Chihuahua Hill

THE DABOVICH FAMILY TREE
SAVO (SAM) DABOVICH---GRANDFATHER
CHRISTINA DABOVICH------GRANDMOTHER
CHRIS DABOVICH------------FATHER
EUSTOLIA DABOVICH-------MOTHER
NIKO DABOVICH--------------UNCLE
DANITZA SABOVICH---------AUNT
EVA SZMARDICH-------------AUNT
ZORA VUKASOVICH---------AUNT


I am writing this as an adult. I will try to recollect some things about each one of my relatives as I remember them as a boy.

My Grandfather, Savo was a slight man in my youthful eyes. I remember him sitting on his porcjh in the lowest rocking chair I have ever seen. He and my Grandmoher lived directly below our house on Chihuahua Hill. He was real old. My Grandfather would not rock on that chair. I would go to visit him and he would point to a wooden crate and he would tell me to sit down in his native Austrian dialect. He would say, "shedy, shedy" and he would say something to me in Serbian which of course I did not understand. He called me "Krsto". that meant Chris I suppose. I would visit my Grandparents maybe once a week. He was a very quiet man, who never went anywhere. I went to see him one day and the rocking chair was empty. I went home and told my parents that "Yedo" (Grandfather wasn't in his rocking chair. My Mom and Dad looked at each other and told me he had died. My eyes welled up with tears and I went to my room to cry. Imissed for a long time, but I eventually got over it.

My Grandmother was a tough, yet gentle Lady. She was on the go all the times. All day and night time too. Her name was Christina, but I called her "Baba", (Grandmother). She wore a scarf or some such cloth on her head, all year long. She wore dresses down to her ankles and she had long sleeves to cover her arms. All I ever saw of her was her face and hands, really.
She wasn't on the slight side, yet she wasn't skinny. Whn she made coffee, she would save the coffee grounds and mix them in the dirt where she had cabbage planted, as well as onions and radishes.

When Yeda died, Baba started some kind of chant. It was a slow, dull, haunting chanting sound that she chanted as she did her housework, her gardening, even when she was doing nothing in particular. Every Saturday, my father would walk with her to the bank to draw money from her bank accont. She did not like to keep money at home; thus the weekly trips to the ban. She would draw enough mony for that particular weeks needs only. That was the only time she would leave her house. She was a very clean aldy. She would clean the dining table about four or five times a day. I never knew why. That's quirkey I suppose. When she died, we were not allowed to go to her services. We were too young.