01/18/06

 The Maderia Family History

A brief account of the origin and history of Patrick Maderia and Anna Tutko

written by

Patrick Maderia Jr.

According to Dad (Patrick) Maderia, the name Maderia originated from the Name “Mogyari” which was pronounced “Madera”. One night in September of 1982, just days before he died, Carole and Dad were talking on the front porch of the farm house. Responding to questions from Carole, Dad relayed the following regarding the origin of the Maderia name. The name Mogyari became "MADERIA" on his first day of school. There he told the teacher that his name was Patrick Mogyari. The teacher took the pronunciation as Maderia and wrote that on the blackboard. Thus the name Maderia originated at the stroke of a teacher's piece of chalk. Dad’s brothers, Gust and Joe, spelled their names “Madera”, leaving out the letter “i”. Why remains a mystery to this day. Dad's father was Hungarian and his mother was “Slavish”. Therefore, we assume that the name Mogyari is a Hungarian name. The photo on the left is that of Dad Maderia’s parents. Their names were Gusti Madari and Mary Shears. The mystery of the name goes on because that spelling (Madari) is what is on the deed when they bought the farm in Grampain on December 7, 1914. The deed is shown as an attachment to this document. Dad was born, I believe in Curwensville in 1903; therefore he would have been 11 years old when they moved to that farm. He was the oldest of three boys and one girl. He had two brothers, Gust and Joe and a sister, Julia. The photo on the right is that of Grandpap and Grandma Maderia with Dad and his brother, Uncle Gust.

Our mom, Anna “Tutko” Maderia's parents were “Slovak”. Her father, John Tutko was born in Kohanoce, Czechoslovakia on May 15, 1878. He came to Ellis Island from Antwerp, Belgium under the name Jan Tutko on December 5, 1899 on the vessel SS Friesland. At that time he was 21 years old. He had a sister, Mary Sheposh. When he was 25 years old, he married Barbara Behina on May 16, 1901 in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. Barbara Behina was born April 18, 1883 at Hutha, Czechoslovakia and came to America when she was 16 years old. She came from a village called Bardeo in Budapest. She had a sister, Anna Vrabel, and a brother, Emery Behina. She was 18 when she married John Tutko and she died October 13, 1934 when she was 51 years old. Photo at left is Grandma & Grandpa Tutko.

I always thought that Anna Tutko, the oldest of the ten children, was born in Wilkes Barre; however her father’s naturalization papers lists her birthplace as Trescel, Pennsylvania. A copy of his naturalization application is attached at the end of this article. I have never been able to find Trescel on any map or in any reference. We know that Anna lived in Madera, PA when she met Dad. I do not know how, why or when she moved from Trescel to Madera. She had 6 sisters, Mary, Lizzi, Julia, Agnes, Helen and Barbie. The picture on the right shows Anna (right side of photo) with her six sisters and Granddad John Tutko. Mom's three brothers (not shown here) were John (Brownie), George (Pungo) and Andrew (Pud).

The Tutko family must have moved to Grampian after Anna was born because George (Uncle Pungo) was born there on Jan 23, 1906. Aunt Mary was also born in Grampian on January 3, 1908. Then they moved to Van Ormer, PA (close to Fallen Timber or Patton) where Uncle John (Brownie) was born on February 13, 1910. The rest of the children were born in Madera, PA, starting with Aunt Agnes, March 6, 1914, Aunt Julia, March 13, 1912, Aunt Lizzi, April 8, 1916, Aunt Helen, July 8, 1918, Uncle Andrew (Pud), Oct 12, 1920 and Aunt Barbara, May 11, 1922.

Patrick Maderia and Anna Tutko were married at the Sacred Heart Church in Houtzdale, Pennsylvania on August 25, 1923. They apparently lived in Grampain, Pennsylvania for a while after their marriage. To the best of our knowledge, their marriage was arranged by their parents, who were good friends. Their first child, Frances, was born in Grampain on June 23, 1924. Sometime after that date, they moved to the town of Madera, Pennsylvania, where Anna’s parents lived. It was there that the next two children, Joe and Emery were born. Joe on May 21, 1926 and Emery on July 25, 1928.

 Dad graduated from the eighth grade and then went to work in the coal mines when he was just fourteen years old. The story goes that Dad Maderia, after their third child, was out of work, so he walked to Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania (about 50 miles) and took a job with the Heisley Mine Company. Heisley Mine was the epitome of mines at the outset, with its imposing smokestack and modern tipple. It also developed a staggering slag dump that for years emitted an unforgettable sulfur odor. More on that below.  It was in Nanty Glo, that Aggie was born on February 17, 1932. If you are wondering why there were four whole years between Emery and Aggie’s births - well, there wasn’t. Emery was a twin - the other died at birth, and Mom had another later that was still-born. Patrick Jr. came next on January 24, 1934 while we still lived on Cedar Street near the Company Store in Nanty Glo. The Company Store, appropriately named because it was owned by the Heisley Coal Company, was the place where all of the miners and their families bought clothes, groceries, etc. Most of the men were paid in company checks that could only be used at the Company Store. You might say that the company had complete control and made a lot of money from the workers.

