Rita Carozza

Family Stories

December 28, 2005

DECEMBER 6, 1955

It was fifty years ago, a Tuesday, when it happened. Clem (15) and I, (17), were

at a basketball game at Bolton Central School. Angele (18) should have been there too since both she and Clem were cheerleaders, but she had stayed home that evening. Attending the games was a big part of the social life in our high school and there was usually a bus load of kids who went as spectators. We had a good team so we were all enjoying an evening watching our school mates play ball.

About half way through the game, our cousin, Marcel, showed up with John Miner, one of our neighbor’s sons. They told us we had to come home because our father was in an accident at work and our mother wanted us home. Marcel’s stepfather, Avit, was in the lumbering business too and the word had come to him and our aunt Alexandra, my father’s sister-in-law, that they were to tell my mother. During the 30-40 minute ride home, we asked questions such as:

“How badly was he hurt?” “Pretty bad.”

“Is he going to be OK?” “We don’t know.”

“Where is he?” “Long Lake hospital”

(Later we realized there was no hospital in Long Lake.)

“Can we go see him?” “I don’t think so.”

It was a stressful and emotional ride home and Marcel and John consoled us as best they could.

Meanwhile, Eddy (13) and Monique (9) were at home with Mom and Angele. Angele recalls that around suppertime Ma Tante Sandra came to the house and very nervously announced that Dominique had had an accident at work and that they were taking him to the

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hospital in Tupper Lake. After asking a lot of hasty questions, not feeling reassured and not knowing what else she could do, Maman asked everyone to kneel down and say the rosary. Angele remembers her struggling with her rosary, hastily trying to repair an eyelet that had opened up, causing the circle of beads to lose its shape. Her immediate reaction to a crisis was to ask “La Sainte Vierge”, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to intercede for her, this time praying to bring her husband safely back to her. But it was already too late.

Pepa and another lumberman, Marcel Pinard, had a contract to log a piece of property in the Long Lake area. They were going through the process of an average day’s work, each cutting down trees, a bit of a distance apart, listening to the “buzz” of each other’s chain saws, hard and fast as they attacked the trees, slowing down to an idle as the tree fell and as they positioned themselves to strip it of its branches with short, quick strokes of the saw. They would then cut them into “quatre pieds”, four-foot lengths, to be loaded onto a truck and driven to the nearest pulp mill. Pepa had been a lumberjack all of his adult life. This work had become second nature to him and he had gained a reputation for being fast, accurate, hardworking and extremely productive.

Angele was there when Mr. Pinard came to see Maman. He related that they had agreed to take a break together for lunch and as they were working along, he noticed that Dominique’s chain saw was idling for an unusual length of time which was odd because it would be a waste of gas. When he heard the chain saw stop, he walked over to see if Dominique was ready to break for lunch but he was nowhere in sight. He found him in a ravine, and to his horror, discovered that the tree that Dominique had cut had kicked back onto him, breaking his neck and instantly killing him. This was a lumberjack’s nightmare….after carefully planning the cut so that the tree would fall in a certain direction, it could kick back off the trunk or get hung up in the upper part and fall in a different direction. One could only hope to move out of its way fast enough. In this case, the nightmare became real.

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When Clem and I arrived home, we could tell that the worst had happened. Everyone was crying, hugging, in a state of dismay and we both wrapped ourselves up into our grieving family, all of us trying to help each other by spreading the burden of this heavyhearted feeling.

Angele was immediately concerned about Maman’s health. She was a serious diabetic, and stress and emotions could drastically affect her sugar level driving her into a diabetic convulsion. Angele stayed with her constantly, watching over her, making sure she ate and rested though she had no appetite…wanted nothing to eat. Angele has always been the caring, concerned daughter, the worrier, the one Maman could depend on. When Maman was diagnosed with diabetes, having to take insulin shots and in the early years trying to regulate her sugar level, it was Angele who slept with her when Pepa wasn’t home just in case her sugar level dropped during the night. So she took on this responsibility too. It’s not surprising that she became a nurse.

