"Who Daddy You?"

Uncle Mike was our favorite. He was full of stories, and when he and Dad got together talking about their boyhood, it was a real hoot. They told of running wild through the Virginia woods, doing all the things little Hrubik boys do when nobody is watching (apparently Grandma was too sick most of the time to keep up with her little jungle critters). Girls, when you marry a Hrubik and little boys come out, your life will forever after be interesting.

Uncle Mike often told how they found Civil War relics -- the Battle of Seven Pines was fought partly on their farm -- and how he fell into a trench one day. Then there was the time the boys wandered up to an old cabin, and the man sitting on the porch asked only one question, "Who Daddy you?". As Uncle Mike told it, it scared them, both because of the man's fierce demeanor, and the fact that they spoke hardly any English at that time. All three, Emil, Mike, and Carl, streaked back off into the woods.

Uncle Mike and Dad laughed over that one. I first heard it when I was about 7 or 8 years old. When I was 8, I bought my first bike, a 26" Huffy Roadmaster, from my classmate, Tom Goila, who lived about six or seven houses south on Dover Avenue. Once I had that bike, I became the milk and bread delivery system, riding down to the Lawson store where Diagonal, Mercer, and Bisson came together.

For a while, there was still a vacant lot on Peerless, and we preferred to ride through that rather than go all the way to Mercer on Bellevue, but when a house was built there, we had to stick to the street. That took us past the Pure Oil station on the north corner of Mercer and Diagonal.

Pure Oil, you say? What is that? Back in the Good Old Days, when American companies worried mostly about selling products to Americans, we had all kinds of enticing labeling. I remember when "EXXON" began -- the name was chosen so that people in foreign countries (that is what we used to call world markets) would not find something offensive about it in their language, and we Americans were too stupid to be offended by that. Ah, yes, Pure Oil, with its round signs, and pretty blue lettering, and the bright blue trim on the buildings, even blue roofs.

One day the tire on my bike was a bit low, and I stopped at the Pure Oil station to fill it. This was right after one of Uncle Mike's visits. There were several men sitting around in the garage, and after I returned the air gauge (oh, yes, they would let you borrow the gauge to check your tires!), one of the men stared at me and growled, "Who Daddy you?". His gruff manner, and his accent, both matched exactly the man in Uncle Mike's story. I told him who my Daddy was, and rode off wondering whether or not the incident was some sort of set-up arranged by Uncle Mike.

Old stories are part of family lore. That's part of why I bother with this blog. It also leads to some interesting interchanges, like the dino discussion some time back, where a crack about a news article actually had both researchers (from England) posting here. The family history stuff seems to get people stirred up a bit. Mention of place names, like Glozan, and Mokrim, and Henrico County, and Harrow, gets picked up by webcrawlers and the blog ends up as a search result.

Unfortunately, it is hard to track some of those folks down. Or, maybe, once they hear from me, it scares them off. The September 23, 2006 post (right after the taped interview with Grannie Annie) pulled in this:

miklovic said...
Iam a member of Miklovic family that has theirs roots in Hlozany. One of my grandfathers relatives lives Hlozany in 1930 and immigrate to Canada. Now I am trying to get to contact with Miklovic family from Canada if you could help me.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008 4:19:00 PM EST

Grandpa Jim said...
Hey, there, Miklovic. You need to fill in more of your Blogger profile; it would be nice to have a name and email address to reply to.

What was the name of your grandfather's relative?

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2008 10:57:00 AM EST

miklovic said...
name was Jozef Joe

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2008 5:08:00 PM EST

miklovic said...
my e-mail is miklovic2001@yahoo.com and my grandfather relatives lives in Harow

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2008 5:09:00 PM EST

Anonymous said...
Today is June 2/09. I just found this site and am so thrilled that I did. I was born a Cipkar. My parents are Paul and Kata from Harrow. My grandfather is Paul who was married to a Suzana. They came from Glozany and my great grandfather's name was Stefan who was married to Ana. Apparently my great grandfather held a government office position in Glozany. I would love to trace my family tree and when I saw this information on the web, I was thrilled that possibly I may be able to get some further information about my family. I see that these postings happened in 2006. If you could provide any information to me, I would greatly appreciate it. My email is k_c34@gmail.com

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2009 1:02:00 PM EDT

So I called Grannie Annie and asked about that. We finally got it figured out. k_c34 is just slightly off; her great-grandfather Stefan is Mom's Uncle Steve (her Dad's brother). I sent a reply email,
but got a Mailer-Daemon reply that the email account does not exist. So, k_c34, if you are reading this, you know what happened.

Then, to top it off, a few hous later I got this, as a comment in the May 30, 2009 post:

Jaroslav said...
Hello I am writing you from Serbia, my grandfather was Samuel Miklovic from Glozan or Hlozany on Slovak . I am searching form some relatives in Canada , my grandfather was tailor like his two brothers Jano and Emil

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2009 5:33:00 PM EDT

Jaroslav needs to also fill in his blogger profile and provide an email address. Unfortunately, most of what I know about the Miklovics would fit in a thimble. Joe Miklovic's kids, John, Mary, and Susie are the ones I knew -- John Miklovic married Mary Cipkar, John Cipkar married Mary Miklovic, and Steve Cipkar married Susie Miklovic. They had a cousin, Ed Miklovic, who lived in Union City PA. That's all I know, folks.

Anyhoo, gotta get back to making sawdust.