A Man I learned Much From

November 27TH, 1918 just another day, not really, somewhere in Chicago a little boy was born who would become a great man, my Dad. In his younger years he was a good family man to his parents and to his sister/sisters (two died young), he had to exit school early during the depression as his Dad had unfortunately drank away the profits from their butcher shop, thus his father became the new owners employee and my Dad who was of a Polish family but who insisted they speak English at home so he would do well in school with learning English, well money was scarce, the depression was well on and my Dad had to quit school to dig trenches/ditches to bring in extra money. When he was young man he was surrounded by his friends "The Honoree Gang" named for the street corner they frequented in Chicago until it was time for a long war, World War II and my Dad enlisted in the army and became eventually a Sargent and was stationed in France, Belgium, and with Patton's help they invaded Germany and saw much of the damage's the Germans had inflicted on all of those countries, and saw the camps at the end of the war holding German soldiers instead of Jewish people of all descents. He came home and started working as a printer, and met my Mom who lived not far from his own home in Chicago, she lived on North Avenue in a huge apartment building close to 1841 North Ave, it had a wonderful hot dog stand next to it, and they had the best french fries on earth as we children would one day declare. It had a bar named Louie's at the end of the block. They dated, married, and had children, 3 of us, and tried to make a good home for us in Chicago, within the first few years he lost his mother, his sister, his father, and our mother had already lost her mother and her youngest brother early before she turned 15 both were gone, so my parents really focused on work and home and family. My mother tried to take care of her father & stepmother along with help given by my father, and somewhere along the line my mother became ill, and was hospitalized for several months and remained ill for several years. I remember my father's attempts at cooking dinner for his three children, I remember his transmission going on his vehicle & him driving backwards to the hospital in Evanston to see her cause he promised he would. I remember a Christmas when the vehicle was broken or snow was too high where he took a sled with one of our neighbors and carried home our fresh Christmas tree on that sled through many miles of bad terrain and cold...for his children. I remember him teaching me that gardening was like life you always had to give back some to the earth...you couldn't just take. I remember him telling my brothers that they had so much cologne on they smelled like bad hookers, and him telling my mother when he had the wrong colors on for a suit pant & coat...not to let him go out of the house looking like a j off, and I remember him telling me when I was spending too much time visiting them after I'd married that my husband might be angry, and " Married life was not all Lying on your back", these things were said practically thus I remember them smiling and seeing the humor in Ziggy's way of coining it. He loved the city of Chicago and it's beautiful old buildings, old architecture, knew where the underground streets were in the city, took us to see the Water Tower before it was ever revamped, and was one of the few dads to take us to Lincoln Park Zoo for summer evenings, and we went sledding in the snow for hours, and ice skating and he would take us whenever he could to something fun, until any fun ended for that while. Ah, I do miss this man, but I try to carry him in my heart, he would have been 89 today, and I celebrate this even though he passed when he was 71, I celebrate that he was here, he was seldom afraid of something, he tried mountain climbing and liked it, he worked around the house and made many improvements to it, always reading or researching first but never being afraid to tackle it. Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you lots, Kathy