Just like immigrants in the United States today, our Slovak ancestors in the early 1900s suffered taunts and derision as a matter of course. After six years in East St. Louis, Stefan Kalish decided he could no longer tolerate being looked down upon. He especially disliked what co-workers called him.
“I’m no hunkee SOB!” he complained.
The hunkee part of the ethnic slur apparently came from the earlier bohunk, which referred to a Bohemian from Hungary. The SOB part requires no explanation. The term hunkee would later evolve into honkey, a slang American term used in the 1960s for any white person.
In 1912, leaving children Annie, Mary, Mike, and Joe in East St. Louis, Stefan and Kata returned to Austria-Hungary with 10-year-old daughter Mildred. Leaving 11-year-old Joe behind was an agonizing decision. Six years after he had nearly been turned back at Ellis Island for being “a cripple,” to use the parlance of the day, Kata did not want to risk taking him out of the country for fear he would never be let back in.
We don’t know if they left before or after the birth that year of their grandson Frantisck Kavalir, son of daughter Mary and Franz Kavalir—who would later go by Frank Kavalier after a schoolteacher told him to add the “e” to make it sound better.
Back in Banova Jaruga, where the family had lived before, Stefan and Kata grew plum trees and made slivovitz, a kind of plum brandy, along with other goods.
In 1913, Franz and Mary Kavalir decided to travel back to Austria-Hungary with baby Frank, to visit Franz’s parents’ farm in Daruvar—a village located in what is now Croatia, not far from Banova Jaruga, where Mary’s parents and youngest sister were again living. We don’t know how long Mary and Franz intended to stay. But World War I erupted soon after their arrival, following the 1914 assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which put any travel plans on indefinite hold.
Worse, because Franz was an Austro-Hungarian citizen, he was drafted into the army to fight alongside the Germans. Mary was left alone with Frank. Soon she got the worst news possible: her husband Franz had been killed in combat. Mary adjusted to her new reality as a war widow, taking the one-hour train ride to visit her parents with little Frank whenever she could.
Stefan and Kata Kalish’s family was also affected by the war, when they found their goods and horses confiscated by various armies. Stefan lost the family’s money to a wartime bank closing and rode a horse to Germany in a failed attempt to get it back.
Stefan, Kata, and little Mildred Kalish—and Mary and baby Frank Kavalir—were still in Austria-Hungary as it collapsed in 1918, finding themselves struggling in a country now known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which would later be renamed Yugoslavia. It would eventually be subdivided into Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later renamed Serbia and Montenegro).
Back in East St. Louis, Joe Kalish—after having lost his mother at the age of 11—had a rough time transitioning into adulthood. The physical disability in his legs, due apparently to infantile paralysis or polio contracted as a child, certainly did not help. It’s doubtful he could have worked in the meatpacking houses without healthy legs.
As a young adult, Joe was known as a lively and resourceful guy who played the accordion and piano, rode a motorcycle, ran a filling station, liked to play checkers, and liked to drink. At some point, Joe acquired a Model T Ford and used it to shuttle prostitutes—for five dollars a ride—between ESL and the town of Zeigler, Illinois. And this was no short jaunt. It could take two and a half hours to get there in a Model T, and another two and a half to get back. Joe at this time was all of 15 or 16 years old.
Located about 100 miles southeast of ESL, huge coal deposits had been discovered in Zeigler in the early 1900s. This led to the opening of mining operations. The town was incorporated in 1914, named for Levi Zeigler, father of the founder of the Zeigler Coal Company. It was, and remains, a relatively small town. Located midway between the Little Muddy River and Big Muddy River, it did not appear on the official state road map until 1926.
Mines require miners, and miners enjoy liquor and the company of women. Some miners are willing to pay for both. We have no idea how Joe learned about the little town of Zeigler and its need for services he could help provide. But help he did. East St. Louis had plenty of liquor and plenty of prostitutes, ready for loading into Joe’s car for the long and bumpy ride to Zeigler.
After his return to East St. Louis from Oklahoma, Louis Kalish had grown increasingly unhappy about his return to a 70-hour workweek at ten cents an hour. After learning about Zeigler from his younger brother Joe, and determined to change his young family’s fortune, he had an idea.
The miners down in Zeigler needed not just liquor and the company of women, but a place where they could enjoy both. Leaving behind his meatpacking career for good, he and Anna moved from ESL to Zeigler with young James around 1914. There, they opened a boardinghouse that may also have served as a restaurant, tavern, and brothel. We can’t be certain of all the services offered.
Whatever services were offered, they were apparently quite lucrative. Soon, Louis convinced other family members to relocate from East St. Louis to Zeigler to help run the place. Before long, Zeigler was also home to Anna’s parents, Leonard and Marie Krokvica; Anna’s little sister Mary; Anna’s other sister Josie and her husband Steve Walko; and the two Walko boys, Steve Jr. and Ed Walko. Their sister Dorothy Walko would be born there in 1924.
It’s not clear if Louis and Joe’s brother Mike Kalish was in on the Zeigler operation or not. His first wife, Millie Roach, was mother to Louis M. Kalish, born in 1914. They had a second son, Mike Kalish Jr., in 1919. Sadly, Millie died the next year. Infant Mike was then sent to live with his maternal grandmother.
Mike remarried Rose Heisler in 1920. Their daughter Violet was born in 1921. Mike became a self-taught lawyer and East St. Louis bondsman. In 1928, he went to state prison after posting bond for a client who then fled the state.
In 1920, Prohibition went into effect, banning the sale of alcohol in the United States. It would be repealed in 1933. We don’t know precisely how Prohibition affected the family operation in Zeigler and Joe’s taxi business. It sure didn’t hurt.
We don’t know how James Kalish liked living in Zeigler as a child, but we do know he liked going to school. Indeed he loved it. In 1921 he received an award for perfect attendance at the Zeigler elementary school.
Back in Europe, Stefan and Kata may have learned of the financial success of the Kalish brothers and their Zeigler operation. Indeed, it may have been a factor in their decision to emigrate to the United States a second time, in 1921. Louis certainly by then had the financial means to support them.
For whatever reasons, in 1921 Stefan’s family re-emigrated to the United States. Somewhere over the Atlantic, Kata contracted pneumonia. By the time they went through Ellis Island it had worsened. A few weeks after arriving back in East St. Louis, it turned fatal. After Kata’s death at the age of 52, Stefan left the United States for good. This time Mildred refused to go with him. She moved in with siblings.
Back in Europe for the second time, Stefan remarried (to whom we don’t know) and died in 1925 in Daruvar, now part of Croatia and not far from Banova Jaruga, at the age of 64.
In 1922, with both parents now gone, the six Kalish children—Annie, Louis, Mike, Mary, Joe, and Mildred—were on their own in East St. Louis and Zeigler. That’s the year Louis Kalish made an astonishing purchase, launching the next era of this family history.
Next: 14. The Savoy Hotel 1922-1940
Previous: 12. The Kalish, Krokvica, and Walko Families 1867-1916
Michael Durbin 