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Delray Stories |
I Came across your Old Delray website a month ago, and loved it! Really glad to know there is someone out there who wants to preserve the rich Hungarian people and heritage that once populated Delray, as I am proud to have some Hungarian in my blood! I would like to add some of tidbits about Delray to your Snippets of E-mails" section on your site, if there is room for it below:
I personally never lived in Delray, but would stop by and visit there from time to time whenever I would pass by the area with my mother, since she is part Hungarian and we once in while attend the Mass at Holy Cross Hungarian Church on South Street.
My grandparents came to Delray in the very late forties, where my grandfather started out as a welder, later rising to supervisor at Cadillac Fleetwood Fisher Body plant on Fort and West End street from 1948 until his retirement in 1986. Very often after he'd get off work, he would frequent Al's Lounge, and remarked about how fabulous food was there. My grandmother reminisced about going out at night to the theater to see a movie with my grandfather on West Jefferson and buying food from Szabo's Hungarian Market.
My grandparents, my mother and other siblings lived on 866 Central Street from 1950 until 1961, which later was razed to make room for construction of I-75, after they moved out of Delray and into the suburbs of Downriver. The first 2 of my grandparents' children (my aunt and uncle) were born at Delray General Hospital. My mother, aunt and uncles recall memories and shared pictures of my grandparents taking them to Gen. George S. Patton Park in the fifties.
My mother mentioned about how on her parents' 25th anniversary, they went out for dinner at the Hungarian Village. I have been to where Hungarian Village was last week, and the structure still stands today, only it had undergone light remodeling and different color repaint job, and is now "Centenaro Mexican Restaurant" which can been seen with the cook grilling in front of the restaurant when you stop at red light on the ramp on Springwells off I-75 South.
Also, while driving up and down on West Jefferson after the Mass just the other day, I regret to say that "For Sale" sign just has been placed up in front of Delray Cafe, the one of last few occupied commercial building to operate on West Jefferson until present time.
Occasionally, I stop in at Hungarian American Cultural Central on Goddard Road in Taylor for authentic Hungarian cooking which is served every Friday. I also go to the Hungarian Strudel Shop during their limited hours on Park Avenue in Allen Park for the best strudel - their Walnut Strudel (my most favorite filling). After hearing all these stories, it had made me feel like I might have been born in wrong time (1982), since now I felt like I really wished I'd be born early enough to see, witness, and experience the thriving time of Delray! My mother's parents' name was Alden and Josephine Lawson. My mother's father Alden was not Hungarian or anything like that, but my mother's mother was, and the maiden name was Mancos, from her parents' original spelling of family name Manczos. |
This entire site Copyrighted 2008 and Forever by R. S. Bujaki |