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A. Varesano interviewing Anne Timko -4- 7/19/72 Tape 22-2

AV: It was an accident that killed him?
AT: No, he died from asthma. He was only forty-six years old, as far as I can remember - he wasn't quite forty-six, I think a month later he would have been forty-six years old - when he died. His birthday was in March, and he died in February from asthma.
AV: He left how many kids?
AT: Well, there were four of us, but Mike was seventeen, he was already working. That was my brother, Mike Gyurko, that's living on the other street. He was working then.
AV: What did he do then?
AT: Working in the mines. With the mules.
AV: Oh, mule-driving. He left yourself, also. How old were you then?
AT: Twelve. I was twelve when my father died. My brother was seventeen, his birthday was on the ninth of Febrary, and my father died on the tenth of February, the next day. My father was in bed for six days, from Saturday til Friday, and all night already, Thursday night, like over Thursday night and Friday morning, he had a bad night, and I recall I got awake a couple of times, and I heard my mother in the other room by my father, and she was, you know, trying to help him. He even got angry at her that she was, you know, bothering him all the time. So then in the morning at five o'clock, he wakened my brother up to get up, because at six o'clock he had to go down to the mule stable to clean the mules and harness them to go to work. And then, on the way back, because they were working on this section, on the way back they would pick up their lunch cans and go on to work. So he waked my brother up, and my brother got up and he got dressed, and he went down to the sable, and Mom looked upstairs, and, she had a tiny little bit of a lamp up there, just you know, for a little light, and the light wasn't out. So she thought, that's funny that he didn't get up, you know, to put out that light, which he always did. And that morning he didn't. So she went upstairs, and she put out the light, and she stood by the door, she said she was afraid to holler at him, that he would scold her for bothering him. And she thought he was alseep. And she says to him, Mike! He didn't answer. She said, Mike, are you sleepin'? He didn't answer. And she was afraid to go to him, but she said she was gonna go and check anyway. And he was dead. Just like that. Within an hour, just an hour, he was dead. And the doctor told her, he said, Mike, one of these days, you're gonna block, you're no gonna know what happens. Your lungs are gonna block, and it's gonna kill you.
AV: And what could he do about it?
AT: Nothing. There was nothing you could do about it. Look, like my sister-in-law, now. She's got asthma, and there's nothing you can do about it. She's been in the hospital and everything else. At least now they have oxygen, where in them days they didn't even have that.
AV: Well, who else did he leave besides you and your brother Mike?
AT: My brother Mike, and I was next, and then the two younger brothers. Joe, the one that's in Ohio, and my brother , he's in Upper Lehigh.
AV: How old were they?
AT: I was twelve, Joe was nine, and Pixie was seven.
AV: Well, what happened then, when you didn't have any more income from your father?
AT: Just had to struggle, that's all.
AV: What did your mother do to get some money?
AT: Well, I'm telling you, she'd make us pick huckleberries, then she had a cow, and she would sell milk, they used to sell the milk, they'd call it a pint