Christina Semmel and Arielle Semmel

00:00 Name is Christina Jean SEMO. I just turned 70 this year at today's date is August 24th 2019 on we're in Chicago, Illinois at the Chicago Cultural Center at my partner for the interview is my youngest daughter Ariel SEMO. And while I guess I said, she's my daughter.

00:21 And I am Ariel Simone and I am 40 years old. And today's date is Saturday October Saturday, August 24th, 2019. We are in Chicago, Illinois at the Chicago Cultural Center and Christina. Some old. My mother is my interview partner.

00:40 So pressed mom daughter, but you three daughters wanted to interview you on the occasion of your 70th birthday. And so I was assigned to kick it off and and talk about growing up in your your childhood in your younger years. And one of the first things you wanted to ask you about was your grown up in Logan Square in the 50s and 60s and just kind of what was that like and what was the neighborhood like then at the time I was growing up we lived on Troy street that was important because my mother always referred to it as the house on Troy street. It was where I lived from the time. I was probably a year old, maybe even a little younger until I left at 8:18. So that was the one and only place. I lived as a child. It was about five blocks away from where my dad grew up. So the

01:40 Grade school the public grade school that was in the area was the same grade school that my dad went to so we were not a family that moved. The neighborhood when I was a young child was probably sort of middle-class by the time I got to high school the neighborhood was already starting to change. Okay, but at the time I remember if I think mostly of my childhood it was a sort of close-knit little neighborhood. I knew almost all the people on our street. There were a lot of kids that lived on the street my mom and dad socialized with other parents in the neighborhood that were about the same age. It seemed to me at the time a lot of people who lived in the neighborhood were about the same age sort of young families getting started about half the houses were rental, you know, like there were some

02:40 Small apartment buildings. We lived in a two-story apartment building that was owned by my dad's mom my paternal grandmother. Okay. And so when I was a young child up until probably Middle School my aunt and uncle and my cousins lived on the second floor my dad and mom and us kids lived on the first floor and my grandmother lived in a basement apartment. My grandfather died when I was about it two years old, so I don't really remember him very well at all somewhere around middle middle school my aunt and uncle moved out to Mount Prospect and my grandmother then moved from the basement up to the second floor and rent it out the basement apartment. But for a long time, it was family in their two-story building. Was it Aunt Erica and Erica and Uncle Don lived upstairs? And at the time they live there my two cousins Paul and Tim Maia.

03:40 Wasn't Jeff wasn't born until after they moved?

03:43 So you mentioned you're the grandpa your dad grew up in Chicago and both your parents group in Chicago. Could you talk a little bit about your parents and who they were and maybe some of the stories they told you about growing up. Okay. My dad's name was Eugene last name where Schwarz he had a lot of buddies. I don't know how else to explain it. It was almost like, you know, you don't want to call it again cuz that sounds like bad but it was sort of like if you ever saw the old TV show our gang which was actually just a bunch of kids that hung out together that was sort of how my dad hadn't even growing up even after I was married and as a young adult I knew a lot of my dad's friends that were friends from when he was like in first grade. I mean, he just sort of hang around with a lot of the same people and they all had really goofy nicknames. You know, I'm and do you remember my Uncle Don was one of my dad's friends? That's how he met my Aunt are

04:43 And he was a redhead so they called him read that was real novel and my mom's best friend was Lucille and she had gone all the way through grade school with her and she ended up marrying somebody that my dad also knew and he was of German descent and still had a German accent so they called him. Again a real novel kind of name. If you ever seen. I know you've seen pictures of my dad. Now this is this is going to sound terrible. I hate to put this in a recording but my dad and his family were from Germany. Okay, my grandmother immigrated here from germinate. My grandmother was relatively dark for a German. My dad was really dark. I'm he was often mistaken is Italian Lebanese Middle Eastern anything but German, okay. He was always very dark and heat and in the summer time, he played bass.

