Abstract
This oral history interview, conducted on February 22, 2003, features Emily Wish and Edward Mendyka, who share their memories of growing up in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. Both discuss their families' immigration to the United States in the early 20th century and the impact of the Great Depression on their lives. They reflect on the strong sense of community, local traditions, and the ethnic diversity that characterized the South Side, where they spent most of their lives. The interview covers various aspects of daily life, including religious practices, holiday celebrations, neighborhood businesses, and social activities. Wish and Mendyka also recall the changes in the neighborhood over the years, including the decline of some areas and the ongoing gentrification efforts.
Interviewee
Wish, Emily (interviewee);Wish, Emily (interviewee)
Interviewer
Lipscomb, Garrick E. (interviewer)
Project
Tremont History Project
Date
2-22-2003
Document Type
Oral History
Recommended Citation
"Emily Wish and Edward Mendyka interview, 22 February 2003" (2003). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 223014.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1322
Transcript
Edward Mendyka:Emily lived on the South Side, oh my god.
Emily Wish:For about forty-five years.
Edward Mendyka: They lived right across the street from the rectory at Cantius.
Emily Wish: My parents owned a home there.
Edward Mendyka: I used to go there, when I going to school and I was riding my nice, new Roadmaster bicycle. I’d park in their yard. And then she married somebody from the South Side.
Emily Wish: I moved a block away. On College too. Do you know where College is?
Garrick Lipscomb:Yes.
Edward Mendyka: His family lived on Barber. It’s like he’s from the neighborhood.
Emily Wish: Oh yeah. Okay.
Edward Mendyka: She was considered South Side, we weren’t. [Laughter]
Edward Mendyka: I was on the fringes, on the limits. I went to Cantius. But then, they lived on Fifth Street, your dad?
Emily Wish: No, then my dad lost his home there.
Edward Mendyka: On College?
Emily Wish: On College there. During the Depression. And then the bank used to take the homes because people didn’t work. So they took the home right next door with the big porch. So we moved right there. Then from there, we landed on Fifth. I got married already.
Edward Mendyka: You go married before that? So it was just your dad and Ted were living on Fifth?
Emily Wish: Most of them, because I was the first one, I was twenty-one when I left home. My brother Chester was in the service.
Garrick Lipscomb: You were born in Tremont?
Emily Wish: That section, yes. I was born on Seventh Street. Already on the corner College was going up.
Edward Mendyka: You were born on Seventh Street?
Emily Wish: I was born on Seventh. You know the Slusarczyk used to have that house, the gospel place? Right there, that house there.
Edward Mendyka: You were born at home then too?
Emily Wish: Sure, we all were.
Edward Mendyka: Do you remember what the midwife’s name was?
Emily Wish: No, we used to know. She lived on Seventh Street, she was for everybody. You got me thinking now.
Edward Mendyka: Sorry I brought it up now.
Garrick Lipscomb: You went to school in the neighborhood?
Emily Wish: Yes, Cantius there. For eight years, then to Lincoln High.
Garrick Lipscomb: When did your family move to Tremont?
Emily Wish: Well, they stayed there on the South Side, all their live until they passed away. But the kids got married and everyone went on their own.
Garrick Lipscomb: When did your family immigrate to the US?
Emily Wish: What was that year? 1918? 1919?
Edward Mendyka: When did your dad come? It must have been just after my dad came. 1910? And then he went back to Europe –
Emily Wish: Yes, because my dad came here, then the war broke out and he went back to Poland. He went to fight for his country.
Edward Mendyka: That was during World War One and he joined what was called Haller’s Army.
Emily Wish: Haller’s army, what was that in France? I think it was in France.
Edward Mendyka: And then he went back to Europe and fought with them. Then he came back, about 1920 I think he came back. He was still a bachelor and then he got married.
Emily Wish: Yes, that’s right. Because my brother Chester was born in 1921 and I was born in 1922.
Edward Mendyka: Okay, see that. It was after the First World War, about 1919 or 1920. When he immigrated, he came like my dad did, he came over here, in fact he was living down, I don’t know if he was living at the same house or not.
Emily Wish: Wasn’t that on Jefferson or something?
Edward Mendyka: My dad when he first came here, when he immigrated, 2346, I think or something, West Sixth Street, and then they moved to Jefferson.
Emily Wish: Oh, West Sixth Street.
