Marli Szpaller in a new homeland: "Never call me 'honey'"

Marli and Elton Szpaller, 1964. The red dress was
her engagement dress.

My mom has always been a hard worker, and I liked hearing her talk about her first jobs in the U.S., working at a matchbook factory and then sewing for Neiman Marcus.

Here's a short explanation of a couple Portuguese words: "Tivó" and "Tivô" are terms of endearment that loosely translate into "Auntie-gram" and "Uncle-gramp." They were my parents' sponsors to the U.S., and they became like second parents to my folks.

Here's a link to the first story from my mom, one about leaving Brazil. And now, her leap into earning a paycheck.

"In Dallas, we went to Tivó and Tivô’s house, and we stayed there at first until we found an apartment. Tivó would pick me up just about every day. “Bring the laundry and come.”

For the first couple months, I don’t think I worked, and then I went to work at the factory where Tivô was one of the managers, and the name was Atlas Match Corporation. They produced those little match books, and so my job was to close these little books as they came out and put them in little boxes, so many per box. That’s what I did until I got something better, and I started learning English, which I didn’t want to open my mouth for three months. I thought I would not speak until I spoke really well. Talk about being naïve, especially with the English language.

But I really enjoyed grammar when I was going to school in Brazil, and I enjoyed my Portuguese. I knew what speaking properly was, and I just didn’t want to say anything because I was afraid people would laugh. So it took me about three months. Then I woke up. I thought, well, your dad is speaking. He is speaking however it comes out, but he is learning. So I decided it’s about time to learn.

I think I was at Atlas for not too long of a time, but I would go the bathroom sometimes and cry because I just didn’t like what I was doing. Of course, I’d never been in that situation before, but all the people there were very nice. You’re going to laugh a little bit at this story. This woman who was my supervisor was a very nice lady, a very jolly type of person. She kept taking the broom, and she would sweep a little bit, and look at me. I understood what was happening. Every day at the end of the day someone would sweep the floor in the area where we worked. She came and she asked me to do it. But I was determined I was not going to sweep. I was not a janitor. I made gestures, like, I don’t know. And I just didn’t understand what she was saying. So she gave up. I think she ended up sweeping, and I never swept the place. Another lady would bring in a bologna sandwich with that lettuce that we don’t eat, iceberg, and something I learned with her and I still love ‘til this day, those corn chips. She brought that every day, and whenever I smell iceberg lettuce, it takes me back to Atlas Match.

So that’s what came first. Hey, it was an hourly wage, but that’s fine. It brings some money on the table. Then, I don’t quite recall how I got my job at Neiman Marcus, but I know Tivó is the one who found the ad in the paper and took me to apply. She knew I could do something better. So I got the job there working in the alterations department because back home I took fashion design and I knew how to sew, I was capable of drawing patterns and sewing and all that kind of stuff. So I was the youngest person there in the department with very, very nice ladies. A lot of them could be my aunties and some of them my mom, and they all took me under their wings. Really, I have no bad memories of anything any of the days I spent working there at that factory and then at Neiman Marcus in alterations.

It was a very, very good experience, and I worked there for at least three years until we moved to Oregon. They had a nice lunch area at Neiman Marcus, and I made friends. A lot of people from Cuba worked there, and I became friends with a couple of them. I always admired them and their ambition just to have things, and what they would do as far as working. I don’t know how I spoke, but I remember a little older lady who was Italian. She was a very refined woman, always dressed very, very nicely. Looking back I’m sure she was a very fine seamstress in Italy just because of the way she always presented herself. Her dress was always impeccable. She spoke only Italian, it didn’t matter who she was talking to. So all of a sudden, I was translating Italian to the other people with my broken English. Talking about adventure. But I really enjoyed working there and the environment.

Mr. Marcus is someone that I have always admired. At that time, remember, we were in the ‘60s, and he had black people working for him. I remember this man, he was a little bit chubby, he used to work in the stock room, and all of a sudden he is wearing suits and he was trained to be a salesman because he was so good at what he did. So Mr. Marcus used to do that. It was amazing to see, and he did a lot to help different people. He was very good to his employees. He was Jewish, but every year, he had a beautiful Christmas program for the employees. It’s where I first heard “O Holy Night.” One of the employees sang it. She was a black woman, tall, slender, had a voice of gold.

I enjoyed a lot working there, and I was working with people who knew how to do beautiful sewing, and I made nice clothes for myself. I remember a little purple suit I made, wool suit, and it was the cutest thing.  So I continued to learn that with the people who worked over there even though sometimes I felt like, you know, I was working with too many older people, but they were so nice, all of them. And one of my supervisors, I can see her face, too, she didn’t remember anyone’s name. She was older, so she used to call everyone honey. I got so tired of honey. I told your dad, never call me ‘honey.’"

