Ici Tells How She and Her Siblings were Hungarian "Post Office Brats"

Some people are "army brats", but I could be called a "post office brat", since my father and one of my grandfathers and several other relatives all worked for the Hungarian Post Office.

Mother’s father was a post officer with a small salary and a large family. The oldest of his children was Karoly Melcher, who became a doctor and somehow wound up in the northern part of Hungary. He was a small man and married a large woman, Aunt Irene. They had two children, a boy, Karcsi, about my age, and a younger daughter, Iren. We did not see them too often, because the city they lived in became, after the first World War, part of Czechoslovakia, and we needed a visa to enter the border.

The second oldest was my mother, and the third oldest was a boy, Gyula (in English, that’s Julius). He was an army officer and married a girl named Anna (Aunnus neni). Her parents were landowners and quiet wealthy, but since they also lived in North Hungary, he was banished from Czechoslovakia and ended up also in Budapest. They had a daughter, Auci (in English, Anny), and two sons Odon and Zohi. They had a hard time to make ends meet, since Uncle Gyula loved to live highly. They were forever in debt.

Next in the Melcher family was Erzike, a dark haired beauty, who never married, because she was too choosy. As I already mentioned, she worked also for the post office, spent all of her money on her lovely one bedroom apartment and jewels. She loved to make overtime and night shift, because it paid more. Once, after a grueling three day no sleep marathon weekend, she wend home dead tired and tried to take a bath. The poor thing fell asleep in the tub and woke up in ice cold water, ending up with a king sized cold.