Grandma Coyle - Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog

Episode 5: The never-ending smile of Grandma Coyle

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Grandma Coyle, the saint, died on All Saints Day.

I mean, she wasn’t some perfect saintly woman, but that makes what she gave so much more special.

She swore, drank beer, smoked Parliaments, and she’d crack ya if you needed it. But she also loved all of us fully, completely, and deeply every moment.

Just as important as the love, she constantly let us know how much she loved us.

Her love for all of us was unconditional and ever flowing… And that love just made her so happy.

I loved watching her on holidays– that love filled smile would fill her face every time one of her kids or grandkids or their spouses walked through the door.

The radiance of her heart made the world a better place for the time she was here, and it continues now.

Her heart lives on in all of us who she loved. The love that radiated from her smile every time any of us walked in the room left no question that there was a beautiful woman who loved you with every fiber of her being.

I’m blessed in that just the thought of that smile fills my heart with love enough to share in the way she taught me.

She’s been gone a long time, but the love she built in my heart lasts and grows as her example shows me how to love the people in my life without compromise.

Even if someone doesn’t deserve it. Or if someone needs a crack. Or if someone isn’t wearing an undershirt (the crime of which I was most often guilty in Grandma’s court)… no matter what, love never wavers.

PS… I’m wearing an undershirt.

Great-Grandma Wargo’s potato pancakes

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

My German ancestors arrived in Buffalo in 1827, and probably brought some version of this potato pancake recipe with them.

I know the recipe I use goes back at least to my German great-grandmother, Jeannette Greiner-Wargo.

Potato pancakes are a messy pain to make, but well worth it, especially when none of the local restaurants that make them don;t taste anything close to this.

GREAT GRANDMA WARGO’S POTATO PANCAKES

5 or 6 medium potatoes
one medium onion
one egg
flour
salt and pepper
vegetable oil for cooking

Peel 5 or 6 medium potatoes, and peel and trim onion.

Using the larger of the two shred sizes of a hand grater, shred the potatoes and the onion in a big bowl.

Add the egg and salt & pepper and mix.

Add enough flour to soak up any liquid in the bowl, stir well. (You will likely have to do this again as more liquid shows up in the bowl while you’re frying.)

Heat a heavy frying pan (I use cast iron) to medium-high, and coat the bottom of the pan with oil.

When the oil is hot, make 3-4 inch pancakes. Let the edges brown, flip once.

Put pancakes on paper towel covered plate to allow grease to drain.

Coat bottom of pan with oil again, repeat. Add flour and mix well if there is liquid in the bowl.

Grandma Coyle always served them with homemade applesauce… which was deliciously easy— apples cut into inch cubes into a sauce pan, covered with sugar, and then covered with water, turned on low and let it simmer.

Remembering Grandma’s special love on her birthday

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It’s hard to put into words, that warm, strong, unquestioned grandmotherly heart.

And working in a high school, with plenty of boys who clearly don’t have anything close to a Grandma Coyle in their lives, I love and appreciate all that she was— and continues to be for me, my brother and sister, my mom and her brothers and sisters, and just our whole family.

From the time I was born, Grandma called me “her little sugar booger,” but later I found out she stopped when she thought it might embarrass me (like in front of a girlfriend.) Just writing this makes me tear up.

She wasn’t some perfect saintly woman, but that makes what she gave so much more special.

She swore, drank beer, smoked Parliaments, and she’d crack ya if you needed it. But she also loved all of us fully, completely, and deeply every moment. Just as important as the love, she constantly let us know how much she loved us.

She’s been gone a long time, but the love she built in my heart lasts and grows as her example shows me how to love the people in my life without compromise.

Even if someone doesn’t deserve it or if someone needs a crack or if someone isn’t wearing an undershirt (the crime of which I was most often guilty in Grandma’s court) love never wavers.

Happy birthday in heaven, Grandma. (And I am wearing an undershirt.)

