St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 45

A7 i N. ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH PART SIX ST. LOUIS, SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 29, 1940. PAGES 1 SH Americans All AZ3 On Broadway New York Night and 1 Town by Day ow rons mmi3ran hi xy7 Won OUIS ace in Word Pictures of Persons, Places And Things on Manhattan Island.

By Walter Winchell NEW YORK BY NIGHT AND DAY: The pink blush In th sky after it sheds the raiment of day and, for just a few minutes, stands naked before slipping under the cover of night The expressions of worriment etched on the upturned Mike Milonski Came Here 36 Years Ago and For Past 35Years Has Worked For Same Company Doesn't Talk His Patriotism, but Lives It. I I i pj. I i I i 1 1 -1 I i faces of the Times Square electrick-er-tape-bulletin-readers a Mosaic of Anxiety The pall on the mall in Central Park these nights, as empty as a false lover's promise The Plaza Hotel on Fifty-eighth street and Fifth, which was a beautiful belle when the other lovelies of today were still in their pigtails now wearing its age with the grace, and dignity of a true aristocrat The pigeons perched on the library lions snap for any candid cam-erradict The worn and weary counter salesgirls of Manhattan bargain-basements shopwrecks. WALTER WINCHELL MR. AND MRS.

MIKE MILONSKI AS THEY ARE TODAY. Sufferers in Poland, and he is now secretary of the Polish-American Federation Relief Committee in St. Louis. He is also active in the Polish American Union, the Polish National Alliance and the Masonic lodge. Like her husband, Mrs.

Milonski works hard in church and charitable societies, has her clubs and has kept up her work in the dramatic society. "We are never at home in the At 58, Mike Milonski still says a daily prayer of thanks for the blessings of America. He has a warm spot in his heart for his native Poland, but nothing could induce him to return there. "America is everything to me now," he says. "Where else in the world do people have so much?" The part of Poland in which Mike Milonski was born has again been taken over by Russia and with his two remaining sisters THE HORST AVESSEL atmosphere in Yorkville malice in Bunderland The Riveters stitching together the looming framework of the new Woolworth Building on the site of the once glamorous Casa Manana.

They'll sell everything there for a dime except a dance Ninth Avenue, getting the El knocked out of it boulevard of broken beams Gay St. in the Village, N. smallest street, yet it is impossible to see from one end of it to the other The Greek evangelist, clothed with biblical quotations, trying to save the souls of the Broadway heels The slimming lovelies on horseback in the Park, drinking, deep draughts of fresh air and hoping for a male chaser The Sixth Avenue bookstallers thumbing the "artists' manuals" a high class word for low class art The nightly yowling in the street outside the "La. Purchase" undressing rooms Broadway Rose serenading her new crush, Wm. Gaxton Sign in the Village men's haberdashery: "Clothes Make the Woman" Charlie Chin's laundry on W.

56th off Eighth The ciggy girl at the Beachcomber who chants: "Cigars, cigarettes that's all, brother!" Typical N. Y. greetings on B'way and 50th. One fellow says: "What goes on?" The other asks: "What's coming off?" The Hotel Astor lobby, where every John meets his Jane The drugstore cowbores in the soda spots The lias-tile-like Tombs at Centre St. with its ragged line of cells pillories of society The dilemma of horns and raised voices that start muttering when the traffic snarls The electryf ying atmosphere as stidden darkness wraps itself around the city just before a storm breaks and a sharp wind clears the way for its fury.

i THE MILONSKI FAMILY. FROM THE LEFT, BOZENA, ZDZISLAW, MR. MILONSKI HOLDING PATRICIA, MRS. MILONSKI, MIECZYSLAW AND MICHAL By Virginia Irwin there he has lost all contact. In Warsaw, now under German rule, Mrs.

Milonski has two sisters and a brother, but there has been no word from them since the German invasion. A TALL man, sparely built, with a now graying thatch of hair, Mike Milonski ras resisted all the efforts of his family to induce him to move from the neighborhood where he has lived 20 years in the same house. The neighborhood, once good, is now run-down, not too clean and anything but attractive, but Mr. and Mrs. Milonski stay on.

Mike feels that he is part of it because it was here that he went through the process of Americanization, raised his family and grew from an immigrant Polish laborer to an active American citizen. Mrs. Milonski does not say too much to her husband. She understands his sentiments. And perhaps, she, too, is a little sentimental about the old neighborhood.

'I can remember," she laughed as she served her delicious homemade paczki and coffee, "how I used to feel so strange on these same streets. English was so hard for me. I remember one thing in particular. Coming home from the skirt factory I used to see a truck going up and down the street with the word "Pies" painted on it. In Polish, pie means dog, and I wondered and wondered why people would ride dogs around and around in a wagon." The papa Milonski also had his baffling experiences when he first came to America, including the time he ate a banana for the first This is the first of a series of rtories about one-time immigrants who have made St.

