Gabby Pantages English 2010 Profile 9/23/15 Harry & Anna: A Love Story Nearly a century ago, in the Mountainous state of Utah, there lived a small country boy and a small country girl. They didn’t know each other yet, but one day they would, and with that meeting would come the first possibility of my existence. Anna , the only girl in a family with four brothers, lived in Salt Lake City, and Harry Mamales, second from the oldest among ten full­blooded Greek children, grew up in Magna. His parents, whose marriage had been arranged, came over from Greece, and her ancestors hailed from Germany and old Yugoslavia. The life of an immigrant in America was not an easy one, and the lives of Harry and Anna and their families were no exception. This dark haired boy and red­headed girl would have to learn early on what it meant to “work to make a living”. Late in the afternoon, when the sun had begun to make it’s way over the mountain, Anna would go to collect firewood from the big pile that her brothers had chopped for the cold stove. On this particular fall day, Anna was playing basketball with her brothers, and as time tends to do when your having fun, it slipped away with all thoughts of firewood and stoves. Soon, her mother, now the shade of a ripe tomato, came barreling out of the house with what appeared to be smoke streaming from her ears. Little Anna cowered in fright. “Didn’t give me any supper. She put me down in the basement, told me the boogeyman was going to get me, and locked the door”. “Yep that’s the way she was”, continues Anna, now at the wise age of eighty­two, “I’m still afraid of the dark. I always look behind me to see if someone’s chasing me”. Just ten miles to the West, Harry was also working on his family's farm, though in a bit different of circumstances. “My mother never gave me the chance to be a kid”, reflects Anna, “I just worked, worked, worked on the farm. That’s the way old country people are. They work their kids”. Often left to her own devices, Anna says that she had a hard life. “I had to pull weeds and feed the damn pigs; they called it slopping the pigs. I had to gather the rotten fruit and feed it to the pigs, and they stunk! I wouldn’t clean the animals, I let my brothers do that”. A few seconds and cuss words later, I found out why my grandma Anna wouldn’t complete the task of gathering eggs from the chickens either. I wonder how well that went over with her mother. Anna’s first job off the farm was at a grocery store that was a block away from her house. “I was only thirteen...I walked home after dark...you gotta do what you gotta do”. She didn’t mind working at the grocery though, because the people there would feed her a bologna sandwich every night. In fact, without a hint of sarcasm, she say’s that she loved going to work and wishes that she still could today. Her next job was in a hospital as a nurses aid. Squirming in her seat, she mutters through puckered lips, “I couldn’t handle it, the smell in that hospital about got me”. Now shuddering she begins to remember and talk about seeing the inside of people. “No, that ain’t my cup of tea”. At the tender age of sixteen, Anna graduated from high school. A member of the Acapella choir and an “A” student, she longed to go to college, but didn’t have enough money. “We was poor”, she says, “I would have died if somebody could have paid for me to go”. Having no choice but to go down the “non­college path”, Anna went to go work for the Army Depot in Tooele, where military equipment was made and repaired. Her job was to drive the heavy equipment. “I like to drive. I drove caterpillars, mules…”. I sat questioning my grandmother's sanity for a few moments before she cleared up that, “a caterpillar is where you pull big tanks” and that “mules were the little four wheelers”. Harry Mamales was eighteen years old when he got drafted into the United States army. He had been working for Kennicott, in fields of horses and cows near their base, but would now have to provide for his family whilst being away from home; his father had died and it was up to Harry to send in the bacon. In the midst of WWII, his first assignment was in Texas for boot camp, and then from there, onto the Phillipines. The conditions in the Philippines were terrible. The water was so contaminated that you couldn’t even take a shower or drink it without breaking out in sores. He was there for one and a half years, when the War ended. Upon returning home, Harry went to work for the Tooele Army Depot. He worked on mechanical stuff, fixing whatever was brought in, from tanks to guns. He would've rather been doing artwork, but his fiery red­headed coworker made the work days go fast, and the weekends even faster. For their first date, Harry took Anna to watch him race in what was called a “midget racer”. “Him and his friend had spent months building it”, says Anna, “it was as big as a small car”. When the race done, Harry found Anna in the grandstands, and took her to Greek restaurant in Salt Lake. A bunch of his Greek friends and family worked and hung out there and Anna says that she can still remember how good the food was. For their second date Harry and Anna went to Greektown in Bingham, to go dancing. My grandfather always did love to dance and after this second date they went all the time. Before he passed, I can remember him slowly rising from his favorite chair to do a little jig as we watched “Dancing with Stars” on the television. He couldn’t dance like he used to, but it looked liked he was enjoying himself just as much. It was a great moment. Harry and Anna spent everyday with one another after that first date, and when a year had gone by, the country boy asked the country girl to marry him. She was nineteen, and he had just turned twenty­seven. After a few months of marriage spent living with Anna’s mother, the happy couple rented a house from one of Harry’s good friends, Papa Nicholas, in Magna. It was surrounded by open fields, and not another house could be seen for miles. After seven years and five children: Billy, Roxanne, Jimmy, Tony, and Sophie, Harry and Anna moved into a big brick house that he had built in the heart of West Valley. It was here that the final five were born: Penny, Christina, Kelly (my Mother), Angie, and Mark. Years of diapers, first days of school, homemade halloween costumes, homecomings and proms, and graduation ceremonies went by before the last bird left the nest. The Mamales family had never been rich in money, but they had been rich in things that are worth far more: a loving family, great friends, and a place to call home. For the second time, my Grandmother stated, “the best day of my life was marrying your Grandpa”, “I’ve never regretted it” she continued. “I still miss him a lot. My saddest day was when he left. He was my angel”.