Leaving Brazil, with Marli Szpaller: "I felt like I was free."

Here's my mom's story of leaving Brazil. She wasn't bluffing when at first, she told my dad she wouldn't go. I think my favorite part is how she goes so quickly from grieving after leaving her family to curiosity about being on an airplane.

One of my mom's stories inspired the first piece I posted here, the nut of a book proposal.

"I don’t recall exactly when your dad told me, but I recall telling him I wasn’t coming to the States. And then, he said he was going to come anyway. I thought, well, I’d better change my mind here.

Just think about it. I was very sheltered. I was protected there by Dad and everything. Think about going to a different world, a different country. So my first reaction was no, I’m not going to go. Then it was my dad’s turn. He called me into his little office, shut the door, and told me, Marli, you don’t have to marry Elton. You know that don’t you? I am pretty sure I told him I loved your dad, and I was going to go. I said I knew I didn’t have to marry him, but I wanted to marry him. I loved him. And he was going to go, and I was going to come along. Crazy.

  

We had been together for three years then, and we were engaged. So my dad probably wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing and make sure I wasn’t going just because I was going with your dad for so long. I don’t really have words to tell you what he said back to me, but I’m pretty sure he settled. OK. She knows she doesn’t have to marry him, but she wants to go.

I think Vovó had a different view. Vovó, I don’t think she got the whole picture, maybe. Wow. This is the way it’s going. My daughter is going so far away. I almost feel like because she was so busy, she had just had Marcia, she was with all those children, I don’t think she really had a chance to absorb everything until after I left. Just a few years before she passed away, she told me she cried for a whole year after I left. That made me cry. But she never told me at the time. She was such a strong woman.

I tell you one thing. When I was home growing up, I was always very, very  independent, and I could never be independent. I wanted to be independent. It’s almost like I always wanted to go somewhere, but I was being held back because my dad was very protective to the point of being too much, as you know. So I think once I had the chance or the opportunity, I’m going to explore, I’m going to learn. I always wanted to continue my education and learn more. I’m sure all this crossed my mind. Once we got married and I left, I felt like I was free. I could do anything.

First of all, I had to get married. So that’s what I did. We had to get a wedding going, and everything related to it. It was a lot of commotion going on because of our wedding. I was very involved in that and your dad was so excited. All he talked about was coming over. I think for him, the wedding was secondary. We talked about it and we decided, I wish we hadn’t, to tell people not to give us any wedding gifts. Give us money. And I'm sorry we did because I still have a couple pieces, gifts, that people gave us anyway.

We got married in July, and on our honeymoon, we went to Curitiba to get our papers because we needed to have our certificate of marriage and get the papers going. August, a month later, we left. We just came with our everyday clothes. That’s all. And to be honest with you, I don’t think we put much thought into what we are going to do when we get there. Your dad was confident he was going to work. Anything. I was very sheltered. I was very naive. I didn’t really think about it. Am I going to work? What am I going to do? No. I did not. Once we got here, then is when I started thinking because then of course the need comes up, right?

I didn’t even think of the airplane flight until the day came, you know. I had never flown before. I was excited. Yeah, I was excited. Today I look back and I say, I was not afraid at all. I was sad to leave my family. I cried all the way from Curitiba to either São Paulo or Rio. I cried all the way on that flight. All the way. And then from there to the States, I decided I wanted to explore. So I would go to the bathroom and open everything, every little compartment I could open to see what was there because everything was so different and new.

It was interesting. That’s why sometimes it’s good to do things when you are very, very young because you don’t think too much about it."

Part IV: "Lo and behold ... an affidavit"

I wanted to hear about when my dad told my mom about his plans to head to the United States. I’ve known he always wanted to leave Brazil, and she didn’t want to, at least at first. But I wasn’t sure how it all went down. Here’s Part IV of his side of the story; here's Part I, Part II and Part III. I’ll add my mom’s recollections later.

"As I dug more and more into this concept of going to the United States, I couldn’t help but talk to everybody about it. That’s all I talked about. I was like a broken record. Get the papers. Get the papers.

I had a good friend that he was a couple years older than me, and we went to the same school. He was a good kid, and he ended up getting married to this young lady, the daughter of a wealthy fella that owned a department store right downtown Ponta Grossa. They had a ranch in the country, a house on the beach.