Louis a better city in which to live. AS a boy back in Poland in his native town of Lomza, Mike Milonskj used to spend the long evenings lying before the 'peat porcelain stove in the Mi-jlonski kitchen back of his mother's millinery shop. While Mike dreamed, the matka Milonski would ititch away on one of the bonnets ihe made for the fine ladies of Lomza and tell young Mike stories MR. AND MRS. MILONSKI AT THE TIME OF THEIR WEDDING IN 1907.

of his father and his grandfather. Twenty years before Mike was born his grandpapa had been sent into exile in Siberia as punishment for his patriotism in the Polish uprising against Russia in 1863. Mike's was dead. He had been attacked by a wolf when Mike was till a pupo in his mother's arms ind Mike did not even remember him. As Mike Milonski grew a little 'der, he thought a lot about the pandfather whom he had never een and who was then among the living dead forced to work in the mines of frozen Siberia.

He thought It Might Have Been Said Today POSTERITY! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not I shall repent it in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it. John Adams, 1776. evening," Mike Milonski explains.

"There is so much to be done. But it is good that old people keep busy. They are not lonesome then when their children are grown." Of the four Milonski children, who are as American as corn on the cob, Bozena, the oldest, is now Mrs. Albert Drozda, and as Bee Milonski she made the Papa Milonski pretty proud of her when she qualified as a St. Louis candidate for the Olympic Games.

Two of the Milonski boys, Zdzislaw, nicknamed Sonny, and Mieczyslaw, called Mitchell, work with their father in the steel foundries. The third boy, named Michal and called Mike, like his dad, is 12 and still in school. The Milonski's have one grandchild, Patricia, who is the apple of Grandpa Milonski's eye. time and consumed peeling and all, but such things as that, he says, were part of his education. He has no regrets except that he was rejected for the first World War because the company for which he works was then making shells and Mike Milonski was needed at home.

Now, however, he has two sons registered in the draft. The youngest, Mitchell, who is 22, wants to volunteer for the army. It is all right with Mike Milonski. If America needs the boy, Mike is glad. Wwut his father, too, who had died MR.

AND MRS. MILONSKI IN 1920. THE STEW in the Stork Club who goes up to a celebrity and says: "I beg ya pardon, but it's the privilege of a drunk like me to bother people like you" noiseless phone booths in the 6th Avenue subway extension. People on the inside look like a movie with the tound track gone wrong The Delancey Street Santa Claus who talked to the children in Yiddish The would-be Izaak Waltons taking lessons in fly casting on the roof of the Anglers Roost, haven for fishermen, on East 43rd Street Sign in the window of a West 43rd Street fur shop: "Keep Her Heart Warm:" The pickaninny-pavementertainers whose dancing has more authentic rhythm than many of the professionals The Hayden Planetarium, where the price of a movie will get you a mezzanine-seat in the Theater of Infinity The Greatest Show Off Earth The lights of the George Washington Bridge at midnight, a tiny string of pearls in the lap of the heavens The lunch hour Johnnies around the Rockefeller Center ring applauding when a shapely skater's skirt i. wings high in a breeze City College students on 23rd Street selling last year's course notes at one cent a page The mermaid on the Wilson electrick sign at Broadway and 46th St.

Eleanor Ohm? The tri-motored airliners zooming through the night on their way to JLaGuardia Field, red, white and blut lights on their motors, like Christmas trees in the sky. THE TERRACED WONDERLAND along the Hudson River below Riverside Drive the hand-holders' Promised Land, built by a man named Moses The exotic, tasty foods served at the Son of the Sheik in lower Manhattan, where the Armenian dishes excite the palate the way a Saroyan play excites some critics Strolling down Fifth Ave a squat, bewhiskered gent in shirt sleeves, knickerbocker pants and sneakers with collar open to show his manly chest to amazed passersby shivering in 30 degree weather. WHAT MIAMI BEACH Is Talking About: The perfect weather since the visit of FDR, who passed through when the sun was a hookey-player The countless new hotels, reatau-rants, residences The gambling expected to atart about Jan. 7 but not on the Beach The new 1000 seater (a restaurant) which calls itself the Stork The newly decorated Royal Palm Club, the swank spot of them all The sensational business at The Beachcomber and its enticing Patio, with the Miami moon for a spotlight The Roney-Plaza'a majesty The 5 O'Clock Club's La Playa Dancers and the beauty of the girls in that enchanting act The Rhumba Casino, the new Latin Quarter epot and the soon-due -Singapore Sadie'a," the most fascinating name for a joynt yet The entire therne in most of the night places being "tropical" The way Ramon Renita sat around all dressed and ready (for four nights) at the Miami Biltmore to give a "command dance" for aa ieit his mother, wiaowea, wna Sve young ones to provide for in country which Mike knew from his history books was a hapless Mld of glory and tragedy. It was ao easy thing for the matka Mi-iotiski to make a living for her hrood, but somehow she managed, Bd when Mike was old enough he sent to industrial school in and was soon apprenticed a steel foundry there.