I remember one specific event that occurred in the house on Pergrim Hill.  I remember being at the top of the stairs with all the other kids and women while a terrific fight was going on downstairs. It turned out that Dad and his brother Gust had a fistfight. I remember that we kids didn’t really know what was going on, but all of the women were crying but they did not dare interfere. You see, in those days, the guys were guys and the gals were gals, and the guys ruled the roost. At least they thought they did. They also drank a lot of booze and fought a lot – it was just the way of life in a coalmining town. Nanty Glo must have had fifteen to thirty bars (Beer Gardens, they were called in those days).  The men worked hard in the mines, but come the weekend, they spent a lot of what they made on booze. It was nothing to see a drunk being thrown out on the street by a bartender or two guys fighting on the street.

 A good thing happened to the family about this time. Dad and Mom got a few bucks somewhere   (I think they got $500 from Grandma Maderia’s life insurance policy when she died) so they decided to buy a farm. They bought the farm, in the summer of 1936, one mile west of Mundy’s Corner, Pennsylvania  just after Tom was born. Dad found that the owner was willing to sell the farm for $2,000. Five hundred down and the rest on payments – In those days, a handshake was good enough to close the deal and Dad came away with a farm. I say that was a good thing, because, you see, we still had four more kids coming along, and you could never feed that many kids unless you had a farm.  

Here, on the farm, I can remember a few very early things. I remember that the farm house had no electric lights, no plumbing or running water, and, of course, no bathroom. Our lights consisted of oil lamps, lanterns, and lamps very similar to the Coleman lamps you see today. The difference was that these stocking lamps were beautiful brass things with four socks – one simply filled them with “white gas”, pumped them up, and, KaZaam – a nice way to light the room. Of course, we also had oil lamps and candles. Electricity would come much later – like in 1940 when I was 6 years old. I remember the trucks from the electric company plowing through the Elder Berry Bushes (the farm was covered with them at the time) to put the electric utility poles in the ground.  We, as kids, ran after the utility truck and had a ball even if, at the time, we really did not realize what they were doing.

The picture on the left was taken around 1945. That was after Dad put brick looking tarpaper siding and a new front porch on the house. The farmhouse had three bedrooms upstairs – Mom and Dad shared one, and the kids shared the other two. There were no closets in the bedrooms – another smaller room upstairs served as a “clothes room” where all of the clothes for the whole family hung neatly in a row. The clothes we wore every day were normally hung on hooks behind each bedroom door. With no air conditioning, the house was very hot in the summer. The windows would all be opened with screens to keep out the insects. The slightest breeze would move the hanging clothes behind the bedroom doors – in the middle of the night, this would scare some of the girls half to death.

I don’t remember how the kids were situated in the two bedrooms. I know there were two double beds in one room – three girls slept in one and three boys in the other. When we moved to the farm in 1936, there were six kids. Let’s see, Fran would have been 12 years old and Tom, the youngest at the time would have been one. Then Rosie was born in 1939 when Fran was 15.  By the time Patty was born in 1941, Fran had already gone to New York to find a job working in the war effort. Joe soon followed her to New York when he was 16, and then enlisted in the Navy when he was 17. By the way, Patty was the only child that was born in the hospital.  The rest of the kids were born at home. I specifically remember when Sonny was born. It was a hot July day and Dad had taken some of us to Grampian to visit Uncle Gust and his family.  When we got back home, Sonny had been born.  I don’t know who delivered him, that is, I don’t remember seeing a doctor, but I do know that we had a new baby brother when we got home from that trip. I really don’t know why I remember that particular day because I do not remember when any of the others were born.  Funny what we remember sometimes.

The old house also had an attic – as kids, we were all afraid to go up there because “Old Isaacs” might get us – I remember that there was an old, dusty and large picture of an old man right at the top of the stairs to the attic – for some reason we named him Issacs or were told that his name was Issacs. Anyway we were all deathly afraid of him and were afraid to go into the attic alone. Talking about being afraid. We had a little stream in front of the house and next to it was a big old Pear Tree. It had some of the best pears and mom always canned them – but that tree was a frightful thing for me at night – for some reason I just knew that someone was waiting behind that tree to grab me – so even into my teen years, every time I would come home at night I would start running about 50 yards before I got to the tree and would not stop until I was in the house. I guess it worked, because whoever was hiding behind that tree never did get me!

The downstairs of the farmhouse consisted of two rooms – one was a kitchen and the other served as the living room. In the kitchen we had a coal-burning cook stove. A magnificent thing with an oven and a warmer on top. That was the stove that mom did all the cooking and baking on and it also served as a portion of our heat in the winter – a hole in the ceiling allowed heat to go to the bedroom upstairs. There was always a bucket of coal sitting by the stove. There was also a small stack of kindling wood which was used to start the fire in the mornings. Mom never hesitated to grab one of those sticks and get after us when we acted up (which was pretty often). Behind the stove, we had racks like one could hang towels to dry. I remember we also strung apple slices on string and hung them there to dry so that we could have dried apples in the winter. In the living room a coal burning “heating stove” was set up each winter – again, holes in the ceiling provided heat to the other two bedrooms upstairs. During the summer, the heating stove was simply pushed into a corner of the room and covered with a “dolly” and it stayed there until it was again set up for winter.