Edward Mendyka: When he was on Jefferson, your dad was on that Jefferson Avenue too. Yes, same address.
Emily Wish: So there were three brothers, his dad, my dad and another one that was in this country. Mark.
Garrick Lipscomb: You must have had a similar home life. Did you visit a lot?
Edward Mendyka: That’s what I say, for Christmas Eve. Wegilia, we’d go. We all got together at Uncle Mark’s house. That one time that I remember, they were pulling out my hair.
Emily Wish: Oh yeah, yeah. That was a Polish tradition. I remember that.
Edward Mendyka: That was Christmas Eve.
Garrick Lipscomb: What other traditions do you remember? Anything besides Christmas Eve?
Edward Mendyka: That one really stands out. In my head.
Emily Wish: My mother, for Easter, used to color eggs. The pretty ones.
Edward Mendyka: She was fantastic. You wouldn’t believe how good her mother used to color eggs.
Emily Wish: Yes, my mother used to color eggs for Easter.
Garrick Lipscomb: How did she color them?
Emily Wish: How did she do it? Well, at that time they bought crepe paper that was colored, not what you got today. And she used to boil that and get all the color out of it. One day her hands would be red, then blue before you’d get all that off. And you’d get all those colors.
Edward Mendyka: And she’s dip this paper in hot water? She’s put vinegar in it?
Emily Wish: She’d put a bit of vinegar in, it keeps the color. And then she’d have on the stove a little silver container, with wax. The good wax we used to get from the candles from the nuns when we were in school. With a pen, that’s what she’d use to draw her designs. And remember the library, I’m not sure if it’s still there, on Jefferson.
Edward Mendyka: On Jefferson, yes it’s still there.
Emily Wish: Well they had a little place there on display on colored eggs. My mother always made us go there. She’d want us to make a design on paper like we saw there. She’s make them then. Identical, yes. She was good at that. But when they had that, every September, where you go, the festival, remember, they were making them there, I was watching. It’s much easier today.
Edward Mendyka: Her mother used to make them, I don’t know when she’d start, cooking these eggs before Easter. Beautiful designs, and I mean they were gorgeous. And every year my dad would go before Easter, he’d go visit with his brother, visit with them and he would come back with some of these beautiful Easter eggs.
Emily Wish: Yes, she was good at that.
Edward Mendyka: That had to be time consuming. Because you’d have to dip your pen in the wax, then maybe make a little stroke—
Emily Wish: Then when the egg cracks, I’ll tell you. Sometimes it would take two or three hours for a certain kind of egg you were making, depending on the design.
Edward Mendyka: And then you’d dip them in the different dyes, and you had to go from lighter to darker—
Emily Wish: I’ve got a whole bunch of those at home, from Cantius.
Edward Mendyka: Well, I’ve got one upstairs that’s made out of wood.
Emily Wish: Oh, I’ve got a couple of those.
Edward Mendyka: Well you know, that was the big thing for Easter.
Garrick Lipscomb: So your mother was good in the kitchen?
Emily Wish: She was, oh yes.
Garrick Lipscomb: What were some of you favorite dishes you remember her cooking?
Emily Wish: Easter, do you know what we used to wait for? When my boys got bigger they could practically say they were ten, because my husband died young. They were ten and twelve, my two boys. They started working at the grocery store on the corner near Cantius.
Edward Mendyka: College and Professor.
Emily Wish: They used to make the best sausage ever.
Edward Mendyka: Tell him how much they used to make, later on, when they made it.
Emily Wish: Oh, tons. They’d ship it out to different states. They wouldn’t come home for two days, or sometimes three days and three nights, just making that doggone sausage. And you know that garlic in it. Then my in-laws got in the habit, because I lived across the street, ordering and keeping it in my refrigerator. Oh, that was a little too often because it turned my butter, everything smelled like that garlic. Oh the smell of that garlic.
Edward Mendyka: Easter morning, we’d go to what they called Resurrection Mass, it was like a six o’clock mass. It would be a great big, solemn high mass, three priests. And when he first intoned the Gloria, they used to have what they’d call, they were like a paramilitary group that, they’d be out in the school yard and at the wave of a hanky, the window would be open so there’d be the wave of a hanky, and they’d be shooting, Boom! [Laughter]
Edward Mendyka: They would shoot at different parts of the mass. It was, then you’d go home, Easter, for breakfast. We had, you want to know another tradition, you’d have to cut up an egg, one egg. A hard-boiled egg. Every member of the family would have to partake, take a piece of that egg. And you would have to eat it. And this symbolized, I guess, the oneness of the family, unity of the family. But it, for us it was a tradition along with all the beautiful food that you had. For Easter you’d have kielbasa, of course you’d have hard-boiled eggs, then you’d have –
Emily Wish: Oh yeah, horseradish. Hot stuff, whoa!