As the reality sank in, my feelings seemed to turn to very self-centered thoughts. How were we going to live? Maman couldn’t work; she couldn’t speak English. Would Angele and I have to quit school to go to work to help support the family? I really wanted none of that responsibility. Would Maman want to move back to Canada? When I asked her about that, she gave me a confused look and to my relief she said. “This is our home; we’re not going anywhere.”

That night we called some of the relatives in Quebec and asked them to pass the word around. Pepa had ten living brothers and sisters plus his father, and Maman’s family included seven siblings and her father. They made arrangements to charter a bus and would arrive two days later in full force along with some cousins. We managed to find places for them to stay at ma tante Sandra’s, cousins Pierrette’s and Marcel’s, The American Hotel in town and Pierson’s Tavern down the road that had rooms to rent.

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WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7 & 8, 1955

Those two days were a blur to me as we made arrangements for Swain’s Funeral Home

to bring Pepa’s body from Long Lake and prepare it for viewing at home. I went to St. James Church with Maman to help plan the funeral and decide on the burial plot (a plot for four in case any of the children might need it.) We selected French and English prayers for the memorial cards as well as the last picture that had been taken of him…a photo taken that summer for his commercial drivers license. (He had told Maman he was getting too old for this kind of work; he wasn’t keeping up with the young guys and he thought he would start driving logging trucks.)

She amazingly rose to the occasion, and with translating help from us and guidance from Andy Miner, a friend of Pepa’s who lived across the street and spoke French, we managed to put everything together. Neighbors and friends dropped off food along with their condolences; several small groups of classmates stopped by to show their sympathy. It was such an emotional rollercoaster, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, as we told and retold the accident scenario, talked about what made Pepa so special or listened to people relate events that they remembered about him. One story was the time that the Methodist minister had asked him to cut down a tree behind their church and it had fallen onto the parish hall attached to the back of the church. He had taken quite a lot of teasing about that and he had laughed it off with his usual sense of humor. Some remembered how he had been the one to cut down the trees for the new and challenging Hudson Trail at Gore Mt. (now called North Creek Ski Bowl)

On Thursday, Pepa’s casket was placed in the living room in the curve of the bay windows facing the Hudson River. Intense emotions welled up again as our family gathered together to view the body for the first time. Here was the evidence; we had to believe it now. But there was no physical sign of the damage from the accident and that habitual half-smile, one side of his mouth turning up slightly, was still there. How could we not help but think, “This

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can’t be permanent; he’s sure to get up and smile teasingly and everything is going to be normal again.” In the late evening hours when no one else was in the house but us, it was somewhat disconcerting having the body at home. Pepa was there but he really wasn’t. Both Clem and Monique remember having many dreams in years to come where he would get up from the casket and walk to them. How scary that was! Angele’s recurring dream was that he would arrive at the back door, knock and say. “Here I am!” Mom would be all upset and Angele would angrily respond, “Where have you been all these years?” My dreams had him returning home from work coming in the back door over and over as he had done so many times and then disappear. Or he would show up when he was very old and hardly recognizable and he acted as if nothing was different and we all played along because we didn’t want him to leave again.

A short time after the people from the funeral home left, Father Hickey from St. James Church and a couple of the sisters from the convent joined the family for some short prayers. Sister Regina Mary, our choir leader and Angele’s piano teacher, stayed to encourage Maman to have faith, courage and resolve to stay strong for her children. Then the bus from Canada

arrived, and the stream of relatives poured in, hugging, kissing, crying; the house was in French chaos, loud and disorderly. When things finally settled down and everyone had an opportunity to quietly see Pepa, all of us got on our knees and we said the rosary in French.