On the back of the house, there was also another lean-to type room that we called the pantry and a covered porch. The pantry was used for storing groceries, food, and every other thing you could think of. We also had a cellar that had an entrance from the kitchen as well as an entrance from the outside. The cellar was used for storage of vegetables and canned goods. I remember bins filled with potatoes and shelves just full of all the things that mom canned. We always had a barrel of sauerkraut in the cellar. Dad would stomp the grated cabbage with his bare feet as he added salt, thus creating the best sauerkraut in the world. The irony was that the cellar flooded every spring – one could go down the stairway and see two feet of water standing and everything that could float was floating on the water. Down below the house was a gorgeous maple tree and underneath it was a “spring house”. Before electricity, the milk was kept there to keep it cool. That's right, we had cows as well as horses, pigs, and chickens. The spring almost never ran dry, but sometimes did. I remember that occasionally we would have to take the team of horses and a wagon and haul water from Burkhart’s Crossing. That was a place that had a spring of water that never went dry. We would put 55 gallon drums on the wagon and then go approximately five miles to the crossing to fill the barrels with water.  

Chickens were one of the mainstays on the farm.  They provided all the eggs we ever wanted as well as good Sunday dinners. We would come home from church Sunday morning and it was the job of one of the boys to catch a couple of chickens for Sunday dinner.  So off we would go, run them down and make them ready for dinner.  We kept the chickens in a “chicken coop” – a building with roosts in it so the chickens could sleep. The building also had built-in nests (boxes with straw in them) where the chickens would lay their eggs. Every day someone would go to the chicken coop and gather the eggs that were in the nests. We even hatched the eggs and had an incubator in the coop to house the freshly born chicks. We had a large chicken wire fence that kept the chickens in a specified area (most of the time). A funny story goes with that one.  One time Tom decided to pee through the fence on one of the roosters. Well, needless to say, the rooster didn’t like that very much so he bite Tom’s pecker. What a sight – Tom crying and holding his little bleeding pecker in his hand. That could be one for Reader’s Digest!

I don’t know when we put the electric pump in the basement that brought water to the house. I remember Dad, Uncle Peezo, Uncle Pungo and others digging the ditch for the pipes that put water into the house. I also remember a sink on one wall of the old kitchen so we did have running water. Still no bathroom though – that would come much later after I had graduated from high school. It was in the spring of 1954 when Tom and I were laid off from work that we built the new kitchen and bathroom in the house. Dad did the financing and Tom and I did the work. We dug out the basement and used large stones for the basement walls. We built the kitchen and bathroom. We made the kitchen cabinets ourselves from knotty pine wood because money was scarce and store bought cabinets from Sears & Roebucks were simply out of our price range.  I remember Mom would come into that partially completed kitchen and stand by the un-finished cabinets, look out the picture window, smile and pretend that she was working in her dream kitchen. We finished Mom's dream kitchen in the last week of September, 1954. But I am getting ahead of myself – more about that later.

There was another house on the farm. Dad would rent that out. Fran, Emery and Rosie are shown in the photo on the left. You can see a corner of the farmhouse and then the other house is in the background. I remember it had green tar paper shingles for siding. For a while I remember that Red Taylor and his family lived there. He had a daughter named Delores that Tom and I used to tease her constantly.  She turned out to be pretty good looking and was Tom’s girl for a while in our teenage years. Then Mom’s sister, Mary and her husband, John (Uncle Peezo) moved into that house. They had four children, Matilda, Dorothy (Blondie), John (Youn) and Barbie. These, of course, were our first cousins and we had a lot of fun together on the farm. Later on, Aunt Mary and her family would move to Madera to Grandpa Tutko’s house. Then Emery got married and lived in the house. Emery’s twin boys, Jim and Joe were born while they still lived there. The twins were always getting into trouble with Dad because they were always into his things. I remember them getting into a bag of white lime in Dad's garage. Man, they came out of there covered from head to toe. It's a wonder they didn't get it in their eyes and go blind. Sometimes the good Lord takes care of little guys like that.

Other buildings on the farm included the pump house which housed the well and was right next to Aunt Mary’s house. It also served as the storage place for wood and coal to supply that house. There was an old barn and a “granary” up closer to the road.  The granary served as a garage and kind of a junk place and a good place for us kids to play. There was also a large old barn close to the road. I think that I remember it having one of those Mail Pouch tobacco signs painted on it. Dad later tore that barn down and built a new one down below the old spring. It was a real nice barn with a ramp that lead up to the upper floor between two maws where the hay and straw were stored for the winter. It also was equipped with a hay fork on a long pulley. The fork was pushed into the load of hay and then a horse or later a tractor was used to hoist the hay into the maw. It was hard work because we had to be in the maw and spread the hay evenly across the maw. Harder than that, however, was getting the grain (oats & wheat) thrashed. We didn’t have a thrasher so Dad would schedule a day or two with the neighbor who would bring the thrasher to our farm. The sheaves of wheat or oats were stacked on a large pile (we had hauled it there from the field earlier). Then the sheaves were tossed into the thrasher, grain would come out into burlap bags and the straw would be blown through a large tube into the straw maw. It was dusty, dirty and very difficult work. Of course, we didn’t use masks to guard from the dust so we were blowing dirt from our noses for days afterward.

