| OCR Text |
Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Nag Unregenerate into Reform born in Hungary. Tell us what to do." My dear Mary, this Is really a predicament; your mother as well as your father is failing you. True, she did carry you youngsters through the hardest years, sacrificing sacrifi-cing and working for you, but she has no right now to impose this disreputable dis-reputable and disagreeable man upon you. If he will not pull himself together, to-gether, brace up, get a job any sort of job, and treat his children with the consideration they have so well earned, then I think you four are quite justified in asking that he live somewhere else. And yet, easy as that is to say, it is quite different to put into effect. Your mother will object strenuously strenuous-ly to such a change; and you are all too young to feel free yourselves. So my advice is to take your mother into your councils, and tell her how disturbed you are that the loved home she did so much to save is threatened by this irresponsible man. Nag them both steadily and constantly. He did not help to raise you; now you get together and raise him. "Stop being unreasonable, Dad. Don't use that tone, Dad. Say 'thank you' to Mom, Dad. Go put on a clean shirt, Dad. That's enough crabbing, Dad." He'll try not to pay attention. He'll have to. TILL YOU PLEASE tell US , " which is right, mother or ourselves?" writes 16-year-old Mary Kralisch of Minneapolis. "There are four of us, Joe, 20, Lisa 18, my twin brother Bill and myself. "Ten years ago my father deserted de-serted us. There was no trouble; no trouble, that is, that wasn't very common in the neighborhood where we lived. Everyone was poor, every flat was crowded, there were too many children screaming about; winters were one long nightmare of colds, fights, noise, money shortage, dirt, struggle of all sorts. We scrambled up as best we could, and the finest little mother" in the world stood by us. She used to put the big bucket of suds in the middle mid-dle of the kitchen every night, and everyone of us got scrubbed, although al-though mother was janitress of a thirty-apartment building and had plenty of scrubbing to do without worrying about us. Our clothes were clean, too, for school and church, anyway, and even when a meal was nothing but bread and milky tea, it was served in a tidy kitchen. "Bitter cold nights we had hot cocoa in bed, and in the burning hot summers mother always let us run pretty free, to find coolness and baths and watermelon and summer camps wherever generous people offered them. Fop Walks Out "That was the woman Pop walked out on, ten years ago. When Joe and Lisa got their first jobs, while still in high school, the first thing they did was move us away. We bought a double house near town, and mother had her own ground under her feet for the first time in her life. We all worked; In "... the big bucket of suds ..." war time we made as much as $200 a week. Bills got paid, and my mother never stopped saying how grateful she was for the peace of mind her children had brought to her. "Three months ago my father walked back into the kitchen. How he found us we don't know, but there he was. We were decent enough to him at first thinking he would get a job and contribute his share to the family finances and show by his attitude that he regretted re-gretted his disgraceful abandonment abandon-ment of us years ago. He Doesn't Work "But he hasn't done anything of the kind. He doesn't work, he criticizes criti-cizes everything, he wants the best of everything, he asks Joe and Lisa for money, and says openly that he is our father and that we ought to support him. This would be bad enough but mother's attitude makes it worse. She is a perfect slave to him, carrying in his coffee at ten o'clock, expecting us to respect him, and reminding us every little while that he is our father, and that she promised to love and cherish him until death parts them. She washes his clothes, cooks what he likes, and won't let anyone murmur any criticism. "Do you think we should put up with this? We have grown up without with-out a father's help, protection or affection. We knew years of privation, priva-tion, while mother struggled day and night to support us. We have gained happiness, self-respect, solvency, sol-vency, and the addition of this untidy, un-tidy, critical old man to our group ruins everything. Mother ' is 44, American born, my father it SO. |
