A Box of Memories

I have a magic box filled with a million stories.

Actually, it’s a shirt box dating back to when a man’s dress shirt would be folded, pinned, and wrapped in white tissue by the salesclerk, then placed into a thin cardboard box and secured with twine. That’s how I remember my father buying his shirts from Marshall Field’s State Street department store in Chicago’s Loop.

One of those boxes survived to become home to an untidy collection of photos—sepia-toned and black-and-white, curled at the edges—of people I don’t know. They are my father’s relatives and not a single one is dated or identified by name or location. Each picture is a mystery; each with a story that has disappeared into the ether.

I’ve had this box since my father died twenty-six years ago. I take it out from time to time, staring at the faces and trying to imagine the stories behind the people. There’s a certain comfort in the unknown.

The men and women pictured—some of whom I must have known when I was little—are olive-skinned, their brows furrowed, and their wrinkles deeply etched. They are working-class immigrants in threadbare clothes. The women worked in sweatshops or as laundresses or housekeepers for the upper classes, two bus transfers from their homes.

The men worked in the steel mills on Chicago’s South Side, in construction gangs digging the foundations for a growing city, and in the slaughterhouses inside the sprawling Stock Yards.

I remember being told stories by my father about the humble beginnings of our family in the new world. Each of those jobs was held by some distant relative.

One of these pictures is of my grandfather’s sister. He had two, one of whom took her life by jumping into the Chicago River from the Michigan Avenue bridge. The other was the cook for a prominent Chicago family whose millions had been made in steel—or was it packaged foods? I don’t remember.

There are few smiles on the faces of my pictured family; their dark eyes flat and distant. Even my grandparents’ wedding photo is of two people who seem more bothered by the photo being taken than pleased.

My father’s people were not joyous. They enjoyed playing cards at the kitchen table in the only place I knew them—a two-room apartment on a quiet street off Cermack Road in Cicero. My grandfather smoked cigarettes, as do most of the men in the photos, and he took a certain pleasure in a glass of pilsner—a beer named for the town in which he was born, Plzeň, a city in what is now the Czech Republic. I visited there not so many years ago, and read my surname in the city’s telephone directory.

He and my grandmother both enjoyed prune or apricot kolacky, a Bohemian pastry, with their morning coffee or as an after-dinner treat.

They gifted me with a burial spot in the family plot at the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago.

“We mourn a birth and celebrate a death,” my father would frequently say, as if to remind me that life—though not without its small pleasures—was a mostly a struggle, an uphill climb.

Maybe it’s time to pitch the million stories. My children have never known any of their grandfather’s relatives, only having met two of them at my father’s memorial service. The box loses its fascination on my doorstep; the blanks in the stories filled with details perhaps more of my own making. Our histories, beyond the vital statistics, are anecdotal—given to exaggeration with every retelling. I don’t expect anybody to carry on the family history.

But the shirt box doesn’t take up much room, so I’ll probably return it to the cabinet it has called home these many years.

In this time when much of America’s holiday haul is adrift off the Southern California coast, a great gift idea might be to pass down our own histories to our children and grandchildren in the form of photographs, recipes, some poetry, or letters.

Do the kids a favor: Identify the people in the pictures.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Pickled beef (svíčková na smetaně)

This recipe is derived from my memory of Grandma Liska’s “pickled” beef which she served at family gatherings, most of which occurred because somebody had died. It, along with her roast pork, was a family favorite. We’d have thick slabs of Jewish rye bread to sop up the gravy, in addition to boiled potatoes with butter and dumplings. Bohemians are not afraid.

1 large onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 cup diced tomatoes
1 Tbs. pickling spice
1 Tbs. brown mustard
1/4 cup lemon juice
1-1/2 cups water
1 Tbs. kosher salt
6 lbs. beef loin or rump roast
6 slices bacon
4 Tbs. flour
1 pint sour cream

Boil all but the last four ingredients. Let cool.

Slice bacon into lardons. Cut slits in the beef and stuff with bacon. Place the beef into a deep dish and cover with the cooled brine. Cover marinade 2 days to one week. The longer, the better.

Remove meat from the brine and place in a roaster. Place the vegetables around the roast and add brine until the meat is about half covered. Bake at 350°F, covered, until tender.

Pour the rest of the brine into a saucepan and boil to reduce. Strain and add brine from the roast. Beat flour into the sour cream and mix into the brine to complete the gravy.

Thinly slice the beef and serve with the gravy, bread dumplings and sauerkraut.