Mitka's Secret by Steven W. Brallier

Author:Steven W. Brallier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Heading West

Reno and Sparks, 1959–1963

On that cold Sunday morning—February 22, 1959—the Kalinski family, along with their dog, Candy, drove away from Pendleton, New York, loaded into a “minivan” of the day: a 1952 Ford Ranch Wagon. With two doors, a V6 engine, and a “three-on-the-tree” standard transmission, it was not Mitka’s dream ride. Nevertheless, like other cars he had owned, it represented where he was in life, and he was proud of it.

Mitka was in control when in a car. He could go to or away from any place. A quintessential American symbol of independence, a car was a tangible reminder of his liberation from the Nazis.

Tim—the only name Mitka’s family knew him by—was the American name he embraced. It gave him separation from his past and a fixed connection to everything his new world represented. The process of eliminating vestiges of his life in Poland, Ukraine, and Germany continued day by day.

Mitka was especially proud of the progress he had made in learning English. Though he thought he had discarded more of his eastern European accent than was true, its remaining traces didn’t affect his confidence.

Only eight years removed from his landing in America, Mitka was a large and physically powerful man. In other ways, though, he remained a small, timid seven-year-old boy, haunted by his slavery. His gregariousness became a way to hide his past from others, especially from those he loved most.

Mitka’s stays in the Bronx, Baltimore, North Tonawanda, and Pendleton had provided a necessary buffer, allowing him a delayed opportunity to pass from boyhood to manhood. As he drove beyond the western edge of New York, through Pennsylvania, and into Ohio, Tim Kalinski, husband and father, worker and responsible adult, believed that Martin, the cowering, needy child, was safely concealed.

Wending west, Mitka’s imagination was filled with boyish excitement. He was going to the land of John Wayne and cowboys, the very backdrop of the stories he loved best, the ones that had formed his teenage fantasies and taught him English. Notions of the Wild West animated the journey from the outset. In many respects it was the American West, at least the romanticized version of it presented in the movies, that taught him how to be a man. Now he could see and experience the actual West. It hardly mattered that no house or job awaited his arrival in Nevada.

Adrienne had a very different attitude about the adventure on which they had embarked. Ever practical, she saw the move as a necessity. In making such a momentous decision, her hope rested on her cousin Cal’s insistence that Reno was a place of opportunity. Leaving her extended family was the hardest choice she’d ever made, but the family’s finances were exhausted, and she knew Mitka needed steady work. She believed this was the right choice for her family.

The trip itself was unlike a modern-day cross-country drive. In 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, impressed by the German autobahn he had driven on during World War II, had signed into law the Federal Aid Highway Act.

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