The lower part of the barn was where the horses and cows were kept.  There was a nice concrete trough behind each stall to catch the droppings. The only problem was that the barn was built in a low spot and did not drain properly. So when we had severe wet weather, the barn flooded. I remember that the last whipping I got from Dad was when I was about 12 or 13 years old. Like a dummy, I built a fire about three feet from the new barn that had just been filled with straw and hay.  Well, needless to say, that made Dad quite angry and he peppered me pretty good for that prank.

 There was another garage above the house where Uncle Peezo kept his car. Then there was the coal house where we kept coal and wood to fuel the stoves. I remember a chicken coop and pigpens. We had two pens because Uncle Peezo kept pigs on our farm also. He kept them in a pen that had a small opening so that the pigs could go from the pen to the outside yard. Emery and Tom had gone to the pigpen for some reason or other. Emery bet Tom a dime that he couldn’t ride one of Peezo’s hogs. Tom was pretty daring anyway and couldn’t pass up a chance to make a dime. He boarded that hog lickety split!!! Needless to say, the hog didn’t like the idea of Tom being on its back. He let out a squeal and a holler and headed out the opening to the yard. Now, of course, there wasn’t enough clearance in the opening for both the hog and Tom, so Tom’s face collided with the siding above the door and Tom ended up on his rear in the dirt. Emery wouldn’t give him the dime because he said Tom didn’t stay on the hog long enough!!! So to this day, Tom says that Emery owes him a dime plus interest.  At six percent annually, I figure that Em owes Tom about $3.50.

Oh yes, and then there were the Outhouses. I remember that there were two of them. The one that serviced the other house was an old “two holer” that didn’t have a hole in the ground under it. It had a sort of barrel sled so that when it became full, supposedly, someone could hitch to the sled and drag the stuff away. I don’t ever remember anyone dragging it away so you can understand that the smell was quite heavy most of the time. And in the summer time, oh man, the flies. They were as big as ducks. I remember Dad building the other Out House. They dug a hole and built the shed over it. It also was a “two holer”; although I never knew why, because only one person used it at a time. I remember that there were large cracks between the boards. In the winter, you had to use the Sears Catalog (which was left there to serve as toilet paper) to brush the snow from the seat before you sat down. It wasn’t that bad though, I remember as a young boy sitting and enjoying the ladies lingerie section of the catalog. I guess that was our version of Playboy.

Every Thanksgiving Day was “butchering” day and Dad was the region's senior and seasoned butcher. He would butcher the hogs for us and most of the neighbors. Most of the time there was a lot of snow on Thanksgiving and I remember the large fires with the two cast iron pots with boiling water. The hot water was used to help get the hair from the pigs’ hides. One would pour the water on the dead hog and then use a very sharp knife to literally shave the hair from the hog. It was normally our job as kids to keep the fires going and the kettles filled with water. The butchering brings back memories of the Smoke House. This was a small building with a tunnel that went out to the side of a hill. The hams, bacons, etc was hung in the smoke house and a fire was built at the mouth of the tunnel. We younger boys were responsible for cutting the green wood, hickory, beech etc that would provide the smoke to cure the meat. Oh, the smell, I remember it was mouth-watering – the sweet smell of smoked ham and bacon was just something to remember. When the Smoke House was not in use, it also served as a good hiding place for Emery. He would hide there until the school bus passed and then would not have to go to school, because the school was about eight miles away – so if he missed the bus, he could not go to school. But I am again getting ahead of myself. 

The two houses were situated about two hundred yards from the highway. There was a steep driveway down from the road. In the winter time, the cars had to be left on the highway because the snow and ice would prevent anyone from getting the cars up the driveway. The snow was always deep and the winters very cold – of course, as kids maybe the snow just looked deeper. I do know that we had to walk to the school at Mundy’s Corner which was a mile or so away. Later buses were used, but in the early years, we walked. Dad and Mom could not afford to send us to the Catholic School in Nanty Glo so we went to the public school. Then, because we were Catholics, us kids had to attend Catechism in the summer time. To do that we had to walk about three miles down through the woods to the Catholic School in Nanty Glo.  It was the same walk we took to go to the movies, but it seemed so much longer when we were walking to catechism. I don’t know how long we went in the summer time, but it seemed like forever.  But that’s the only way we could get to our first communion so that is what we had to do. 