And he had no freedom because he had to live at the apartment the father-in-law gave him across the street downtown from where the store was. And guess what we’re going to do this weekend as a family? We’re all going to go to this fazenda, this ranch, and barbecue. What do you think they’re going to do next weekend? They’re going to go to their place at the beach.

This guy was tied every which way. He loves the girl, but that’s not the point. He’s not a happy guy. I love my mom and I love my dad, but I look at his life, and I say, is this really what I want for me?

One thing I didn’t talk about, but it was very high inside my head, is that my father was first elder of the church. (That's Augusto Szpaller, pictured in his military garb above.) He evolved over time, and I have to give him credit, but if you turn the clock back, he was a very conservative man. So now I have the church to contend with. And OK, I’m not really a moviegoer, even to this day. Your mom and I went to see the War Horse, by the way. The point is, once in a while I would go to the movies. And you cannot do that if you are an Adventist. And if you turn the clock back 40 years, almost 50 years ago, it is as a matter of fact that 50 years ago, I create problems for him. See what I mean? But I don’t have a problem with movies. Particularly in those days, they were so conservative, silly, simple movies that’s not even funny. But all of that plays a role in terms of I don’t have my latitude. I want to be able to be free, and I don’t feel like I’m free here.

What’s the long short of this whole story? All of this is in my head, and it doesn’t matter who I talk to. I talk to everybody about the United States. So undoubtedly your mom knew that all along. That was not something that I just broke open one day like you break an egg, and there it is. That was near and dear to me, and I’m talking to everyone about it, and I’m writing to people about it.

She knew about it. She was namorando with me at her own risk because I was unwavering in my determination. I really don’t remember when I talked to her, but she clearly knew all along. This was no secret.

And eventually, lo and behold, here comes this beautiful document in the mail, and I have an affidavit. The affidavit is now a serious business. I believe the affidavit had a time lapse, six months or something. And either I can exercise or I can waive that. So that’s when that major dreadful encounter took place.

By now, everybody knows, not just my family, but cousins, uncles everyone. You have to remember, jets just started flying in those days. That’s how far back in history this goes. This is significant. When you go on a trip like this, you have high heels, you have fancy tuxedos. It’s like you’re going to a White House party. Travel like this is unheard of. So everybody knows that I now have the papers.

So I go to her. I have the papers in my hand. That I clearly remember, very, very clearly. I said, I have to act on the papers. And that means getting my passport and going to the American Consulate office in Curitiba. I have to meet with the American Consulate, go through the process, and hopefully get a visa. The tickets have already been bought, so then I’m on to the United States. So I need to talk to you.

Leaving Brazil, with Elton Szpaller, Part III

Marli and Elton Szpaller, 1964

Here's Part III with Elton Szpaller on leaving the United States. If you missed it, here's Part I and Part II. I talked with my dad this week about how he broached the news to my mom and her family, and that piece will come next.


"So back to my father, in a very dreadful, long answer, I told him no. I don’t want to assume responsibility for the books when I have my foot in the door to get into law school, if I don’t get the papers. If I get the papers, I go to the United States.

Those conversations, we had it in the living room, but not with Vovó, your grandma. She would be out there crying in the kitchen. The last thing she wanted was for me to go to the States. She liked your mom a lot, but she couldn’t fathom her son doing that.

We had no TV, but my father listened to five minutes of international news that always came at 12:55 p.m., and it was called Reporter Esso. The 12:55 gave him a peek at the world, the international news. It would be like the BBC. He had three papers that came to the house. Two daily papers and I think it was like a weekly Ukrainian paper, maybe two Ukrainian papers. Two daily papers came from Ponta Grossa, Jornal da Manha, Daily Morning, and Diardio Dos Campos.

I knew where we came from, who we were, how we ended up there from Ukraine. We made many trips to Ivai. It was just a little subset of the Ukraine in Brazil where my father came from. At the time, naquela época, não tinha blacktop.

It was 100 km from where we lived, and if the cow peed on the road, you had to put chains. It was a mess. There was dust everywhere. We get there, and all these people talk Ukrainian. My Tio Nicolau corresponded with people in the Ukraine in Ukrainian.

It was just natural for me to think that way, to think that there was more to the world than the place I was born. That’s not the only place for me.

In order to entice me to stay in Brazil, I believe, Vovô had already bought two lots for your mom and I maybe three miles from the house on the way toward Curitiba. It was a whole brand new development, Jardim Europa. He bought not one lot, he bought two lots so the property would be very attractive, very nice, we could build a large house. He gave that to me. He outright gave that to me.

