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Skylarks and Rebels
My son Tālivaldis working on a batch of gingerbread cookies.
A small but resilient nation, it is miraculous that after all that Latvians have been through, we can still come together to sing, dance, and be merry. Wearing our traditional folk costumes, we are proud of our rich cultural heritage. I remain an idealist, even as modern-day Latvia struggles with its post-Soviet woes. Hopefully, things will improve. Recuperating from 50 years of foreign occupation and influence has been very difficult for many Eastern European countries.
I invite you, my reader, to visit my beautiful ancestral country Latvia, as well as its Baltic neighbors, Lithuania and Estonia. Good food and lovely cities, towns, countrysides, and unique monuments to fascinating histories and cultures await you. My sons and other members of my extended family live there, as do many dear friends. Latvia needs people; its schools need children; its cemeteries where our ancestors lie must be taken care of. Those of us who hail from Latvia must ask ourselves this question: who will take care of Latvia, if not us?
A winter wonderland… My first real “taste” of the beautiful Latvian countryside was in Piebalga, an area historically known for its artisans and writers. (Photo by Andris Krieviņš)
PART ONE:
New Jersey Latvian American Girl and Trimda (Exile)
1962: Seventeen years after the end of World War II. Here I am, a two-year-old Latvian American girl playing in the sand at the Jersey shore. The first language to touch my ears was Latvian. Jūra (“sea”), saule (“sun”), smiltis (“sand”)…
Hillside Haven
My grandparents (with the exception of my paternal grandmother) departed from Latvia in 1944 with aching hearts, singing the Latvian national anthem and hoping to return soon. Months in exile turned into years. After the Second World War my parents spent their teen to early adulthood years in DP (“displaced persons”) camps in defeated Germany before sailing to the United States, which had granted their families political asylum. In the New World my highly educated grandparents worked in various low income jobs and socialized with other Latvian refugees.
My parents, Baiba Bičole (b. 1931 in Rīga, Latvia) and Ilmārs Rumpēters (b. 1929 in Daugavpils, Latvia), were married in 1953 in Baltimore, Maryland. America felt strange and even alien to them at first, and they clung to each other for comfort and companionship. When my father was released from military service in San Antonio, Texas in 1954, they settled down in New Jersey near my grandparents. My older brother Arvils was born in 1955, followed by me in 1960, and my younger brother Artis in 1963. Thanks to the GI Bill, my father graduated from the Newark School of Fine Art and Industrial Design and went on to work for many years for a leading packaging design company on Fifth Avenue in New York City. My mother gave up college to take care of us and expressed herself through poetry.
I was born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1960, where my parents rented an apartment on Walnut Street. Later they moved into a rental property on Park Avenue (Parkavēnija in their tongue), which they shared with Mimmī and Tuks, my maternal grandparents, and Kārļonkuls (Uncle Kārlis), a relation on my father’s side of the family. What I remember most about the Park Avenue house (perhaps referred to by the neighbors as “the place with all those foreigners”) were the brilliant red climbing roses and dinnertime, when we all sat down together to eat.
I have early memories of Walnut Street and Park Avenue and their proximity to the church that Latvians rented in East Orange. In 1966 my parents bought a house in nearby Glen Ridge with a 10% down payment from money that my father had earned illustrating a Latvian “ABC” book commissioned by the American Latvian Association, an organization founded by Latvians in exile. In addition, his military service in the US Army entitled him to a lower mortgage. My parents were delighted to finally have a place of their own. East Orange, just south of Glen Ridge, would rapidly change in subsequent years, becoming a predominantly African-American community. American society was in a continuous state of flux, with immigrants climbing up the ladder of success.
My father painted our front door a bright crimson red, and we settled in. My brothers and I each had our own bedroom. My older brother later discovered some old documents hidden beneath the floor of our attic while snooping around: apparently our house was built around 1910 by a ship’s captain. It was a wonderful house with lots of woodwork and simple charm. A round porthole window in our mudroom attested to the original owner’s maritime adventures.