Grandma Coyle, the saint, died on All Saints Day

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

June Marie Wargo Coyle
Jan. 14, 1931- Nov. 1, 2005

Her love for all of us was unconditional and ever flowing… And that love just made her so happy. I loved watching her on holidays– that love filled smile would fill her face every time one of her kids or grandkids or their spouses walked through the door. The radiance of her heart made the world a better place for the time she was here, and it continues now– Her heart lives on in all of us who she loved.

The love that radiated from her smile every time any of us walked in the room left no question that there was a beautiful woman who loved you with every fiber of her being. I’m blessed in that just the thought of that smile fills my heart with love enough to share in the way she taught me.

Here are Grandma and Grandpa Coyle outside of their new home on Hayden Street, South Buffalo, in the late 50s.

The every day is filled with memories of those who make us who we are

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This Hertel Avenue litter triggered an instant memory flashback:

Hey Steve-o, here’s a couple bucks. Go to the store and get your ol’man a pack of smokes. Your grandmother, too. And get yourself a candy bar, ok?

Even at 6 years old, Dad didn’t have to tell me to get him Parliament 100s or Grandma Kools.

There was never a note that I remember… and never a problem so long as I went to the corner deli and got the right brand of smokes. ( I tried to buy Marlboro for an uncle once and they literally chased me out of the store. Hahahaha.)

That was Grandma Cichon with the Kools.

Grandma Coyle, like my dad, smoked Parliaments. But the only thing she’d send us to B-Kwik for regularly was rolls for dinner.

Sometimes we’d stay late at Grandma Coyle’s house, and we’d take our baths there.

Sometimes, Grandma Coyle would have a beer– in an old school pint glass just like this one– while reclining on the couch watching TV.

It fills my heart even now to think about walking into the living room on Hayden Street in our pajamas, and seeing Grandma smiling as we walked in, all freshly scrubbed.

She smiled every time we walked into a room… and if that isn’t the greatest thing ever.

I’m so glad I decided to have a beer tonight– and that it took me to this story.

Having a beer with Grandma Coyle

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Sometimes we’d stay late at Grandma Coyle’s house, and we’d take our baths there.

Sometimes, Grandma Coyle would have a beer– in an old school pint glass just like this one– while reclining on the couch watching TV.

It fills my heart even now to think about walking into the living room on Hayden Street in our pajamas, and seeing Grandma smiling as we walked in, all freshly scrubbed.

She smiled every time we walked into a room… and if that isn’t the greatest thing ever.

I’m so glad I decided to have a beer tonight– and that it took me to this story.

Julius Wargo and Elizabeth Kotis, 1906

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Doing some crazy 1000+ result wide cast searches on one of the ancestry websites came back with a great hit, and gave me the info to order my great-grandfather’s parents’ marriage certificate from the New York City archives. His name was misspelled when transcribed, and her name is actually Kotis… but somehow it popped up.

Gyula Varga and Erszebet Kotis came to the US from Hungary in 1906 and settled in Pennsylvania for a decade before moving to Buffalo around 1917. They obviously stopped long enough in New York City to get married upon their initial arrival.

It’s the first time I’ve been able to find anything on either of them from before the 1910 census, when they lived in Pennsylvania coal country– and told the census worker that they came from Hungary in 1906.

From Marion Heights, Pennsylvania, they moved to Abby Street in South Buffalo around 1917, and Julius got a job a few blocks away at Donner-Republic Steel along the Buffalo River.

He died in January, 1919, leaving his widow with six kids and a very limited knowledge of English.

I wish I had a photo of him– especially since his first name is my middle name (I was named after his son, my mom’s grandfather, Stephen Julius Wargo.)

Elizabeth Wargo lived until 1962– and is fondly remembered by many of her great-grandchildren (including my mom.)

My great-great grandmother, Elizabeth Kotis Wargo, holding my grandmother, June Wargo Coyle, 1931.

Chicken Paprikash

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

2° calls for some serious ethnic comfort food. Chicken Paprikash on the way!

This is the way I’ve been making this dish which came down from my Hungarian great-grandfather’s family for about 30 years now.

