Tag #156736 - Interview #78355 (Mrs. Gábor Révész)

We also had a maid with whom we kept in touch until she died. She was also from Zala [County]. I even remember her name, Ilona. The name of the village from where she came was Zalagalsa. She came to work for us when she was sixteen. She was with us for many years. I don’t know how my mother found her. We loved her very much and we were very close. My mother was like a mother to her, which shows how much she cared for her. My mother got her married off and gave her a dowry. After she got married, she lived in Horn Ede utca, but until then she lived with us. Her room opened from the kitchen. How she found a husband is an interesting story. A grocer’s apprentice started courting her. He worked at the grocer’s where she and my mother did their shopping. My mother and Ilonka always went shopping together. They did their shopping at the Hold street market, and there were shops by the front of the building. There was a grocery and delicatessen shop, and that’s where they shopped. This apprentice was there and they became such good friends that Ilonka got pregnant and told my mother. When she heard this, my mother sprang into action. She went to the young man and his boss and made a fuss saying, kindly marry Ilonka or else! And so it happened. Their wedding was in the Basilica. My sister and I were the flower girls. This is why her family didn’t attend. She had an older brother in Pest. He was a shoemaker whom we called Suszti.19 We were on very good terms with him, too. The baby was born. The two of us, my sister and I, were the godmother, and Suszti the godfather. They lived at Horn Ede utca 4 in a one room apartment with a kitchen and we used to visit them a lot.

Ilonka did everything with my mother except for the wash, because we had a washing woman. But she did the ironing alone. Mrs. Jakab came once a month, and I remember that on these occasions we always had something for our midday meal that she especially liked. We had chicken soup and noodles with cottage cheese, or some other dish with noodles, because that’s what Mrs. Jakab liked. I don’t know where she was from. All I remember is that when she was there, we weren’t allowed into the kitchen because that’s where she set up the tub, and the clothes and bed linen were boiling in a big pot. Back then the beds were changed once a month. There was a laundry room in the building, but we didn’t use it. I don’t remember where we hung the laundry out to dry. Probably up in the attic. The house had four storeys, and we lived on the fourth.