John, Lena and The Big Penny

He struck me as a mountain of a man, and she a gentle, dignified old soul. In my child’s eyes they seemed older than Adam and Eve, though amazingly left out of that familiar tale. In truth, he was about 90 years old, tall, once thicker, but now drawn and slowed by age. And yet, he stood and shuffled fairly erect with happy eyes and a peaceful, content demeanor. His wife Magdalena (a.k.a. Lena) was petite, a bit younger but frail and soon to be bedridden. Grandparents on my mother’s side, I experienced them only as a young child. However, I do remember shadowy vignettes, snapshots of smiles, their loving kindness, their touch, their physical pain and quiet longing for something I could not comprehend--something transcendent-- and soon to come.

John and “Lena” were both of Germanic stock, first generation native-born American citizens and proud of it. Here’s one way you could tell: as very young adults they married on the 4th of July 1887—the 4th being ‘quite the “doo’ in that day and age. Yep, “American as apple pie.” In a whimsical way it seems that significant dates—like getting married on a patriotic holiday—was important to him. To wit: born Christmas Eve 1866, he made it his business to retire on exactly that day 47 years later in 1934.

John Jacob Pfister (the surname morphed over time to “Feaster”) and Magdalena Witt sprang from a heritage that came to be known as “Pennsylvania Dutch”-actually “Deutche” meaning German--but skewed with the Americanization of the term. Farmer stock on both sides, their ancestors came from Germany in the late 1840’s to the rich and pregnant Pennsylvania farmlands.

The City of New Brunswick, NJ, where he was born, took its name from the Germanic Braunschweig also known as Brunswiek; the name referring to a trading hub or layover for merchants. True for the City of Braunschweig in Germany this was also the case for this bustling New Jersey town. During the 19th and early 20th Century New Brunswick became known as the “Hub City” and attracted a large number of German immigrants and native-born Germanic transplants from the farms of Pennsylvania.

John Feaster was a “Boatman” when he was a very young adult. He performed the duties of a longshoreman along the Delaware and Raritan Canal (a trade and early passenger route between New York City and Philadelphia). The canal connected his lifelong home of New Brunswick, on the Raritan River, northeast to New York and west to the Delaware River that conjoined Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Those days, longshoremen guided the boats laden with coal and other freight up and down the canal. They loaded and unloaded materials, sometimes hooking up horses to shepherd boats through the gates and along to the Raritan or Delaware rivers where they continued on to their final destinations.

Soon after their marriage, John took a job that kept him close to home at the New Brunswick Electric Distribution Department. He served as a fireman, engineer, operator and supervisor during his long career.

By 1900 John and Lena moved into a new home built on Jones Avenue. Here they would raise their family and live for the rest of their lives. Ultimately, John and Lena had fourteen children, only eight made it to adulthood, with only six alive by 1952. All that death included the horrific loss by fire of four-year old Lizzie in 1897. One can only imagine the sad and tragic burden of losing so many children this husband and wife of 68 years carried into old age. The flip side of that dark coin was the rich legacy of 27 grandchildren and 30 great grandchildren known to exist by their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary. Given all those grandchildren--that these ancients even recognized me--the olive-skinned German-Sicilian boy, as one of their grandsons--now seems quite remarkable.

Originally, what would become their lifelong home probably had gas lights for lighting. However, electric lighting was becoming ‘all the rage,’ and given John’s insider connections to the utility company, it is quite possible the home did shortly have electricity installed. The kitchen featured a long wood-fired stove for cooking and the home may have had minimal cold water plumbing to the enclosed back porch or the adjacent kitchen. There were no indoor bathrooms until installed by my father, a master plumber, sometime in the 1920’s; until then, the family used ‘chamber pots’ and an outhouse located in the backyard. I was told the family took frigid, winter trips to the outhouse where magazine and newspaper scraps were used as toilet paper.

In the 1950s, sturdy rectangular grates still existed in ceilings suggesting the original structure was heated only by coal, wood stoves or fireplaces—with the heat generated by these fixtures radiating through the large grates to the upper floors. On chilly nights the family heated bricks and placed them under sheets at the foot of the bed for warmth. Lena surrounded the house with hydrangea deep into old age, and there was a substantial grape vine providing shade, fresh fruit and canned jelly. In earlier years one imagines an herb and vegetable garden in the small, but sufficient, urban backyard.

In the 1950s, Lena’s foot-powered sewing machine sat in a corner catching the light from a nearby window. Its importance in creating and repairing outfits underscored by the quality of the equipment; for this was no common machine mounted on a cast-iron peddle base and wooden slab. This ancient ‘Singer’ combined both form and function; it sat atop an ornate metal peddle base surrounded by a practical yet proper piece of furniture, all nicely crafted and worthy of display.

These Feasters were pragmatic folks as demonstrated by their buying philosophy. My mother passed down and adhered to parental thoughts on the matter: “Don’t buy the lowest price item, because it’s cheap and probably won’t last. Don’t buy the most expensive item, it’s generally made very well, but overpriced. Buy something priced in the middle, the quality will be good and you won’t get cheated.” Amen.

John, dare I suggest like most German men, seemed to like his pilsner. Rumor has it he was known to return home on the weekends with a “pail” of beer—this container was probably a two-gallon galvanized bucket popular deep into the 20th Century. He told his children tales of a terrifying midnight encounter with a ghost at some long-forgotten intersection in New Brunswick. One can only speculate if this close encounter of the supernatural kind had anything to do with those pails of beer…but whatever happened, oral tradition has it he avoided this particular intersection for the rest of his life.

Both he, and after his death Lena, often surprised and treated their “nice little” German-Sicilian grandson with what she called “a Big Penny.” This was actually a 50-cent piece…a half-dollar! Doesn’t sound like much, but this was a fair amount of cash for a kid in the 1950’s. Trust me on this. You can do the math; 50-cents bought a lot of penny candy, nickel packs of baseball cards (which included a giant-sized piece of gum!) and dime sodas from the local corner store. Ahh…it all began to make sense: God gave us grandparents because He loves us and wants us to be happy…Thank you, thank you, thank you.

John’s funeral in 1955 was the first I attended. At age seven I had little concept of what was going on. I remember the sadness and the crowd of people at the funeral home. Mostly, I remember two things; one touched the senses, the other the soul. First, the sight and unique smell of the place, especially the perfumed beauty of the abundant Lilies and other cut flowers arrayed around the casket. Every funeral home since has touched both sight and smell in exactly the same way. A second was tactile, in both a familial and spiritual way. Mother advised, “After you say a prayer for grandpa and before you walk away, touch his hand one last time to say goodbye.” Who knows if that was a German tradition or a family thing, but I followed through. His hand was thick, cold and rigid, deeply familiar, yet something beyond touch and is with me still. I immediately assimilated this first parting ritual, repeating it countless times over the decades.

Lena lived four more years attended by her unmarried daughter with daily visits and help from my mother and other married sisters. Any talk of placing “mama” in a “home” was verboten. Bedridden, but loved and well cared for, I never heard bitterness, regret or complaint. She died peacefully at home, shortly after receiving the Catholic Church’s Last Rites, then called Extreme Unction. The candles and ritual accoutrements coming from a compartment inside the crucifix that hung over her bed. Then she, like her husband, so many of their children before them and the flowers that surrounded each of their caskets, returned to the dust and the Unity from which we all spring.

© 2022 Gerald R. Gioglio