Dad and Mom worked hard. Dad kept his job in the mines and also worked the farm. I remember that he volunteered for the “three to eleven” shift so that he could work both places. Dad was a pretty sharp cookie even though he only finished the eighth grade. He managed to get out of the underground mine when he was elected “Weigh Boss” at the mine. When he became a “Weigh Boss” he did not have to go into the mine. The Weigh Boss was a trusted individual that was elected by the miners. His job was to weigh the coal cars as they came from the mine. He had to be trusted to give the correct weight so that each miner would get the correct pay for his work. The cars would come from the mine to a scale, an individual known as the “Checkman” would pull the brass disk (check) that identified the miner who filled the car, and the Check man would slide the disk down a tube to Dad. Dad would record the weight of the coal and the number of the responsible miner. He would do this on large accounting sheets which he then used to add and summarize for each individual miner or teams of miners. The miners were paid based on Dad’s tabulations. This was a big responsibility for Dad, because the sheets had to be very accurate. He used to be able to add figures on those sheets faster than most people could do it with a calculator today. The picture shown is Heisley Mine around 1920. The white arrow is pointing to a small shed. That is where Dad worked. The tipple is the larger building with the ramp going up to it. That ramp has rails that were used to carried the coal cars up to the tipple. There the coal was washed and then dumped into railroad cars for transport.  That small building where Dad worked was on the other side of a creek (which ran yellow because of the sulfur from the mine).

As we grew older, we used to walk through the woods from the farm, along the railroad tracks by the mine, and then hit dad up for the money to go tothe movies. Nanty Glo had three movie theaters at that time, the Liberty, Victory and The Capitol. We normally went to the Liberty because it was the cheapest at nine cents.  The Liberty, nicknamed “the Ranch House” because of its concentration on western movies, was an early casualty of television and drive-in theaters. The building still stands on Shoemaker Street across from the upper level of Commons Hardware. There at the Liberty we could see a double feature, one of which was a western like Hop Along Cassidy, Tom Mix, etc., the news, a cartoon, and a serial for all of nine cents. The serial, like The Red Rider, The Durango Kid, Zorro, etc would run for several months or so and played each week. Each weekly episode would end with the hero in real danger, therefore, we couldn’t wait to get back the next week to see if he was saved. Of course, he always got out of trouble at the last moment and went on to defeat the bad guys. After the movie, we would walk back up the railroad tracks to the mine and wait for Dad to take us home when he got off at 11 o’clock. I used to love to ride in the back of the car late at night so that I could snooze on the way home.  But sometimes it was hard to sleep no matter how sleepy we were. You see Dad used to chew Copenhagen snuff so he would always have the driver’s side window open in the car. It didn’t matter if it was winter or summer – the window was always open. Of course in the winter, the back seat got pretty cold. Then because he chewed snuff, he would spit out the window – well, with the wind blowing through that window, we in the back seat would have to duck or get snuff in the face. We would ask him to put the window up, but he just said that it really wasn’t that cold – little did he know!

 The photo at the left is of the Victory theater (pre 1945) before it was destroyed by fire. The theater is actually on the left side of that square – the building on the corner is Rexall Drug Store. I can remember Dad taking a couple of us there once with Mom to have a milk shake – we thought we were in heaven! That is the only time I ever remember Dad taking us out to get a milkshake or soda.

Dad and all the other male relatives worked hard, but they also drank hard. I don’t think that there was a wedding, birthday, baptism, or for that matter a weekend that went by that all the men folk didn’t get blind-ass drunk. Then there would be fights and the men were mean. Dad was pretty mean when he got drunk. I think that the only one he never fought with was Uncle Brownie (mom’s oldest brother). He and Dad were both strong as bulls and respected each other. They were afraid to fight one another. When Uncle Brownie got drunk, he would get crazy. They called it “getting the snakes”. I remember one time we were visiting down in Twin Rocks, PA. That was where Aunt Mary and Uncle Pezzo lived before they moved to the farm.  Uncle Brownie, Uncle Pezzo, and Uncle Mike all lived with their families in Twin Rocks. Uncle Brownie got the snakes and started a fight with, both, Uncle Pezzo and Uncle Mike.  Mike got scared and ran to his house and hit under the bed. After Uncle Brownie grew tired of beating on Uncle Peezo, he went to Mike’s house, kicked in the door, dragged Mike out from under the bed and beat on him.  

I don’t know how he did it, but Dad would go off for the weekend and get drunk. He would then drive the car home, come down the lane, bump the car into an apple tree, fall out the door and sleep on the ground until he “slept it off”. He had Tom in the car one time and someone hit him at the intersection in Mundy’s Corner. Hell, Mundy’s Corner only had one intersection. Anyway, it was the other guy’s fault, but because Dad was drunk, he got the blame. He was convicted, lost his driver’s license and was sentenced to 30 days in the county jail. During that time the jail warden would let the prisoners work at the County Farm. So we would visit Dad at the farm. There was a beer garden about a quarter of a mile down the road from the County Farm. We found out Dad and his buddy used to sneak away from their work and go down to the beer garden and get drunk.

It was dreadful when Dad was drunk. He would become obnoxious and mean and we were all afraid of him. I remember one time hiding under an apple tree above the house with Mom and a few other kids because Dad was drunk and in one of his rages. It was in the evening and we just stayed there until he fell asleep. Dad finally quit drinking when Mom got so fed up that she finally convinced herself to leave him. He then went in front of a “Justice of the Peace” and took an oath that he would never drink again as long as Mom was alive. He was quite a man, really, because he quit “cold turkey” and he kept that oath until the day she died.

