My Russian Grandpa

My maternal grandfather, Mike Stossivich, died in 1958, one year before I was born.  He immigrated from Russia to the United State one year prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.  There is very little information about his young life in Russia.  All we really know is that he was from Western Russia and may have lived in an area near the Polish border. 

Having never known my Russian Grandpa, I sometimes wonder about his early life and the story of his bold move to the United States.  I have included a fascinating little article written in the Mason City Globe Gazette March 27, 2011.  My mother, Karen Vaage, was interviewed about life growing up on the north end of Mason City.  It was a neighborhood where many new immigrants got their start in a new world.  I hope you enjoy reading this article.  I notice that lately I have been receiving many "hits" from my blog readers from Russia.  Here is a small tribute to my Russian roots and the legacy that is still very important to me.

 

North End provided jobs for generations

By KRISTIN BUEHNER, kristin.buehner@globegazette.com | Posted: Sunday, March 27, 2011 11:44 pm
MASON CITY - It’s been years since Gary Birch lived on the North End, but he still loves driving around the old neighborhood and pointing out where things used to be.
Chazen’s junkyard, the Log Cabin filling station and Nick and Mary’s bakery — all are gone.
“We lived there, on the east side of Federal, before they ever built that bridge,” said Birch, now of Garner, of an overpass in front of the former Northwestern States Portland Cement Co. “If you went under it there was a chainlink fence and gate to where the old Northwestern Steakhouse used to be.”
Birch’s house, a two-story brick duplex apartment at 1825 N. Federal, has been demolished. Birch lived there from 1936 to 1954. The old Northwestern Steakhouse building — a small white building with red-trimmed windows — is also gone.
None of the houses in his neighborhood had running water or indoor plumbing in the 1940s, Birch said.
One of his chores growing up was to chop coal with an ax for the pot belly stove.
North of 18th Street on the west side of Federal were three houses known as the Northwestern Cottages or Northwestern Row. Birch’s grandparents, the Ashlocks, lived in the most southern one. Those houses are gone, too.
“The streets were all gravel back then,” he said.
As a boy, Birch had a Globe Gazette newspaper route and his last delivery was to the Noel and Mabel DeWitt farm, 2607 N. Federal, across from the Blue Waters quarry on North Federal.
Birch’s grandpa, Sidney Birch, worked for Northwestern States Portland Cement Co. when it opened in 1906. He died at the age of 45 after suffering a heart attack while operating a steam shovel in the quarry.
His grandfather Ashlock was night watchman at Northwestern States. In those days, Belgian horses were used to haul rock from the quarry into the cement plant where the rock crusher was, Birch said.
When he was very young the wagon driver used to let Birch ride with him as they hauled rock.
A blacksmith shop stood next to the barn where they kept the horses. The  shop is still there, barely visible from the highway on the west side of the highway.
Birch’s father, Dale, worked at Northwestern States, too, for 42 years.
Dale Birch was born in 1912 in a house located on land where the Lime Creek Nature Center is now.
“That whole trail where the Lime Creek Nature Center is now was my backyard, basically,” Birch said. “That’s where we went rabbit hunting. Having squirrels and rabbits was meat on the table back during the war.”
Birch remembered one winter in the later 1940s when the workers went on strike at Decker’s meatpacking plant, picketing in picket shacks where they stopped workers from entering the plant.
“When the strike was settled, the kids took them over and used them as forts.”

Karen (Stossivich) Vaage, 69, lived as a child at 1645 N. Pennsylvania Ave., a house that is no longer there.
Her family was Russian. Her father, Mike, worked at Decker’s.
“Everyone said that it was a rough area of town, but I didn’t know that,” Vaage said. “The families neighbored. In the summer you’d hear dogs barking, kids yelling, bikes going up and down the street, people talking and sharing produce with one another.
“There were lots of nationalities,” said Vaage, who is putting together a scrapbook about the North End.
Immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Greece and Mexico lived side by side.
Down the street from her house was Pete Kirchoff’s Grocery, 1452 N. Federal Ave., where Vaage’s father would let the kids buy Popsicles.
The B&O Drug Store was a popular place, too. Dean Baumgartner was soda jerk. Glenn “Elly” Burgraff, the store owner, was the pharmacist. “Everyone wore a white coat,” Vaage said.
The kids from the neighborhood went swimming at Calmus Creek in what is now the Lime Creek Nature Center. Some of the better swimmers jumped off a cliff into the creek, others jumped in from a rock, Vaage recalled.
“There was a path and the kids would all just meet down there. We’d bring our blankets. It was like our own little beach.”
Halloween was a big event. Students dressed in homemade costumes and went to school where they paraded around a four-block area. “The neighbors all came out and clapped,” Vaage said.
The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad track ran behind her house and others on North Pennsylvania.
“Everybody had gardens up to the tracks,” she said. “The railroad allowed us to do it. We used to wave at the engineers and they’d wave back at us.”
Vaage’s life centered on the First Assembly of God Church on 15th Street Northeast, with the Revs. Louis Roggow and Allen Ullestad.
“They had so many programs for children,” including an orchestra and a choir, Vaage said.
In the summer the children were loaded onto a bus to go to church camp for a week at Storm Lake.
“That little church was a light to the North End,” Vaage said. “It helped a lot of people.”