Edward Mendyka: It would be beets and horseradish combination with some vinegar and a little sugar. You’d have that with the egg and you’d have ham.
Emily Wish: You know what I liked? Since we had that porch in front of our house, from the church they used to have all these parades, all these doings. Boy, I guess the whole South Side were in those parades. Going around the whole block.
Garrick Lipscomb: Was it different churches?
Emily Wish: Our church. Cantius, at that time the Catholic church.
Edward Mendyka: Yes, they would do it for Corpus Christi. Emily, we were talking the other day. Tell him about that monkey and the fortune teller.
Emily Wish: Oh, those.
Edward Mendyka: Tell him about the fishmonger that came, you know, all those peddlers.
Emily Wish: Half of these kids today don’t even know what a horse looks like. Really, not unless you go to the zoo and see some there. But we had them around the streets. Peddlers, rag men, ice men, the monkey. The guy would have a little thing like that. The monkey would sit on top, and he would turn the handle and it had music. And out of one end would come the little fortune, you’d take out. [Laughter]
Edward Mendyka: The monkey would pick it out and give it to you?
Emily Wish: No, no, that came out of the machine. Sometimes she would peck at it, that monkey. It’s a wonder it never ran away. It sat on that thing everywhere he went through the whole neighborhood.
Edward Mendyka: In our neighborhood, I don’t remember that.
Emily Wish: You didn’t have that. Just a little bit further up. We had everything.
Edward Mendyka: But Pauline was saying something about the waffle man.
Emily Wish: Waffle man every Sunday. Every Sunday, not the kind of waffles you buy now. Not in the morning, but by noon. By noon he’d be there. He’d come every Sunday.
Edward Mendyka: Would he come in his car or his truck?
Emily Wish: No, he had like a little van and they used to make them in there.
Garrick Lipscomb: Earlier there were horses with carts?
Emily Wish: Later on, yes. We had everything there.
Edward Mendyka: In our neighborhood, there’d be what they called a huckster. He’d come, and he had this truck and everything was mechanized, he didn’t have a horse. But anyway, he had all kinds of fruits and vegetables on this thing. Both sides, it was an open air truck, both sides and the back. And he’d just have that truck piled with stuff. When he came he’d pull up and park in the neighborhood. All the mothers would go out and buy this or that. Fresh fruits or fresh vegetables.
Emily Wish: What I liked when we were on that part of College, no matter what way you turned, you turned to the corner, there’s your grocery store, and right there’s the florist, then a candy store, then the Cleveland, the Lincoln bank, at that time it was called the Lincoln bank. Lincoln Heights. Then Fisher’s, and across the street was the funeral director, Majewski. Then the nun’s house and the church and on the other side of Professor, we had the hardware store, the shoe store and across the street from there, you had a guy who sold appliances and the one that had the clothing store. And right on the corner again was another shoe store. Everything was just a little walk. It was good. And right on the corner, you’d just cross the street and there was your bus line.
Edward Mendyka: You had Cantius drug over there, and that other drug store.
Emily Wish: There were a lot of taverns though. [Laughter]
Edward Mendyka: Of course! And upstairs, who was that doctor upstairs up above that drugstore? What the heck, that doctor, in fact he changed his name. He Americanized it.
Emily Wish: Yes, I know. I remember him, but I don’t know the name.
Edward Mendyka: But over on West Fourteenth Street, we had Dr. Matuszwski and you had the dentist, that Dr. Gizewski and then on the corner there you had another drug store that was West Fourteenth Street Drug, corner of Fourteenth and Auburn.
Emily Wish: It was all situated with stores, what was easy. And a lot of schools and churches. Oh they claimed Cleveland had more churches than any state in this country, really.
Edward Mendyka: I think Tremont, per square mile, even to this day, has more churches than any other locale of the same size.
Emily Wish: Yes, that’s true.
Edward Mendyka: Churches up the kazoo. You’ve got that Saint George’s, that I think is Syrian, you’ve got that Greek Annunciation, oh my goodness.
