Paper Mill Town

by Jenny Gapinski

I begin to smell the stink from the paper mill when we’re a half hour away, after eleven hours in the car with my parents and two younger sisters. That acrid smell, sulfurous and smoky, invades my memory of visiting my grandparents in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania. I don’t think anyone who lives in Johnsonburg notices it, and after a week I can’t either—its only manifestation is the soot on the buildings and the cancer clinic in the nearest city.

The small neighboring towns in western Pennsylvania where my grandparents live are really nothing more than large factories with houses built in circles around them. Like almost everyone else in town, my grandfather and great uncles all worked at the paper mill in Johnsonburg for most of their lives. Besides the mill, the other main community gathering place in town is the Catholic church, an ornate cathedral whose marble entryway and stained glass windows stand in sharp contrast to the two-story wooden row houses of the people that support it.

My ancestors moved to Johnsonburg right off the ship from Poland sixty years ago and whole rows of houses are still filled with Gapinskis today. The smells of fried zucchini, sauerkraut, and the pickled herring called sledgie fill their houses as strongly as the odor from the mill. Whole
days are spent in Johnsonburg sitting on the front porch or playing gin rummy on the back porch when the afternoon sun gets too hot. This great aunt or that third cousin is always willing to serve Kool-Aid to us three girls and pop open a beer for my dad. Straub beer, brewed one town over, is as essential here as water.

My parents grew up in these blue-collar towns, dating through high school and then marrying right after college. My dad left his childhood of hunting deer in the mountains to attend college instead of following his classmates to the paper mill. My mother came from a strict, religious home; “when someone is working no one is sitting” was the family rule. She put herself through college when home economics was all the education girls could expect.

Now, every Fourth of July brings a trip back to “God’s Country,” as my father calls it. Our Ford minivan sticks out parked with trucks and dirt bikes on the Johnsonburg street. In my younger years I had looked forward to walking down these streets to the convenience store, or the barbecue at the county dam. By the time I was thirteen, though, all I could see was how lame and rundown the town was, how sadly uncultured the people in Elk County were. My grandmother scowled and called us “citified” even before I explained that I’m a vegetarian.

But years later, I’ve grown to appreciate Johnsonburg. Image is nothing in a small town like this. The people are humble and sacrificing, grateful for what they have. Family is their most important priority—two doors down, they’re always there to help, to share, or to celebrate with. Working hard at an honest job is expected; laziness is not an option. They show their zest for life even when times are hard, relaxing with a beer after along day or playing cards with a neighbor. The pride in community, the strong traditions—all of these values I take home with me when I return
to life in Massachusetts. I can’t wash them out like the paper-mill smell on my clothes, and I would never want to.

Jenny Gapinski wrote “Paper Mill Town” as a student at the Francis W. Parker School in
Devens, Massachusetts, at age seventeen.

Israel Is My Home

by Efty Sharony

I was at a loss. I realized that I didn’t want to leave for “my world” in America. This is where my family is. My father’s parents were Zionists, the group of people who believed in a Jewish state. They came as pioneers in the thirties. My mother’s parents came years later as survivors of the
Holocaust.

All of my family has served in the Israeli Army. My grandparents fought in the war of independence in ???and helped to build Israel. My grandfather also fought in ???and ????in the Six Day War, and then continued to serve in the civilian branch of the Army, the Haggah. My father fought in the Yom Kippur war.

I live in San Francisco and was raised in Los Angeles, but Israel is my home. No one is all that shocked as a bar is bombed. My family all gathers around the TV, a place where much of my visit was spent watching the violence unfold. I spent a lot of my time in the neighborhood that was hit,
specifically that block. Shenkin and the surrounding blocks is a young, hip neighborhood filled with local fashion designer shops, restaurants and bars. When we walked around there during the week, my cousin Anat kept saying, “They are going to come to Shenkin, it’s going to get hit.” She explained that it was a symbol of young Israeli creativity and prosperity—an obvious target.

I talked to Anat before I flew out to see what things were like. She described the nervousness and tension that engulfed even the smallest of crowds. At one point she said I might not even notice because I am not part of it. Once I got there though, the change was painfully obvious. On my first day in Israel, I drove with my cousins, ages nine and eleven, to our grandmother’s house. The whole drive they joked around, pretending to be suicide bombers. Every cab ride, fruit market visit and family gathering was a story of pain, grief and misery. We visited my parents’ best friends’ house on one of our last days there. They have a daughter, Liat, who is exactly my age and goes to the University of Jerusalem. She waitressed at a restaurant that was bombed.

On the day of the bombing, she was training a new girl. Liat’s tables were all full, so she offered the new girl the table of people that had just sat down by the door. When the trainee walked over to take their order, the suicide bomber walked in. The girl was killed. She was twenty-six years
old. Liat stood behind the bar, and the six people in front of her were killed in their seats. In all, eleven people died.

During Passover lunch at my grandmother’s house, my whole family sat around arguing about the situation. I asked questions, trying to get a feel of the conflict. When I asked how more violence was going to help anything, my eleven-year-old cousin who had been silent up until this point responded, “Efty, when you know someone who has been blown up, you will think differently.” He was right.

My head throbbed on the plane ride home. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how. I was already planning my return trip. This was my first trip to Israel in a year and half, since the terror began. I have always wanted to live in Israel for a period of time, but now there’s a greater sense of urgency. I feel like there’s a way I could contribute to a solution.

Now that I’m back, I don’t want to talk to my friends about my trip. It is difficult for me to digest everything and understand it myself, so how can I try to make someone else understand? I don’t want to have political conversations with people who aren’t from there. I loathe the abstract
American political conversation, buried in ideology. The conversations I had with my family and friends in Israel were real and valid. This issue isn’t political for me, it’s about my family, my people’s home. How can I talk about it with someone who sees it as the newest protest topic? In one conversation, I asked my grandmother what she made of what’s going on. She simply stated that she had been through the Holocaust. Her husband, my grandfather, spent three years in Auschwitz and when he got out, fought for the state of Israel as long as he was needed. She just thinks that she deserves to have a place to call home.

During another meal at my grandmother’s home, Anat asked my grandmother if she had found out more information about her Polish citizenship. I was shocked. It seems that some survivors of the Holocaust are trying to find documentation of their birth in Poland to grant them and their families Polish citizenship. This would be a place to go to in case the situation in Israel deteriorates beyond control. My parents explained to me that Israelis are cynical about where things are headed and that returning to Poland isn’t an entirely serious option.

But the possibility that my family would have to abandon our home in Israel never occurred to us before this latest trauma. The idea of my family returning to the place where most of our ancestors were slaughtered only intensifies my feelings of hopelessness.

I remember being a little girl in Israel and finally being old enough to go on the patrol with my grandfather. I got to stay up until one o’clock in the morning, driving around the perimeter of the city with him and the other men. I remember how proud I was walking around with his rifle. I felt safe and secure. I want to feel like that about Israel again.

Efty Sharony’s essay “Israel Is My Home” was published in Youth Outlook (YO!) magazine.

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