05:43 And stuff so he heat and allowed into the knee was really dark. And so unfortunately the neighborhood name for him and it's stuck stuck with him while he went into the Navy was Niger. So well, that was the times. What can you say that was sort of bad but he didn't tell me that name. I think I was 40 before he told me what his nickname had been as as a kid, but that's the story is my dad played softball when I was a little kid at the in the Park District at the local park. I understand when he was in high school. He was the Chicago Ping Pong Champion. Did you know that I think he didn't tell which I thought was really sort of funny as a kid. I understand he hung around a lot at the park that was associated with Avondale School. That was the school in the neighborhood that he went to and it had a big park around it and so he hung out a lot around there.

06:43 My mom grew up in a name in the neighborhood. Now. It's around DePaul University. I can't remember what it's called. But she went to Saint Michael's grade school and they're still there. She did not have an easy life as a young child. My grandmother her maternal mother was a sickly person and originally had wanted to go in the convent. She was also sort of a very devout Catholic. She wanted to go in the convent and they wouldn't take her cuz she was too sick. So she's marrying a guy who was a widow and already had a child and had three more children after that and when she was in her 30s, she lost her leg. She lost it cuz she had a sore that didn't get taken care of on her foot and it will became had gangrene and they amputated the leg above the knee.

07:43 So she was you know on crutches as a I guess that's still considered a young adult and all the way into her 60s where she then ended up having to be in a wheelchair. So my mom, you know is the only girl she had an older brother and a significantly younger brother. And so she took care of a lot of the household things that my grandmother couldn't take care of and my grandfather my maternal grandfather died of what we think was cancer. He never went to the hospital but it seemed like that. Was it Auntie to died when I was about a year old. I had already been born but I have no memory of him at all. And but my mom talks about, you know, really tough times. I don't know for sure if they actually ever were on welfare because they were, you know, very proud proud not to want to do that kind of stuff. But my mom talks about like the Saint Vincent De Paul Society come.

08:43 To their house at Christmas time with bags of clothes and stuff like that and how humiliated she was how that really bothered her. So I'm she you know, they were they were honestly poor and and they really struggled a lot and so that's about I don't know a whole lot about their Early Childhood, you know, because my mom didn't talk a lot about it. It would just come out every now and then I know her best friend was Lucille and they stayed stayed friends. I'm so my mom is named. I'm her Marion and her last name or maiden name was Sewell.

09:25 And I know I know that she she too had some friends that she kept in contact with from grade school mostly high school. She used to tell me that the friends you make in high school be your friends for life. And so she she had several friends that she kept in touch with all the way through most of her life.

09:47 I guess make it you mentioning don't know a lot about your parents childhood, but maybe we can talk a little bit about your your childhood, I guess.

10:00 Was there like when you and your your 105 so you want to talk about your siblings a little bit and I'll share all the state of that space you had in that apartment with all of you in there. I'm the oldest of five children. Okay. My next sibling is my sister Carol. She's a year-and-a-half younger than me. I'm so that was closed and then a year after her came my brother Glenn. Okay, so there were three of us under five at one time. So that was a pretty good challenge. It was my next sister. Cindy is 7 years younger than me. So there was a little bit of a gap there and until Cindy was born. My brother Glenn was the baby of the family and the only boy which was pretty important to my grandmother and sell.

10:51 Do you know when my sister Cindy was born? My brother? Glenn was not particularly happy because she started took over the baby's spot. Okay. She also is we are all sort of we we were until we get older. I'll start of dark complected and had dark hair Cindy was born with blond hair. So one of the things my brother used to taunt her about all the time was that she was adopted because that was sort of one of these things cuz she didn't look like the rest of us though. She does have brown eyes and does Tim for a blond. So that's sort of nice and then my last sister Kimberly is almost 14 years younger than me. And so we always remind her that you know, she's the one that's going to take care of all of us when we get old and decrepit we lived in the we lived in there too flat apartment, but it had only two bedrooms and sell us for girls slept in one bedroom with two sets of bunk beds one.

