Daniel John Olah, Memories of Old Delray
I was very happy to find this web site while searching for information on Delray. I‘m starting to write my memories for my two daughters and two grandchildren.
I was born on Post Ave., two houses from Jefferson Ave. and across from Kovacs Bar. My parents were renting a cold-water flat there. That meant going to the basement and warming up a large kettle of water to fill the bathtub for a Saturday night bath. They rented at two other locations in Delray; Olivette and Lyon streets. My sister was born on Olivette Street.
My first lasting memory was on Lyon St. where I saw a man leading a black and white Pinto pony with a big box camera over his shoulder. He would stop and put cowboy clothes on a child and then seat the “Little Cowboy” on the pony and take his picture. I ran home to tell my mother that I wanted to sit on the pony too. I didn’t care about the picture, then. My mother relented and I still have that picture.
Two years later, my folks bought their first home on South St., around the corner from Holy Cross Church. Their side yard bordered the back yards of the Yale St. houses, which faced Holy Cross. That South St. house with redbrick siding was still standing last year, but all the surrounding houses were gone. At the corner of Yale and South streets was Ma & Pa Ader’s Sweet Shop. They sold ice cream cones, Popsicles, fudgcicles, and penny candy. I had my first ice cream sundae at the ice cream bar with round rotating seats on pedestals. In those idyllic summer days, mom would say, “Go out and play, but come home when the street lights come on.” I would go a few doors up the street and stand in front of the Soter house and bawl “Mii-keey” until my friend Mikey would come out so we could go and play baseball in the Holy Cross school yard, if someone had a bat and ball. There were no Little Leagues then.
My first paying job was delivering the Detroit News along Dearborn Ave. and Thaddeus St. One of my customers was the John Molnar Funeral Home on Dearborn Ave., now in Lincoln Park. The newspaper had a Saturday night edition of the Sunday paper. I dreaded going to the back of the funeral home to leave the night edition.
Thanks to Margo Koroknay-Palicz, I learned the name of the lady who owned the candy store on the corner of Vanderbilt and Dearborn streets, Appolonia Eory. Her candy store was along my paper route and I usually stopped to buy candy and comic books there. She also had some Comet model airplane kits for 25 cents. That started me in the hobby and I still make rubber band powered model airplanes 65 years later.
My first hourly job was at Sunkist Super Market on Dearborn Ave. next door to Neisner’s Dime store, where my sister got her first hourly job. Her first job was my assistant on the paper route. I was kind of small for my age, but I got the job of stock boy at Sunkist because I could speak Hungarian to the little old ladies who came to ask where something was. In fact I had to learn English in kindergarten at McMillan Elementary School because I could only speak Hungarian until then. The teacher appointed a fellow classmate as my interpreter because he could speak Hungarian and English. Billy and I remained buddies all through the eight years we attended McMillan. Billy Medvegy’s father owned a cigar store on Slone St., one door from Jefferson Ave.
I went to McMillan Elementary School, graduating in 1951, and then went to Southwestern High School, graduating in 1955. I was baptized at the Hungarian Reformed Church, on West End Ave., which was across from McMillan school; both are gone now. When the new Hungarian Reformed Church was built on the corner of Vanderbilt and Dearborn, my parents joined there. However, two of my closest buddies were Mikey Soter and Raymond Pasco, both altar boys at Holy Cross. Some of my sister’s friends were Francis Farkas, who lived directly across the street and Lillian Nagy who lived a few doors past the Soter house.
We moved from Hungarian Camelot when my dad’s company built the new GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan and transferred him there. My dad drove out to Warren for a year and a half to let me finish at Southwestern High. We kept in touch with friends who also moved from Delray to places like: Lincoln Park, Allen Park, Wyandotte, and Riverview, but life in my “Hungarian Village” slowly faded into just memories and old photographs.
