Laureen Sinyai and Clare Altland

00:02 Hi, I'm Clara sin II Island. I'm 36 years old. Today is November 19th 2016. Where in Gulfport Mississippi at Lynn Meadows Discovery Center, and I'm here with my mother.

00:19 And I am Lori semi my age is 68 today is November 19th. We are in Gulfport, Mississippi at the Children's Museum and my daughter Claire is speaking to me today.

00:33 So tell me a little bit about growing up in Bridgeport, Connecticut and what the community was like that you grew up in.

00:41 That is actually an interesting question because it was not a

00:46 Cohesive Community like we would think today Bridgeport was a manufacturing center.

00:54 It was chock-full of factories. Everyone that wanted a job could have a job whether you were brilliant or stupid. It was a job for you in the factory. All my aunts went into the Brass Company or Harvey Hubbell or bead chain where they made the chain that pulls light bulbs on and off and they walk to work and we lived on Mountain Grove Street which one Bridgeport choke on a name like play cities off and do the name was the Park City because of the beautiful Elms and there were hundreds of Elms aligned every kind every street. But by the time I came along

01:33 And we moved into my grandmother's house on Mountain Grove Street. Those Elms had been killed from Dutch elm disease. So it was more like the city of tree stumps and at one end was the cemetery which was a beautiful spot. Nothing like cemeteries today. It was Hills and Groves and all sorts of things and we would go for walks there just to get out of the city across the street from our house was Bonine manufacturing which ran the entire block. So one side was two family in three family houses that whenever anyone came over the first thing and immigrant family would try to do would be to buy a two and three family house. First of all, it was logical economically.

02:18 You always had a renter. Sometimes it was your own family upstairs was Mom and the brother that never left home or whatever and then the next four with a passel of aunts and uncles and their kids everyone lived together.

02:36 Our area

02:39 Looking back on it now was primarily Slovak and Hungarian.

02:44 Maybe six blocks down the street it turned into mcfield, which was Irish.

02:50 All the Polacks live down East, Maine

02:54 America's history which course kossuth? What's a Polish freedom fighter?

02:59 A big deal that happened

03:02 In Bridgeport at that time was or a little bit after that time was the Hungarian Revolution and a whole new wave of Hungarian immigrants came because of course where else would they come but hometown?

03:15 The people that I knew never identified themselves as Hungarian Americans or Slovak Americans are Latinos and we had something of everything you would call the Multicultural issues today both food social Customs family Arrangements, but everyone called themselves either. I'm an American or I'm a new American when someone was no longer 8dp, which was a displaced person and those were War refugees.

03:46 But they became new Americans and there would be small celebrations about that at our house. We got the Hungarian newspaper, which only my grandmother could read. My grandfather could not read English, but my grandmother was by far the more intelligent of of the two of them, but he had his place has

04:07 For instance. He was the cheapest man I ever met and the plus being

04:14 That when they the depression came in this was a story I heard of course because I wasn't around the depression his his bar that he owns had close.

04:25 But my grandmother being very resourceful not only raise chickens and everything else in the backyard, but you've made the bathtub gin in a very bathtub jet we used for the next hundred years, okay.

04:39 Prohibition during prohibition. She made the bathtub. After that he when the prohibition was over from what I understand.

04:49 He sold the restaurant.

04:52 And went from there and back into the factories everyone worked in the factory. And this is your father's my father's father and mother. Yeah, then they moved the thought my grandmother and grandfather moved to Philadelphia where

05:10 I guess they we went to visit them occasionally.

05:13 They lived in a row house there. I can only remember the Alleyways because as children are we were free to run up and down the alleys for miles and you know, somebody would go out and yell Billy can all tell her here. Eventually you'd find your way back all the Alleyways look the same to me, but I was 5 and 6 years old. So, you know then made a difference what made them move here from Angry different reasons. They certainly didn't know each other at that time. My grandmother left a small agricultural Village on the Tokay wine region near the lake for a call. I think it is and she wanted to go because

05:53 She told me once that you her father couldn't afford tobacco.

05:58 And she decided she was going to get him tobacco. So when she was 13, she came by herself and she went to Philadelphia so they must have known some Hungarian group there.