11:51 Master and one small closet. Okay. We all went to Catholic school. We went to same for Veronica's in Chicago which isn't functioning anymore. But so it made it a little easier as far as clothes cuz we are war uniforms and so you only need a couple pair of pants and a couple dresses and you were okay. I never thought of you know, like closet space or drawer space. I never seem to think that that was a problem off and the bedroom was just a bedroom. It's not like kids today where they have stereos in there and TVs and they go hide in the bedroom. We went in the bedroom to sleep. That was it and so, you know, what can these two sets of bunk beds when I was probably in 4th or 5th grade, my mother's mother came to live with us that was about when she was in the wheelchair and she couldn't be a home anymore. And so she came to live with us with put her in a hospital but bed and the bedroom off the kitchen so she took up that one room. And so that

12:51 Left where was everybody else going to sleep? You know my brother slept on a daybed in the dining room. And when the weather got warmer, he would move out just so you had some privacy he would move out to the enclosed back porch, but it wasn't heated so he couldn't sleep there in the in the winter time. But that's where he was all the way through his high school. Okay, and when my grandmother came to live with us Dept in force my parents to sleep on a sofa bed. So I think I've told you this before but now I was Universal bedtime everybody had to go at 9, whether you were five years old or 15 years old and I was fed time because you couldn't turn on a light in any bedroom without a light anywhere without waking somebody up. So everybody had to be in bed at night. I never thought of it as real crowded, you know for it was the all the rooms were good-sized, you know, and we had

13:51 Dining room and we also had a kitchen that had a table in it and our regular meals were around the kitchen table that's where and we had dinner together as a family every single night and we each had like assigned seats sort of funny that we all had a sort of seed and I remember because I got taller than my mother. I'm the tallest of except for my brother of all the girls and but he was younger than me. So he wasn't taller than me yet. You know what my dad said that one had to the table and I sat at the other had because they decided I needed the most room I guess but my head of the table was right next to the radiator was behind me and it had a cover on it. And so because there were so many people around the table my mom would sort of use the top of the renal the radiator cover as a buffet and it also sort of kept the food warm. And so all I did the whole meal was passed the food. Okay all the food

14:51 Behind me. So it's constantly Fiesta Food but we did use the dining room for formal occasions uniform. Oh, I mean like Christmas and stuff. And that was where we all did our homework. We came home from school and the rule was you couldn't do anything until your homework was done. So there was no break. You came home yet changed out of uniform and you sat down with the dining room table and everybody did their homework at the table. I think I went on to what else do you want to know about my childhood? Was there anything but like like it a good catch phrase for Grandma Grandma and Grandpa like something that they Grandpa always said, I don't like Grandma said George, but she could keep all your name straight. So she just called you and told us that but other things that they said all the time that

15:38 Come to mind.

15:40 Let me think here for a minute.

15:44 My dad was incredibly stubborn. My mother always said that at his funeral she was going to sing. I Did It My Way one that Herzing but she was gay of somebody's thing and course because it was a Catholic funeral. They couldn't do it at the church, but we did do it at the breakfast lunch and afterwards because that was that was sort of how he was, you know, he was very

16:09 Trying to say I don't want to say chauvinistic but he grew up in a culture and a family where the men were the the the rulers kind of thing, you know, so he didn't do a lot of

16:24 He didn't do housework ever. Okay didn't watch the kids ever. I'm not sure he ever changed a diaper when later and their years we used to say the man couldn't boil water. Okay, that was just not what things where his job was to be the provider and to go out and have a job into you know, make a living and bring home the paycheck and that kind of stuff. My mom was a neat freak. I don't know how else to say it. We used to kick it around and say, you know, like if you were in the front room and that Chicago, you know, if you were in the front room and you put a glass down on the coffee table to go use the restroom when you came back it was not only gone but it was washed and put away because that was sometimes I think her self-esteem was really wrapped up in how well she could keep a house and and how well behaved her children were and and that kind of thing.

17:25 I think I mean I hear stories and I see pictures and I know my parents are really used to like to go to parties and do a lot of stuff but I don't remember that as a kid, you know, they were incredible dancers. Oh my God, my mom and dad could Jitterbug. They could beat anybody and they were just amazing. My dad told me that he has his sister and Erica was the one who taught him how to dance. What do you want to know? What I don't know. Is that help? I can't think of anything.