Glen Ridge is an affluent town wedged like a thin sliver between blue-collar Bloomfield and Montclair, a culturally diverse community with a lovely art museum, a university, and a wooded crest from which to gaze upon the skyline of Manhattan. Glen Ridge is famous for its antique gas lanterns, a good school system, and an excellent commute to New York City. It has its own Frank Lloyd Wright house, the Stuart Richardson house, a ten minute walk from where we lived. Our home, one of many Glen Ridge homes built in the early 20th century, was set on a shady, maple-lined street. Hillside Avenue runs beneath the Erie Lackawanna Railway and intersects Bloomfield Avenue, a busy street and bus route that connects depressed Newark with pretty suburban towns to the west, like Verona and Caldwell.
Life in white and predominantly white collar Glen Ridge provided my brothers and me with a large yard in which to play, exercise, and grow. There were trees and garage rooftops for climbing and feeling free. In his late teens, my older brother did crazy flips and stunts on the metal grape trellis. We played a lot of badmington in our yard. My father started a tomato and cucumber garden with the help of “the Senator” (my paternal grandfather). My parents planted a hedge of pink roses. Purple hyacinths, blue irises, and orange daylilies are some of the flowers I remember from the garden. Every summer my mother sowed zinnias for color. A lilac Rose of Sharon grew at the end of the garden path. Two dogwoods, pink and white, shaded our front veranda. In the summers there were cookouts with my parents’ Latvian friends. On hot summer nights we sat on our back porch looking at flickering mosquito candles and fireflies. My older brother played the guitar, while the Cicadas rattled their maracas in unison. You could always hear the Garden State Parkway humming in the distance, a couple of miles away. The old, gray house was simple, modest, and cosy.
There was an attic beneath the roof. A brown bearskin coat that my Opaps had once worn in Latvia hung on the wall at the foot of the attic staircase. His old smokings (“tuxedo”) from the fancy parties in Latvia before the war and my mother’s dresses were packed into a wardrobe that smelled of mothballs. Our guests slept in the attic bedroom with its wonderful view of the evergreen trees. In my teens I went up to that room to smoke, opening the window to air out the evidence. Later my mother slept there, when my parents’ marriage was disintegrating.
Our immediate neighbors were Americans of German and Italian descent, including a family allegedly linked to the Italian Mafia. The Schultes were a German-Italian union with four children. Mr. Schulte had all sorts of projects going on at home. At one time he kept geese in his garage. On occasion we raided his strawberry patch, so temptingly close. His wife, a teacher, had a very loud voice that could be heard calling the children home. In our household my mother used a small bell for that purpose.
Our other lively, loud Italian neighbors, Joe and Angie, had three daughters and a little white poodle named Shelly. The Schneiders next to us were a quiet, friendly couple who enjoyed the company of our wandering black tomcat Ūsiņš and fed our kitties when we were away. Then there was the spooky, white Victorian house on the corner occupied at different times by a Jewish family, the Braffmans, a bunch of hippies with a dog named Freak, and a large Venezuelan family. I remember Freak humping Shelly and getting stuck to her; what a scandal that was! Another time my mother caught one of the Venezuelan boys making out with Joe and Angie’s youngest daughter in a tent in our yard. Lucky that grumpy ol’ Joe didn’t surprise them. The Venezuelans’ youngest son Claude tried to kiss me under our porch. Sharon the ballet dancer lived across the street from us; she had once partnered with Rudolf Nureyev in Canada and had a big black and white photograph to prove it. The friendly, tidy Luises had a beautiful flower garden; when their son died, they moved away. There were neighbors of Irish, Scottish, and Jewish descent. Many people commuted to New York for work. Glen Ridge was a safe and pretty place to live.
When we were old enough, my mother took us into New York City. We rode the comfortable DeCamp bus line across the New Jersey Meadowlands and through the Lincoln Tunnel into Midtown Manhattan. The city’s looming skyscrapers, loud traffic, and pungent smells—exhaust fumes, subway odors, roasting chestnuts, hotdogs, pretzels, and even human urine—always filled me with a strange excitement.
