[joe-frank-list] notes on 'Karma memories'; Joe's grandmother

[russellbell at gmail.com]

	WNYC aired 'Karma memories' Sunday.
	Joe begins with an account of his mother taking a train to
South Carolina to see Freddie, says that they married a year after his
father died; it was 2 years.  (This story includes her having sex with
a soldier she met on the train.  Joe says she told it to him 10 years
ago, when she was 80: this matches the facts: the show was made in
2000, his mother was born in 1910.)
	'So my brother Ben, who'd taken over the family business upon
my father's death, brought Freddie in.'  Ben Passweg was Joe's uncle.
Even if Joe had had an older brother, he'd have been only 16 then.  If
this were casual conversation, I'd figure Joe made a simple mistake,
said 'my' when he meant 'her', but Joe produced his shows carefully.
	The song Freddie sings after Joe catches him drinking whisky
from the bottle is 'My defenses are down' from 'Annie get your gun'.
	The last story in the show (about 55 minutes along - 'I have
one good memory of my mother, Freddie, and I.  It happened a long time
ago, when I was 7 or 8 years old...'), Joe mentions his grandmother.
I find her in the records (Sabine Passweg, before Scheindel Sabina
Passweg), born in Sambor, Poland in 1886, mother of Friederike and
Ben, naturalized in 1941, died 1960.  She sailed from Lisbon in 1941.
	They went to the nearby home of his uncle (Ben Passweg, I
assume) where they sang songs in German and French, his mother on the
accordion, cousin Jules on the mandolin, and danced.  I can't find any
record of Jules Passweg.  Ben had 3 daughters.


russell bell