18:00 I'm trying to think of any phrases, but I can't really think of anything. I can take my dad used to swear in German. Where were they don't ya just got in himmel, which is Jesus God in heaven and you know how sometimes people say? Oh my God or something. Well that was his thing and I'm sure he got there from his mother, okay?

18:27 So I guess kind did you have a favorite family tradition Growing Up Christmas Christmas was the big deal through the course of my growing up there were several times when there were very lean years were my dad was out of work. He was a truck driver a route truck driver for various companies and sometimes it be like one time. I was like six months and that was I'm sure if we did not live in my grandmother's house. We would have been evicted long ago because I don't know. I'm sure they didn't pay rent for several months. You know, I'm so there were some times when it was really tough. There were also sometimes when my parents long times when my parents didn't get along answers lot of fighting and stuff going on. So other holidays tended to sometimes get Washed by the wayside. I know in some families birthdays are a big deal they were

19:27 Not a big deal in my family, I think partly cuz a lot of times they sell it at a time when maybe money was tight, you know, or they fell in the middle of the week and there was not much to do as I as we got older my mom at least would usually asked us what we would like for our birthday dinner, you know, but it was things like spaghetti or pizza, you know, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, but Christmas always always was a huge deal to to my parents and Tim and I don't know if that came from not having real big Christmases or if it came from all the hype that goes on around Christmas, you know, the Norman Rockwell Christmas kind of thing, but my mom and dad went all out for Christmas. I don't know how I'm in later years. Like when I was in high school, I found out that they used to take out loans to buy Christmas presents if they didn't have enough money.

20:27 You know back down there used to these companies like household finance and I can't hfc in a couple of their whole business was to give small unsecured loans to people and and so I know they would take out these loan so that they could buy presents for us. Now. They didn't go like Nazi and by like exorbitant presents, but they tried so hard to give us the thing that we wanted the most and I just have some really strong memories of some of the creative things my parents did to make sure that our wish came true for Christmas and so Christmas was always real magical to me cuz it was the one time of the year where you could ask for something that seemed unattainable.

21:16 And you got it, you know, I was like your wish came true, you know, I mean, we weren't stupid we didn't ask for outrageous things, but I can remember a couple of times like one time when I was probably in 7th or 8th grade. I thought I was going to be her Rider, you know, I really like to read and I really like to write and so I wanted a typewriter. I want a typewriter so bad I can feel it. You know, and so that was my Christmas list that I went. This is before electric typewriter stuff, but they had portable. I wanted a portable manual typewriter which was probably out of my parents price range for what they could have given at that time. I mean there were five of us and we all had something we really wanted and so I really really wanted it and I thought I don't know if I'm going to get this and my mom found a old manual typewriter at some used office place.

22:16 I was one of those big black weighs a ton almost like cast-iron typewriters where he had to push the keys so hard and it had the cloth ribbons and I'm so she bought this used typewriter and I just I mean, I remember being ecstatic that I got this typewriter cuz it was like I never thought I was going to get a typewriter and I just to this day think of how creative she was that she wanted to get me what I really wanted and I had never thought of it. You probably didn't even realize they had used typewriters. So that was one time when I was in high school. I want a birthstone ring OK as mybigy present and I remember them going to a jeweler and buying a you know, birthstone ring. And so I said, I some of those things it was just like Christmas was always so magical and maybe because there were five of us. Okay, it always look like on Christmas when we saw these presents.

23:16 Look, like there was this a mountain of presents, you know, and it really we probably only got like three things, you know, or maybe one big thing and a couple small things and they would always shove in some of the things that they know we needed like socks. Grandma was good for underwear. You didn't know who I'm some of that kind of stuff but it was just the excitement of opening all the presents and you know, all of us they are and just thinking and it's probably part of the reason why I go a little ballistic at Christmastime myself because it's the one time where I think you know, I'm not to be greedy but their dreams can come true and it's more in the given. I think that was it. That's what I learned from my parents about Christmas. It wasn't that you got what you asked for, but how excited they were that they could give something that really meant something and it so as I got older it we excitement was not so much. What am I going to get?