I still remember 42nd Street in its sleazy era, with porn shops, peep shows, titty clubs, and other X-rated venues and “dens of sin.” My mother avoided it by shepherding us down other streets. From the busy Port Authority we traipsed around Manhattan, visiting the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, or going to concerts. Of course, when we were little, this was hard on us; the walking and looking at stuffy antiquities and modern art was exhausting. The Good Humor ice cream trucks and hot dog vendors were my mother’s “carrot” to entice us in and out of these extraordinary repositories of history, art, and culture.
Glen Ridge is set on a gentle incline that rises up from a basin, which includes the swampy Meadowlands, towards a ridge that provides excellent views of the Manhattan skyline. From time to time we would drive up to Eagle Rock Reservation to get a really good view of the “Big Apple.” Its jagged skyscraper silhouette was etched upon our developing brains. In the 1970s, when we were driving home from the city, we sometimes saw the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers light up from the setting sun as if on fire.
Glen Ridge is named after a shallow glen with a creek called Toney’s Brook that traverses the town from Montclair to Bloomfield and beyond. When I was little, the smokestack of an old factory between the creek and the train tracks still coughed up smoke that smelled of rubber. There were very few shops in Glen Ridge. We had one supermarket at the end of our street that changed owners several times. For shopping we walked down Washington Street to downtown Bloomfield, passing the Revolutionary War’s Lt. Col. Thomas Cadmus House, site of some visits by President Washington in the late 18th century. Who knows: maybe it was seeing the historical marker by the Cadmus house that eventually got me interested in history and antiques.
I remember Bloomfield center as a safe and nice place for a kid to hang out in the 1970s. A great book shop and lots of mom and pop stores attracted pedestrian shoppers from the neighborhood. “The Last Straw” was a head shop. Its long-haired owners sold all sorts of neat stuff: silver jewelry; African imports; incense; clothes from India; stained glass; etc. I loved the scent of the store, which aroused me. Greeting cards featured depictions of marijuana and couples locked in cosmic orgasms. For a young teen like me “The Last Straw” was a magnet; its vibe was mysterious and alluring. Although I was too young to belong to the hippie era, its music, which continued to dominate the radio airwaves in the early 1970s, left a lasting impression on me: Joan Baez; Jimi Hendrix; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; Jefferson Airplane/Starship; Richie Havens; Joni Mitchell; Janis Joplin; Creedence Clearwater Revival; The Band; etc. The Woodstock era’s performers and their lyrics resonated with me, a budding teenager. I perceived them as bards of fun, freedom, change, tolerance, acceptance, peace, and erotic love, a subject I was growing increasingly interested in. There were two movie theaters and several “five-and-dime” stores, including Woolworth’s, which I frequented. My childhood friend Barbara and I were apprehended prying candy out of a plastic container; I peed in my pants and immediately learned to respect the law.
The Beatles’ movie “The Yellow Submarine”(1968) was a big event for our family, and we went to the movie theater to see it. Peter Max’s psychedelic calendar lingered on my wall for several years. We grew up watching Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers, and humor would become a necessary part of my life. It would sometimes save me from depression.
Glen Ridge property taxes were high, and it is still considered a high-income commuter town. I remember only one black student in our school, Calvin, who lived all the way down at the south end, maybe even on the East Orange side. In other words, we grew up in a racial bubble. There was one Indian girl, Sandy, in our class. In America’s multicultural society the Latvians of my grandparents’ generation were mostly a conservative bunch, and they insulated themselves from the rest of American society in an attempt to preserve their “Old Country” identity. Acceptance of others required time, as the deep wounds of trauma and loss healed.
I can still remember the beautiful old mansion that was razed to build the new Glen Ridge high school. The first and last time we saw it was when we took our first walk around our new town; the next time I looked, it was gone. Many of Glen Ridge’s homes were old, dating back to the turn of the 20th century, and well maintained, with green lawns and mature trees. Ridgewood Avenue was a parade of large, elegant dwellings with enormous yards owned by doctors, lawyers, and company executives.
