“I Thought You’d Never Ask!”
John Varchulik was the son of Yugoslavian immigrants that had moved to Chicago after farming for a time in Ohio. John was born in 1906, and as a young boy got a job at a furniture store loading and unloading trucks. He diligently saved his money and eventually had enough to buy a small fruit and vegetable market in Cicero. Determined to be a success, he worked at the market constantly, practically living there and so came to know many of his customers very well.
One such customer that frequented the market was a young woman by the name of Emily Broz, who came often to shop for her mother and twelve siblings. John took a fancy to Emily, though she was shy to return his affections. She was grateful, however, when he would set aside a bag of “bad” vegetables that were supposedly bruised or damaged, giving it to her for free, though when she got home she always found that the bag contained perfectly good vegetables and even sometimes fruit! John finally got up the courage one day to ask Emily out, saying “Do you think you could ever go out with a guy like me?” Emily apparently laughed and said that of course she could. “I thought you’d never ask!” was her happy reply.
Eventually John and Emily began courting and eventually married in 1934 and moved in with Emily’s mother, who was blind and partially paralyzed, and Emily’s sister, Pearl, who was very weak and sickly, too. John continued working furiously to support them as well as the two daughters he and Emily eventually had. Sadly, Pearl died when she was just thirty-six. John had tried to take her to different doctors, but there was apparently nothing that could be done for her.
It wasn’t until the early ‘50’s, after Emily’s mother and sister had passed away, that John decided to sell the market and go into the restaurant business. He got a job at the very bottom of the industry at a drive-in burger stand and went to school at night to learn bartending. After that, he bought the Lisle Lounge is Lisle, Illinois with his sister, Mary, and her husband Ed. He and Ed tended bar and Mary and Emily ran the kitchen. It was a huge success and became quite the place to go, with bands playing every weekend for dancing. John dreamed of expanding it, but Ed didn’t want to, saying that “This is good enough. Let’s not get greedy.”
Eventually it led to more and more arguments, however, and the partners finally split, John taking various bartending jobs for the rest of his working life, splitting his time between his two hobbies, music and gardening. He loved dancing, and he and Emily made time to go out each week, sometimes even going into the city to go to the famous Aragon Ballroom.
Eventually John retired, and he and Emily, after working so hard for so many years, finally began the life of travel they had always dreamed of, even making it all the way to New Zealand and Hawaii before Emily was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in May of 1986. She died just one month later.
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