Life More Sweet Than Bitter

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 52, 1984, No. 4

Life More Sweet Than Bitter

BY PHILA HEIMANN

COMING TO AMERICA, MY FIRST IMPRESSION when I landed in New York and saw the conditions there by the harbor, I said to my husband, "Come on, let's go home." But we went on and lived in Milwaukee for a while, then for six months in Illinois, and after that I wanted to come to Salt Lake. Being from Austria, a beautiful green country, when I walked up Main Street and saw those barren hills I again said, "Let's go home." I know now that it was a blessing that I didn't have the $200 to return home, because the war came and I was very happy to be here. My very first job in Salt Lake City was as a knitting instructor at ZCMI, showing the American ladies how to knit and crochet. Then I began my family.

During the war I was investigated by the FBI, but I didn't realize it at the time. Dr. McKay had sent two girls, two secretaries at the FBI office, to me; they wanted to learn German but couldn't attend night classes. At the time I had a child about three years old and was expecting my second one. The girls came twice a week. One day they said, "One of our agents would like to learn German." I said, "Well that's fine." So he called me on the phone, and I told him all the books he should buy and he bought them. Then he came two hours earlier than had been arranged and took his lesson. The next time he came an hour later than was arranged; he never came at the time that was arranged. But after three or four weeks he decided that he was not going to learn German anymore, that he was now interested in Japanese. Later on I found out that during the war some German spies living in this country posed as language teachers. So wdien that agent found out that those two girls were learning German from a private teacher he thought, "Aha, here I am going to find a spy." He came at unexpected hours and always found that I was very harmless and that there were a lot of people there. I was not a spy, so then he decided he would learn Japanese.

I taught my first class at the University of Utah in 1946. Most of the students were returned GIs, but none of them was as rude to me as they were to some others, probably because I was an Austrian — I don't know. Hitler was an Austrian. But anyway, 46 students and for two weeks no books. Every morning I went into Dr. McKay's office and said, "Are the books here?" "No." I said, "Well what am I going to do?" "Oh just go on in, you can manage." I did. When the books came the students could sing a few songs; they knew the months, the years, the days; and they knew all the parts of the body and everything in the classroom. And so if you want to do it, you can.

How was I treated during the war? Well there were some people who kind of looked at me from the side, "Is she a spy?" "Is she one of those mean Germans?" But I must say that most of my neighbors bent over backwards to be friendly and kind to me for fear that they would hurt my feelings. For that I'm very grateful. I must, however, say that in those days, before the war and before we had a Kissinger and other people with accents in the government, people were not as sophisticated and as kind if somebody spoke with an accent. I was quite often treated as second class because I spoke English with an accent, which, of course, now does not happen. But it does happen sometimes, and I must tell you just one story. Not too long ago somebody called and asked me if I would give a short speech on a certain occasion, and I said I would be happy to. Then she said, "Oh, I detect an accent when you speak English." I said, "Yes, I'm not a native American. I was born and educated in Vienna, Austria. English was about my third or fourth language." She said, "How long have you been here?" I said, "Oh, probably longer than you are old." I knew that she was the wife of one of the students at the university. "You mean to tell me that you have been in this country for forty years and still have an accent?" But now I'm a little smarter, and now I don't crawl back in my shell anymore and feel inferior. I said, "Thank you very much. I consider that a compliment. The fact that I have an accent when I speak English proves that I speak at least one other language besides English." And then I went on and said, "Do you? Do you know a second language?"

Since I retired from the University I'm a volunteer at the Ensign Elementary School helping kids with problems with their math and their spelling and their English. I also teach the whole class German for 25 minutes once a week. The other day the classroom teacher paid me what I consider a great compliment. She said to the children, "You know, Mrs. Heimann has an accent when she speaks English, but I have never heard her make a grammatical error."

What I liked about America was the fact that I could do one thing today and another thing tomorrow. I remember when Eric and I bought our first home for $2,000 in 1939. We needed new linoleum in the kitchen; but I knew with the small salary he was making at the time we could never buy new linoleum. I had a baby. I wouldn't leave my child with anyone. Then I heard that the Arrow Pickle factory was employing women in the high season, between 5 and 9 in the evening, to fill bottles with pickles, pickled onions, etc. That was the time when my husband was home; so I waited for him at the bus stop and handed the baby to him. I took the next bus to the Arrow Pickle factory and filled the jars and never thought anything of it. I enjoyed doing it, and when I had earned the $70, or whatever that the linoleum cost, I quit so I could stay home. This is what America has done to me, but I have to admit that I share the fate of most immigrants. My heart, my emotions are in both countries. If I am here, I am homesick for Austria; if I'm in Austria, I'm homesick for Utah. I believe that many share the same feelings. Yet, with all the problems that everybody has in life, life has been more sweet than bitter for me in America.

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