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A Tale of Immigration at Christmastime – My Father’s Father’s Story

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(I first posted this true story in December 2016. )

Stories define us. We tell stories to explain ourselves, our understanding of reality, and our relationship to one another. Stories can be true, or stories can be fictive – stories are like fibers that hold together the fabric of our lives…

From the time I was a young kid until well into my young adulthood, my father’s family used to gather at their parents’ (my grandparents’) house on Christmas Eve. There was a lot of food, much talk, and cousins, aunts, uncles, and of course, my grandparents.

My grandfather, as I recall, would eat and have a beer or two and mostly was a quiet observer of the celebration. For one reason or another I never talked with him much – he spent a little more time with the adults it seemed, and that was ok – he was Grandpa.

Anyway, one Christmas Eve, I must have been 16 or 17, I was feeling a little too old to be sitting at the table and being silly with my cousins and too young to share a drink and talk with the uncles – so with my plate heaped with food I went into the parlor to take a seat and eat. I expected others to be there, I mean it was a small apartment, where would everyone go? But, I was alone in the parlor with my grandfather who was finishing up his food and enjoying a beer (Miller’s High Life, I think)…

So, I sat down in a chair near my grandfather and asked him how he was doing, and we chatted about the cold and my school.

Then, quietly, because he was a quiet man, he said this to me, or this is how I recall it… “Did you know I first came here on Christmas Eve? It was cold and snowing. from the train at South Station, I got on a wagon with everyone else. My name and the address were on a paper pinned to my coat.”

He patted his shirt to show where the paper had been pinned. Then he continued –

“We were on a wagon with some hay and our bags. It was going slow from South Station up Summer Street toward South Boston, only I didn’t know where I was. It was cold and the snow was wet. As the wagon rolled slowly up Summer Street some boys started to run toward us. We thought they were greeting us because they were laughing. They were yelling, ‘Greenie! Greenie!’ And they threw snowballs at us. One hit a woman and her kid who sitting near me. ‘Greenie! Greenie!’ They yelled some more. We didn’t know what that meant, but my brother later told me a greenhorn was not a good thing.”

Before I could ask any questions, one of my younger cousins came jetting down the hallway, bumped into an uncle and almost upended the Christmas tree. Our conversation ended as abruptly as it began.

For one reason or another I never got around to finishing that conversation, but it has stayed with me since. I think I’ve talked about it with my father, but he said he had never heard that story.

For a long time, I thought the story too coincidental –

But there is truth there. The record shows that my grandfather listed as Petrus Kleponis arrived at Ellis Island on December 22, 1904, and that he had $2.00 in his possession and was going to stay with his brother Konstantin at Bolton Street, South Boston. Given processing and paper work, my grandfather would have arrived at South Station on Christmas Eve 1904.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be just 20, alone, thousands of miles away from home life on a farm in a small village and find oneself first at Ellis Island then after a train ride in South Station – all without knowing the language, traveling not with friends or relatives but by one’s self.

I cannot fathom what it must have been like to be on a wagon, rolling up a strange street in a strange land and to be accosted by strange shouts of “Greenie!” The snowballs, I would imagine erased any doubts about intent.

1904 seems so long ago, but have things really changed that much?

My grandfather is gone over 40 years, and our family does not gather in that 2 nd floor flat on Christmas Eve anymore – we have all gone our separate ways in our successful lives.

I think I understand a little better why my grandfather was a quiet, content observer at those Christmas Eve gatherings. I’ll bet if he were around he would not want his grandsons or great grandsons throwing snowballs or shouting “Greenie!”

Men I Did Not Know (a poem)

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My poem Men I Did Not Know was published in the October 2020 issue of Boston Literary Magazine. You can read their fine works there as well.

Men I Did Not Know
Joseph Kleponis

In the photo,
there they are,
Dad and his brother,
young men
on bicycles in a park,
dark haired
playing to the camera,
the picture taken by Mother,
or by Auntie,
or maybe by some secret someone
young with dark flowing hair,
on a bicycle as well, perhaps,
not in the picture, though,
with these smiling men
whom I did not know –
young men who laughed and dreamed
before daily jobs
and houses
and children
and bills
and troubles
and illnesses
rounded their shoulders,
lined their faces,
set crow’s feet by their eyes,
and sent them
searching for other pleasures:
a quiet cigar after Sunday dinner,
a warm shot of whiskey,
a nap while the ball game droned on the radio,
no more bicycles
for the work weary men,
Dad and his brother,
the men I knew
in my youth.