My Life and Times · Chapter 2 of 10

Childhood in Rīga and Cēsis

Now back to my own life story. The first two years of my life were spent in Torņukalns (Tower Hill), a suburb of Rīga. My father, Mārtinš Sirlaks, and my mother Emma Smukulis were both born about 8 km from each other: my mother in Vecrauna (Old Rauna) and my father in Jaunrauna (New Rauna). Their education was (I estimate) equivalent to about the 4th grade of elementary school. They married fairly young and left for Rīga to look for greater opportunities. At first they both worked in menial jobs, but then my father opened a tavern while mother stayed at home as a housewife. When WWI started in 1914, they left Rīga to escape the anticipated disruptions and disturbances of war and went to Cēsis, which was the closest sizeable town to the area in which most of their relatives lived (“dzimtu pagasts”).

At first we lived in a rented house in the Vinterkalns area, several km outside of Cēsis. The road passing near the house led to Bērzaine high school, where I and my sisters Biruta and Mirdza spent 4 years. The house was on a hill, with a path leading down to a stream. The stream provided a place for all kinds of playtime activities for us and the neighbor kids. Mirdza was born in this house. My mother (Māte) fed her cream of wheat, which I considered a great delicacy. Usually, I only got to lick the bowl.

Eventually, my parents bought a house in Cēsis – Lielās Katrines (Katherine the Great) Street number 13. At first we lived upstairs. The rest of the house was rented out. I remember a music box there – once it started by itself to play “God Bless the Czar” (Note: the national anthem of Czarist Russia). Māte was downstairs in the yard, and hearing this music, she came charging up the stairs, scared to death. Often wandering in the streets were armed groups of anti-government revolutionaries (Communists). They could have put us in jail or even had us shot for being Czarist sympathizers. Mate stopped the music box before anyone heard it. I also remember that we were all sick with the flu (Note: In 1919 a worldwide flu epidemic killed 20 million people). Since everyone was sick in bed, it was difficult to even get a drink of water. However, we all recovered.

My parents opened a tea house in the present day Rožu Laukums (Square of Roses). In those days it was fashionable to drink tea, not coffee. People drank it very hot, glass after glass. The teahouse was full of young men in soldier’s uniforms. I remember they wore fuzzy hats made of sheep’s fur. These were boys far from home and the teahouse must have seemed more homelike than the army barracks. They could also eat “rupmaize” along with the tea. I should point out that the tea was real black tea, that is, it had as much caffeine as coffee. Mirdza and I marched every morning and in hand to the teahouse for breakfast. In those days, children’s underwear did not have any elastic bands but were held together with buttons and clasps. I was never taught how to fasten these and one time when Mirdza and I were going to the teahouse, her underwear kept slipping down around her ankles the whole time. It must not have looked very nice.

I remember one incident when my father’s mother had driven to our house in a horse-drawn wagon from Raunas Vīstuči. She lived with on a farm with my father’s brother Dāvis (the father of our cousin Velta, who now lives in Canada). In the wagon at her feet were placed various garlands of pine branches. She had heard rumors that my father (Mārtinš) had died. (Note: Pine garlands were placed into graves at graveside funerals). She had woven the garlands crying and grieving the whole time, and still crying, had driven to our house in Cēsis. She climbed out of the wagon and said “Where is papa?” “In the house” I said calmly, because I was preoccupied jumping hopscotch with another girl. “So he hasn’t been taken to the funerary yet?” she asked. When she opened the front door to the house, my father greeted her “Sveiki, māte (hello mother) I see you have come to visit.” Again lots of crying but this time from joy. My father had a great story to tell after that.

My pre-school years were carefree, spent playing with the renter’s kids. We played hide-and-seek, hopscotch, walked on stilts. In our yard beside the main house was a smaller house which had a stable attached to it. In the second story was kept hay, which was tossed down for horses through a trapdoor hole, I used this hole during hide-and-seek games. When they came looking for me, I pulled myself up into the hay loft. The kids never could find me there. In the summer, we went to the river Gauja, which was nearby. Along with her own children, a neighbor woman came along to watch us. She was a seamstress – an unstructured profession – so she had the time to come with us. It was only 3 km to the Gauja, but we walked slowly and it usually took us an hour. There were separate swimming places for men and women, because everyone went naked. In those days, no one had swimming suits. One time, after a heavy rain, a girl was caught by the current and carried away. She could no longer reach the bottom with her feet. I was a distance downstream with the other girls. I waded in until only my toes were touching the sand and tried to reach out to her. As she went by, she barely could grab my outstretched fingers but that was enough and I pulled her ashore. So I saved a life. During my entire time at school, she was very nice to me. The other incident that I remember was once when we went to the Gauja by ourselves without the neighbor woman. The river was often used to transport logs by floating them downstream. This time, the river was full of tree trunks that were floating along with the current. We went upstream a ways, then mounted one of the logs as on a horse and yelling and screaming rode the log downstream. As it happened, the log rotated and spilled us into the water. Under water we could see all kinds of little fish and water plants. Fortunately, there were no underwater currents or quicksand and we were able to get to the surface. We went home by a different route – a dry riverbed paralleling the main road. In the meantime, a woman had rushed up to Māte and told her that several children had drowned in the Gauja. Terrified, she left the store in charge of father (who usually sat in the corner nipping from the bottle) and went running down to the swimming place on the river. However, because we had come home by this other way, she did not meet us on the way there and the swimming place was also deserted and quiet. By the time mother got home, she was almost faint from anxiety and the physical exertion. We were already home, so to calm her nerves, she gave us a lashing with switches (žagari; thin branches from a bush, very painful) on the backs of the legs.