a glimpse: mary ann hudzik, born 1935.

the blur of getting the final volume of work for this project done has led to less updates here besides poetry reading scenes. publishing stages are finally just around the corner.

here is a first introduction into samplings from volume three of the labors of our fingertips: poems from manufacturing history in berks county.

mary ann hudzik lives in cumru township. i met mary ann through her granddaughter zoe who i met while doing a poetry reading at reading area community college. zoe connected me with her grandmother, and i loved how kind and easy to talk to she seemed right away, waiting for me in the lobby of her apartment to make it simpler on me so i didn't have to hunt my way up to the top floor in an unfamiliar place. i wouldn't have minded walking the stairs or taking an elevator, but it was kind of her to wait for me, and i interviewed her in a community-ish room on the first floor.

below is a photograph of mary ann, followed by a long excerpt of her poem in the upcoming third and final book in this project.

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mary ann hudzik, cumru township | born: 1935

never meeting my grandfather who didn’t survive the flu

epidemic, i kept his naturalization papers from germany—

frank cieplinski. his grave shows he made it to 53, born

august 16, 1865, leaning his way into dust by august 14, 

1919. grandmother victoria made it through, had a house 

built on south tenth street in the city of reading, paid off 

that loan on her own. she birthed my father there. my mother 

knew final pregnancy pains with me in that home, too. by

1965, narrow fabric in west reading hired me. i ran machines

for four years. maybe you had 200 or so strips processing, but

these machines were lengthy. i mostly remember that we

fashioned the material for fishnet stockings, although we

weren’t the ones who did the final work, shaped where legs

and feet fit into them. bra straps, now those i remember

well enough. they had lace machines for wedding gowns

but only briefly due to the market’s complexity, how 

fussy a bride can get, and those designs were more than

just ornate. different machines did different cuts of widths.

we kept several ladders around to replace the enormous

wooden spools, stocked on shelves set back, higher than

our heads. spooling happened on the fifth floor. before i

had a car, i took a few buses to get to work, had to deal

with downpours of rain, hoping to avoid the soaking

of it with what an umbrella could do. eventually, i left

those machines, moved to the office, became a secretary

to the plant’s manager, martin horn. meetings always

blurring the hours, i brewed 7 or 8 pots of coffee a day.

that mr. horn loved machinery, jumped at the chance

to work a plow in winter’s blustery months when snow

covered our parking lot, savored digging holes for trees

outside in springtime. they gave us nicely-sized hershey

bars at christmas...