Emily Wish: Saint Augustine’s.
Edward Mendyka: You’ve got Pilgrim church, you’ve got Our Lady of Mercy, you’ve got Cantius.
Emily Wish: The Ukrainian church down the hill.
Edward Mendyka: That’s where you got your pierogies?
Emily Wish: Every Friday. Pierogies at that time were forty cents a dozen. I’ll never forget it. Forty cents! [Laughter]
Emily Wish: They used to be so crowded if you didn’t go early they had a long wait.
Edward Mendyka: Now they’re four-fifty a dozen.
Emily Wish: They used to sell borscht and stuffed cabbage with a bit of barley. Very good, let me tell you. Instead of rice, barley. Very good.
Edward Mendyka: They sold all that stuff. Now they sell only those pierogies.
Emily Wish: Yes, it used to be very nice at that time. It’s all changed now though. I think there’s only one person, if she’s living, that lives on College. Nobody else that I know of.
Edward Mendyka: Emily, you wouldn’t believe that place now if you went down and looked, with the new construction—
Emily Wish: I know, I saw it a little over a year ago. My two sons, every so often they go. When you have that thing in September?
Edward Mendyka: That festival?
Emily Wish: They always after that walk through the whole neighborhood again. I say, if you miss it, move back.
Edward Mendyka: It must bring back a lot of old memories.
Emily Wish: They like to go, other people don’t. But they like to go look around. My dad’s house is still standing there. It’s an antique.
Edward Mendyka: They painted it a nice yellow now. [Laughter]
Emily Wish: There’s a lot of change there now, an awful lot of change.
Garrick Lipscomb: When did you leave the neighborhood?
Emily Wish: When I got married. For five years, then my mother-in-law died and their house, they made into two family. So I moved back and I was there twenty-three years.
Edward Mendyka: And where was that? In what house?
Emily Wish: The other part of College, right across the street from Polonia Hall. Remember Polonia Hall?
Edward Mendyka: Oh, over there. Sure. I was telling him they had a private club there. On Sundays you could go over, sit down and get a shot of whisky.
Emily Wish: We enjoyed the weddings every Saturday, we’d sit in the front yard. Listen to the music. Every Saturday there were patrol cars, with the cops taking the drunks out. Fights! [Laughter]
Edward Mendyka: There was no air conditioning, they’d open the windows.
Emily Wish: Nothing, it was so hot.
Edward Mendyka: And you could hear that good Polish music coming from the windows.
Emily Wish: The whole neighborhood heard the music from the hall. Kept them up at night. They took all that down, it’s not there anymore. Just an empty lot.
Edward Mendyka: Demolished the whole thing. Do you remember that printer that used to live near?
Emily Wish: Oh, next door to me.
Edward Mendyka: He was next door to you? That was that guy, that printer, on Thurmon, he has Lantern Printing now, Bilsey, but that was his dad that had that print shop.
Emily Wish: Oh was it?
Edward Mendyka: Yes, and I got from him—
Emily Wish: My wedding invitations were made by him.
Edward Mendyka: My parent’s twenty-fifth I got there. The party that we threw for them, I got the invitations there. And he has still got plates, now I’m talking about his son, he’s got that Lantern Printing on Thurmon, He’s still got plates, these glass, so you’ve got to know that they go back a long way. I don’t know even how you’d get those things deposited from those things.
Emily Wish: How about that big Salvation Army?
Edward Mendyka: That huge, well that building is still there, they want to convert that into some kind of an art colony now or something.
Emily Wish: There’s all different types of goings-on in there.
Garrick Lipscomb: Where’s that located at?
Emily Wish: It’s right on Thurmond Avenue, do you know where Thurmon is? It goes through that whole block, down Jefferson and down Seventh all the way. It’s a very big building. They had a write up about it in the paper once.
Edward Mendyka: It’s a huge complex.
Emily Wish: You’d get lost going in there, the tunnels in there. Wow. What was nice about them, they used to have these gospel singers some of them living in there. They used to have some sort of church going on and every New Year’s, it was snowing out in the middle of winter, they’d come on the corner of College where we lived, and they’d be singing gospels after midnight. Yeah, that was nice.
Edward Mendyka: I didn’t know that.
Emily Wish: Well, you didn’t live on the South Side Ed. We had everything there.
Garrick Lipscomb: So just a few blocks away made a big difference?
