Gampsy

Grandpa "Gampsy" Smarowsky

Albert "Gampsy" Smarowsky was my maternal grandfather. He lived with us during a couple of periods during my years in Frackville. He was a coal miner. He had pieces of coal embedded in his hands from working in the mines. These were not strip mines but rather they were tunnels dug deep in the ground. He told me of people being killed in a collapse. He smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes and I remember him coughing a lot. The combination of black lung disease and smoking finally killed him. UPDATE: Recently I found his death certificate online which stated the cause of death as bladder cancer.

Gampsy on the back porch. I'm sitting

on the ground on the left.

After living somewhere else for a while, Gampsy came back to live with us and that’s when I have the fondest memories of him. One day Gampsy gathered my sister Shirley, a neighbor Bea Davis, and me in the back yard and made an offer we couldn’t refuse. There were always plenty of weeds in our yard since mother nature had complete control over what grew there. One of the most plentiful weeds was plantain, better known as pigtails to us. "I’ll give you each five cents for every pigtail you dig up and put in this basket," Gampsy said, holding a bushel basket out in front of him. I don’t remember how many we picked but the basket was quite full and Gampsy kept his promise. The picture shows him sitting on the back porch around this time.

For a short time I remember sharing the same room with Gampsy. My brother Jimmy was a toddler and was still sleeping in my parent’s bedroom. Gampsy and I were in the back bedroom. That didn’t last long and I believe he moved up to the attic when my brother Jimmy and I started sharing the same bedroom. The bedroom was very small and did not have a closet. The few clothes we had were kept in a wardrobe in one corner. I remember the suit I wore to church hung on the back of the attic door. It was the only suit so I wore it every Sunday to church. I hated that suit because it was heavy wool and since then I can’t stand wool clothes touching my skin.

Pool table set up in the dining room. I'm racking
the balls while my brother watches.

Gampsy spent a lot of his youth in pool halls. He gave my brother Jimmy and me a pool table for Christmas. From the picture it looks like it was around 1951. I spent many hours at the local pool halls during my high school years.

Gampsy had a knack of being able to make everything better. It didn’t matter if it was a broken toy or a broken spirit, he could fix it.

I last saw him working at Paul’s Bar on South Lehigh avenue. My brother said he was working just for room and board. I visited him in 1962 shortly before he died. I went down to the bar and was talking to him when his boss yelled to him to go to the basement and tap another keg. He was 73 but still stocky and could handle a keg of beer pretty well.

Both of my grandparents are buried in the cemetery at Fountain Springs. Their gravestone is easy to find. It is right alongside highway 61 next to the first telephone pole on the right after making the turn at the bottom of the hill going toward Ashland, very near the Ashland Hospital.