Mysteries abound, even at garden parties

Mysteries intrigue me.  Navigating the twists and turns of a good mystery keep me interested in a story.  It gives me something to think about, to analyze.  Give me some vague details about a situation and I can spend hours going over different scenarios to fill in the blanks.

There is one mystery I have been pondering lately.  I have written before about my paternal grandparents, immigrants from Hungary.  My grandfather came to the U.S. from Hungary in 1904.  According to his ship’s manifest he was accompanied by two other people, his father, Gyula, and a woman named Gyulane.  I bought a copy of the manifest from Ellis Island and gave it to Daddy for Christmas several years ago.  I thought he would be pleased to see his family names in black and white, proof of their journey from the “Old Country”, as my grandmother used to say.  When I asked him about Gyulane he blew it off.  He said he didn’t know who she was, but she couldn’t be related.  That was the end of that conversation, and I knew to never bring it up again.

Daddy may have been able to pretend Gyulane did not exist, but I cannot.  She is a mystery to me.  The manifest states she was travelling with a husband, but things Daddy said about his grandfather always led me to believe he left his wife and other children in Hungary.  If that is true, then was my great-grandfather a smuggler of sorts? Or a bigamist?  Mmm, a mystery.

These newly landed immigrants’ destination, according to the manifest, was Chicago.  It was there my grandfather met and married another Hungarian immigrant.  I do not know the details of how they met or when, but I am fairly certain they did not know each other in Hungary.

Their life in Chicago is a mystery to me as well, something I would like to research someday.   Meanwhile, I have a box of old photographs once belonging to my grandmother to keep me busy.  My favorite is one that gives me a glimpse of what at least one day was like in those early Chicago days.  A clue.

The photograph documents a happy day in the life of 19 people, five men, ten women, and four children.  They are all grouped together in a candid fashion in front of a house that sits high above the ground with at least ten steps leading up to the front porch.  Was it near a river?  A picket fence separates the group from the inner front garden of the house, so it might have been a neighborhood party.  There is no date on the photograph, but I see it as a day in late spring or early summer because the grass is about a foot high and most of the women are holding generous bouquets.  Easter, maybe?

There are so many things to interpret in the photo.  For example, the older woman on the back row, second from left, rests her hands very gently on the back of the chairs of the two women seated in front of her.  One of the seated women is holding a suitcase which suggests the gathering may be a going away party for her, but she is not sitting at the center of the picture.  I think the older woman must be their mother because no others in the picture are as affectionate. 

I am pretty sure the man on the back row, far right, standing just a tad apart from everyone else, is my great-grandfather.  He’s wearing a three piece suit and a bowler hat and sporting a fashionable moustache of the day.  He is holding a bottled beverage in his right hand, and his hand is blurred as if he was caught in mid drink.  He looks happy.

My grandfather is lying in the grass on the front row.  This I am sure because he looks just like he does in the formal picture I have hanging of him in my dining room and he’s wearing the same suit.  He’s also holding his right hand in the same manner I often saw my father hold his hand, rubbing his thumb and fingers together as if in deep thought.

Then there is the man on the opposite end of the front row in his shirt sleeves and vest only, no jacket.  He is the least formal of the group, and he wears his hat like Chicago gangsters of the next decade, but his image is softened by the terrier puppy he has in the crook of his left arm.  What was his story?

I have had a hard time finding my grandmother in the group.  The young woman with the broad smile in the center of the photo looks like me, but I do not look like my grandmother so that can’t be her.  There’s another woman sitting directly behind my grandfather that I think must be her.  At first I thought it was someone else I’ve seen in other photos, but when I look at the picture under magnification (which I often do) I can tell there is a crinkle in the paper that distorts her face just a tiny bit.  So, yes, I think that is definitely her.

And there is a woman sitting next to her at the end of the row.  Personally, I think she is the mysterious Gyulane.  She looks to be the proper age, she is in the middle of the Csaszar family grouping, and she is sitting with her body leaning slightly towards my grandmother.  My grandmother has her shoulder leaning into Gyulane’s with a closeness that suggests to me a relationship.  And, if you look with imaginative eyes there is something in her lap that looks very much to me like a baby.  My father, maybe?  I can’t help but think that it is.

My speculations may or may not be accurate.  I will probably never know the truth of that day, or the truth of Gyulane.  Regardless, I have this picture, and it gives me enjoyment.  It’s the little things like the flowers in the women’s hair, the little girl in the grass with the very large bow and holding a doll, the little boys and the bottles.  How I love the little boys and the bottles!  For me this picture is evidence of lives that were lived before me, and without them, I would not be.