Chicken Paprikash

Ingredients:
A whole split chicken or split breasts or whatever parts are on sale
Medium onion coarsely chopped
Few stalks of celery coarsely chopped
Few carrots coarsely chopped
—-
oil
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
—-
Potatoes for mashed potatoes (or white rice)
—
Bisquik biscuits (or the cheapo refrigerated biscuits) for dumplings

Directions:
In a stock pot, cover chicken, onion, celery, carrots with water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the chicken starts falling off the bones… or… the longer the better.

Strain and keep the broth. Spread the chicken and vegetables out on a cookie sheet to cool. (Everything but the meat is going in the garbage… but it’s a bit of a challenge to pick out the meat.)

While the meat cools, peel and cut potatoes for mashed potatoes. Cover with water and bring to a boil, then simmer. Potatoes are traditional, but I’ve also served this over rice… I like mashed potatoes better.

Follow the Bisquik recipe for biscuits and mix that and have it ready… (or have a can of the small, cheap refrigerated cardboard tube of biscuits on standby.)
Once meat has cooled, carefully pick the meat out of the stuff on the cookie sheet, and shred it— being careful to get rid of bones. (This takes forever, and is the primary reason why I don’t make this more than once or twice a year.)

Add salt, pepper, paprika to chicken shreds. You’ll need quite a bit of dollar store paprika to get any flavor… but the good Szeged Hungarian Paprika (I like to use the sweet version, not the hot version) only takes a couple of shakes. If you get the hot one, be careful—it’s the kind of heat that sneaks up on you. It’s not immediate, but hits you as you eat.

Heat some oil…. And toss the chicken in the oil and fry up the shreds a bit. You can add a come more shakes of paprika as you toss the chicken.

After some of the chicken is fried up a bit… add the broth back to the pan. If it doesn’t cover the chicken, add water to cover. Bring to a boil.

Scoop spoonfuls of the biscuit mix onto the top of the boiling broth. (This part I’ll call optional. These dumplings are my favorite part, but Monica thinks they are disgusting.) Cover and simmer.

Drain and mash potatoes.

To serve, I put mashed potatoes in a bowl… chicken and broth on top. (Dumplings on mine, no dumplings for my dumpling wife.)

To eat, mix it together— might need salt.

It’s a lot of work for the resultant slop… But generations of my family loves it.

Scary brass lizards and memories of Father’s Days past

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Seeing this guy on the window sill in our dining room fired up a Father’s Day memory.

This is one of a couple of brass lizards that were in hidden in the dining room plants at the house of my great-grandpa and namesake, Stephen Julius Wargo.

Especially when they were dirty, these things looked real– and one time, when Gramps sent me in to water his plants, one of these really scared the life out of me — which was probably the whole idea. It made good ol’ Grandpa W. laugh and laugh. “AND DID HE LAUGH,” as Grandma Coyle would say, laughing herself.

My mom always made her Grandpa Wargo oatmeal cookies for all holidays, including Fathers Day, and his big grin showed it was just about his favorite present ever, every time.

When Great-Grandpa Wargo died, his daughter, my Grandma Coyle, gave me a few of his things–including this brass lizard.

Seeing it makes me remember Grandpa Wargo and Grandma Coyle, and think about my mom and the gallon sized bag of oatmeal cookies, closed with a twist tie, which we gladly delivered on our Father’s Day travels of long ago.

Of course, I think of my own ol’man on Father’s Day, too… I made a video about it for my campaign for Erie County Clerk.

Lessons from Dad

Happy Father's Day weekend! Although my dad isn't here physically to take part in my campaign, with your help, I'll be bringing his sense of common sense to the clerk's office.

Posted by Steve Cichon for Erie County Clerk on Friday, June 16, 2017

My dad would always refer to himself as “your ol’man” when talking to us kids.

He died seven years ago, but so long as I’m around, he lives every moment in my heart and in my actions. So although my dad isn’t here physically to take part in my campaign, with your help, I’ll be bringing his sense of common sense to the clerk’s office.

Happy Fathers Day, everyone.