Oral History Interview with Tom Krauska, October 9, 2001 Page: 4

                                
the opportunity about two years ago to go to Poland and walk the streets
where my parents and my dad's folks were raised and lived. They had a
rough life when they were growing up. I thank the good Lord for that
opportunity. My dad's mother came to the United States to follow her
husband who had come over earlier. He had a friend here who got him a
job. His friend said, "Ignatius come on over, I've got a job for you."
They saved fifteen or twenty dollars for passage to come over on a boat.
I really don't know how they did it. My grandmother claimed it was so
crowded with people but somehow they lived through it. When they got
to the United States my grandfather worked for five cents an hour but it
was better than what they had in Poland. He never did make a lot of
money, just existed really but my grandmother was a seamstress. She
took in work and she had a business of her own making dresses for
people. My grandmother lived to be eighty-six years old.
Mr. Cox:      When you got out of high school where did you go from there?
Mr. Krauska: As I said my dad thought boys should go to college so I was going to go
to the University of Missouri but it came down to dollars and cents so I

checked with Saint Louis University which was about five miles up the
road from where we lived. It was in mid-town of Saint Louis. We had a
campus of four big theaters for one, not a little campus at all. We had a
couple of catholic churches close by. Saint Louis University had a big
catholic church and being catholic to begin with made it a lot easier

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