Hawk Run, Pennsylvania

Summers at the Radomsky Farm. The years before the polio vaccine when fortunate Manhattan children were sent to the country during the hot months. Anna Radomsky was our housekeeper, her brothers were coalminers. Baba, the grandmother, kept a pig, a cow, chickens, and a sizeable vegetable garden. The pride when I was allowed to collect the eggs, and bring the cow home (an eye out for rattlesnakes). The mines were independently owned, the brother who lived in Hawk Run would come back each night covered in coal dust. The house had a luxury, an indoor bathroom. Hawk Run had two churches, a Russian Orthodox and Catholic. I tried to run away at the end of summer, hid in the strippings. A proud possession, a flowered cotton dress made from feed sack. My mother would not let me wear it.

Becky, on the left, with Uncle Pete at the coal mine