For some reason, Dad was all work and no play except for the binges. He did not hunt, fish, or play any sports. But, occasionally he would take us boys, Emery, Tom and I fishing on a Sunday morning. He would drive us out to Blacklick Creek which was one of the few creeks that was not polluted from the coal mines. There he would drop us off and come back for us about four hours later. We never did catch any fish because we didn’t know anything about fishing. I remember there was one hole in the creek with an old stump over it. You could look down into the water and see these large fish lying under that stump. We would spend most of our time lying on our bellies over that stump trying to catch those monster trout. Only came to realize later that they were nothing but suckers – We never did catch any of them.  The photo at the left is Bracken Bridge across Blacklick Creek. I think that is the bridge where Dad would drop us when he took us fishing.

On the farm, we all had chores. The boys worked outside and the girls inside. The girls helped mom with the cooking, canning, laundry and cleaning of the house. Looking back on it now and although we did not appreciate it at the time, Mom and those sisters were the greatest because us boys were treated like kings when we came in from the fields. They always had the house cleaned and food on the table for us. Mom kept them humping and the house was always clean from top to bottom. Of course, at the time, us boys didn’t think it was any big deal. Because we were on the farm we always had a lot to eat, and most of what we had was all grown or raised on the farm. Anything that was purchased from the grocery store was a real luxury. I don’t think I can ever remember having a banana. We all kind of lived the life of the Waltons but I don’t think we were near that good. Man, us boys drove Mom crazy because we were always in scrapes with each other – sometimes I wonder how we didn’t kill one another. I remember one time, Emery got mad at me for something and hit me up side the head with a corn cob (the hard cob was left over after the corn was shelled from it). I was knocked unconscious - - - lucky it didn't kill me!!!!

Fran likes to tell the story of the time she, Joe and Emery were supposed to stay home and watch the place while Mom and Dad were away. Well, the three of them decided to go up over the hill to visit with their friends in the Taylor clan. They locked up the house and then hid the key under a coal bucket that was on the porch. Then they proceeded to write a note and hang it on the front door. The note read “Mom and Dad – the key is under the coal bucket!”.

Dad would tell us to go up to the field to do some work – like weeding, cutting wood or whatever.  Then once in a while, he would go to town or somewhere.  As soon as we saw him pull out of the driveway, we would drop what we were doing and head up over the hill to the swimming hole. Sometimes it was an old dam on the Ditchcreek farm or we would swim in the strippings. The hills were strip-mined for coal and this left large depressions in the ground.  These would fill up with clear cold water and provide a perfect swimming hole. Sometimes they were 50 or more feet deep. There were no lifeguards or anything like that – we just went in, most of the time naked, diving off the rocks and having a ball. As kids, we really had a lot of freedom, not like the kids today. Hell, when we were not working, like on Sundays, we would head to the woods and play until dark or until we were called in to dinner.  I remember Tom, Youn and I building a small log cabin in the woods. Man that was our secret hideout where we spent a lot of our leisure time. We had a small “fireplace” in it with a flat stone for a base. One time we were there and it was raining cats and dogs. We had that fire going full blast and the stone on the base of the fireplace exploded. Wow, there was fire and smoke all over the place. Lucky none of us got burned and we were able to control the fire and get out of the cabin.

Mom had a very hard life. I don’t know how she did it. She was a saint; she was the glue that held us together. She was simply the greatest and any love that was in the family came from her. There was always so much for her to do, canning, cleaning, washing, and cooking, just to name a few.  But she always seemed to manage. She even found time to pull weeds in the garden and to help us kids pick wild huckleberries and blackberries. She and Aunt Mary, with the help of the girls, canned everything.  They made jellies, preserves, canned all the vegetables, baked, and cooked. I remember they would buy bushels of peaches then sit for hours peeling them so that they could be canned. Canned peaches were quite a treat for us. Us kids used to eat the peelings from the peaches and I still like peach peelings today. I can still see Mom today, setting on the porch in a rocker with a pail of peas or beans in her lap.  She would be rocking and humming a tune while she pealed peas or cut beans, or whatever for dinner. I don’t know how one person could be that loving, that beautiful and oh, so durable.  She was truly a gift from God to us kids, and, also to Dad. At the time, I don’t think that many of us realized just what she meant to us.  

Mom would even make some of our clothes. I remember that sometimes the feed for the cattle came in nice colored and flowered cloth sacks – she would use those to make clothes – everyone lived in hand-me-downs – one almost never got something new – although, I remember getting a new suit for my First Communion – suits in those days always came with two pair of trousers, one with long pant legs and the other pair were Knickers – trousers that only come to the bottom of the knee – I hated those things but I had to wear them to my first communion. When the clothes were too worn for anyone to wear, Mom would tear them into strips, sew the strips end to end, and roll them into balls. After she had a large collection of these balls, she would take them to a lady in Twin Rocks who then made carpets out of them. If you had those carpets now, you could sell them for a very nice sum. 