Emily Wish: Oh, yes.
Edward Mendyka: Well, I lived on the outskirts, we lived on Rowley.
Emily Wish: We had to cut through Lincoln Park to go to his place.
Edward Mendyka: It really depended on where you wanted the boundary lines for Tremont. Some were saying Scranton, some said West Twenty-Fifth and then the southernmost boundary was Holmden. But we lived on Rowley, there was like on the boundary limits. Where Emily lived, well you know, College—
Emily Wish: Well, most of my life was on College. You know they got a College on the East side too.
Edward Mendyka: College Avenue?
Emily Wish: Yes.
Garrick Lipscomb: Did you see Lincoln Park as the center of the neighborhood?
Emily Wish: Yes. There was no other place but Lincoln Park to play.
Edward Mendyka: This is what some people consider to be the Tremont neighborhood. [Looking at map]
Emily Wish: As kids, we never called it the Tremont area though, when did they start that? Long time ago?
Edward Mendyka: It was usually know as, it was a misnomer, they called it the South Side. But really it was the Near West Side. It wasn’t like, South Side is now maybe considered Parma, but it was known as the South Side.
Emily Wish: I don’t even know who called it the South Side? Where it started from.
Edward Mendyka: I don’t know where it started from.
Garrick Lipscomb: It was always the South Side to you?
Edward Mendyka: Yes, that general area. But that building, it was know as the Gospel Press building or something, wasn’t it?
Emily Wish: Yeah, that big one. They’re the ones that moved and bought that place on Brookpark, the Gospel place. That’s where they’re at now.
Edward Mendyka: So that place, for a long time, was just run-down, but I don’t know now if there are plans, they want to move some artists in there.
Emily Wish: Oh, yeah.
Edward Mendyka: That’s a huge complex. Tunnels and corridors. There was an article in the paper about it not too long ago. I had it, but I guess I don’t.
Emily Wish: It’s unbelievable.
Garrick Lipscomb: Emily, where did your Father work?
Emily Wish: In the steel mills for thirty-six years. Thirty- six years.
Garrick Lipscomb: It seems like most of the men in the are, they worked in the mills.
Emily Wish: Yes, most of them worked in the steel mills.
Garrick Lipscomb: How about your mother, did she work?
Emily Wish: She was home, taking care of six kids. So how can you work? Six mean kids! [Laughter]
Edward Mendyka: She had her hands full raising a family.
Garrick Lipscomb: Do you remember what the Depression was like?
Emily Wish: Oh, very well. I think that’s why I’m a fruit eater now. I’ve got to have fruit every day, cause in those days, we never had it. It was bad. And my dad, during the Depression, he’d work like a day, or a day and a half a week. None of us were ever on Welfare. They wouldn’t give it to you if you worked a day. You wouldn’t get it. We’ve got them here, you wouldn’t believe. You wouldn’t believe.
Garrick Lipscomb: Did your Father join the union?
Emily Wish: They had a union at work I know. Yeah, they did have a union.
Garrick Lipscomb: Do you remember when they built the Valley View homes?
Emily Wish: The projects? Oh, yeah I remember because that was during the Second World War. They built those projects. They were meant for widows, if the veterans were killed. Or their wives who had children to move in there. I had a sister that lived there, that’s what it was meant for. It’s all shot now.
Garrick Lipscomb: Do you remember when people first moved in them?
Emily Wish: Oh yes, I remember. Because, see after that, when I got older, my husband passed away, I worked for sixteen years with sick, elderly people. I used to take bed ridden patients too. Most of those people left there because they were being robbed so much. It got bad in that part of the neighborhood. They landed on the east side, on Superior, in these towers. I worked there, it was a CMHA. A lot of them that I knew from there landed there.
Garrick Lipscomb: You must remember when they built the highways through the neighborhood?
Emily Wish: All that stuff, yeah. With the Depression they came out at least with the CC camps and stuff.
Garrick Lipscomb: What’s a CC camp?
Emily Wish: CC camps, my brother had to go and work, I think he was about sixteen or seventeen years old. To have a job or something just to help out in the home, you know. That’s when Roosevelt was the president, he came out with all of that. Street cleaners and all, somebody always had something to do.
Garrick Lipscomb: What did your family think about Roosevelt?
