Stella HEY STELLA

Stlla d'oro lilly

It's that time of year when the lillies are in bloom...this year our Stella d'Oros bloomed ahead of the other lillies, most years it is opposite.  Nevertheless each year when I first see her golden bursts I recall A Streetcar Named Desire and Marlon Brando's character Stanley's anguish cry, "Stella, HEY Stella! Stella!" And the echoes of the  angry woman who wants her to leave him, "she ain't comin' down so you just as well not call"   That raw scene is an opposite contrast to  the beauty of this golden lilly but Stanley's  tantrum after he rages with abuse is what comes to my mind every year when the golden lillies appear in masse.. 

I would have seen that movie with my grandma, Rose who loved the movies and who  saved her money so that every Sunday after mass and dinner off we went downtown to one of our three theaters. Sometimes we would see 2 movies in an afternoon because her brother Bill was a projectionist at the local Liberty theater and he would likely get us in free. That left money for me to be sure to see a technicolor cowboys and Indians, which were my faves.    I grew to like movies as much as she did and perhaps this one is not for children but it did not harm nor traumatize me.  My Baba would  talk to the screen, "that's right you bum, she ain't coming back to you..."  Many other in the audience did the same back then but I do not recall anyone being annoyed by another's comment, people had similar to the same values and thought alike back then.  Simpler central times where all was not bared to the world for judgement and rehashing.  

If you are unfamiliar with this Elia Kazan 1952  black and white movie with Kim Hunter too it is   based on the Tennessee Williams' play, I have a link here.  Be aware there is a Verizon commercial  before the clip is featured.  http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/294987/Streetcar-NamedDesire-A-Movie-Clip-Stella-.html     

One clump of our Stella's

From the same movie there is the bitter death monologue that Blance du Bois  unleashes to Stella in frustration beyond..." ,I took the blows on my face and my body! All those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard. Father, Mother, Margaret that dreadful way. So big with it, she couldn’t be put in a coffin, but had to be burned like rubbish! You came just in time for funerals Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to death. Funerals are quiet, but deaths not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, sometimes it rattles, sometimes they cry out to you, "Don’t let me go!" Even the old sometimes say it- "Don't let me go". As if you could stop them! Funerals are quiet, with pretty flowers. And oh, what lovely boxes they pack you away in! Unless you were there at the bed when they cried out "Hold me" you'd never suspect there was struggle for breath and bleeding. You didn't dream, but I saw! Saw! And now you sit there telling me with your eyes that I let the place go. How in hell do you think all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive Miss Stella! And old Cousin Jessie, right after Margaret's, hers! The Grim Reaper put his tent up on our doorstep! Stella, Belle Reve was his headquarters. Honey, that's how it slipped through my fingers. Which of them left us a fortune? Which of them left us a cent of insurance even? Only poor Jessie- one hundred to pay for her coffin. That was it Stella! And I with my pitiful salary at the school! Yes, accuse me! Sit there and stare at me, thinking I let the place go. I let the place go! Where were you Stella? In bed with your Polack!"

1945 Mom & Stella Janosky holding me

The name Stella is seldom heard today but when I grew up it was common around western Pennsylvania and in the Polish families and .  There was at least one Stella in every family, the one I recall most in ours was my grandma's niece, Stella Janosky who was Mary and Tommy's daughter and a close cousin of Mom's and Aunt Jinx.  Stella never married and worked at Pittsburgh Plate Glass; she and Aunt Jinx did many things together because they were both single working ladies who lived with their parents, old maids they were called back then.  But Aunt Jinx married Uncle John later in life and that may have been the end of their times hanging out together.  By then I was into my own self as a new teenager and I seldom saw Stella, it was as though she faded from the scene as my scene changed around my school life and activities. .  

Recently I have met several young women names Alice and Lois, two more old names, but no Stella's.  Still I wonder, whatever became of that old name?