06:10 And she met my grandfather who I don't know why he left. I know he was from a larger town area not not Budapest or anything like that, but he came and worked in a factory in Philadelphia. And that's where they met. I don't know too much about their courtship or anything else except their wedding picture. I know that he was a good husband until he bought.

06:39 The bar and then I'm afraid to get an alcoholic Tendencies and all during prohibition. I understand. It was a violent household. So all of the children were born here. Yes and yet they didn't speak English didn't speak English until they went to school that is also on garion Slovak neighborhood. I believe they could speak Slovak, but I don't know for sure. I know they're their immediate neighbors were

07:09 This is home. She misses don't got you look like a witch out of a Baba Yaga tell and so did most people older women on that street. I have no idea. Now how old they really were grandma and boy my great-grandmother. She definitely look like a witch will by then. She was you know, if she was just a small shrunken lady. She was not real but misses him. You had the bad boys for the whole bit, but what I was saying about you do growing up there you just

07:41 You you just if you wanted a butter lamb around Easter you went down to the Pollock town if you wanted stuff kapusta you went.

07:54 To my grandmother's house if you wanted to.

07:59 The Caboose Irving soccer

08:02 I know that my own mother couldn't stand the smell of a pork chop frying in the morning and onion and garlic and she almost had a miscarriage because of it because they was right after the war they moved in with Grandma and Grandpa zambori on Mountain Grove Street and

08:23 That's what my grandfather had for breakfast before. He went to work that in a shot of whiskey.

08:28 It was a manly world and my mother they couldn't figure out what was wrong with her until finally. Dr. Nichols said, you know when you're telling me this and this and this tells me that it's older sitter setting you off. She would start to throw up and couldn't stop all day and she was so he told her to drink a drink and egg and wine. That was the prescription for that which of course made her throw up faster and eventually my own grandmother figured it out. She said it's just I can't do her accent. But it is this in FedEx, which was my father Frankie no more.

09:10 No more just garlic this job no more. And so the old man didn't have his chop in the morning. She put her foot down a cash woman that later would almost at fire to the retirement home by insisting on frying liver. And yes, yes. Yes, who's the first person that you remember in the community outside your family isn't the the neighbor Babushka woman or who stands out to you?

09:43 Probably did this the set of of people.

09:49 We had Neighbors on the other side that were evidently.

09:53 I'll say normal meaning.

09:56 But everyone is fired to be just plain American hanging around Harry and his wife and I would go out early in the morning or knows what time that really was and swing on my swing in the backyard which my father made from a out of a

10:11 Tree limb and something else and I guess one day I wasn't why I wasn't wearing underwear up when I went out to swing on. I got myself dressed, you know, and I was swinging and Swinging swaying in the old man X4 was laughing his fool head off and are any he said something about you better go in you better go in and at that moment I looked at him and I let go of the swing and I flew literally into his into his head that separated the yard. So he stands out in my mind is if he pulled me out of the hedges, you know, this I had to be three one thing. I remember about the street is all the women on the street. Everyone had a garden in the back. It was vegetables in the front flowers flowers flowers. They all had either Hedges are fences delineating. There are 10 square feet cuz it was a very tiny yard.

11:02 Usually hydrangeas, which I came to think of his old lady flowers right up to the edge of the of the a little bit of grass that you could walk around just to keep the flowers from brushing the hedges.

11:18 And I I see that now as as a

11:22 Women's need for an inordinate need for beauty where men got up in the morning did what they had to do that. You know, they did what they thought they had to do and they they went to work they were decent provider. So I'm not sell some drank a lot some didn't but mostly it was just normal people trying to recognize that they had limitations and that they wanted something more for their children. They didn't know what more was do you think about him started as Victoria Gardens now, this was a totally not and I'll leave most of these people came.

