Whistleville

For those who do not know ... Gordo has Klebsiella pneumoniae which is a bacterial organism that is responsible for causing pneumonia, sepsis, and urinary tract infections. He has had all three. With elderly folks it can cause mental confusion, fatigue, loss of appetite, etc. 
Most recently he has been very confused ... so when he decided yesterday to share memories ... I stopped what I was doing and just listened. The old guy has a ton of stuff in his vault.
These are just a few that he told me about.

"Whistleville" was a neighborhood in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Where Gordo grew up. A large number of Hungarian immigrants settled along the railroad which ran from New York City to New Haven. Because of many curves in the tracks, the trains found it necessary to sound their whistles as they went through the area, thus the name "Whistleville".
Well in this small town ... dad's house was the last " English" aka "American" owned home left. The rest were occupied and owed by immigrants. His dad would get furious when the Hungarians would refer to his family as English. He would say "We are Americans"!
Side note: Dad would marry my mom 20 years later. Her family came from Budapest Hungary and actually lived in "Whistleville" too.
That lead us to the next topic ... about the English ships going back and forth to India. The ship's captian would say "port outward, starboard home" when the sun was behind them ... making it a more pleasurable journey ... without the sun in their eyes. Thus the acronymn and ultimately the word ... POSH.
I'll spare all of you the content from the next 2 hours of stories ... but Gordo had a REALLY good day and I enjoyed listening to him.
Listen to our old folks ... they have amazing stories to tell ... if we give them some time to share them.