Spring Shawl Progress

THe Yarnmarket Shawl is really fun to knit. Lots of short row shaping involved. Feels like cheating when I don't have to finish an entire row....I am beginning, now, to see it take shape.


So here's the little Hungarian story as promised days ago:

My father's grandparents and his father and brother all came through Ellis Island. They came over in steerage. They were Poor immigrants hoping for the new life in America. My father's Uncle Joe played the Push Me Pull Me or the accordion as they say. Uncle Joe had hydrocephalus, or as they called it water on the brain.

Apparently Uncle Joe played so well, that word spread to the upper levels of the ship. Joe was asked to play for the elite on the ship. Night after night he played as they danced and dined. The story goes that he was well fed for his accordion playing.

When they got to Ellis Island, his large head was all too prominent and he was refused entry as his family's greatest fears appeared realized. The story goes, then, that some physicians who Joe had entertained on the long trip over to America convinced the Ellis Island authorities to give Joe a simple math test. If they could convince them he was educable and not a hindrance to society, he could go with his family and make a new life. Of course, he succeeded.

So by the grace of music, and goodness of humans around him, Uncle Joe entered the U.S. and became a citizen. He lived well into his 50s. He was a teen at the time he came to Ellis Island.

We have a couple of photographs of him and his head is very oversized and large. The story goes, that his mother was kicked by a cow when pregnant and that is what they attributed his defect to-

Interesting Eh? I think they were an incredibly brave family to journey so far with the chance they may not get into the US. That side of my family is bold though, and they speak their minds. There you have my little Hungarian story on Irisheyes.