Apparently Tom Cruise went to Glen Ridge High, though I never met him. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin was another Glen Ridge notable. Members of the Parker Pen family apparently lived there (a Parker girl and I graduated together). One of my favorite contemporary artists, Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), was born in Glen Ridge. Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci and I must have been in the same class. In terms of the social spectrum, we were somewhere in the middle and definitely not Glen Ridge Country Club material because of our last name and origin. As I was pedaling around the school playground on my tricycle one day, two boys asked me what my name was. When I answered “Rita Rumpeters,” they burst into laughter. One of them asked me, “Do you eat rumps?” I pedaled away on my three-wheeler as fast as I could, confused and hurt by their laughter… Luckily, that was the first and last taunt I endured over our unusual surname.
When I was little, my father woke up early to take the bus into New York City. Later when I was a teenager, he began driving to a park-and-ride not far from the Lincoln Tunnel, thereby becoming a willing participant in the madness of New Jersey’s morning hour rush. I remember commuting with him to my summer job in the city in 1978 and listening to his amusing curses aimed at other drivers. He drove like a maniac along the shoulder of the road, speeding by the stalled cars and never once getting caught.
On the weekends Tētis (“Daddy”) worked on his paintings and pursued other artistic and creative endeavors, including photography and music. He created many of the superb cover designs for Jaunā Gaita, a quarterly devoted to Latvian culture and history. My mother, whose Latvian hips my grandfather “the Senator” judged to be perfect for childbearing, stayed home to take care of us and wrote poetry in the basement, leaning against the washing machine and smoking cigarettes. Her books were highly acclaimed by her peers―Latvian literati.
My mother was associated with a storied group of Latvian writers named after New York’s Hell’s Kitchen (Elles ķēķis), the neighborhood where beloved Latvian poet Linards Tauns (1922–1963) lived, and where they often congregated in his apartment or at the local taverns. These former refugees and fledgling Americans were brought together by their common language, identity, and love of poetry, art, music, and the vibe of New York City. They were a wonderful, unique group of Latvians who produced a rich legacy of art and literature.
My father’s large, colorful paintings decorated the walls of our house, and the large, clunky stereo in the living room was always blasting some kind of music: opera; Woody Guthrie; the Kingston Trio; the Beatles; Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Tom Paxton; Peter, Paul, and Mary; the Band; Simon and Garfunkel; et al. Later my brothers and I rocked the house with Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Allman Brothers, Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene,” the Talking Heads, etc. My mother listened to New York’s classical music station WQXR. In my late teens we tuned into WFMU, a public radio station at nearby Upsala College, to listen to the fantastic world music programming of “The Immigrant” (DJ Dan Behrman). We became friends with Dan and even visited him once in the studio to introduce Latvian music to his listeners.
Our shelves sagged with books about art and history, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in English and Latvian. Needless to say, my brothers and I read a lot. In winter the old radiators hissed, rattled, and smelled delightfully of steam. Years of home cooking, mothballs in the coat closet, the industrial grade carpet where our feet walked and sometimes danced, cats and socks, traces of my mother’s Shalimar perfume, sauerkraut at Christmas and hard-boiled eggs at Easter, rubber cement and magic markers and the scent from my dad’s painting station in the basement: this was the potpourri of aromas that defined our house on Hillside Avenue. The old wooden floors creaked delightfully, and the curving front and back staircases added to the house’s charm. It was full of slanting light and creative spirit. Latvian was the language of the house, and we were exposed to it from infancy through our parents, our extended family, Latvian school, books, and music. It was a wonderful home to grow up in.
