Joseph Rudzinski Interview, History 150 Spring 2017, Conducted by Sarah Beda, March 12, 2017,
The interview was conducted in person in the basement of my house because it was a quiet environment away from the rest of the family. I used a digital audio recorder and a lavalier microphone that I rented from Carrier Library’s Innovation Services. We were able to get the interview done in one take, despite a small pause, so I did not feel like had to do any editing. One obstacle was making sure that both the interviewee’s and my voice could be heard clearly; this was especially an issue given that he was getting over a cold. So to try and adjust to this, I positioned the recorder closer to my interviewee than to myself. The result of doing this was that in a few areas my voice is a little soft. Despite this, there were no issues with the process.
The interviewee’s name is Joseph Stanley Rudzinski, my grandfather. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 9, 1939. His father was Polish and his mother was Lithuania; their cultures and backgrounds played a big part in Mr. Rudzinski’s upbringing. One aspect of his life driven by his ethnicity was his education, he attended Polish church and school where teaching was in English and Polish. But this was not the only thing affected, his family ate traditional Polish and Lithuanian food and they even lived in a neighborhood with other people of the same ethnicity. In the interview, he explains what it was like growing up in a society driven by different “ethnic communities”.
In addition to the ethnic neighborhoods, Scranton was even better known for their anthracite coal mining. Coal mining was more than just a 9-5 job, it drove a large part of life within mining towns. Those who worked in the coal mines lived in company housing–modest houses provided by the owners of the mines. This grouped all of the miners together and really tied them to their jobs; if they were to quit they would lose their job and their house. With this, miners had pretty good job security but the occupation did not come without dangers and risks. One issue was falling pieces of coal that could cause fatal injuries or even make the whole mine collapse seriously hurting or even killing all those in it. There are also longterm health conditions that can be caused from spending extensive time in mines. Due to all the particles of coal floating in the air, many miners who spent years working in the mines would develop a condition called black lung from ingesting all the dust and coal. Black lung is named for exactly what it is: it turns your lungs completely black and causes the coughing up of black mucus eventually killing you. Since Scranton was driven by the coal mining industry, I think it’s important to know a little about it.
Citing Sources: (MLA)
Magnusson, Leifur. “Employers’ Housing in the United States.” Monthly Review of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, vol. 5, no. 5, 1917, pp. 35–60., www.jstor.org/stable/41829214.
Harrington, D. “Safety in Coal Mining.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 123, 1926, pp. 93–101., www.jstor.org/stable/1015457.
Sarah: “Hi, how are you doing today?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “I’m doing well. How are you?”
Sarah: “Pretty good. Thank you. So, can you first start by telling us your name please?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “My name is Joseph Stanley Rudzinski.”
Sarah: “Okay. Where, and what year were you born in?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “I was born the 9th of April, 1939 in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Easter Sunday.”
Sarah: “Oh, very nice. Can you tell us a little about growing up in Scranton and how that was like?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Okay. Well, as you can imagine, being born in 1939, I’m in a unique group. Very are very few of us left and we grew up during World War II and at the end of the Depression. So, my early years, I can barely, barely remember the end of World War II and the town that we grew up in was small. There were only 5,000 – 6,000 people and it was a really nice place to grow up. We had a river to play by, we had dumps to climb over. We had, it was just a fun place. There were a lot of kids and we had a lot of friends and it was just a good place to grow up.”
Sarah: “Okay. So your father was Polish and your mother was Lithuanian?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “My parents were Polish and Lithuanian. We are, they were, the first generation so I’m second generation, yeah.”
Sarah: “Okay. And how did that affect your life? Was your life run by them being from there?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “It’s really interesting. We lived close to our grandparents and our grandparents basically spoke Polish. Uh, even though my grandmother was Lithuanian, she was part Polish too so Polish was the language that we talked to our grandparents. They, my grandfather couldn’t understand English and he was literate. He could write and read, but my grandmother was illiterate. She could not read or she could not write. So, whenever we talked to them, we talked to them in Polish and they talked to us in Polish.”
Sarah: “Mhmm.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Uh, better stop a minute, is that Ok?”
Sarah: “Okay.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “The community that we grew up in was basically an ethnic community. There were a lot of Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, and Italians. So, it was a mixed community and the different ethnic groups tended to group together so growing up, most of my friends were Polish. And, it was not unusual to talk, to hear other kids that were in the same situation that I was. Their grandparents spoke to them in Polish. In fact, my first two years in school, in elementary school, were bilingual. We, uh, we did our English and Polish reading. We did math in Polish and English and, uh, we sang Polish songs, so it was different.”
Sarah: “So, your school was separated based on these ethnic groups? Was anything else?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “It generally was. There was only one Catholic school in our town but it was a Polish Catholic school so the majority of the kids were Polish and the nuns were fluent in Polish but, uh, yeah.”
Sarah: “Were there any conflicts or problems between ethnic groups?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Yeah, there were. I mean, I don’t think it turned out to be anything violent or anything like that, but the groups tended to stick together and uh, for whatever reason, a Polish girl was supposed to marry a Polish guy and a Slovak girl was supposed to marry a Slovak guy and an Italian was supposed to marry an Italian. That was still, that was not the case for me, but for my parents it was and they tended to stick together that way.”
Sarah: “So there was no problem with you marrying a Slovak wife?”