11:57 After the war ended in a tide of refugees or way before both Wars, okay that you said that your aunt's my great aunts were working in factories that they continue their work during the war of the factor Aaliyah everybody everyone work. And if I mean they were sending out calls for everything from airplanes to

12:25 The bead change the light bulbs to

12:29 It was just as my mother often said you know, there was there was nobody left in town, but the men wise but the toothless and people over 90, but she didn't work at a factory. She did for a while. She worked on the assembly line in singer manufacturing, which I don't know what they made during the war. But of course that was sewing machines. It was the biggest sewing machine factory in the world. I thought her father tried to stop her from working the factory he did but there was money to be made and everything else in the factory. Shoot eventually. She went into the office in the Red Cross you work for the Red Cross offices, but in the fact I remember her telling me a quick story. She was very reticent about anything to do with sexuality and how people were treated. She had lots of reasons for that.

13:20 But she was working in the factory and I guess someone came on to her and made, she was an inspector I think about it you was up and down the lines inspecting body work and some man made a comment and I guess he was rather coarse and as you say when she was younger, I guess you was got to hear.

13:44 And she went to another man who was the bigger boss and she said, you know Harold over there or whatever. His name was Harold said this that and the other thing to me and I'm getting tired of it and I I don't I don't want him to do that anymore. And I guess the man felt kindly towards her more like a daughter or something and that guy was transferred out the next day, which was a big deal in that at that time.

14:14 She worked.

14:17 That I was sent when she graduated from high school cuz she was I was 48. She was working during the war and right after it.

14:26 Right after it in the Red Cross. I remember her saying that she had started seeing Grandpa before the war. Oh, yeah, and then when he went away and wrote her a letter and told her that she shouldn't go to the roller skating rink anymore, which is her hobby because she was with him then and she said I'll do what I want to do is tell her what to do and she wasn't having it. She wasn't having it at that age that yeah sure. She she she was she was actually a champion roller skating dance person not speed we're talkin dance here like ice skating and you know, she made her own costumes and all that and

15:10 And I

15:21 I'm kind of curious.

15:23 I just assumed.

15:26 Everybody

15:29 Everybody was different but not really.

15:32 We would ask each other later on by the time you're ten. You say something like a what descent are you? Which meant are you Italian are you it was the one thing I was forbidden to do that clear nose about was I was forbidden to date Italians by my father because he said they always beat their wives. Will that was his experience set the Italians he knew beat their wives so it wasn't his father also abusive when he was drinking. Yes. So you think you have to be in hungarians and I have never once I get the one thing I know is I don't know anyting. I do know that it never occurred to me to think of any specific group as anything except part of

16:23 Us all of us can only difference would be are you a girl or a boy? Are you a little already a big? Are you older? Are you young but I even then it was more like are you a grandma or a mom? It wasn't are you single or married or divorced or anything like that? And I have no idea how old the old ladies were on the street because most of them spoke different languages. You said you liked everything else would you just assume that if you want to smoke something you go to the Hungarian Butcher and be sure he doesn't give you the one in the back of the case. Okay, you just learned thing but you but it never occurred to me to say the Hungarian butcher was a cheater because it would be more like every butcher is going to give you the one in the back of the case doesn't matter. If you go down East Main Street and go to the Italian place where you can't stand the smells of salami.

17:13 It's just felt like I was all very food-related. Well, it really was because there were the owners of food were as a child. Your sense of smell is also very strong and like our landlady upstairs when we move from that to another house in the city was Italian and mrs. Lee a party was always cooking something and always yelling my parents never Yelp.

17:40 My grandmother would correct my father but they never they just never yelled that might have been a difference. But I I just thought it was massively a party rather than Italians, you know, so the effects would be

17:54 What do you mean you're if somebody had said to me?

17:58 Imma, let you know or I'm a Puerto Rican I would have said to myself.

18:03 And yeah.

18:06 In

18:09 What else?

18:11 What school do you go to you know, it was pretty tough growing up and she didn't take much crap from Grand Prairie. Nobody else. How was she compared to everybody else in the name the block my mother. She was she was outspoken. That is that is something I'd like to talk about just a little her nobody in that time drove. No women. No women because there were one car and then if you didn't take the bus there was plenty of mass transit. So the women would you don't take their shopping carts and walk to the supermarket or

18:54 Go downtown to shop once a week or pay your bills or whatever. You take the bus.

