The LuLac Edition #5, 127, June 16th, 2024

 

 

 FACTS ABOUT JAKE

 On this Father's Day, I'd like to share with you a few facts about my father. 

 

He was born in June of 1914 and was named Stephen. He acquired the nickname "Jake" from working in a butcher store in the early 30s. The catch phrase of the day for something going right was "Everything's Jake". Yonki family legend has it that since he was a dependable employee everything was "Jake". 

My father taught my sister and I to drive even though he never had a license. We both passed on the first try. 

When my father was courting my mother, he grew up in the Junction section of Pittston and she lived in Exeter. They went to fairs, eaters and movies. But he had no license thus no car. However every time he'd knock on the door at 1297 Wyoming Avenue in Exeter, he'd walk my mother down the steps and out of nowhere came the late Frank Piontek of Duryea in a spiffy vehicle. Frank would stop and say, "Where ya headed Jake?" And my father would tell him the destination and he'd say "Isn't this a coincidence". My mother told me years later that after the fourth date she had figured it out but never said a word. 

My father took me to see John Kennedy in Pittston when he was running for President. I was 6 and it was a thing I would always be grateful to him for. 

My father always tipped his hat in front of every church he passed. 

I only saw and heard my father sob and cry once. That was when I was 5 and hit my head against a radiator mimicking a bull. I was bleeding profusely as he ran down the steps to a neighbor's car and we sped off to Pittston Hospital. 

My dad was a voracious reader of newspapers. We got 4 every Sunday. The Sunday Dispatch, the Independent, the Philly Inquirer and the New York Daily News. 

He was a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan and Chicago Cardinals football fan. But he said you had to follow East Coast sports teams because you lived in the East. 

When I was dating after college, if a woman was divorced, he'd refer to them as "widows" Never could endorse divorce I guess. 

He encouraged all of us to get education and he was proud when we graduated higher education. He had to leave school after the 8th grade to help support the family in the Depression. He'd say, "If I went to high school, I could have been a Philadelphia lawyer. 

I never really got it that he was loved in the neighborhood. When he passe away at the age of 66 on January 6th, 1980 his make neighbors came to the house and sobbed. My mother passed away on June 15th, 2008 on what would have been their 65th wedding anniversary. I like to think Frank Piontek was driving them someplace up in heaven that day. 

My father was pleased I never drank or smoked but told friends that eventually women would kill me. Although I came perilously close a few times, well a lot, that didn't happen. 

He worked as an essential employee in WW2 and was on  the Lehigh Valley Railroad until 1975.  He would be thrilled to see the railroads operating again down the street from our house. He'd walk to work every day, leaving Dewitt, going down the alley, across North Main (where we saw JFK) and on to Coxton YARDS.

 The Reverend Paul McDonnell's dad Tommy would always tell me how proud my father would be of me now. People come up to me now and say at my age and build am the spitting image of him. Even though I can't bring him back, miss him terribly, on this Father's Day how could anyone ask for more.