She came to this country from Poland in the early 1920s, with her husband and two young sons: my Grandfather, Walter; and his younger brother Andy, my Great Uncle. My Great Grandfather, I never met - he died shortly after reaching the New World. Gramma Anna remarried fairly soon afterwards - and this is where the great mystery comes in. Her new husband might have been Polish or Russian, it all depends on what nationality the name Simasko is. He may have legally adopted my grandfather and his brother. I do not have the document in hand, but they were baptized in either the Polish or Russian Orthodox Catholic Church in Chicago where it is rumored that their last name was changed to the Polish version of whatever it was before. The Russian form of the same name is supposed to be Sajacic (sa-HA-shik).

We were never able to confirm this story to any degree. My Gramma Anna is said to have protested this line of conjecture, but did not elaborate. However, there being much hostility between the two countries at the turn of the previous century could go far to explain this. She was most likely definitely of full Polish nationality, but if her first husband were not entirely Polish (and therefore the boys as well), that might be further incentive to come to America. Until this mystery gets cleared up, I put my grampa down as a quarter russian (so it's easier to color code it the right way, one way or another, whenever i figure this out).

The CZYK suffix is fairly common among Poles - almost as common as SKI. During the common ritual, and too familiar distraction, of confusing innocent public servants with strange consonants in places they don't appear they should be at all comfortable with (over 100 points in Scrabble), I like to relieve the apparent dizziness by telling the person before me that my name is Polish for Johnson. Who knows, I might not be that far off - Sasha is still Russian for John, isn't it?