New Year Resolutions By Christopher Billopp A Strong VipnHViv hnv Miko Hid Of sll in his work, sent a little mon- freedom in a land where a man could live by the work of his hands and think as he pleased." For 35 of the 36 years that Mike Milonski has now spent in America, he has worked for the same company the American Steel Foundries across the river in Granite City and for 23 of those 35 years he has been foreman of the metal pattern department of that company. A quiet, hard-working, capable man, Mike Milonski has had the right to call himself a citizen of the United States since 1914 and the lad from Lomza, Poland, has made the most of the privilege. Mike Milonski is not a man to use big words or talk of patriotism, or the principles of good citizenship, or try to explain his loyalty to the United States. He lives these things. "Sometimes," Mike says, "I think the people who were born here in America take it too much for granted.

They are like the man who was too near to the forest to see the trees. I knew a different life. The things that America stands for do not get old to me." With a good job to work at in the daytime, Mike began to look around soon after he came to St. that he was making 21 cents an hour and working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. This meant $2.50 a day and $17.50 every week.

To the Milonskis it was almost riches. Mike didn't mind the long hours, because, as he says, "everything was so good in America." When the Milonski's first baby, a girl, Bozena, was born in 1909, Mike Milonski said to his young wife one evening, have an American in the family now. It is good that we become Americans, too." And so Mike began working for his citizenship papers. Today those papers are his proudest possession. And under the regulations at that time, Mrs.

Milonski became a citizen along with her husband. With promotion at the steel foundries, Mike was working somewhat shorter hours and there was more time for taking part in the affairs of the Polish community. He became a star gymnast and instructor in the Polish Falcons. He sang in the choir of the Polish National Catholic Church and became a director in the Kolko Jul-jusza Slowackiego, a dramatic society in which he is still active, with the direction of more than 500 plays to his credit. There is little now in the Polish community in which Mike Milonski does not have a hand.

Following the German Invasion of Poland, "he was vice-chairman of the National Committee for Belief of the War Polish Falcons, the gymnastic society in which he had been active in Poland, and because he was interested in dramatics, he became a member of the Aleksander Fredro Kolko Dramatyzzne. In the Aleksander Fredro Kolko Dramatyzzne there was a shy young Polish girl by the name of Janina Sobieraj and it so happened that in one of the plays she had to take the part of the bride and Mike the groom. There was a play wedding on the stage, and six week3 later, after a whirlwind courtship, there was a real wedding. At the age of 18, Janina Sobieraj became Mrs. Mike Milonski.

A NATIVE of Warsaw, Poland, Janina Sobieraj had come to America at the age of 15 with her parents. At one time the Sobieraj family had been among the well-to-do of Warsaw, but with hard times in Poland the papa Sobieraj had lost all his money. Emigrating to the United States, he got a job as a night watchman in a St. Louis car foundry, and Janina went to work in a Lucas avenue skirt factory. From her earnings in the skirt factory she saved a little money and when she and Mike were married, Janina had a pretty white dress and a white tulle veiL At the time he and Janina were married.

Mike Milonski remembers Home to his mother each week, was happy until the Russo-Japanese war broke ou in 1904, and Hussia, in her domination of Po-attempted to force the Polish "Wh into the war against Japan. Young Mike Milonski had no Ptevance against the Japanese. He instead, only hatred for Rus- because of her long years of VUe of the Poles and so on the Jy that he was called to report wr service in the Russian army, ike Milonski slipped quietly out Warsaw. His mind was made He war. going to America.

had heard all the stories about the streets in America were ved with gold and how dollars ew on trees," Mike ex-ined the other evening with his Mary. Resolved, not to be openly ashamed of parents. To accept Mother's judgment in selection of hats, dresses, etc. To limit washing of stockings and festooning bathroom with them to not more than two days a week. To make no libelous statements about competitors.

To refrain from sassing parents and teasing Johnny about his girl. Johnny. Resolved, not to hang around when Mary's date arrives. To bathe bi-weekly without being reminded. To turn up occasionally on time for meals.

To give somebody else a chance to talk at table. To stop pilfering Father's shaving soap, razor blades and collar buttons. To offer comfortable chair to elders without being dragged out. To realize there is more to life than sports and swing bands. Everybody.

Resolved, to bear in mind that every cloud has its silver lining, the least said soonest mended, and that, for all its faults, there is no place like home. FOR persons in search of New Tear's resolutions, here are a few practical suggestions that will appeal to other members of their families: Mother. Resolved, to worry less over Father and the children. To give Father cheerful report on day's happenings at home. To smell nothing burning and hear no burglars during night.

To seal lips while riding as a passenger in the family car. To accept without a murmur use of her personal stationery by others. To demand or expect no help from Father in maintaining discipline. Father. Resolved, to listen attentively.

To carve delicate slices of meat, not hunks. To stop suggesting people who ought to be invited to dinner. To admit that his cough comes from smoking. To refrain from noticing slips that show below the skirt line. To hook wife up the back without swearing.

To argue without shouting. To sleep without enorinz. sauierea arouna a in me living room of the modest Louis in 1904 for something to oc- II'uuski home at 914 Madison cupy nis evenings. ie wanted 10 "But I didn't com to Ampr- meet oeonle and make a nlace for the Windsors and then didn't. "ith the idea of making a for- himself in the Polish colony, so he I came because it meant joined the local chapter of the ir.