The Other Side of Memory

Preface

The child is father of the man is an old saying used by the poet William Wordsworth. All the fragments and experiences of a child determine who he will become.

The people we speak with, the children we play with, the schools we go to, the teachers we learn from, the shows we watch, the books we read, the places we visit, the spiritual mentors and religious beliefs we are exposed to; the lives of others who have intersected with our own—all shape our own lives and help us to become who we are.

How and what we remember guides us through life and our interaction with persons and events. When Anne Sexton said, It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was, she was in effect saying that perception often becomes the reality.

The other side of memory is the attribution of meaning and significance to the events of our lives. There is purpose in our being and it may take a lifetime to realize it and understand it. In this book I have attempted to make sense of my varied experiences by exploring a few dimensions of my life. My family heritage, my work as a pastor and teacher, and my interest in archaeology, theater, mystical experiences, and more have all contributed to who I have become and have added texture and meaning to my life.

We all need to share our stories, for, collectively, they tell us who we are. Our stories may in some small way answer the question that an old German mother asked when looking out her window at the vastness and complexity of her world, "Was soll das Alles? What does it all mean?"

We have our own stories to tell, and since we are all part of the same universe and the one mind of God, our individual stories will have meaning to the whole of life.

Rosebud

The house on Marne Street in Newark’s Ironbound section had been in our family for a hundred years. When my grandparents, Lucas and Natalie, were married, they purchased the small two-up, two-down house built in the Frutchey development. It was truly a small house for the husband and wife, one son, and three daughters who lived there. There were only two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen, with a toilet and sink in the basement. Later, Lucas would get rid of the coal bin in the cellar and move the kitchen downstairs. A porcelain cookstove would heat the entire house, with the warmth rising through two registers in the first and second floors. As primitive as this sounds, for most immigrants from Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, this was luxury.

Lucas and Natalie had both emigrated from Russia, which was ruled by Tzar Nicholas II at the time. Both were ethnic Germans who lived in communities along the Volga River—Lucas from Saratov and Natalie from Tzaritsyn, which later became Stalingrad and now Volgograd. The Germans had been invited by Catherine the Great, a German princess from Anhalt, to settle in Russia sometime in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Catherine claimed that she wanted to show the indolent Russians how their farms could be made more productive when industrious, hard-working Germans tilled the land.

Lucas Wertz was a Volga German who worked on a farm near his village, but faced years of hardship, and decided to come to America, along with many other Russian Germans. He settled in Newark, where there was a large German population. Many were braumeisters who aided the growth of beer production in the city. Lucas, however, worked at the weavers’ trade, but loved his beer. His children and grandchildren learned to appreciate a good brew at Sunday dinners. He later served his country during World War I and was awarded the Victory Medal.

Natalie Grauberger came from an upper-middle-class family. The Graubergers were rather well off. Her father owned a leather goods factory, and was a purveyor of leather boots and other items to the tzar. Natalie sometimes accompanied him to Moscow to deliver his work at the Grand Kremlin Palace.

There were rumblings of revolution in Russia in 1916. Natalie had received an offer of marriage from a Mr. Ellenberger in New Jersey. When she left Russia, she travelled first class with her belongings placed in the finest leather luggage from her father’s factory. The voyage through the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic was not without incident. There were storms that the vessel had to endure, but she said that as a young lady she was comforted by the words of the captain, at whose table she frequently dined. His short lecture on seamanship put her at ease.

When Natalie arrived at the port of New York, she did not need to be processed at Ellis Island like so many millions of other new arrivals, but was met by friends who brought her to Newark. She then learned that the man she was to marry had tired of waiting and had married someone else. Natalie later met Lucas, and they married in 1919 and bought the house on Marne Street.

Richard Wertz was the oldest of the children, and perhaps the most enterprising. After returning from service in the Navy, he and Lucas constructed a tool and die shop in the backyard. As a five-year-old, I helped carry bricks from a demolished factory in the north of Newark. But the shop didn’t last long. Richie heard the siren call, and it was California, here I come, and he headed west to the Tujunga Valley. After working as a butler to the actor Jimmy Cagney, he left to make his fortune in the burgeoning real estate market, and later moved to the Rogue River area of Oregon. Richie and his wife, Barbara, became Jehovah’s Witnesses and would return east to attend their conventions in New York. We would have great disputations over biblical interpretations, and I would always be grateful for his sharpening of my skills in resisting the Witnesses when they rang my doorbell. I would tell them that I was in the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program.

