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know that my father thought Granny was too full of quiet resignation, too passive. He talked about that passivity often, saying he couldn’t stand such “martyrdom.” But he never told me what she was a martyr about. Was it Samuel’s tantrums? Samuel’s drinking? He didn’t say.
    But my grandfather did stand by her financially, even when times were tough for him.
    By 1902, Samuel had moved with Granny to Jersey City, where my father was born, followed in four years by Aunt Judy. Samuel practiced the craft of watch repair (learned in his adolescence in Nagyvarad) but couldn’t abide New Jersey.
    Over the next fifteen years, the family moved many times: from New Jersey to Philadelphia; from Philly back to New York; then to Pittsburgh. Samuel’s profession changed just as often. He gave up watchmaking for a hardware store, then traded that in to sell early models of the phonograph to the miners in the hills above the Allegheny River. My aunt remembers him striding around his study in Pittsburgh, comparing recordings of various arias—Caruso versus “unknown” tenors like Lazaro—and asking everyone in the family whom they preferred, so he could let the phonograph company know what it should support. Samuel thought Caruso was not the best; he didn’t last long at that job, either.
    “Every day started with excitement,” wrote Aunt Judy. “He was an early riser. I heard him sing and whistle in the bathroom. I loved that. Then I had to be prepared for what would follow. My door would open and there would be some surprise. A funny face, a hand making signals, the growl of a monster. Before the day was over I would witness an endless variety of moods and antics. When he pounded the table at dinner, I didn’t always know whether he was angry or having fun.”
    Some of this behavior can undoubtedly be chalked up to the “Magyar personality,” the explosive temperament coming out of the tempestuous battles for survival in the old empire. But much was probably due to a particular set of character traits that I could sometimes find in my own father. He, too, whistled pretty tunes. He, too, broke into fiery anger at strange times. He, too, could be sarcastic—making jokes that were, or were not, funny.
    My grandfather seemed totally unaware of the effects his erratic behavior had on Granny—or anyone else, for that matter. He was one of those theatrical human beings who was a whole world unto himself.
    In Pittsburgh, Samuel continued to make enough money to support the family with basics. Anna gave them luxuries with her sewing, including a piano for Aunt Judy, who couldn’t play then and never did learn. Aunt Judy’s first marriage, at nineteen, the one that took her away from the lovelorn column, was a disaster. “I married a Hungarian firecracker” is the way she put it. “And that’s all I’m going to say about
that
!” I later found out he was twenty years her elder, an abusive man. When she married again in the 1970s, Dad helped get her divorce papers from Mexico.
    Aunt Judy told me that Dad was popular with both girls and boys, who loved the way he had taught himself to play the mandolin and the accordion. Dad never mentioned his popularity. He spoke of the ugly, belching steel mills, and made it sound as if his family were poor. Aunt Judy swears they were not. Perhaps what colors how he remembered it were the vivid arguments he had with his father, especially about the outbreak of hostilities during World War I. Samuel believed the family should support the Hungarians, who were, of course, on the side of the Austrians, and therefore foes of the Americans. Dad was furious about this and argued in America’s defense. When the “wrong side” won, Samuel pretended he’d been America’s supporter all along. But they both shared dismay that the Allies had taken Nagyvarad from Hungary and given it to Romania. In some ways, it took the steam out of Samuel for the rest of his life.
    Dad was also disappointed