about the 50s about the 50s?

30:26 I remember that I remember that we could we could go anywhere. We wanted to go we get on a bus we could get on a train we could go downtown. I remember going downtown shopping getting off the train and shopping by myself. I remember

30:45 Playing outside

30:48 Until the streetlights came on with not and never any fear of being in danger or anything like that. I remember not really having a whole lot and not missing it now. I mean, I think one of the things about the fifties was for for me. Anyway was that makes it so different from today. Is it there just wasn't that much stuff now and other wasn't stuff that you had to have you didn't have to have the latest iPhone or iPod or this or that or the other thing there were no such things you just I play with paper towels and that was $0.25 for a book of paper towels and it is a thrill to get that, you know, and you play outside games that you made up with no accoutrements with it or any of you just you know, a ball or a stick or whatever and you just played on some dirt. Yeah. Yeah.

31:48 I remember going to the to the beach that I loved. We we did live close enough to the beach that we would go swimming during the summer a lot. I remember go swimming going swimming with my father. He love to go swimming down at the lake and he would take me sometimes in the evening on a hot summer night. We take a dip in the lake to cool off me and where we went to bed at night now.

32:12 I think it was a wonderful time to grow up for

32:18 Fur for someone like me who had a good family and good loving family and now

32:27 That's good. What's your best friend's name when you were a kid?

32:33 It depends on when my best friend as a very young child. Her name was Melville Arts. She had blond ringlets hair and she had the most beautiful dolls. I've ever seen killed very jealous of Melva and all of her dolls and her blonde ringlets hair, but said that she wasn't so much your friend as your rival. Maybe you guys not really a rival. I guess. I wanted wanted her to want me to be her friend. He likes to play with us so I can talk with her dolls that was on Orchard Street, which was

33:16 The apartment the apartment on Orchard Street. Yeah, I do. Remember my mother taking me over there to try and give me some time to play with Melva and then as I got older my best friend was was Sylvia Mary Constance page. Okay who I met in high school and she was from England and had come to the United States with her mother and she and I became very close friends and she had her father had left her mother a long time ago and she's spent a lot a lot of time at our house with my mom and dad and thought of them is as you know, cuz I can parents be so heartless.

34:07 Those are my two I didn't have a whole lot of friends as a child. I was extremely shy. Yeah, and you know.

34:17 And then when I was in high school

34:21 When I went to HighSchool, I went to send High School in the Northside of Chicago.

34:26 The second half of my freshman year. I got romantic fever and I was home that whole semester in bed and kind of missed it that whole period of time where it's kind of important to make friendships tonight and get yourself settled in high school. I miss that whole thing by the time I came back and my sophomore year of high school. Everyone else already had their friends in their circles and

34:51 So it was I was constantly trying to catch up have to have it took me until I got to college until I really did that but you certainly made up for it since that. I have made an emergency. And yes, one of the most popular people I know now. I don't know why I love my life people.

35:09 Do you think that's your you do. You are a very outgoing sort of, you know, everybody come to my house and have a party things. You think that kind of comes back from that a little bit.

35:23 I don't know if it does or not. It might I would save that. It also might just be come from my mother now cuz my mother was a very she was a party girl. She was a pretty girl and she loved him and she loved my father to he loved people he loved to party so it probably is more that once I got to the point where I was comfortable with myself.

35:49 Those kinds of characteristics came out in me more damn.

35:54 I'll see you had a lot to say you were worried that you would have no storage, but you got a lot of very very good about this.

36:04 Well, I like to hear the stories. We tell everybody can hear the stories. So I haven't told any stories about Judy yet. She'll be hurt. If I don't tell a story about Clarity probably like 4 minutes 3 minutes to it a true story about Judy Judy was a tomboy and when she was like, I don't know for I was sure she worshipped her big brother. Tom just worshipped him in the two of them were played together all the time, but when she was I don't know four, five six years old. I think I've heard this story for something. She wanted to wear Toms underwear. That's how much you wanted to be a boy Bad Bunny age. Didn't she wanted to wear boys underwear? Yes. She did. She shoot you when you went shopping. She wanted to go to the boys Department cuz I have enough for underwear. I thought it was underwear.

37:01 Ranches for t-shirts for the boys Department only has like superheroes.

37:10 That's pretty funny.

37:13 That's it. That's the only story she got the only story showing she when she was younger. She was younger enough.

37:21 That that she and I didn't really become good friends until we got a little bit older. I mean I was in college and she was just she was still in grammar school. Yeah. Yeah.

37:36 Where where was Tom in the spectrum of age Thomas a year-and-a-half younger than me Tim closer to you than she almost was like

37:50 A generation behind like a right to write only childish thing. Yeah. She wasn't she she also or almost that time here.

38:02 Okay, she.

38:05 When when I went away to college, my father's business was still struggling. I mean, it was really hard from him to put me through college now and it's one of them wonderful. What's another wonderful memory. I have of my father the day that I graduated from college. He gave me a letter that he had written in which I still have an among other things and he said well kid we did it. Yeah, it wasn't just me. It was him, right? Yeah. Yeah and but by the time Judy went to college his businesses had picked up and Judy remembers a whole different lifestyle than I do. They have a lot more money. They were able to travel they were and then by that time she was the youngest in the last one left at home, too. So she had a lot.

38:51 No money, unless she remembers a different side of my parents. I think in some ways than I do.

38:59 That's very interesting to get here get her in here too in and hear her side of her side of the story child of the late 60s.

39:11 Professor much difference that can make you think yeah. I mean, I think that it's you know

39:20 Interesting how much of a change you perceive from when you know from the 50s into the 60s that there was such a big sudden because I don't notice that there was the change in decades was much more gradual for my right ear was for you. They were your life. There was a whole other thing like that again something that I don't think people think about so much with the 50s that there was a moment when that all had to end and suddenly everybody woke up from the idyllic dream and it was it was the Vietnam War and end the racial struggle in this country man. That's what I think it was.

40:04 Let me that huge change an opener Horizon.

40:10 It's pretty amazing actually. So I feel very lucky that I was able to grow up in that little bubble of as having height of happiness and idyllic life.

40:22 Yeah, that's pretty cool. And I think that's white people talk about that era and you know, you see things flying around the internet. Do you remember when and yeah. Yeah TV shows

40:35 I suppose so there's something to be said about the golden age that it really did have sort of a golden will ask for some of us it did and not for everyone. Certainly. I just feel very

40:48 Fortunately, I was one of them.

40:52 That was a good thing for me.

40:58 I said we're done.

41:02 We get to hug and kiss now.