Mr. Rudzinski: Laughing, “No, no. If she would have been Italian, it might have been a problem but, [laughing] Polish and Slovak were not a problem. I mean, by the time we did this, it was not a problem anymore, it was less of a problem. But it was basically a white community. There were no blacks anywhere in our town, or Negroes, or whatever you want to, however you want to define them. Um, it was different.”
Sarah: “Yeah, different times. And I looked up and I know coal mining was a really prevalent thing, especially in your town.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Coal mining, anthracite coal mining, or hard coal, was what made our towns. All the towns around us were basically coal mining towns and the immigrants came to the U.S. starting in the late 1800s and 1890s. My grandfather came to the U.S. from Poland in 1895 and, um, the immigration influx started after that. There were, uh, our town was an example, was, had 1500 people in 1900. By 1930, it was up to 8,000.”
Sarah: “Oh wow.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “And, if you looked at the census, you would see a mix of, a big ethnic mix whereas, in 1900 or 1890, it was basically white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.”
Sarah: “So, with the coal mining, I know that, like, drove a big part of life and housing was even, if you worked in the coal mine, you were given certain housing and. . .”
Mr. Rudzinski: “That’s true, by the time we grew up, um, that had changed a lot. Initially, people lived in a company house, they went to a company store and I could recall my Dad talking about that. You went to a company doctor when you were sick. But by the time we grew up, uh, that was all gone. But, you could go anywhere in the town and you could immediately spot the company houses. They were, there would be usually a row of ten or so in a row and you could, they were all identical. They all looked the same. But. . .”
Sarah: “Were they nice?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Uh, they were simple. They were basically a long rectangle. You had two, three rooms downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. Uh, initially, very few had indoor plumbing. Uh, there were no closets basically. Uh, but, you grew up in it and you didn’t know any different so it was, I mean, all your friends lived in the same kind of house so it didn’t seem unusual.”
Sarah: “Mhmm. So, besides were certain like occupations limited to certain ethnic groups or. . .”
Mr. Rudzinski: “No, not really. There was, basically coal mining was the major industry. But, by the end of World War II, which really affects me, coal mining really went into a decline. The demand for anthracite coal, uh, really went down because natural gas came into being. And, it was cleaner, natural gas was cleaner than coal and, uh, World War II really had a big impact because so many men went away to fight and when they came back, they had access to the G.I. Bill which allowed them to get educated, some kind of training. So a lot of them went into electronic training and that sort of thing and moved away. So, there never was any big discrepancy or fight over jobs. It was the coal mine or some service industry like a grocery store or something like that. There were not a whole lot of uh, not a whole lot of. . .”
Sarah: “Competing industry?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “No, no competing industry. So, when coal started going down, it really hurt our area. It went into an economic downturn and things got really tough.”
Sarah: “Yeah. And I know you still go back and have family there and visit there. How much has it changed? Are there still a lot of these people living in these kind of unofficial ethnic communities?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “No, the ethnic communities kind of went away. The, uh, interesting thing is though, they people that stayed there pretty much live in the houses that their parents lived in and grew up in. So, in that way, if there was an ethnic, if you had five people on your street that never left the area and stayed, then those five families are still living there and own those homes. Uh, it has changed though, the population went down significantly and, uh, probably starting in 1950. But in the case of our hometown, it actually had a rebound and it’s back up over 4,000 people and, uh, they seem to be doing well. The old, if you drive down any of the streets where the old houses were, you could see that they’ve been all modified in some, usually modified in some sense. An addition put on them or, uh, siding is on now–aluminum siding or vinyl siding or whatever and uh, there have been a lot of improvements. And, people seem to like it that live up there.”
Sarah: “Yeah, so is there anything else that you want to add about growing up then or your town or the times?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Well, in looking back, and most people would probably say this, the old times always seem better. Uh, kids were free to run around and you never had to worry about anyone being kidnapped or anything like that. Uh, we. . .”
Sarah: “You take that for granted when you’re younger. You don’t know, but now it’s different.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Yeah, you never knew any better. I mean you could just go anywhere and, uh, very few people had cars. My parents never had a car when I was growing up. We never had a car so we took the bus wherever we went and, transportation was relatively cheap and it was available so that was nice. Uh, it was, it was nice to grow up with kids you knew your whole life. Nobody moved. The kids that I went to school with, I went to school with for twelve years. You didn’t have this constant change as people have today so you grew up with a kid from the time you were four or five years old and played with them and knew them really well.”
Sarah: “And knew their families?”
Mr. Rudzinski: “And knew their family, exactly. And sometimes, uh, people thought your best friend was your brother, because [laughing] you hung around with them so often. Uh, the nice thing was you had all of this ethnic food too. Some of my fondest memories are of the foods that my mother made and uh, they were straight ethnic. They were cheap, uh, in looking back, you, we never ate a whole lot of fancy steaks or anything like that. It was all basic staples. Potatoes. A lot of potatoes and uh, things like that. It was a good time.”
Sarah: “Alright. Thank you so much for letting me interview you today.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “That’s all you want?”
Sarah: “Yeah, that’s all.”
Mr. Rudzinski: “Well, very good.”
Overall, I think the interview went really well and I learned a lot of really interesting things from it. I don’t think there were issues with how it flowed. If I could do it over, I would ask more questions directed towards coal mining and what life was like being the son of a coal miner. For me, I found going off script was better because it helped the conversation flow better.