Great Aunt Millie used to 'count the widows' on the hill. She'd get the local newspaper delivered everyday and look to see who died. She noted one by one, the women she knew who outlived their men. Just as she outlived her own husband. She was way into the double digits before she died in 1988. All those widows living alone.
Those widows were the first generation Polish Immigrants. Many ended up in poverty--living on Social Security combined with a meager pension. Sitting on porches, making periogies, and walking to the neighborhood Polish church was their life. Every year fewer second and third generation children of that generation remain here.
Twenty years after Millie's death, I'm still in the neighborhood counting the widows. The widows themselves from her generation are pretty much all gone now. I swear I'm down to the last one.... a 98 year old woman who lives beside me. I saw her on the street walking with her cane. She laments that no one talks to anybody anymore. She still sits on her porch, and she still makes pierogies. "The young people don't have time," she said. I know she doesn't walk to church anymore. It was sold a few years ago.
The last vestige of a dying neighborhood.
