Main Street – April 20, 1961

By Morris Rote-Rosen

It was a long hard road for Helen Macura but she made it and her Granville friends are elated over her success in graduating from the Grasslands hospital at Valhalla, N.Y., as a nurse. We have known Helen like we have known the whole Macura family. Helen has always been ambitious and her struggle to succeed was at times discouraging to her but she never gave up. Her ambition and her work kept driving her and no chore was too menial for her if she thought that it was in the right direction. A spirit like that is to be admired and we congratulate Helen on her reaching her goal.

We can look back at our community and recall the hardships and toil of the immigrant parents of these American born children. Their parents came here to seek and find a better life and a more prosperous future for themselves and their families. The Macura family is an example of the early immigrants from Austria of those who came to Granville to find work in the slate quarries at the turn of the century. Like others of the newly arrived Slovaks, Adam and Susie (Strich) Macura were strangers in a strange land, not knowing the language nor the ways and customs of their newly adopted country.

These Slovak people were considered an undesirable element in our community then. Even their homes were in a segregated section of our village and they were forced to live in shacks which would today be considered unfit for animals, lacking facilities which weren't even denied to the slave Negro in the South. The newly arrived immigrants had to adapt themselves to living conditions which were even below the standard to which they lived in Europe. These new arrivals to Granville were socially ostracized and were degraded by the name of "Huns". Wages offered them were one degree above that paid the lowest workers on record.

The head of the family was the wage earner and the housewife had to resort to caring for boarders in order to earn enough to support the children. Taking care of the boarders, their laundry, their lunches in the quarry and their meals in the evening was a gargantuan task which would have broken the back of the sturdiest of people. But these Slovak women stood the test and came through like champions. Working from the break of awn until the late hours in the night, cooking, baking, washing, sewing, earning for the children, putting them to bed and getting them prepared for school was a 24 hour a day chore. But no one ever heard these Slovak women complain.

When a child was born physicians would not attend the confinement. That old reliable midwife, Anastasia Kirik, delivered hundreds of newly born babies to the Granville Slovak immigrant families. With a meager income the mother county not afford to stay in bed even for a few hours. They were up with the crack of dawn the following day back in the old routine of cooking, washing, scrubbing, putting up lunches and preparing meals, and their homes were as clean and as neat as any of the better homes in our community. It was an uphill struggle for them and their burden was heavy and their toll was hard.

The slate quarries offered no benefits of any kind in care of illness, injury or even death. Workmen's compensation was still half a century away in one of the most hazardous occupations known. The passing of the hat among their fellow employees helped pay the doctor's or the undertaker's bill. As for the widow and orphans left behind they had to switch for themselves as best they could. That is what impresses us when we see the second and third generation of the Granville Slovak immigrants make good in business and in professions to fit into the American way of life.

The Macura family is just one family. There are the Bashars, the Gilberts, the Kordiaks, the Zayacheks, the Prehodas and the Somiches. Space does not permit the mentioning of all the families we would like to. W are taking the Macuras as a model because Mother Susie Macura can sit back in her declining years and look at her toil worn hands and recollect the hardships she has gone through, the disappointments she has experienced and look back with a mother's love and pride at her twelve sons and daughters who brought honor to themselves and to our country. If we could speak to Mrs. Macura and recall her early days in Granville compared with the present we know that her answer would be: "Slava Bogu!"

Theodore E. Vogel called our attention to four small gold lapel badges presented to Sim's Freight Service as safety awards to the five drivers of the firm. These awards were presented by the Continental Insurance Company to Alan Butler and Floyd Fisher for 26 years of safe driving; to Charles Pecue for a 20 year record and for 10 years of perfect driving to Ernest Trombley and "Ted" Vogel. The certificate, presented with the award reads: "Safe Driver Award. This is to certify that (name of drive inscribed on the badge and the certificate), Sim's Freight Service had earned and received a (number of years) award to 12/31/1960 in recognition of his safe driving record."

The drivers mentioned in the gold medal award totaled together more than 200,000 miles annually during any given year and covered nine states: Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York. Butler, Trombley and Pecue averaged about 80,000 miles annually; "Ted" Vogel about 50,000 miles and Fisher about 25,000, without a mishap. The insurance company state that Sim's Freight Service has the best safety driving record in New York State. Since the death of Dorothy Vogel, Sim's Freight Service is no longer in business. All of these drivers found employment in and around Granville. There is always room for the employment of good and reliable men.

We regret the passing of Rev. Father Raymond J. Doran, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church of Middle Granville. We became acquainted with him when he first came to Granville and he never passed us on the street without exchanging pleasant greetings. We paid him several visits to his parish house on Dayton Hill. The first time we saw him we didn't know who we was or where he came from. He stepped up with hand extended and said: "You are Rote, aren't you?" No one around here ever used that name before since 1917-1919, during World War I, except the officers and enlisted men in our army unit.

Curious to know how he got the abbreviation of our army name, we asked him about it. We informed him that only the buddies in the army called us "Rote" and we didn't think that Father Doran was there with them. He had a good laugh about it as he told us that he had served as pastor in Fort Plain, N.Y., and when he informed one of his friends there that he was being transferred to Granville, his friend said: "Remember me to Rote." We also learned that the friend Father Doran referred to was Howard Gray, a World War I buddy who served in the same outfit with us who is now an undertaker in Fort Plain. "Howard said to remember him to Rote," said Father Doran, "and I delivered the message." We haven't seen Howard Gray since 1919, 42 years now.

Officially spring may have arrived here on March 21, but actually the first decent, pleasant spring day is not recorded until Sunday, April 9. The skies cleared, the sun shone all day in its glory. The robins were breakfasting early on the slightly greening lawns and the crows were winging east sounding their raucous morning call. To emphasize that spring had really arrived we heard the blowing of an automobile horn and a hand motioning to come over. It was Ashton Tenney who with Mabel couldn't stay away any longer from visiting the Tenney homestead. Ashton was as jolly and as cheerful as the weather as he extended his right hand, happy to be back in his boyhood stomping grounds. "What have we to worry about?" he asked. We agreed that at our ages our worries were all behind us and not ahead.