Irma "Mom" Szalay

December 4, 1914 - March 7, 2011

It seems eerily different on Palm Street now that Mom has passed away. When I open her gate and say, “Hi Mom, I’m here”, I get no response. There is no tinkering with the laundry, no filling of the birdbath, no hoeing a few weeds by her. In the house the TV was never on before 3:00. She really liked the Millionaire game show and watching The Doctors at 4:00. She was so excited to see her actual Kaiser doctor, Dr. Moreno, often on that show promoting his 17 Day Diet book and weight loss program. She shared her oranges and vegetables with him, too. If her eyes were clear enough, she would also read the paper during the day. Her frail body could not do too much in these later years.

But life for her was very different many years ago. She lived in and was married in a small village in Hungary where she had her daughter Irene. Today the family tree has a limb with Granddaughter Sylvia and even Great Grandchildren Adam and Palma. Irene is a splitting image of her mom but she speaks no English. Thru the magic of the internet, we were able to reconnect again after many decades apart. I printed their Hungarian emails and had my mom translate them. Growing up I could understand Hungarian but the nuns at St. John of the Cross Catholic School told my parents to speak more English around us. While living there, she hand made many beautiful and colorfully decorated hemp fiber linens on looms. These are now family treasures considering the time, effort and skill to produce one.

Coming to America on the final voyage of the Queen Mary before it became a troop transport in war times, moms travels brought her to Ohio and then to Las Vegas in the 1940’s. Her bubbly personality and gift of gab earned her good commissions selling clothes at Ronzoni’s Dept. Store, but she had to exist virtually being a slave. She lived in a dingy basement that was so damp she had to brush the mildew off her shoes every few days and had to endure continual sexual harassment as we would now call it. Then she became a casino shill playing with the casinos money, yelling and screaming when a jackpot hit, to lure other people in to play.

She arrived in California and was a caretaker for Mr. & Mrs. Mentall in La Mesa. She was finally treated very well. And this was now becoming the Fabulous Fifties. She married my dad Frank and I was born in 1949 when she was 35 years old and my brother Bob was born in 1953 when she was 39. So most strangers thought we were grandkids because of the classic white Szalay hair, which I also inherited!

Life was good. My dad was a milkman having a very tough route on Mt Helix. Mom stayed home and did all the things moms did in those days raising a family. She never learned to drive. She loved walking and went to Lemon Grove often, even for just a spool of thread. In her late 70’s, she would even walk with grandson Greg so he could get an ice cream at Thrifty’s. In the 1960’s I began raising and selling tropical fish. My mom ran the “nursery” raising and caring for the baby fish. She raised tens of thousands of angelfish. It required hatching baby brine shrimp to feed them. She rotated several glass milk bottles from Carnation Dairy starting new batches of shrimp each day. She would even get up in the middle of the night to feed the baby angelfish. And she also helped me with the T-Shirt business for 35 years until her arms became too weak to fold and stack hundreds of silkscreened shirts.

Sadly my dad passed away at home in 1974 and her love for him was so great she never wanted to remarry. Her other son Bob loved fast cars and off-road racing and lived a wild life before passing away in 2006. Bob was an incredibly talented powder coating painter. Bob’s son Greg shares his passion for adventure, hunting and motorcycle racing.

My mom loved the outdoors. For many years she maintained that huge yard tilling the soil with just a spading fork, shovel and hoe. Look closely at that well maintained soil in the pictures. A push reel mower was used on the lawn. And hand operated grass edgers and pruners were her choice. As she advanced in years it became difficult to spade that much area. So we just recently began using roto-tillers, weed-eaters, leaf-blowers, gas lawn mower and drip irrigation. Heaven forbid!

There has been gardening there continually since 1947! People used to drive all the way from Point Loma to buy their sweet oranges and fresh eggs. Her flowers and oranges have won many awards at the County Fair, but she just loved sharing her crops with friends and relatives. You may notice that she is being buried with her favorite pruners in one hand and a rosary in the other. Even though the doctors provided an aluminum walker for her lately, using her wood cane or two redwood walking sticks was how she shuffled around her yard. Those are also with her in the coffin.

She has lived in that same house all these years and was doing well until just recently. At 96 she has outlived almost all her neighborhood friends. Its so sad to push the lever on her telephone directory and see almost every name has been scratched out. The Christmas card list I came across is the same way, even though her crippled up hands made writing cards very hard. I hoped she would make it to 100 to get that Certificate letter from the White House. But she said “I don’t want no letter from that damn Obama!” By memory I counted 46 of her neighbors up and down the street that we knew when I was growing up. In El Cajon I only know about 6 of my neighbors after 25 years. She was so fortunate to live her life in what I feel were better times than now.

Her death came at 3:45 pm, Monday, March 7, 2011 at Kaiser Hospital on Zion Ave from pneumonia complications. That’s about 50 years longer than Dr. King predicted when she had a series of heart attacks about 1960. She was sharp right up to that final day and the doctors and nurses admired her. I told her many times that I love her and asked if she was in any pain or needed anything. She nodded no. A couple hours after I left, the doctor called and asked me if I was sitting down. No more needed to be said. I had just lost the Greatest Mother in the World as the poster my brother gave her one year said.

I love and miss you mom. I’m sharing a lot of your pictures with people even though you told me not to because you are so wrinkled. I don’t think they care about wrinkles. You are one fantastic person and I am so thankful to be your son.

Your loving son, Dave