My childhood was mostly uneventful, happy, and safe. My parents didn’t fight, and my brothers and I got on fairly well. Arvils was a pack rat who collected books and military paraphernalia, including Nazi stuff. He even went to high school one year in a Nazi uniform for Halloween, when this sort of thing wasn’t yet politically incorrect. Later he sold his collection for a good amount of cash and bought his first car. Nazi paraphernalia was of particular interest to military collectors. Arvils was a talented, self-taught guitarist who struggled with his Latvian identity on and off for years. My younger brother Artis was an athletic bookworm. As siblings we shared a love of “Tintin the Detective” by the Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé and good humor. I liked to draw and spent a lot of time hunched over a piece of paper lost in a fantasy world of horses and princesses. I was definitely influenced by my artistic father, and my mother in turn nurtured my interest in writing.
My maternal grandparents, Tuks and Mimmī, lived in nearby Montclair. My paternal grandfather Augusts Rumpēters, whom we called Opaps, called frequently and sometimes walked over from Bloomfield to visit. When he stayed overnight and slept on the couch, he put his false teeth in a glass of water, thus providing my brothers and me with an endless source of amusement. He brought us smoked whitefish, fruit slice marmalades, and Nestlé’s Crunch bars.
I have wonderful memories of Opaps’ storytelling: his imaginative tales were always about the ancient past and a place with deep, dark forests, people traveling on foot or by horse or carriage, lonely wayside taverns where they stayed, and the scary creatures they encountered, including a disembodied, floating hand. Opaps, the highly respected Latvian justice, apparently had a creative side to him. Opaps was always composed, dignified, and neatly dressed in a button-down shirt and neatly creased trousers, as befits a judge. But sometimes he crumpled a napkin and threw it at me at the dinner table, when I wasn’t expecting it. The presence of my grandparents in my childhood taught me the value of the extended family.
My grandfather Jānis Bičolis’ unique handwriting. Here he writes about the origins of the word “Lithuanian,”
February 2, 1935.
For many years Tuks and Mimmī rented the second floor of a large, old house in Upper Montclair owned by a Latvian family. Mimmī was not permitted to make stewed sauerkraut, a Latvian favorite, on account of the smell. But sometimes she did anyway in spite of the landlady’s orders. Mimmī was very hospitable: when we came to visit, she would start bustling about the kitchen, taking food out of the refrigerator, even when we protested that we were not hungry. She often baked Latvian pīrāgi, caraway buns, and Latvian-style apple and Farmer's Cheese plātsmaize “pan-bread.” My grandmother was a humble, self-effacing person, completely devoted to Tuks and his well-being and always in touch with us, her grandchildren, with kind and loving words. A graduate of the University of Latvia, she worked well into retirement as a cleaning lady at the Montclair Inn, supplementing my grandparents’ meager pensions with a bit of cash. She, too, had once written poetry, as had Tuks, and their poems are poignant reminders of their youth and hopes and dreams. I loved Tuks’ study, where the walls were lined with thousands of books and all sorts of knickknacks. Tuks and Mimi possessed so little in terms of wealth and yet owned so much: rich memories; knowledge, experience, wisdom, and love for their family and fatherland.
“Mr. Cool” (“the Senator”) and “Mr. Hot” (my maternal grandfather the philologist) often argued about Latvian politics and history at our family get-togethers. It was quite amusing to see my grandfathers debating: the one calm and collected, the other turning red in the face and shaking from anger: two vastly different temperaments from the same country.
We children sometimes gently mocked our family members from the Old Country: we ridiculed their English pronunciation behind their backs, snickering and repeating it. “Vitch vey doo vee go, norse or souse?” (“Which way do we go, north or south?”) Opaps’ embarrassing use of the Latvian words šitas, pronounced shitass (“this here”), šite (“here”), šito (“this one”) in stores and public places, with the emphasis on the first syllable šit or “shit-”, made us cringe. Or the beloved faktiski (“in fact”): it made us squirm. My grandparents lost just about everything when they left Latvia, yet they were able to give so much of themselves to the Latvian exile community and us. With their heavy Latvian accents, they were exceptional people in my eyes, people of the book and of words, of culture, and history. They were my living connections to the Old Country that I would hear so much about: Latvia, a place far from New Jersey and its highways, malls, and congestion.