24:16 How can I give the people what do they really want that I couldn't try to being a full fill their wish or whatever and I remember it when I was in 7th or 8th grade. You got me a typewriter when I saw it when I thought I was going to be a writer a big deal. So Christmas was always a big tradition the other tradition that I think really short shaved. My family was we went literally every single Saturday for as long as I can remember. So from the time I was a little kid all the way through high school and even when I went to college, I would even drag some of my friends and and do the same thing. We went every single Saturday to druce Lake. Okay, which is somewhere off Milwaukee up near I don't even know what town it would be in I'd have to think of what town on that would be like north of 120.

25:16 There's something off of Milwaukee. I'm trying to think what town it would be. It doesn't exist anymore. I mean the lake is still there, but it's been the whole properties been bought a couple times. But at that time it was a private Lake that you had to pay to get in. I think it's like $5 a car, you know, so rather than you and every Saturday we would leave early in the morning. I'll Pile in the car go out to druce Lake for the entire day. So we had lunch and dinner there and swam in the lake and all that kind of stuff and we would stay until that Park closed at 10 at night and then we drive back and you know, we did that no matter what happened, you know, sometimes my dad didn't get home till 4 in the morning but still at 6, we were in the car going off to druce Lake and my mom never switch. I mean if she ever raised she would have had a bathing suit on but I don't remember her ever going in the water she would cook and she would sit at the bench and drink Coke.

26:16 And read her romance magazines. She did like romance magazines and she would stay with her relaxing and getting off of Troy Street. She had this big thing about getting off of Troy Street and my dad would play with us in the water. You know, he would throw us around and stuff like that. And so I grew up loving to be in the water and doing stuff and like I said when I got to college when I moved out of the house and stuff, I would even invite friends if they come on let's go for a drive and go up to druce Lake and go swimming. You know, I wish I could remember what town it's in now at the time it seemed like I was really far away. It was up in your gages Lake and Diamond Lake and all their whole bunch of small lakes that were all privately owned and you paid a small fee to get in and then

27:07 You know my parents like this one because right at the edge of the sand where a whole bunch of trees and stuff. He had a lot of willow trees but there a whole bunch of trees. So the picnic tables were in the shade and it was it was a beautiful Park and we did that probably do you know 15 until it was sold we went every time yeah.

27:29 What was high school? Like I think that's when I really blossomed, you know, some people don't do well in high school. I guess as I sort of mentioned before my parents had some difficult times and some in a lot of fighting and stuff and during that time. I just sort of kid came to the cultural center robot that mean that they are time it was the Chicago Public Library and it was a good place to go hide but in junior high and high school, I think I sort of found my voice and sort of found out who I was I knew I was really good in school and in so anyway, I have somewhere in I think it was seventh or eighth grade. I can't remember but I went to Catholic school and the nun there decided that one of the things we needed to learn to do with how to debate how to argue and so she got these she got four of us, you know to the affirmative and two on the negative.

28:29 The topic why should we have dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima? I remember that and believe it or not. They gave me the yes side that I was supposed to fight that we should drop the bomb and I remember going downtown here to the Chicago Public Library that wonderful reference desk and finding articles from like in a right after the dropping of the bomb where people were trying to rationalize why we did it and stuff in looking up all kinds of research and I just loved doing that debate. I just had so much fun, you know, and it was sort of like when the other side would say something I'd whip up this article and say no this person said the opposite they said this and I can't believe to this day that I defended dropping the atom bomb, but given out what I think about and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, it was the whole experience of doing that the bait. I'm not that there weren't other things, but that was so that when I got to high school