Elsie Wertz was the oldest daughter and the most creative. She was an artist, photographer, vocalist, and collector of books. She had a huge volume of Currier and Ives prints that I would often look at and wish to return to the idyllic and pastoral scenes of mid-nineteenth century America. Elsie loved to take Public Service mystery bus trips. She would take me to then obscure places like the Wanaque Reservoir, or Grover Cleveland’s birthplace, or some place along the shore. She loved museums, whether to view photographs or paintings or bits of history. The tool and die shop at the rear of the Marne Street house was converted to her studio and darkroom. I was her model for many of the photos she took, including a prize-winning picture of Little Caballero, which was my first media appearance. Elsie had a beautiful singing voice and sang in the German choir at St. Stephan’s Deutsche Evangelische Kirche, my home church. She recorded with her sisters the folk song The Butcher Boy.

Dorothea, or Dottie, was a waitress at the Terzis Restaurant in the Jewish Weequahic section of Newark. The restaurant made some of the best cheesecake this side of heaven. Dottie married Frank Rygiel, who served with the Army Rangers during World War II, and lived with us while Frank was fighting in the Pacific. Frank was Polish, and they later moved to a two-room apartment on Mott Street and then to a third-floor flat on Fleming Avenue in the Polish section of the Ironbound. Dottie soon learned to make wonderful Polish meals of pierogis, golabki, and rogal świętomarciński, a poppy seed dessert. The kielbasa and babkas came from Teddy’s located next to St. Stephan’s Church.

My mother, Matilda, was the youngest of the Wertz family and the first to marry, eloping to Maryland with an Italian pugilist Harry, my father, for whom I was named. Harry was the 1940 Perth Amboy Golden Gloves winner and was later inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame with other illustrious fighters like Jersey Joe Walcott, Mike Tyson and Two-Ton Tony Galento, who had been a sparring partner, and was the only boxer to knock down Joe Louis.

Tillie first worked at Northern Feather Works, sewing sleeping bags for the Army. She would put notes of support and encouragement in the bags, and when found out, her supervisor told her to continue since it aided morale. After the war, she worked for Western Electric and as a lab technician for Bell Labs.

She was a prolific writer of poetry and letters. While much of her correspondence has been saved, almost all of her poetry has been lost. I keep hoping that it will turn up someday. She wrote to her family and her many friends, and she acknowledged every gift and kindness shown to her. She was generous almost to her fault, remembering every birthday, anniversary, and graduation. Her generosity extended to every charity that wrote to her. I don’t know how many Native American dream catchers, St. Jude medals, or notepads she accumulated, but she made good use of all the greeting cards she received from Sacred Heart Missions, the Redemptorists, the Columban Fathers, and every Catholic institution that promised to say Mass for her.

Tillie Serio was quite an attractive blue-eyed blonde, a virtual party girl who went out on Saturday nights to the best night clubs. She apparently knew many celebrities, such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and other New Jersey–born persons of note. She saved everything, from matchbook covers to swizzle sticks, hundreds of letters, notes, diary entries, and literally thousands of photos. Among her accumulations were the extensive memorabilia of my brother, Robert, who died young, and a large collection of Uncle Emilio’s cards and artwork.

After Tillie’s passing at the age of almost ninety-three, we began the process of emptying out her house on Marne Street. Saving what we could, the rest was piled up at the curb to be picked over by the neighbors and passersby, and then hauled away. Who knew what memories were discarded?

I thought of the 1941 classic film Citizen Kane. You may remember the opening scene of the fog-shrouded castle on the hill, the home of Charles Foster Kane, a titan of a newspaper empire, like William Randolph Hearst. Within moments, Kane is dead, uttering the word Rosebud as he slips into eternity and lets fall from his hands a snow globe. The newspaper that he had owned, the New York Inquirer, tries desperately to understand the meaning of his last word.