Mondays were Mother's wash day.  I remember that we had an old washing machine that was run by a gasoline engine. There was a “ringer” on top (a couple of rubber rollers) that squeezed the water from the washed clothes. All the white clothes were boiled in a copper kettle and hand scrubbed on a scrub board. Then, of course, there were no clothes dryers so the clothes were hung on a line to dry. In the winter time, they would freeze on the line – wow – Mom was really something. During lent, Mom would make us gather around the table and kneel to say the rosary. We didn’t want to do it, but if we didn’t we would really get it big time. I remember Emery was kneeling one time and suddenly said "Mom, I'm going to pass out." Mom answered "Emery, quit your fooling around." Well, he wasn’t kidding and soon fell over on the floor  unconscious and was out like a light. He really wasn't kidding. – Mom nearly had a heart attack!!  The boys were especially good at fussing and fighting so that we kept Mom in constant turmoil. I guess a lot of that led to her early death. Looking back, though, there can be no regrets – we were just kids and she was the greatest mom ever, I guess, at the time we just didn’t realize how great and loving she really was. I guess, like all kids, we did not appreciate her until she was gone.

The boys had to milk the cows, feed the stock, and help with all the planting and harvesting. At 5 O’ clock in the morning Dad was at the bottom of the stairs yelling out “Are you guys going to sleep all day?” We all knew it was coming, but that never made it any easier. Most mornings we would crawl out of bed and make it down stairs to the chores, milking the cows, feeding the chickens, hogs, and the other stock. If we didn’t make the first call, the next wake up call was a little less gentle – Like “Are you guys getting up or not?” – That really wasn’t a question – it was a warning – get out of bed or I’ll come up there and drag you out!  Of course, Mom was always up also – getting breakfast so that we had it when we got in from the chores. And it was always great - eggs, bacon, sometimes corn meal (mush) that we ate with milk and burnt butter. Man, we really loved that. Another one of our main chores was to cut wood and split it into kindling so that we could have that in the winter time. The kindling was used to start the fire in the coal burning stove. We had a coal shed with two rooms – one was kept full of coal and the other is where we stored the kindling. Man we spent a lot of time cutting logs with a crosscut saw and then splitting them into kindling.  

On the farm, we had three horses, Dick, Kit and Queen. The picture on the left is of Dad with Kit and Queen. Tom is in the background – he looks about eight years old so I guess the picture was taken around 1944. Dad was sure proud of those horses. Dick ( not shown in the photo) was just an old nag that was used to help train the younger horses. Kit was nice, but sometimes skittish, - Queen was always skittish. I remember the time when Dad wasn’t home. Emery and I decided it would be a good idea to hook Kit to one of the buggies that was on the farm. We did that and thought we would take a nice little buggy ride around the farm. Well, Kit didn’t like that rickety buggy behind her, got scared and really took off. We couldn’t control her at all. I was lucky and jumped off, but Em had the reins and was trying to control that run-away horse. He ended up catching his leg in the spokes of the front wheel, falling off and hitting his face against a big 55 gallon drum. Kit ran up into the swamp above the house. It was lucky that Em didn’t get something broken – we finally got Kit and quickly released her from the buggy. Dad never found out or he would have taken us to task for being so stupid. Take us to task hell, he would have beat our butts.

The horses were a lot of fun for us because we got to ride them bareback sometimes. One had to be careful around them because sometimes they do not know just how strong they are. I remember one time Dick was grazing above the barn and our cousin, Youn, approached him from the front just to pet him. Dick, just for fun and in a moment of glee, whirled around and kicked up his heels – one foot caught Youn just above the eye and knocked him for a loop.  Just a little lower and he could have sustained a very severe blow to the head – as it was he had a large cut above the eye. 

We always had a barn full of cats and several dogs on the farm. Sometimes we would have as many as fifteen or twenty cats running around the barn.  We always kept a couple of dishes/pans that we would fill with milk at milking time.  The cats loved that.  We would also squirt them in the face when we were milking the cows. The cats would lick the milk off their faces – really cute.  When Emery was old enough to hunt on his own, he decided that he wanted a hunting dog. He took me with him and we rode the bicycle to Nanty Glo where he bought a small beagle pup for five dollars.  I remember that I held the pup while he pedaled us home. He named the dog Fanny and that was the first of many fine hunting beagles that he had throughout the years. I remember one year he decided that he wanted a larger hunting dog.  He sent away from an address in a hunting magazine to purchase a Blue Tick Hound from Kentucky. Well, we got that dog and it was next to worthless. All it could do was eat a lot – well, needless to say, that dog didn’t last long with Emery. He wouldn’t tolerate a hunting dog that couldn’t hunt. From that time on, old Em never bought anything but beagles – he was a true beagle man and we spent many a happy day hunting rabbits behind his beagles. 

As I remember that bicycle was the only one on the farm. It was a great bicycle. One time Dad promised Tom and I that he would split the profits on the strawberries that we sold if we took good care of them. Well, he planted about a half acre of strawberries – that’s a pretty big patch of strawberries. Tom and I would hoe the rows to keep the weeds out. By the time we got through the whole patch, it was time to start again. Well, we sold a lot of strawberries at thirty cents a quart. And we made a lot of money. Dad would put all the money in a glass canning jar and by the time the picking and selling season was over we had over seven hundred dollars in that jar. Now in those days, that was a helluva lot of money. Well, Dad kept his promise, somewhat. He went out an bought a Sears Roebuck, J.C. Higgins bicycle for Tom and I to share. I think the bike cost him all of forty two dollars, but that was our split of the profits for the season. Now we had two bicycles on the farm. When Tom and I became teenagers, those bikes were our only means of transportation and we went everywhere on them. So I guess we didn’t get such a bad deal after all. 