He was a very sensible guy, and I remember a conversation we had in which he explained all of these things to me and all of the opportunities. His credit rating was absolutely No. 1. He bought his steel supply straight from a source in Minas Gerais, and they exported to Russia and other countries. There was no middle man. You don’t get any better price than straight from that.

The competitors did not have a ghost of a chance. He owned his property so there was zero cost of real estate. You can’t go wrong. It’s just expanding these things. There was a company called Osternack, a mini Home Depot, and they were very concerned about my father. They were concerned about my father evolving into a big competitor and killing them, which he was prepared to do it.

But he wanted my help, and I wasn’t interested in expanding it. My father was never money driven, yet here he saw a major opportunity to control the market in the south of Parana. It was a bold vision, but doable.

I said no. I still want to go to the States, but my father questioned what I would do.

What do you have to offer? You cannot do bookkeeping there. What are you going to do?

I have no idea what I’m going to do.

But it gets worse. By now you’re engaged. It’s one thing for you to go do crazy things, but to take someone else’s daughter, that complicates the issue tremendously. Help me understand how you are going to pay the rent and put food on the table.

First of all, I don’t know.

Well that answer is not good, so you’ve got to have another answer.

Well, people eat in restaurants, dishes get dirty. Somebody has to clean that. Sooner or later, someone has to sweep the streets.

You have to think in the context of the Brazilian mindset. It’s not as bad as India with the class, but Brazil does have class, don’t kid yourself. It’s status of not skin but education.

And my father had class. He rubbed shoulders with the mayor and all the people in City Hall and the senators and the congressmen and the top dogs with the Catholic church and the Adventist church. It was a real irony because his business was really blacksmith and a machine shop guy but he was the sharpest looking guy in town with the most brilliant pair of shoes on his feet. That’s the way he was. You go from that status and a son that is educated and about to set foot into law school and, we were not rich, but I think you would have to say we were living an upper middle class.

And now his son is going to wash dishes in a restaurant? Give me a break. He could have exploded right? He could have had real blood pressure and gone through the roof. But he sat back and said, OK. 

Let me understand this right. You want to go to this country so bad that you are prepared to subject yourself to washing dishes in a restaurant to put food on the table and pay your rent?

Yes sir.

Ok. Then how can I help you.

I said, as soon as I get these papers, you could buy me the tickets and that could be a big help. He said, you got it."

Leaving Brazil, with Elton Szpaller, Part II

Here's Part II with Elton Szpaller on leaving the United States. If you missed it, here's Part I.

Elton and Marli Szpaller in Ponta Grossa, 1964

"I had just finished what actually would be the equivalent of high school, but in Brazil, even particularly at that time, it was a different system. It was more along the lines of the French educational system. So my next step would be to go to law school. The choice I made of where to go from elementary school granted me the right. I was called a contador, a public accountant, and that means the thing that I studied was essentially to manage the books.

It was the business side of life. I knew balance sheets, profit and loss statements, how to reconcile the books, and on and on and on. Also, I had something which I’m trying to think of the name, but it would be a word that predated computers. Automation. So we had to learn the latest in terms of equipment that would run an office. So I graduate from that, and I’m now taking what’s called an entry class to prepare me to get into law school.


But. But. I am entitled now to sign as a public accountant, if you please, on somebody’s books, because I have graduated from an institution. So here’s what my father wanted to do. All his books were maintained by a CPA, and the guy had a very large practice, and he was a wonderful guy and he was also by the way not only a business associate of my father, but he was my professor of accounting at the place where I went to school.


So my father’s first step in this journey is to take the books away from him and set up an office and have me to do that. I would say that’s that window of time when I was entitled to do that and I could have done that, and I was capable of doing that. If you look at my cousin Edith, her irmão, that’s precisely what he does. He finished that same course, and he established a practice, and he has it to this day in the suburbs of Ponta Grossa.


So I am at a crossroads, and I am trying to get into law, and I am facing this quote unquote option by my father to start taking care of his books in accounting. And I am reluctant to do it because I had been fussing with the United States for some time. I’m writing to people. Vovô knows that. He knows that. I think maybe he’s hoping somewhere in the back of his mind that this kid is going to grow up and nothing is going to happen.


On top of that, I landed a very good job that took me to actually Guarapuava, maybe 150 km from Ponta Grossa. The point is I’m now making decent money. I bought a car. And now I’m getting serious with this young lady, but my father wants to get me into his shop. In the meantime, I think I was in my last year of school, I found something else out.

Facit calculator Elton Szpaller used daily.