29:29 Okay, I'm getting around to your story question. When I got the high school one of the by the high school. I went to I went to an all-girls Catholic High School Alvernia off of Irving Park Road in Chicago and their two is no longer functioning as a high school, but the building still there. And anyway, one of the first things I did as a freshman at the high school was I found out they had a debate team. I thought I had so much fun doing this and and in other one time in grade school that I'm going to sign up for the debate debate team and high school debate. Did Define a lot of my high school years. I was really good at it. Now. I sort of feel like you know, Elizabeth Warren. Okay, cuz she did that only she was younger than me. But but anyway, I

30:18 I didn't did the bait some of my best friends from high school where people that were Debaters. Like I said, I went to an all-girls school. And so we would have competitions on the weekends and eighty to ninety percent of high school Debaters at that time were boys not bad odds. And so I would you know, so all the guys that I dated all through high school where people I had met through debate now, they weren't all Debaters. It might have been somebody I met and then we were at a party and they introduced me to a friend or whatever, you know, but they were there all somehow connected by a couple Degrees of Separation to somebody who did debate and and like I said, I was good at it. I was good in school, but I was good at the bait. I got a whole bunch of trophies. I went to Nationals twice and so that gave me off tremendous.

31:18 Amount of self-confidence and and stuff like that.

31:24 I went to the high school I went to was all girls but they were relatively Progressive they really believe that women could do anything and so I that was instilled in me, you know, it's like you don't have to just graduate and be a secretary not that there's anything wrong with that but you can go on to you can go on to college you can.

31:47 You know, you can be anything you want to be so I got that and I think the other thing that that really instilled in me besides the real ability to critically think and to question and to argue and to not just take things at face value. I'm the other thing was a strong sense of social justice. I mean the nun to Todd and that's cool. Not only did they really believe in women, but they really believed in social justice and that was during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. There's a lot of stuff we do with that that was the early stages of the Vietnam War. There was a lot of stuff we did with that. I can remember going into my Sociology class as a sophomore and there was a note on the board. It says there will be no classic today sisters in jail again. Okay, because she had when she was out there Marching for civil rights. And so that kind of stuff really stuck with me and I know it's like I said, some people have a hard time in high school to be a high school is when I

32:47 What's your proudest moment from your childhood? What are you proudest of a moment? But what are you proudest of like I said, I think one of the things sometimes you get to ask the questions like what are the 10 biggest achievements in your life or whatever and one of them really I'd always comes up even though it's like a million years ago was being able to go to Nationals and the debate team. That was a very big deal to me. I went as a junior the other three people from my team were seniors. We went to Miami Beach. I had never been on an airplane. I had never been to Florida and the nun who took us that was so proud of us were the only girl team that went all girl team that she took us for a weekend to Nassau in the Bahamas and they always just like incredible to me. You know, I my senior year it was in Atlantic City not so much fun.

33:47 It also conflicted with the boyfriend. I was going with it the times prom and so there was some tension there for

33:57 Well, congratulations. Well, thank you. I mean, that's not

34:02 Those are your childhood questions that we are you.

34:12 By and large we got along pretty well with my siblings. They were

34:18 You know my call kids fight a little bit. We have very different personalities even to this day. My youngest sister says she does not remember me every living at home. I moved out when I was 18 mostly for crowd. I couldn't do my homework in college with not having to turn the light off at 9. So but you know by and large we got along fine. My youngest sister was like hell, you know, I used to drag her around on dates and stuff when she was like four and five cuz I thought you was so cute as we got older there were differences in what we were interested in and so but we are still that it was still all in touch. We are very loyal to each other. We would all anytime anything happens.

35:04 For any of us were all there when my brother had surgery we were all there when my sister's husband had surgery. We were all there any family gathering will you know Christmas? You've been there 45 people nobody moved away from the Chicago area. We don't move very much. I told you that nobody moved away from the Chicago area, except my son everybody else all my siblings all their grown children and all their grandchildren all live in the Chicago area. So I think you know, there is a very strong family tie it despite the fact that we have sometimes very different interests.

35:43 Turn it over. But thank you, Mom. Will thank you. Thank you. There's a talk with you going down memory lane. Okay, I wasn't sure what I was going to get a student pretty fun. Anyways, I was fun to hear some stories that I hadn't gotten here before. So, thank you. Okay.