18:59 But for whatever reason Grandma decided to learn to drive and my father taught her and he was fine with that. Yeah. Yeah, we never had a car. So I don't know what the point that was what she was going to do it and one Summer she was going to teach whoever wanted to learn to drive and she could have been more than 26 on the on the street. Now. Remember people spoke different languages and broken English cars were clutch has nobody had an automatic. It was a

19:33 Fairly wide City street, but there were cars parked on both side. And of course the factory had trucks coming in and out of it all day. It was not quiet was not like learning to drive in a parking lot or a country road. You were out there once you get out of the driveway, which was really hemmed-in more than one woman knock down a hedge trying to get in and out of our driveway.

19:55 She has kids.

19:59 There had to be at least a dozen of us get on the front porch don't step off you kids are going to stay on that porch until mrs. Macvittie learns to drive.

20:10 So Freddy macvittie and I and all his brothers and sisters and a bunch of I was the only child at that point which was strange. Anyway, I was probably the only only child on the street.

20:23 We stood on the front porch and watched as mrs. Macvittie and my mother in high heels because you were going to take your driver's test in high heels because you got a dressed up or else you were going to go.

20:37 Up and down that street and you can imagine the jerking when she was a terrible driver when you nor yeah, but she could she could parallel park while wearing heels on a hill like nobody you have ever seen before or since. She also told me that on a hill. There is a large truck behind her and she couldn't shift gears to go for at a stop sign. So she just waved at the guy and rolled back in that would be grandma Yeah, my point being she taught everybody to drive just like her town of terrible female driver, but his mother spoke Italian and he had married an Irish girl from when I understood she was

21:20 He was Irish. She was Italian so she has a broken English and that one I remember because for some reason as a child, I don't know what it was but I think in retrospect it must have been was he going to be very unhappy when he found out that his lovely wife you had to drive and I don't know if he ever did but it all summer.

21:44 My mother would take the car my father would go to work and she would teach people to drive up and down that street. I just remember standing there on the porch watching and wondering when can we get off this port? How long is this going to take the course? I never knew cuz I was a kid in time is endless. What do you think your best childhood memory?

22:10 If you're talking about early childhood.

22:15 It would be flowers. My grandmother's yard was always at my very first memory is

22:22 Opening my standing in the side yard opening my eyes looking at an iris at exactly my height.

22:30 And its head is its head was as big as me and it was purple and yellow and are I just remember the absolute?

22:38 In take a breath as his most beautiful thing. I had ever seen. I'm sure I had run by it 50 times, but there it was and that's color and everything else later on when when my dad built at the house in the country.

22:54 It would be walking through the woods by myself.

22:59 Quiet

23:01 Looking at the trees hiking finding new things finding a Brooke following it. No one followed. You know one I won't say no one care. They just assumed there was nothing wrong and I think children

23:17 Today might miss a lot of alone time that they can think their own thoughts Gathering to this day. I die. Don't need to cry don't like a crowd even though I'm not enrolled straight you were never alone because there was no it was exciting. You know, that was early childhood versus later. Did anybody have a big influence on you or who had the most influence on you? Was it your mother or someone outside your family?

23:47 I don't I don't.

23:49 II would say I'm the first impulse I'm I'm not prepared for that question. I can't think of a single person leaves out. There is no one that you almost idolized around or anything. No, never.

24:02 No, I was always.

24:05 In one of the states of Wonder at things like

24:09 Really as a kid. What did you picture? The future would be like, did you think you just get married and have kids or why would never use the word just get married?

24:23 Did you think you would simply get married have kids or did you have that wasn't going to be simple it did you did you have a career you wanted did you want to at one time? I thought I might want to be a virologist.

24:40 Studying viruses, okay.

24:44 I think that was a result of schooling at that point. I found it very interesting. But the things that went along with that type of science the physics and things I was not interested in at the same time. I was very interested in the publishing world because I was reading constantly but having said all that I was never driven to have a career. I I knew in those days. You're a pretty much a product of your times. I knew that I could do one thing. I wanted to make a difference in the world.

25:21 And one time I saw a movie and I can't remember the real name of the movie with.

25:26 The woman in it voiced probably what I felt inside was.