I’ve been friends with this guy Osmar for years, the youngest little guy that was brother to Esther, Mama Jordan. The company that I was hired to work for was probably the largest distributor in the state of Parana for Olivetti Underwood. At that time, they were pretty much the IBM of the world. They had an entire rostrum of equipment, typewriters to very sophisticated accounting machines. So I got hired in there, and so did my friend.

We were talking at the corner right downtown in Ponta Grossa when I found out that he had a sister in Dallas. I knew he had three other sisters. So did your mom. But we never knew about Esther.

I’m telling him, I’m fed up with Brazil, and I’ve got to find my way out. Brazil is not it. And he listens, he listens, he smokes. So he’s smoking a cigarette, puffing on a stupid cigarette, and pretty soon he goes, I have a sister in Dallas, Texas.

I just about killed him.

When that happened, I said, Osmar, you have no choice. You have to go. Your mission is to go, and No. 2, once you go and are situated, within a year, you get me into the United States as well. So it’s a one two punch.

So we wrote a letter to the sister, and we dropped it in the mail the following day. Six months or so later, Papa sent him the affidavit, and off he went to the United States."

Leaving Brazil, with Elton Szpaller, Part I

Here's Part I with Elton Szpaller on leaving Brazil for the United States: 

"I made a decision to come here for a number of reasons, and I’ve never had any regrets. Not then, not now. Never ever.
Your mom used to fuss with the idea. We took a month off one time, predominantly in the Parana and São Paulo area. And the question is, right, do we want to come back? Do we want to live here? The answer was no. So we put that to bed, more so your mom. Today I think you would find her completely unwavering to any idea of going back. I had already decided that before I came. The day I arrived, it was 100 percent validated.
The difference is, I am now 20-something years of age, and for half of my life, I’m reading about the United States. If I was good at anything in school, I was good in social science. I knew every country in the world. I knew a bit as a kid about their geography, their natural resource, their standing in the United Nations, the pecking order, and the early stages of Israel as a little nation and the problems in the Suez Canal. People got the biggest kick about talking to me.
My playground was my father’s blacksmith shop. I had no kids to play with. I played in the shop. Who was in the shop all the time? It was all adults talking with my father. They were talking about problems in the Suez Canal and the Secretary of the United Nations. So I knew about the world.

Then I go to academy, and I was responsible for cleaning the library so I spent quite a bit of time looking at things like National Geographic. I loved the pictures. I can tell a quality of life by the pictures, by the ads of cars. I used to go page by page on National Geographic. I don’t know how long I was supposed to spend cleaning the library, but I spent more time looking at all those things.
Growing up, you’ve got to remember I was surrounded by people that were eastern European, predominantly Ukrainian and a few Polish on the side of my uncle and his side of the family, and then there were some other ones, customers of my father. They had left their homeland, so it wasn’t a new idea for me.
My father had all kinds of books on the war, the second world war. He was five years in the military. Five to 10 years after the war, everything was very fresh. Who was fighting whom? Why was Italy doing this? Why was Brazil in Italy? I knew the movement of people and nations and all that, and probably not much as data goes, but for my size and my element, I knew a ton. And so as that evolved, to me it was just non-negotiable, coming to the United States. I never had any questions about that.
Right around the window of time in which I was maybe 19 years of age, somewhere around there, I was at a crossroad of sorts because my father wanted actually to engage me at a serious level in his business. I wanted to leave Brazil. I’m namorando with your mom at the time, and your mom had this awakening because now things turned serious. But this thing with the United States had been brewing with me for a long time."

Hot on Hump day: Coffee! Beans! Deep Brazil!!

So I just found today a blog I'm adding to the roll here: Deep Brazil.

It's written by a journalist, Regina Scharf, and true to its name, it's full of glorious tidbits and posts that talk about the country in depth. So, in her words, beyond carnival.

Deep Brazil posted a link to a study based on 34,000 interviews (holy reporter notebooks!) that concludes the No. 1 "food" consumed in Brazil is ... wait for it ... coffee.  Beans are No. 2. What's No. 3? Rice. Naturally, because eating beans without rice is like wearing socks on the beach.

Anyway, I also learned that Frank Sinatra sang a song about the ungodly amount of coffee Brazilians can drink, and it ranked No. 6 in the U.S. Here's a couple stanzas:

The politician’s daughter
Was accused of drinking water
And was fined a great big fifty dollar bill
They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil


You date a girl and find out later
She smells just like a percolator
Her perfume was made right on the grill
Why they could percolate the ocean in Brazil

I actually love it when my guy smells like coffee, when the whole house does. I'm finishing a cup myself right now.