THE VILLAGE DRUNK

Betty used to tell me that her mother, Helen, said that she had come from Prague and that her entire family had died before she came to America.  Helen had said that her father was the town drunk.  Having been to Prague, I had imagined that he must have been a pretty big drunk, because Prague was a major city, even back then.

In 2002 I visited Ellis Island in New York Harbor and was able to search the electronic archive for the ship manifest that included Helen’s immigration records.  Based on the records, Helen was not from the actual city of Prague, but from Malé Čakovice, a village near the east-edge of the city. When Helen was living there, it would have been an independent village, and small enough that her father could have served the position as the town drunk.

Helen lived through World War I and experienced hard times and hunger, similar to Štefan, who was then living about 200 miles to the east in Drahovce.  She taught Betty that it was a sin to waist food, because she remembered being hungry during the war.

Here is a picture of the church in Malé Čakovice.  In 2004 we visited the village and tried to find the Ramba home. But we did not have enough information to pin point the location.