25:31 And I can't change the world by myself, but

25:36 If I with any luck and I can

25:42 Have a a child and

25:46 My children, I'll have a few of those and if I have enough of those and they do the right things, they will change the world just by little bits, and I've always known that the only thing you're ever in charge of is yourself.

26:01 So

26:03 I kind of went that way and fortunately I met someone who probably felt the same way. Who knows he could never tell you anything.

26:14 Okay.

26:20 What was your perfect day as a kid that that would be easy that would be being outside. I had a pair of skis that I get my mother got me for Chris and best Christmas present I ever had once we move to the country and I went in the woods all day with my dog and these keys there was just nothing. I mean you were walking on wood. It wasn't I wasn't skiing but a boy I thought I was hot stuff and then I would see off little Cliffs. I would never get hurt. You always bounced.

26:55 The dog was a perfect companion.

26:59 And I could stay out until I turned blue and always outside when when I was younger than that my cousin Mickey got hepatitis.

27:10 And they told told told us he'd have to stay inside for a year.

27:16 And I remember thinking.

27:20 Bubble, he do he can't go to school. He can't go outside. He can't he can't even sit on the curb with a piece of chalk. This is the worst thing. I've thought he might as well be dead and covered. The best thing as a child would have been to be either riding your bike in the summer.

27:37 Something involving outside. Are you still that way now, you're perfect day to be outside alone today. I get the most out of my grandchildren about the first bunch in the second Bunch. But being outside is absolutely freeing I do.

27:56 I do like it now that your father is retired and after 27 years of working nose-to-nose with him and business. I like when he's out and I'm all by myself but changed her grandma. She was such a more of a Spitfire when she was yelling in my sister's illness. It just took all our energy.

28:17 It takes every shred of your being.

28:22 Medical conditions illness destroy more families than keep them together.

28:28 And she was having severe asthma allergies ear asthma to the point where she was near death often.

28:36 We had to the ventilators that you use to do the Bird Machines the breathing machines. They were not around. They were just invented. Then we moved to Palm Springs to see the one being in this man's garage the inventor and the place was covered in dust and Janet pretty much turned blue their imagine what that's like pairing your child from place to place.

29:05 And then she was pregnant at the same time with Paul her third child. And after that I think it is just

29:15 Took every Shred.

29:18 She was she was still herself, but it would be like if you had a start shirt and then no starch.

29:28 She eat see glimpses of it with her like when she would tell us as teenagers to use men like tissues wanted you to have other things with.

29:43 With in California, we went to visit her and she would tell Grandma what to do occasionally, but most of the time it was him in charge and him. She was just very passive with it. So hard to reconcile both things together. People are hit with the challenges that sometimes make them and it was Hemingway said something about that but probably to come out with a clever quote that you should try and remember but I've given you so many and you don't remember any of it. So I just got a lot of okay if there's one person who now tells me to

30:25 Relax and keep my mouth shut. That was not what I witnessed crying up. It was stand up for yourself. And for the people who stand up for them, but I'm in a real grandma would tell us about

30:41 Frances Willard that are famous she didn't get a lot of words, but she's a lot of them. She just brushed off. She's figured you can't do anything about this. Yeah, but everything she stood up for her and she was, you know, proud to have out here you weren't you were a product of your time. She was very much forward-thinking amongst the people in Mountain Grove Street. She was very much Forward Thinking among the people that that we lived.

31:15 With rinses I can remember her having a fight with the missus Leah party our landlord on Beecher Street, which was right across the street from the school before while my father was building the house in the country. We had another rent and we were on the bottom for a mrs. Leah party was the second and her daughter and somebody else was on the third floor and it was a tiny yard as all immigrants had from different places filled with flowers, and I had a cat

31:42 And I sat down with my cat on the grass, which was maybe a 12 inch strip.

31:49 And this is only a party came running out yelling and screaming get off the grass is no I forget how you say that in Italian, but I know it pretty well by then and

32:01 My mother stepped out the door.

32:04 And told you old witch.

32:07 You old witch and no one ever your terrible words. Never around me. Did I ever hear a terrible word? Okay, and that was pretty much true of everybody you old witch blah blah blah. Well leave my daughter alone, and she's sitting on the grass. She's not going to ruin your garden got it out of there shortly after that we moved.