Emily Wish: My mother liked him a lot. We had records with his voice. Then the war, both of my brothers were in the war. My oldest brother was wounded with shrapnel. Then the Vietnam War, my sons grew up, one was in Vietnam. His two sons are Marines.
Garrick Lipscomb: Do you remember anyone losing their homes? You mentioned that you lost your home and then moved next door.
Emily Wish: My parents, that came from the old country. A lot of people at that time, the banks were taking their homes away. The Depression.
Garrick Lipscomb: Were there fires in the neighborhood?
Emily Wish: In the summer. I’ll tell you there was a lot of bootlegging as well. I remember those days. Bootlegging days. [Laughter]
Garrick Lipscomb: People in their homes?
Emily Wish: In the homes. And when they were caught, I’ll never forget, when they caught this one lady, making the booze, they were dumping it all in the sewer. Everything went there. Everything.
Edward Mendyka: There were a lot of bootleggers on the South Side. I remember my dad got started on Brayton Avenue when he got married the second time, and him and his wife, my mom, they started out living with my Uncle Mark and Aunt Mary, on Brayton. My sister, Wanda, when they got married, at first they set up housekeeping on Brayton. And Jen and Mike, when they got married, started out on Brayton. Then one time my dad and I went on a bus on the South Side, we got on at Starkweather, we were going to visit my sister who lived on Brayton and as we were walking by, my dad was saying, here lives a bootlegger, here lived a bootlegger.
Emily Wish: Oh yeah. All over.
Edward Mendyka: He knew where. He knew every bootlegger. You going to, somebody’s going to be interviewing my cousin Stella, she’ll have to tell you some stories. [Laughter]
Garrick Lipscomb: Any final thoughts regarding the neighborhood? It seems like you have good memories. A tight community.
Emily Wish: It was, it was. People were nice those days.
Edward Mendyka: But you know if you lived on the South Side, you didn’t have any trouble.
Emily Wish: Never, never. Those were the days your windows, your doors were open. You never were robbed, you can walk anytime of the night outside, and nobody held up nobody.
Edward Mendyka: Nobody bothered you. Probably because you belonged to the neighborhood.
Emily Wish: It wasn’t like today. Not like today.
Edward Mendyka: Do you remember anything about that Filkowski?
Emily Wish: Oh, that Filkowski. The gangster. That’s why they were giving the South Side a bad name. They said we had a criminal there.
Edward Mendyka: He was the guy that had a notorious reputation. He killed some guy over there on the West Side for the payroll. They finally caught him. It’s in the thing there. They finally caught up with him in New York City, in Times Square. But the way, they were looking for him, the Cleveland Police were looking and he was in the Cleveland Clinic. He was having some plastic surgery. They were looking all over the city and there he is. There were some crazy stories about him.
Emily Wish: I think that when he was in prison, he escaped out of prison once. That I remember. Oh yeah.
Garrick Lipscomb: He was from the neighborhood?
Emily Wish: Oh yeah, he was from the neighborhood, because when I got married, I went and I lived five years on Walton Avenue, that’s off Twenty-Fifth Street. They had a little grocery store on the corner and I went there. I’m new, you know. He says, where are you from? I says the South Side. What! [Laughter]
Emily Wish: That’s a bad place! He says. I says I never heard it was bad. I kind of won.
Edward Mendyka: It’s strange to think about that Filkowski, after he served his term, he got paroled. This had to be in the sixties. He was finally paroled, they say he changed his name and they say he got married out of Cantius. But that would have been before Father Ralph’s time. I think he was married when Father Szudarek was pastor. He would have gotten out of prison at that time. When I went, it’s a strange thing, when I was going to Cantius, like I say, this was 1939 to 1944. Those five years. I heard stories about Filkowski and they made him out to be some kind of a neighborhood Robin Hood.
Emily Wish: Yeah, yeah. Another Jesse James. Steal from the rich and give to the poor.
Edward Mendyka: This guy, he killed somebody over on the West Side. That’s the kind of stories that circulated about him. Then this Helen Pelczar, you never heard things about her, I didn’t anyway. You would think that the ladies of the parish, whatever, it would be a gossip item, maybe it was already late. You know the one that they were, she supposedly had the stigmata.
Emily Wish: Oh yeah, I read about her when I was in school yet. Out of a book. She just lived a couple doors away from me, across the street, Thurmond Alley. I don’t know. Doctors claim it’s a rare disease that happens once, used to say.
[End of Tape]
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