As the workmen are crating the works of art and packaging that which can be sold, they are also burning the trivial accumulations of Kane’s lifetime. A reporter ponders the meaning of Kane’s last word, Rosebud, and says, Perhaps Rosebud was something he couldn't get or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn’t have explained anything. I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. The final image is that of a little sled being thrown into a fire with the name Rosebud on it.

We are led to reflect on the meaning of a person’s life, of our life, when at the time of our death all that we have accumulated, all that we have achieved, all that we have done fades into the oblivion of the past. Joy Ufema, a pioneer in the care of the dying, once said that when you are on your death bed, the only thing you will have left will be your memories, so make sure that they are good ones. It’s good advice since the experience of living is all that will transcend this life. Charles Foster Kane had only the memory of a lost childhood, happiness, and innocence, represented in the relic of his youth now consigned to the flames.

Rosebud reminds us that the pursuit of things is the pursuit of vapor and illusion. Rosebud represents not only the memory of what has eluded us, but that which is implanted in our souls from before we were born, and which in the course of living we forget about—until some major tragedy awakens us and shocks us back to our true goal.

In fact, the entirety of the film Citizen Kane might be Kane’s own dreamed recollections in the last moment before his death—his life flashing before his, and our, eyes. It is said that at the time of our death the whole of our life appears before us as a gestalt, a single entity in which we are able, finally, to grasp the entire meaning of our existence before the film runs off the projector and flaps endlessly on the reel. We are then left in the dark to consider what we have seen and wishing we could have played some of the scenes differently.

C. S. Lewis once said, The doors of hell are locked from the inside. I think that’s true. We hold within ourselves the power to determine where we will spend eternity by our perceptions and the actions we take on the basis of those perceptions. We ourselves are heaven and hell, and it is our choice.

When I think back to my family, my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and all the memories of our lives together, and of all that has been forgotten, I know deep in my very being that nothing is ever lost, but all is retained in the heart of God and affects us into eternity.

The Shed—Storehouse of Memories

As early as I can remember, there was a small structure in the rear of our yard on Marne Street. When my grandparents bought the four-room house early in the twentieth century, it soon became too small. The first expansion was to move the kitchen to the basement, which it shared with the coal storage bin. When carrying the ashes out to the ash can became too much of a chore, Lucas Wertz went to kerosene heat. Since it was too dangerous to keep a fifty-five-gallon drum near the kitchen, a small shed was built to house the tank.

When Uncle Richie returned from the Navy after the Second World War, he and Lucas decided to open a tool and die shop to make precision parts for the growing manufacturing industries in the area. There were tables with lathes and other cutting devices and all manner of tools. It didn’t last very long. When Richie took off for California, Elsie took over the shed for her photography studio, complete with a posing area and a darkroom. A photo enlarger replaced the lathe, and trays for developing and fixing, as well as the chemicals, were placed on the shelves. When Elsie got married, it was all left behind.

The shed now became a storage area. After my parents’ divorce and Lucas’s death, we moved from our Monroe Street apartment to live on Marne Street with Natalie. The old furniture was stored in the shed to make room for the newer furniture that we brought with us. Here also was the detritus of an earlier life. Our first television was there, the small thirteen-inch Philco screen in a large stand-up console. Here also was the cathedral-type radio that Lucas and Natalie would listen to each night. It was not only entertainment, but a tool of history. Lucas heard President Roosevelt announce the Day of Infamy when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the Fireside Chats of the president that brought encouragement and comfort during the Great Depression and the World War. On the shelf were kerosene lanterns that were used at blackouts during the war. FDR was greatly admired and a metal plate with his initials was on the wall, as was a poster of Harry Truman, whom folks said looked a lot like Lucas Wertz.

I still have some of the old tools from my grandfather’s workbench: wood-handled screwdrivers, brace and bits for drilling, part of a railroad iron used as an anvil, and other miscellaneous items now obsolete and, in some cases, of unknown usage.

Milton Lis was the president of Teamsters Local 478, but he liked to make money on the side by buying out bankrupt businesses and reselling the office equipment.