32:28 It never occurred to me that it had anything to do with me.

32:32 But

32:33 I caught a conversation later.

32:37 That they said definitely no one was going to tell her children not to sit on the grass. You wasn't so much as sniffing a flower that belong to somebody else for her. But that's just how it was. So like any other mother when provoked

32:53 She could give everything she had so I'm in that and I'm sure I was the same way when provoked in my time. I would stand up for myself. I would do that sort of thing. I was more outspoken, but that's just being a product of your time. There is such a thing as not knowing when to shut up. What are you trying to say? What I'm trying to say is I often didn't know the difference.

33:29 What did she look like and what was her?

33:41 As a young person she was stunning stunningly beautiful. She

33:49 She had a spectacular figure.

33:53 Which I didn't realize until much later why men looked at my mother?

33:59 Men on the bus would look at my mother and I always thought they were staring was I doing something wrong, but it's clear to me now that they were looking directly at her chest. She had long black hair.

34:10 Her biggest disappointment in her early life was that she wanted to become an airline stewardess, which was a new job. She was accepted but she had to come up with five or six hundred dollars to go to Omaha where they were training people and her brother had said, oh, yes, he's had to give her the money and when she was accepted. He said I don't have that money. I was just kidding you and she was crushed cuz there was nowhere to get that money. Her mother had died by that time so she had her own issues, but does she was she was a beautiful woman? She was Slender she was statuesque who is very very statuesque.

34:50 They say in her ice caterer for roller skater outfit she was so

34:56 She was she was a Betty Grable type with dark hair.

35:00 And my father who was the opposite blond and Sky Nathan and where he was too is good looking in his own way and you know, he had to wavy hair. He looked kind of like Danny Kaye in an old movie which he found highly insulting but everybody else said, yeah, you're just a little like he he was taken by her. He said she was the most beautiful person. He ever saw that it was called the mosque. It was a roller skating rink built like a mosque and it was a beautiful building in Bridgeport was in A1 condition then everything was

35:39 Everything was in good repair buses trains, I mean and still enough that I could take the train to New York everyday by the time I became 18 and went to secretarial school. She told me that he would write. Well, we seen the letters he wrote her in the poetry and everything else Atreyu name and he was in the Pacific in World War II and she would not commit to him. And then she said he came back and showed up in his uniform on her front porch and she said to herself I could do that and he came back. He wasn't going to tell her what to do. Yeah.

36:19 Sounds rather taking it she want she wants what she was until she wasn't. Yeah, and then she really wasn't she did almost every morning to live with if you were her daughter. I hope it doesn't go that bad for her. I could see she would be difficult and she stopped standing up to him most of the time but I can't it's hard to reconcile to the stories. I've heard about him and houteff he was and then as a grandpa you it was brilliant brilliant inventor and engineer her feel by comparison dumb, and that was something she never felt until

37:02 My sister's house was out of her control and then she felt as though as all mothers do.

37:08 There's something wrong with my child. I must have done something on some level you feel that not true, but you feel it has their own Dynamics.

37:22 She had a happy marriage for 85% of the time and she never felt the need to know. She said thank you very much. She was worn out.

37:38 So, what was your what you think your proudest moment was his moment as a child.

37:52 Wow.

37:54 Or is it adult?

37:57 II as an adult, and I'm sure you're proud of something you've done.

38:03 Maybe just your youngest daughter could be I could do your children sometimes when I'm standing in church.

38:13 This was long before I was Catholic.

38:16 And there were the three of you and you were all standing upright and tall and respectable-looking.

38:23 And I would look over and think.

38:26 Okay, God now.

38:29 Priestess

38:31 You could take me now cuz everybody doesn't need me anymore. It's okay.

38:37 And now

38:39 Since you didn't it even better because now I have this passel of people.

38:46 You know, you are group the JV team and then Yvonne's group the older team and I look at them all and I and I think there's not one.

38:55 It isn't a kind person that isn't generous.

39:02 Just good and

39:07 Okay, God.

39:13 Now you're done. You never know. I mean there could be more kids and that's it. That's it.