Chapter 1

The Kemény family life in Old Delray centered on the Hinky Dink Bar located at 7808 W. Jefferson. My grandfather, István Kemény, and grandmother, Júlia Kemény, owned and operated this tavern and boarding house. My personal memories of Old Delray in that era are derived from regular visits to the Hinky Dink Bar as a child when my grandparents operated the bar and had living quarters above the bar.

As early as I can recall, my father would drive with my mother, me and my sister, Gloria,  from our house on Liebold Street in southwest Detroit just across the Rouge River from Delray to visit with family at the Hinky Dink. This is where the entire family gathered almost every Sunday afternoon. All my aunts, uncles and cousins were there. The men congregated downstairs in the bar where they socialized and played cards. The women and children met upstairs in the living quarters where they exchanged the happenings of the past week. How well I remember the long climb up those stairs. Finally, at the top there was a painting of the steamship on which my grandparents sailed on a return trip back to Hungary in the 30’s.

Even to this day, I remember some of the features of the immediate neighborhood during this period starting from when I was only about four years old. There was a shoe repair shop to the left of the bar facing Jefferson. If I’m correct, the name of the shoemaker was András Budai. Also, in the same direction, there was a lawyer’s office and a tailor shop, but I don’t recall the name of either. To the right of the bar several doors down and before the railroad tracks that crossed Jefferson, there was a Sunoco gas station. If memory serves me, this gas station also sold coal and coke, the primary household heating substance of the day. This business had only a small building set back a good way from Jefferson. So, there was plenty of room next to the gas pumps to park several vehicles and that is where we parked our car when visiting nagypapa and nagymama. This more open space was also a place that our family used to take photos since it was more open to light in stead of the more confined area between the front of the bar and the close curb of Jefferson. This is why so many of the family snapshots were taken in this area next to the gas station.

Everybody called the man who ran the Sunoco gas station “Peg”. I don’t know him by any other name. The way I found out why they called him “Peg” was one warm sunny day he and my father were sitting in the small building talking and I was there next to them listening as a child probably only four or five years old. Suddenly, Peg took an ice pick and stuck it in his leg to frighten me. Of course, it did, but then I found out that Peg had a wooden leg that he showed me when he pulled up his pant leg while laughing. Then, he really freaked me out when he pulled out his glass eye. I’ll never forget the time I found out why his name was “Peg”.

About this time in the early 40’s, there still was a large horse drinking trough or basin directly in front of the Hinky Dink on the edge of the curb. This trough was round in

shape, quite ornate, green in color and at least three feet in diameter and several feet high. To be quite honest, I don’t recall seeing any horses travel down Jefferson at that time, but I do recall that Wayne Creamery was still delivering milk by horse-drawn wagons in the general area even into the 50’s.

Likewise, back in the 40’s, I also recall a street cleaner sweeping along the curb of Jefferson. He was dressed in an all white uniform and pushed a large two-wheeled cart that was also white with black numbers on the side. This cart had very large bicycle type wheels and a very large round container between the wheels. The man, himself, had one right peg leg. The black round rubber-looking peg showed out from the bottom of his pant seam. He used a wide push broom to sweep the street. I don’t recall any horse dung on the streets then, so I assume that he was just cleaning debris from near the curb.

On the opposite side of Jefferson from the bar there was a large open area before the Solvay plant further back on the river. Further up the street toward downtown was the Delray hospital. It was a large red colored brick building several stories in height as I recall. As a child with my mother, I visited someone in this hospital, but I can’t remember whom it was we visited, just that the person was a relative. I just remember that the building was old with a lot of rooms.

Even further up Jefferson was Fort Wayne. Back then, during World War II, prisoners of war were kept at this facility. There was a high cyclone fence separating Jefferson from a large, long or field area inside the Fort. I recall, as we drove past it one day, there were a large number of men playing soccer inside the fence. Someone in our car said those men were Italian prisoners of war who were incarcerated at the fort. How true that was I do not know, but if it was true, it must have been before Mussolini was deposed during the war when Italy was fighting on the Axis side.

Up that same way on Jefferson Ave. on the corner of Post St. was the Kovács’ Bar with the “netovább” (go no further) sign on the front window that invited everyone in to hear Hungarian music played by a Gypsy band every evening (Magyar cigányzene minden este). They also advertized “valódi magyar konyha” (true Hungarian kitchen).

Hungarian music was a big atttraction at many bars and resturants along Jefferson back then. And, there were plenty of bars and restruants like Hungarian Village and plenty of music. Music wasn’t only limited to inside the bars, but was even out on the streets. How vividly I remember the Gypsies playing on the street corners on a Sunday afternoon as we drove down Jefferson to visit at the Hinky Dink. Delray was alive then as people strolled up and down Jefferson in their Sunday best. They would stop and talk with friends as they passed. Some would even be seen singing as the Gypsies played their favorites. I can still see it all in my mind even though I was just a child at the time. If you drove down Jefferson through Delray now, you would never realize what a vivrant community this was at that time.

In addition to the bars and restruants, too many to enumerate here even if I knew them all, there were a lot of other profitable bussinesses on both sides of Jefferson, West End,

Dearborn Ave and some of the side streets. Some of these included furniture stores,  hardware stores, several funeral homes, numerous meat and grocery stores, gas stations, packing houses, flower shops, cleaners, tailors, shoemakers, bakeries, plumbers, printing shops, barber shops and even a foundry. There seemed to be a small meat market on almost every corner of the clean side streets among the well-kept homes.

People who lived outside Delray would come in to shop on the weekends. There was something there for most every need. There were ethnic specialties that couldn’t be found anywhere else. And, people came for the ambiance and social aspect of the weekly shopping experiance. You have to realize that this was before the big box-stores of today.
As a young man still in school, my dad worked at Csékei’s Meat Market. The ability to speak Hungarian was an important requirement to work at these neighborhood businesses.

The Delray Movie Theater featuring two shows next to each other were  located on Jefferson just down to the right of the Hunky Dink across the railroad tracks. One featured movies in English, the other in Hungarian.

Although the ethnic Hungarian aspect of Delray remains prevalent in my mind, there was also a very large Polish ethnic presents centered around St. Johns Roman Catholic Church located on the southern end of Delray. A good many ethnic Armenians also lived in and near Delray more on the northern side. As I recall, there was an Armenian Cultural center located on Lafeyette Street somewhere near Livernois Avenue...not quite sure of the exact location anymore.

All this is cemented in my memory like it was yesterday and I mention what I recall to help others visualize what I actually saw and experienced as a youth. To me this was a wonderful place in a magical by-gone era. It was even more so to my parents and in a lot of ways it was the essence of my family in that it was where they grew and lived.....the place that was their home and neighborhood and all that is meant by “home”.