Opa

Opa and Oma lived downstairs in our first house on Fairfield Avenue, we lived on the second and third floor.  The kitchen often was the place Opa spent the day playing cards, two deck solitaire, while he smoked camels, only camels, and Oma prepared meals or cleaned.  From his chair he could look 
straight out the back door onto a small porch, with a few steps down into the backyard.   In good weather Opa also watched and fed the birds on that porch.
Opa was a large man.  He wore a night shirt, a pair of baggy harem pants, slippers, and was seated most of the day.  He would call, "Mami, bring mir ein Glass Wasser!"  or "Ein Handtuch!"  Whatever he needed, he asked, and she brought.  If his cat, Mussche was around, he would act as if she was talking to him, and order Oma around, telling her what she needed. 
But Opa really loved the Cardinals, that would make nests in the spirea bushes all around the front of our house, and come eat seed at the back porch.  He was so excited to see them, he called us to watch.  He would feel their protector, and with the open door sit and guard his birds through the day playing cards, watching the birds.

On Sundays Opa got a coat and hat on, took out his cane, and went out the front door.  We would watch to see him leave the house.  He went down the front steps, turned right, slowly marched past the spirea bushes with the cardinals sitting in them, around to the backyard, up the back steps, into the kitchen, where he called to Oma to help him take off his hat and coat to put back into the closet until next Sunday.





We all waited for the Bad Squirrel to come up the porch and try to steal some seeds.  Opa was playing cards in the kitchen, but at some point, the house shook with, "Mami, den Besen!" and  children came to watch.  Opa would be running, broom in hand, swinging wildly at the squirrel, after which he would collapse into his chair, satisfied with his  job well-done of ridding the back porch of that marauding squirrel.

The Bad Squirrel eating Seed meant for Birds