Our Father

Notre Pere qui etes au Cieux, que votre nom soit sanctifie, que votre regne arrive, que votre volonte soit faite sur la terre comme au Ciel. Donnez nous aujourd’hui notre pain quotidien, Pardonnez nous nos offenses comme nous le pardonnons aussi a ceux qui nous ont offense. Et ne nous laissez pas succomber a la tentation, mais delivrez nous du Mal. Ainsi soit-il

Hail Mary

Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grace. Le seigneur est avec vous. Vous etes benie entre toutes les femmes, et Jesus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est beni. Sainte Marie, Mere de Dieu, Priez pour nous, pauvres pecheurs, maintenant et a l’heure de notre mort. Ainsi soit-il.

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The Glory Be

Gloire au Pere et au Fils et au saint Espirit, comme it etait au commencement, comme il est maintenant et toujours, dans les siecles et les siecles. Ainsi soit-il.

This was the first of many times over the rest of the day, into the evening and the next morning that we would say those prayers….the steady repetitive drone (spoken so fast you could hardly make out the words) was surprisingly reassuring. These were simple subsistence farmers, laborers and housewives who held on to the Catholic traditions of their culture, who depended on these rituals to get through the trials and tribulations of their daily lives. There was a down-to-earth belief that life was a cycle, that with the strength gained from knowing that GOD and all his saints, especially Mary, would be there for support, you could get through anything. Life goes on; you look ahead for the better things ahead. Maman’s faith was certainly her source of strength.

During the rest of the day and evening, this extended family, loud and demonstrative, reminisced, shared stories, partook of the food brought by friends and neighbors, then helped clean up. We were enveloped by warm, caring people who loved and admired Pepa. It was a great relief to Maman and us to have them with us. A couple of the uncles who were staying at Pierson’s Tavern took advantage of the proximity of the tavern down the road and disappeared for a couple hours; language was no barrier when you needed a beer, especially Uncle Remi, Pepa’s youngest brother, who had to be dragged back by the others.

That night when everyone had left except for one of our favorite cousins, Columbe Lemay, who was staying the night with us, we girls were sitting in the entry room talking. Someone said something silly or stupid; the rest of us broke out laughing and we couldn’t stop. Maman came bursting out of the kitchen, so angry at us, crying and scolding us about respect and caring. “How could we?” She was mortified at our behavior; then so were we. During those days before the funeral, it was the only time I remember her losing control.

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1955

The funeral required proper attire; it was necessary to wear black or at least a dark color. Monique had a red winter coat; so she borrowed her friend, Shirley Pierson’s, dark blue one. A cousin, Yvette Houde, let Angele wear her fur coat because Angele’s coat was a pinkish color and not appropriate. Yvette thought we didn’t look warm enough in our plain wool coats anyway. Canadians love their fur coats, (Maman had one) so necessary for their climate. Hats for the women were also a requirement. Maman had her fur cloche and we girls wore wide wool scarves on our heads, the ends of which were tossed to the back of the shoulders. It’s strange, but my siblings and I don’t remember the funeral mass at all. We had been choir girls and Eddy had been an altar boy for years, so we had funeral masses memorized. Maybe that’s why it didn’t make an impression.

The ceremony at the gravesite though was different. There were so many people there, even classmates from all of our classes who had gotten permission to leave school which was located a short distance up the street. The ground had not frozen yet, so they were able to actually bury Pepa during the short ceremony which allowed us all to say goodbye. He was buried in the first plot nearest the road leading through the center of the cemetery. Maman would eventually be to his right as was indicated on the headstone which was ordered and placed a short time later.

Several years before, the Church had asked Pepa, Avit Demers and Andy Miner to construct a small building on the cemetery grounds to hold the caskets of those who died after the ground had frozen. As they were building, they joked about who would get to use it first. Pepa was the first to go, but he still didn’t lose the bet; the ground hadn’t frozen.

