216

A. Varesano interviewing M/M Joe Sulkusky
- 5 -
8/8/72
Tape 30-1

136

JS: Now you can take a deer picture!

AV: Good!

MS: She has, she's gonna take pictures in there.

AV: Let me ask, what was the original part of this house? Which rooms here?
Was the kitchen orininally here?

JS: No, I built this.

AV: You built the kitchen? When? When did you build it?

MS: Oh, how long is that now? That's quite some time.

JS: Huh? (He has trouble hearing her).

MS: That's quite some time alreaedy when we built that kitchen. We used to live
down in that house where Helen's livin' , where that
bungalow is now. That's where we were livin', after my mother and father
died--after my mother died, then my father asked us to come and stay, he
lived along, ah, for us to make a home with him, because he was already
eighty-six years old, so he thoufht he was too old to be along, so we came
to stay with my father. Then my father died there with us. So that's quite
a while, my father's dead already I guess about near twenty years already.

AV: So this kitchen was built, when, do you think?

JS: Twenty years or more.

AV: Twenty years? And who built it? You yourself? All by yourself?

JS: And my neighbor. Not this neighbor. Another neighbor was here.

AV: What other neighbor was that?

JS: Boxer, that there, Bradusch was his name.

AV: Bradusch. Boxer Bradusch?

JS: No. His name is, ah, Thomas, Tommy Bradusch.

AV: I see.

JS: That's his nickname, Boxer!

AV: Why do they call him Boxer?

MS: That's just the same with you--you go and ask for mine by his name, Joe. You
won't get him. But if you ask Where does Spongy live, now anybody'll tell
you where Spongy lives, because that's what they all call him, Spongy.

AV: Why do they call you Spongy?

JS: Well, we lived up above where Joey Charnigy[?] is livin', and we had two cherry
trees, one right by the gate, and one right by the side. And there was guys
comin' around adveertising sponge cakes, and they put the tags--they asked my
father, can they put the tags on the tree? And he said, Go ahead. So then,
they guy, boys come after me, you know, the buddies, and they ask my father
Where am I? And he said, That's the Spongy, up there! So now they call me
Spongy!

AV: Ha! Ha!

MS: So you now and ask anybody where does Spongy--they'll directr you to him.
But to Joseph, well, see, they won't this here, but, Joe, like Spongy, but
they'll know Spongy. Because there are so many people, when the talk they
say, are you Spongy's wife? Yeah. Well that's how we know, ou are Spongy's
wife, but we don't know him by his name!

AV: Oh, boy! Well, when did you build those shanties down there?

JS: The other one?

AV: That shanty, yeah.

JS: Oh, that was the company put that up.

AV: Oh, that was the summer kitchen in there, right?

JS: Yeah, that's what that is for.

AV: When do you think that was built?

JS: Oh, jeez, I don't know. A hudred and forty years, maybe, or so!

AV: Wow! That's pretty old.