After Dad took his non-drinking pledge, things got a little better for Mom. As kids left and others got older, she seemed to have a little more pleasure in life. Looking back now, one of Mom's real pleasures in life was to watch television when we finally got one.  She loved to watch wrestling and would sit at night with Rosie and the other younger ones watching wrestling on the TV.  She also loved the soap operas, especially “Search for Tomorrow”.  Another one of her few pleasures was playing Bingo. She loved to play Bingo. Wednesday evenings at St. Mary’s and every Friday night at the Fireman’s Hall in Nanty Glo was Bingo night.  She and Aunt Mary would hardly ever miss a night when they could play bingo. They would both get all dressed up and go out to play bingo. It was nothing to see those gals playing fourteen cards at one time. They even had their own box full of personal transparent plastic chips that they used to cover the numbers as they were called. It was ironic, because she loved bingo, and that is where she had her fatal stroke. It was Friday, October 8, 1954. I had taken her and Aunt Mary to the Fire Hall in Nanty Glo to play bingo. Then I went to the roller rink and was supposed to pick them up at eleven o’clock. Before that time, I received a call at the rink that she had a stroke and was in the hospital in Johnstown. Well, she died the next morning, October 9, 1954 without regaining consciousness.  She worked in her dream kitchen for a total of nine days before she went to God's kitchen in heaven.

After Mom died, it just wasn’t the same around that place. Mom was the center of the family, the absolute hub, and, without her, I don’t think the family would have stuck together all those years. After Mom died, Tom and I hung around through the fall and the holiday season. Without Mom, the Christmas of 1954 was the worst Christmas of our lives. Tom and I were lucky, I guess, because we were of an age to get on with our lives independently, so in the early spring of 1955 Tom joined the Navy and I joined the Air Force. We both really wanted to join the service before that but Mom was dead set against it. I remember in early 1954, I went to New York to take an exam for the Air Force Cadets. I was not selected and when I got home, Mom said “I’m really glad, I was praying that you would not be selected.” How can one fight that? In May of 1955, Aggie got married, so that left the four youngest, Rosie, Patty, Sonny and Babe on the farm with Dad. I didn’t get back to the farm much after that.

In December 1955, Dad remarried. He married a lady from from Heilwood, Pennsylvania. Her name was Theresa Turko. I was already in the Air Force and was stationed in the Philippine Islands at the time. I decided to stay in the Air Force and throughout my service, my family and I would get back to the farm for a visit about once every three years, so I don't remember much about the place during those years. One think I do remember vividly was when Agnes got sick with cancer. That is a tragedy that I will never forget. To this day, I really have not forgiven the Lord for taking her the way he did. There was no reason for him to take her so early in her life. She was a beautiful person who never did anyone any harm. I like to think that I was close to Aggie because we weren’t that far apart in age, her being less than two years older than me. As it turned out, she spent her last months with Frances and Russell.  They were absolute saints to take care of her the way they did.  Oh what a heart breaking experience that must have been. And, even though I was not there, I realize the torment that they and the rest of the kids must have gone through – I guess I was lucky at the time, because the Air Force had sent me to college at the University of Oklahoma; therefore, my torment was much easier because I suffered from a distance.

In July of 1982, my family and I got stationed at the Pentagon in Washington DC. There we were much closer to the farm so we could visit more often. Dad seemed to enjoy his retirement years later in life. He really enjoyed sitting on the porch at the farm and just enjoying life. He rarely visited any one. Once in a while he would drive his pick-up truck to Ohio to visit the kids for a special occasion like a wedding or such. He would never stay more than a few days. I asked him to visit us in Washington DC. He would say "Well, Son, I would, but I don't want to shake any politician's hands." We would laugh at that one. Dad was diagnosed with cancer in August of that year.  We took him home to the farm so that he could spend his last days there. All of the kids were able to visit him during that time and they all did. It was during that time that he told Carole about the origin of our name. He was a strong, independent man. He was on his way to the bathroom, wanting no help from anyone, when his heart gave out and he simply slid to the floor in Carole's arms and died. That was September 20, 1982.  The farm was later sold in 1995.

Looking back on things now, well, I don't know about the other kids, but I have no regrets. Hell, as kids, we didn’t even realize that we were poor. Probably the oldest kids had it rougher than any of us younger ones. They lived during the depression when things were really tough. I know that once Dad and Mom moved to Nanty Glo and later to the farm, Dad had a pretty good job so things were much better. We always seemed to have enough to eat and the hand-me-downs weren’t bad at all. But, over all, we had some hard times, some bad times, and a lot of good times. I guess I could write forever about some of the things that I remember. I am sure that my brothers and sisters could contribute many more stories and I would be happy to type them up if they provide them.  But I will stop now. Hopefully, this little story will give those of you who weren’t there a little bit of the history of Mom Tutko and Dad Maderia and the early days of the Maderia Family.