This chapter is dedicated to my mother, Emily Helen Sadowski, nee URBANIK.
Emily was born into the family of Paul and Eva Urbanik. Homeland is Zdziary,
Poland.
Here are the vital statistics on her life:
Date of Birth: May 21, 1911
Birthplace: Flint, Genesee County
Mother's Birthplace: Poland
Mother's Maiden Name: Eva Sielmowska
Father's Name: Paul Urbanik
Father's Birthplace: Poland
Father's Age: 27
Mother's Age 23
Baptized: June 4, 1911
All Saints Church
Sponsors: Francis Suchara & Helen Urbanik
Married Louis F. Sadowski
: November 24, 1938
Rev. Dr. S. Bortnowski, Pastor
All Saints Church
Witnesses: Stanley Sadowski & Apolonia Urbanik
General Comments about Emily
Emily was a friend to many people . She corresponded with a wide variety of
people. Any mail with a religious picture or message would get her attention and
a donation. She kept the mementos in scrapbooks - 30 of them. The letters
received from our relatives in Poland were saved and thank the Lord because
those documents have proved invaluable on this Family Tree Project.
An odd habit mom had when she washed the floors at home - she placed the Flint
Journal newspapers on the floors ostensibly to keep them cleaner for a longer
period. The rustle and messes under the kitchen table after two days would drive
me goofy. Few people remember mom as a smoker. She loved the Pall Mall reds. Mom
quit smoking in her thirties. Dad smoked Chesterfields at that time, switching
between Lucky Strikes or Camels later in life. He quit much later.
Mom's health during my childhood seemed reasonably normal compared with others.
At age 37 she had all of her teeth removed and from then on she wore dentures.
She had her gall bladder removed surgically at St. Joseph's Hospital when she
was 40 years old. About this time she was prescribed medication for a low
thyroid activity. Blood pressure medications started in this time.
After dad died in 1992, mom's health deteriorated. The most severe ailment was
the amputation of her right leg and subsequent placement in Fostrian Manor in
1995.
I have no recollection of mom being involved with politics, books, or any matter
that required study. Mom read romance and detective magazines. Television was
not brought into the home until the folks were married about ten years. I recall
our first black and white TV because we were the first on the block to have one.
Dad invited all his buddies to come over on Friday evenings to watch boxing
matches. Mom made snacks and hung out in the kitchen.
She was in the first graduating class from Flint Northern High School in 1927.
She said all her school memories were destroyed in the cellar of the Myrtle
Street home. Moisture and dampness ruined her violin also. I never saw her play
the instrument. It was her high school item. Over the years mom would lament
over the loss of all those childhood artifacts.
Employment of Emily
Mom's working career began in her childhood as translator for Dr. Wanliss, a
Flint dentist. Many Polish-speaking patients were patients of the dentist,
including the Urbaniks. Mom would accompany her parents and translate - this led
to her being hired and she stayed with the good dentist until she married dad.
Mom then stayed home raising me and Robert until a calling came years later from
Dr. Graham, a dentist-colleague of the aging Dr. Wanliss. Mom went back to work
as a dental assistant for a dozen more years.
Mom was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) Lodge
#.... She collected monthly insurance premiums from local members and once
a month mailed the monies to the national office in Chicago, IL. This position
she held for twenty-eight years. The PNA paid mom $10.00 per month for this
exhausting parttime work.
Mom took in laundry and ironing for a few friends during the 1950s. The ironing
board seemed to be a permanent fixture in the dining room of the Carton Street
home. She would send me on the deliveries carrying two arms full of shirts to
the owner on the next block. Mom made five dollars per load.
Mom never drove a car during her entire married life. Once , she tried to take
lessons from an agency but dad told her to stop and she obeyed.
Home Cuisine as Bernard Remembers
Cooking was shared in our home between mom and dad. For some reason we never had
"tossed salads" at meals, only several individual bowls of the salad
ingredients. My first real salad was had when I started to date Rita Blood at
age eighteen. I was nineteen and in college as a sophomore before I ate a piece
of pizza. The meals on Carton Street in the 1940s and 1950s were basic meat and
potatoes. Mom could make the best pancakes and apple pies.
Cooking a chicken was an event! Dad and I would walk the twenty or so
blocks from Carton Street to Hockstead's Poultry Shop near Pierson Road on N.
Saginaw Street. Dad would look over the live chickens and choose a small bantam
roosters. The butcher grabbed the chicken's legs and quickly decapitate it.
After the blood drained he would hold the dead carcass over a rotating machine
which ripped off the feathers. The bird got wrapped and we carried it home where
mom took over the balance of preparations. Mom first cut open the chicken to
remove the innards. Then, she would light the stove's front burner and singe off
the hairs of the chicken by careful rotating the chicken to make certain the
entire bird was free of hairs or feathers. The smell was putrid of course. Then
mom would place the chicken in a large pot of cold water to soak for several
hours. The chicken was boiled. For years we ate boiled chicken and once in a
while mom or dad would brown the pieces in a skillet. The innards were cooked
separately and helped make he chicken broth.
Mom had another talent with pancakes. She called pancakes but a modern-day chef
would most likely categorize them as "crepes." Once Robert Paul,
my brother, was a tad older, his requests for beef roasts for Sunday dinner won
over mom. We ate roast beef weekly for years.
Emily hated turkey but she loved the stuffings from a good turkey. She liked to
eat most any type of sandwich and hotdogs were fine with her. Making the polish
gal~abki was always a 3-hour job but boy was it worth it. In the later years dad
took over the job and became quite famous for this meal.
Shopping and Traveling Habits
Shopping in department stores downtown Flint was interesting. Mom would look for
nails, thumbtacks, paint, hammers while dad shopped for groceries. It was Emily
who did the small chores around the home not Louie. When the 1939 Buick was
bought in 1953, fifteen years after mom and dad married, then the routine
changed. Lots of Sunday drives were taken around the county, e.g., looking for
vegetable stands and a good place like Harrimanns on Clio Road to buy ice cream
cones.
Whenever we traveled, mom would ask dad to stop anyplace to get something to
eat. It would put dad into a state many times. Mom liked the car trips upnorth
to Indian River and Alpena. We also went to the Straits when the "Big Mac
" bridge was being constructed in the late 1950s.
There is no doubt in my mind that had Robert and me remained in Flint as adults,
the folks would have never traveled further than Michigan. Mom and dad came to
Elko, Nevada in the 1970s to visit us and they traveled by train to Seattle to
see us where we presently reside. They also traveled to Texas, Florida and New
York to visit with my brother and his wife. sadowskib@aol.com