When we returned to the house, we found that several friends and neighbors led by Mrs. Cunningham and Mrs. Alexander had again brought food and were busy setting up a buffet, then later cleaning up and washing dishes. In a small town like North Creek, everyone knew

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everyone and it was common practice for people to pitch in at times like this. Almost none of the relatives spoke English so everyone communicated with a bit of sign language and a lot of smiles and nodding of heads. We kids flip flopped back and forth in both languages without missing a beat. Monique sometimes had a little trouble expressing herself in French but she understood it pretty well. Growing up and especially as we moved ahead in school, we only spoke to each other in English and sometimes to Pepa who usually answered in French. With Maman it was always French. To each other we always referred to our parents as Mom and Dad, but when speaking to them, called them Maman and Pepa. In the years that our parents had lived in the US, though, their language had developed into one that included several English words with French accents scattered throughout. Dad spoke pretty well with a very heavy accent and Maman’s English improved somewhat as she was forced to fend for herself more and more as each child left home. But she never really got the hang of it, even after 57 years.

By the end of the day, the busload of relatives had started off on their long eight hour drive back to Quebec, the house was cleaned up and we were alone again. There was a sense of relief. Maman had held up well. She was tired but seemed fine healthwise. Angele had taken good care of her.

AND THEN?

All of us look back and marvel at how Maman handled all this. Here was a woman who most of her life had lived for her husband and children. She thought Pepa was wonderful and was always so proud of him, especially when we were with her family. Many times, his work would be far enough away that he couldn’t come home every night but he would always make the effort to be home on Wednesdays as well as the weekends. You could tell how she looked forward to his coming home as we all pitched in to make things just right in the house. When he

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walked into the house and smiled his little crooked smile, it was as if the sun had just come out after a dreary day. She depended on him for everything. He shopped with her, spoke for her and took care of every phase of their lives except managing the house and children. He made her laugh, and sometimes teased her about her family which made her mad enough to cry.

So how did she cope? She simply rose to the occasion, making family decisions herself and we all pitched in to help, each in turn as the older ones left home, driving the car, (she did go to adult driving class once but never had the confidence to take the test) running errands, translating for her, filling in where we were needed.

How did she manage financially? Angele and I did not have to go to work to support the family. After taking care of the legal paperwork that was required, it was determined that Pepa had saved quite a bit of money; we had not been a frugal family for nothing. The house had been paid for at the time of purchase and he held the mortgage for the house on the River Road when he sold it to Allard’s. He had purchased property in Canada from which he collected rent, plus he had lent money to several people there, including holding the mortgages for a couple of his brothers’ farms, so there was interest income from these. He had bank accounts in Canada, and whenever we would travel there, he would transfer money back and forth to take advantage of the difference in the exchange rate.

Social Security for Dependent Children provided Maman with a regular monthly income for each child until each reached 18 and a small Workmen’s Compensation check arrived each week that helped out as well. (Strangely enough, about 30 years later, she received a letter from the Workmen’s Compensation Board telling her that the amount being sent to her all these years had been miscalculated, receiving considerably less than she should have. A check arrived that reimbursed her for the total amount that had been shortchanged and from that point on she received bi-monthly checks quadruple the amount she had previously received. The timing wasn’t great; she had greater need for it when we were all home.)

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The first thing Maman did was to keep track of all the household expenses and income in a black composition notebook. We managed to live on that income, saving the bank money for large purchases when they were needed; frugality was still the family lifestyle. No wasting of anything including food, water, soap. Recycle, recycle, recycle!!! Nails, screws, scraps of wood, buttons, fabric, zippers, corks, paper, string, . . . . . . . . . . .

All of us older girls had always had jobs after school and in the summer, keeping a small amount of our pay for discretionary spending and banking the rest. That didn’t change and Eddy and Monique did the same. We all went to college or trade schools with Maman’s help when we needed it. (She paid for my room and board at Albany State Teachers College and occasionally sent me some spending money when my funds had depleted.)

Pepa would have been proud of her and us.