15

Mary Zurko interviewed by Denis Mercier --8-- 8/21/72 Tape 12-1

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sit with, to be sociable with the rest!

DM: I guess, if they take you, you gotta sit where they do.

MZ: Oh, yeah, I'm glad to get there, ah, Denis. I'm really glad to get there.
If I didn't go over with them, I'd have a heck of a time gettin' to mass.
But our Margaret Maloney doesn't like to go to Saturday night mass. She'd
rather go Sunday. She says, she thinks you're not goin' to mass when...

DM: It doesn't seem right, I know. I know what you mean.

MZ: I said, well, my God, Margaret, if it wasn't right, I said, the Pope wouldn't
give us permission to do what we're doin'. You have to do what he said, if
you want to live your life. Whatever you want to be.

DM: Part of the problem is that they, you know, part of the reason why I think
it was changed is because of traffic problems on Sundays. There are so
many people going in and out of churches that, they all drive their own
cars, that I think it was a practical consideration, too.

MZ: Well, I don't know if it is as congested as it was, you know, on Sundays
now, in Freeland.

DM: Well, I know where I go to church in New Jersey, boy, there's a big jam.
They have to have policemen directing traffic.

MZ: Oh, they do in Freeland.

DM: Do they really?

MZ: When Saturday night mass is out, they have a police there on the corner,
you know. Yeah.

DM: Well, that's what I mean. I think that's part of it.

MZ: And they have it on Sunday mornings. They have it down at the, now, where
Polish is coming out, and the Slovaks, and St. Anthony's--well, Poli[sic], that's
St. Anthony's--no, St. Anthony's is Italian. Well, they almost get done at
the same time, some of them, you know? Well, there's an awful jam, and
cops there, directing traffic. Which is a good thing, you know. They have
plenty of accidents.

DM: Yeah, because the regular people who are driving through town don't understand
that there is a church letting out, and all of these people have to come out.

MZ: That's right, and there's a lot of people come in here, you know. Especially
in the summer, into the Poconos and different places. We're goin' up to
Mt. Airy on, not Mt. Airy, Pocono Playhouse, on Thursday. The Senior
Citizens!

DM: Well, I have you have a good time.

MZ: Ha, ha! Why, hell, you can be a Senior Citizen when you're fifty, you
know!

DM: Is that true? Is that all you have to be? Oh boy!

MZ: Yes, so you're a Senior Citizen, boy!

DM: I'll be there in twenty years!

MZ: Ha ha! You have a long time yet!

DM: Well, I've lived longer than that, so it's not really that long to me.

MZ: Oh, you never know when you're goin'. It's a big gamble, isn't it?

DM: When you were going to church, did you remember whether the women and
children attended more regularly than the men did? Or were the men just as
religious as the women?

MZ: Oh, they were all religious here in town, the people. Well, see, most of
the time, we only, the Slovaks didn't go to our mass. Oh, it's just recently
that they started goin' to, that they would start to go to our mass. Of
course, the children--when the nuns came here to instruct the children for
confirmation, but they all received in their own church, you know, their
own first communion.