Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol) Read Online Free Page A

life in the
sunlight infinitely better than the dangerous and unhealthy working conditions
of the mines. In the winter, the only time miners saw daylight was on Sunday;
it was dark when they left for the mines and dark when they came home. Now
that’s depressing, thought Albert.
    Stash was married but with his wife working, he was
able to save enough for the tuition to attend an eight week course in
Philadelphia at the Eckles College of Mortuary Science. After that he
officially registered as an apprentice to the undertaker he was working with
for two years. Finally, he took the test and was awarded a license to practice
undertaking in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When his mentor, Stanley
Sipkovich, retired in 1932 Stash put out his own shingle and became the
official Polish undertaker for Duryea.
    Even though it was the middle of The Great
Depression, Stash had supported his family of four children quite well; they
were raised in middle class surroundings. He had the added benefit of being
looked up to as a needed professional in his town. Stash sent two of his sons
to four-year colleges, his daughter married, and his third son, Albert,
followed his father into Eckles Mortuary Science School in Philadelphia to
become what is now called a funeral director. It was Albert who was to first
help in and finally take over the family business. The Kozols, in 1939, moved
into a retired doctor’s mansion and remodeled the first floor into what was now
a funeral home. The upstairs was the apartment for the family.
    This expansion was necessary as people no longer
held open casket viewings of their deceased relatives in their living rooms,
but rather at the local funeral home. After serving three years in the U.S.
Army during World War II, Albert returned home to partner with his father in
the business.
    Albert was a smoother, more polished version of his
father since he had a high school education and one-year at Eckles. He was an
active member of Holy Rosary Polish Catholic Church, and also donated to the
neighboring Polish National Church and other churches. Albert was in The
Knights of Columbus, Kiwanis, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, and
served on the library board. Funeral directors were known to be great
‘joiners’. So, when it was time for his father to retire, Albert was more than
ready to seamlessly continue the decades old family business. By doing so
Albert was able to hold on to his core business and add some new families.
    However, since Duryea during this period went from
10,000 to 6,000, the business was now doing sixty funerals per year down from a
high of seventy in Stash’s heyday. But, Kozol’s was still the largest funeral
home in town, since the other two directors had also lost business due to
population declines.
    Albert ran the funeral home from the mid-fifties
until the eighties when it was time to begin thinking of the transition of
ownership to a new generation. He now had to think of what was to become of his
only son after the debacle at Wilkes. Albert decided to give an ultimatum to
Vic meeting the problem head-on.
    “Vic, you either go downstate to mortuary school in
Bethlehem and get a funeral director’s license, or I am going to sell the
business, retire, and you can ‘paddle your own canoe’ from there.”
    Joining the family business was not a prospect that
thrilled Vic, but he was astute enough to know that his options could be worse.
To refuse his father’s offer would put him on the street looking for work with
no marketable skills. This usually meant minimum wage type employment. A job so
tiring and boring, you won’t want to party after your shift is over. Imagine,
standing at the local hot dog joint window with your white hat asking people
all day, “Do you want yours plain or with mustard?” This was a real bummer to
contemplate. Victor was trapped, he needed money and his father was no longer
going to just give it to him.
    Vic had two cousins downstate. One was