192 Grayson Place

This was the address of my maternal grandmother’s house in Teaneck, N.J. Recently our daughter Eva and I drove by that house, after delivering my deceased husband’s ashes to our family plot in Hackensack Cemetery nearby. That house, and all of the houses on that block look brand new, just as I remembered them from the 30’s. I was very excited when I recognized it. I would have liked to enter and look around, as I once did. But it was locked up. Actually, for sale. Those hot, humid summer days, when my cousin, John and I stayed with Granny, were among the happiest of my long life. A sense of freedom and quiet joy pervades those memories. From the age of ten my Mother used to drive or send me by Pullman train from Pittsburgh P.A. to New York City, to stay with her family. This happened almost every Christmas and every summer. I loved those adventures. I had no fear. She wanted me to have a “sense of family”, since my father had left us. I have had a strong sense of family ever since and feel very proud of our own little family. 

Granny’s two-story frame house had a red roof, many windows, and a cool cellar. No air conditioning. It actually belonged to my Uncle Jack who had his own early morning radio program on WOR. It was at first called “Gambling’s Musical Clock”, later “Rambling With Gambling”. It lasted for thirty-four years. He allowed Granny and Grandpa to live there rent-free since they couldn’t afford to rent a place of their own. 

In Granny’s house there was a large kitchen with a cozy breakfast-nook and a small dining room, which also served as her bedroom since she couldn’t go upstairs. Her greatest joy was cooking Sunday dinner for John’s parents, her daughter Rita and her famous son-in law. She got up early in the morning to make Stuffed Cabbage or Chicken Paprika, and to bake delicious fruit pies which I still remember. She got very flushed, her gray hair coming loose from the bun. She used to say, “My best guests are my family!” but she never had any guests, living there quietly with Grandpa. 

Upstairs there was my bedroom, Grandpa’s bedroom, a bathroom, and an empty little room in which I first saw my cousin John in his playpen. He was five years younger than me. I thought he was cute. There was one other room in Granny’s house which I loved best of all, the unfurnished Sun Room. In there she had the huge trunk which accompanied her from Hungary in 1895. She brought out a big iron key and opened the trunk, which contained photo albums full of family pictures. She showed me her brothers and sisters; Onkel Jenö, Onkel Albin, Rezinka and Ilonka. There was also a portrait of one of her uncles in uniform, who was an army surgeon. He received an important medal from Emperor Franz Joseph. There was a picture of a beautiful little girl just a few years older than me, Onkel Jenö’s daughter, Margit Trattner. She had long dark hair like mine, done up with a big white bow. I said I would like to play with her. In 1938 when Mother and I visited Budapest we met her and other members of the family. She was then nineteen, just a few inches taller than me, six years older. Still beautiful. After World War II we learned that she and her mother had died in Auschwitz. Trattner, Granny’s maiden name, was known to be a Jewish name. I don’t think Granny was aware of that, since her father was an avowed atheist.  She had no religious affiliation. I made a mixed media collage of Margit, wearing a party dress and fancy shoes. One of my best art works. I made it on the fiftieth anniversary of the Holocaust. (see picture)

Granny also told me about the gypsies.  In that part of the world, they were feared and despised.  But she seemed to admire them, especially their music and freedom to wander.  She thought they were strong and good-looking, the women as well as the men.  She passed onto me that idealized image and the love of gypsy music. She told me how happy she was as a young, homesick mother when she invited a few gypsy musicians to their modest apartment after a performance.  She wined and dined them, while they played the music she loved.  When I grew up, frequently visiting my family in NYC, they always asked me where we should go for dinner.  I always said, “A Hungarian restaurant with gypsy music!”

One day, before we left the Sun Room I said to Granny, “Please, put a note here saying that all these pictures will go to Nancy.” She did that, and I treasure them.

Granny’s house had a small yard in back, by the garage. There was a large round table with an umbrella, and a small garden with red Begonias and other flowers. I used to weed her garden since Granny was not allowed to stoop over nor climb stairs. She had a very weak heart and astronomically high blood-pressure resulting from a botched hysterectomy. I enjoyed weeding her little garden, my first venture into gardening. She couldn’t stand humidity either. On those sultry summer afternoons, when John and I were enjoying our “Good Humor” ice-cream bars, she often sat in a rocking chair in her cool cellar to escape the heat. Hungary was never like that. 

Granny’s house had a large dark living room, sparsely furnished. It contained a couch where she took her rest every day after lunch. On the wall there was a small, unframed painting called “Fresh Air.”  It was painted by a friend of the family and featured a green meadow with wildflowers and a big blue cloudless sky. She loved that painting, having raised her family in New York tenements, buildings facing brick walls. She said when they moved to Fordham, which was then semi-rural, she just sat there looking at the trees. I think she said, “Trees are often nicer than people”. She was very homesick for the beautiful countryside of her native land and for her Hungarian family. She never became an American. Granny was of medium height and thin. She liked to cook for her family but didn’t eat much herself. If she was left at home at dinner time, she ate one boiled egg. She had long, thick, wavy gray hair parted in the middle, and tied forming a bun in the back.  The bun was held in place with large hairpins. She was soft-spoken and gentle, very sensitive and easily hurt. Like me. She didn’t talk much but understood things. Very intuitive, like all of us “Graubart women.”  Her married name was Dora Graubart.  She once wrote to me “If you are happy, I will be happy. If you are sad, I will be sad.” I still have her letter. 

In the living room there was also Grandpa’s rocking chair. He spent most of his time sitting there, reading newspapers and smoking his cigars. He rarely spoke to us children. Only when necessary. He spoke to Granny in German. He was an orphan who came to the U.S from Austria, a fifteen-year-old draft-dodger. He loved this country, especially New York City. He was a salesman by profession, later a traveling salesman. He believed he had done a day’s work if he made one sale in the morning. Then, according to Uncle Jack, he would spend the rest of the day comfortably seated in the lobby of the Walldorf Astoria, reading newspapers and smoking cigars. “He acted as if he owned the place,” according to Uncle Jack. Meanwhile Granny was sitting at home, worrying about how to get enough money to buy new shoes for their three children, for the approaching school year. One year however, when he was doing well financially, he bought an expensive Hupmobile with a uniformed chauffeur, and sent his wife and three children to Hungry for summer vacation.

I do remember one occasion when Grandpa noticed me. Granny had a big old-fashion Victrola in the living room. She used to play Strauss waltzes on it. I often kicked off my shoes, humming the tune and waltzing around the room. I was twelve or thirteen at the time. Grandpa looked up from his newspapers, removed his cigar and said, “She’ll be quite a woman some day!”

My cousin John, five years younger, was very different. John Alfred Gambling. At that time, he was an attractive slim blond boy, very lively and upbeat. He always had good ideas about how to have fun. For example, once when Granny was taking her rest on the living room coach, my cousin John, who was then perhaps seven or eight years old, suggested that we make a gift for her. He found some old magazines from which we cut all sorts of pictures. We glued them to a small box. My first collage! Granny was very happy when we presented it to her. On those rare occasions when Granny and John’s mother Rita disagreed about something, it was little Johnny who calmed the troubled waters. I admired him and loved him as my brother.

When Eva and I stood at our family plot in the Hackensack Cemetery, I told her how Gran and I used to walk there from Teaneck. She used to speak of “the good earth” and looked forward to being buried there next to a young World War II bombardier, who had a Germanic name like hers. Eva asked me if I would like to say a prayer. I said, “Granny used to say, “Geloubst sei du, Marie!” (Praise be to Mary!) As we left the cemetery, the workman who put Andre’s ashes into the hole said to us, “God bless you!”