The Autobiography of Aunt Millie Part Three: Flittings

     The family moved from Yonkers to 4052 Park Ave., where the Central Railroad's trains kept thundering by.

     Her Grandpa Fieg died, as did some famous Fleischman.

                "Beta (Bertha) says our name was originally Fiegen. I didn't

                 know that, or why they dropped the en."

     It must have been a poverty time, because her mother and oldest sister, Martha, made beaded purses to sell.

     The next move was to Washington Ave., where there were bed bugs! The only memory there is playing hopscotch, taking part in a Christmas school play for which the oldest sister gave the six-year-old a beautifully dressed doll to carry in the play [Could this be the doll in the photo in the introduction?]; and a girl whose last name was Lechinsky. When her mother called from the third story window for her daughter, the kid hid in the doorway and called back, "I ain't here, mama!"

     The next move, or "flitting," was to a three-story house on 173rd St. that the father named Igles Loch (pronounced Eagle's Lock)

                "...in the midst of a lovely cherry orchard."

     A French couple lived in the attic apartment, and on Saturdays when we two [Millie and Beta probably] were taking a bath, that French woman would have to call to those girls in the bath tub, "Open ze door." It was the only way she could get upstairs.

     Here too, a Hungarian woman lived on the first floor and she had a large white goose, which she tucked under her left arm. With the forefinger of her right hand she forced whole corn down that helpless animal's throat. It is thus that pâté de foie gras is produced.

     Green pastures belonging to the Astors were nearby, and the older boys used to gather wood there by lantern light, and store it in the second story of a nearby shed.  Max built a pipe to the kitchen window of the Fieg home, and a box full of wood would slide across to his mother's kitchen, thus saving his lugging armfuls up the stairs.

     They owned a goat that the goose-feeding Hungarian could milk, and a large turkey that wandered away never to be seen again.

     There is a memory of many enjoyable evenings with [Uncle] Gustave Boehler, who could write verse and once he had a verse for each member of the family.  Only two can be recalled:

"Jetzt komt Max und die feder fie Max

Und die glis es war ein man

Ein turkey da,

Der is mach valerian (the unknown)."

For Beta:

"Jetzt komt Beta on die rei,

Der is alles einerly,

Die a madele wie der Blitz,

Shonsees wenn sie am esse sits."

     Then they all end with "Tara ra boom de ay!"  How the Old Timer wishes she could remember the rest of the verses!

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  The population of Yonkers in 1900 was about twice that of Pforzheim and the Fiegs were perhaps delighted by the hustle and bustle. Trolleys had replaced horse-drawn coaches for the most part and residents also increasingly travelled by bicycle. Nearby Uniontown, just south of Dobbs Ferry, boasted a Ferris wheel, carousel and beer parlor and was a popular destination. The Hudson River offered a place to swim, fish and picnic and fireworks on the Fourth of July spangled the skies over the water.

     Park Ave. in the Bronx runs north-south along the railroad line. During this time there was talk of converting the railroad from steam to electricity, as had been done in Baltimore. (Can you imagine the noise and fumes as the trains roared along the tracks next to the Fieg home?) Washington Ave. parallels Park Ave. one block to the east. (In Millie's letter to my father she says they moved first to Washington Ave. and then to Park Ave., reversing the order given in this autobiography.)

     When the Fieg family moved to Igles Loch they only moved a few blocks. 173rd St. crosses Park and Washington one block to the south, running from the Grand Concourse in the west to the Bronx River in the east and ending at W. Farms Rd. Three blocks to the east of Washington, 173rd is interrupted by Crotona Park and runs one block north of the smaller Claremont Park, one or the other of which was, perhaps, the location of the cherry orchard.

     The Astor family had emigrated from Walldorf, Germany in the early 1800s and hence the name of their famous hotel, the Waldorf Astoria. (But why did the boys gather firewood by lantern light?)

     The Fieg men had sawdust in their veins - they could build anything! Millie's son, Gifford, built a home from the ground up in 1993 at the age of 74 and her brother, Lothar, went on to become an influential builder in Oneonta, New York, bringing his second son, Frank, into the family business. His third son - my father - hand-built several pieces of furniture for me as well as built-in bookshelves, storage sheds and a beautifully crafted split rail fence for the home where he lived with my mother in Greensboro, North Carolina until his death in 1989.

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     Times were hard from 1900 on -- a coal strike was on and every evening the father would announce an increase in the price of coal.  She remembers talk of gooing to Alaska as the gold strike was on but instead he bought a poor little stony farm in Schocopee [Pennsylvania].  She remembers the train ride in late March [1903], when they stopped at the Halfway House for the driver of the horse stage, Billy McGown, to get a glass of beer (I guess).

     The next morning was a beautiful sunshiny March day -- very mild -- and [the] eight-year-old was very pleased with the rural scenery.  Her mother, though, cried when she was the kitchen, the walls of which were covered with boards from grocery boxes (1903 -- no cardboard boxes then!) placed in haphazard fashion all over.  How her mother ever stood the next few years is still a marvel to the Old Timer.