Josh was here 10 days and Polly the last 4 of that. Oh my gosh! Two cooking classes and a full day Mescal Tour. And shopping, walking, shopping, walking! Tasting menus at two restaurants, El Destilado and Pitiona and a third meal at Origen! And that doesn’t count the Tlacalula Market, Benito Juarez and November 20 Markets!
Someone posted on a Couchsurfing 50+ discussion site this question:
Were You A Hippie? It got me to thinking. Long and deep.
Educated in a Catholic college prep school, my first doubts about the oppressive aspects of both religion and popular culture were given expression by reading, in high school as a teenager, Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. And “Siddhartha”-Hermann Hesse (1922) and “Razor’s Edge”-Somerset Maugham.
In my view, all hippies were counterculture but often for various reasons. Much of it was not ideological but was just adolescent rebellion against authority. So young people grew their hair long and dressed sloppy and purposely often dirty and freely engaged in sex.
The worldview of hippies and political activists alike included a make the world better mindset based on a combination of Eastern philosophy and secular Humanism. For some this meant nebulous peace and antiwar and all-you-need-is-love. For others this meant an active attempt to do something practical. They didn’t think the Hippies had a program.
I did some browsing on the internet and found this on Wikipedia.
European Roots Of The Counter-Culture Movement
Between 1896 and 1908, a German youth movement arose as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs that centered around German folk music. Known as Der Wandervogel (“migratory bird”), the hippie movement opposed the formality of traditional German clubs, instead emphasizing amateur music and singing, creative dress, and communal outings involving hiking and camping.[16] Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, Hermann Hesse, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors.[17] During the first several decades of the 20th century, Germans settled around the United States, bringing the values of the Wandervogel with them. Some opened the first health food stores, and many moved to southern California where they could practice an alternative lifestyle in a warm climate.
About the same time Henry David Thoreau, a Transcendentalist, wrote “Walden,” a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay “Civil Disobedience,” originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government,” in the mid 19th Century was an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
Over time, young Americans adopted the beliefs and practices of the new immigrants. One group, called the “Nature Boys,” took to the California desert and raised organic food, espousing a back-to-nature lifestyle like the Wandervogel.[18] Songwriter Eden Ahbez wrote a hit song called Nature Boy inspired by Robert Bootzin (Gypsy Boots), who helped popularize health-consciousness, yoga, and organic food in the United States.”
The song has been recorded by David Bowie and others and was part of the Moulin Rouge movie soundtrack.
Historical Roots in the U.S.
“Birth of the Cool”
The World Wars and Great Depression spawned a ‘beat generation’ refusing to conform to mainstream American values which lead to the emergence of the Hippies and the counterculture.
The “Beat” writers had picked up the lingo of Black musicians in the 40’s who were using the terms “hip” and “hep” and “hep cat.” This was the birth of “cool” and they were called “Beatniks.”
In 1962-64 in college we were having beat parties where we wore black turtleneck sweaters and leotards, drank cheap red wine and listened to Miles Davis and beat poetry like “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (written in 1955 BTW) with candles burning in old wine bottles. And reading Kerouac and Alan Watts.
So the proliferation of the counterculture movement actually started in the late 50’s way before you saw any “hippies.” Right after the end of WWII the GI bill enabled returning men to get an education and become successful businessmen and their wives could enjoy leisure time with newly acquired wash machines and nice kitchens. The social environment was excessively restrictive after the chaos of the war when adults wanted predictability and order. The middle class rose like a sphynx. Families were headed by “The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit,” a play of the same name, and dutiful wives played highly defined roles. To not be thought weird, dresses on women had to hit at exactly the right spot on the calf.
But their children rebelled against absentee fathers working long hours and restrictive roles for women and moral rules. They left home for freedom and the sexual revolution. The Beatles sang “She’s Leaving Home.”
Women began rebelling too. The Feminist Movement grew and women started meeting in “Consciousness Raising” groups. Women started wearing “granny” dresses and Mini skirts. The hell with dresses hitting that “right” spot on the calf. Guys grew their hair long in defiance of societal expectations of the male. Dress length on women and hair length on men became very symbolic making a political statement.
Psychedelics
Born 1900 in Spring Valley, Illinois of first generation immigrant parents from Poland. She had no idea what was ahead of her.
As for why I am here and not somewhere else…I lived with a Mex-American family for 4 years of high school and then worked on behalf of the migrant community for 30 years…most of whom were from Oaxaca and for the last 10 years developed and administered a violence prevention/alternative ed program for Latino high school dropouts. I loved the families we were working with from Oaxaca and mentored several of the girls from the Mixteco. I wanted to come see the culture where they all were from and what made them who they are. 10 years later I am happily still here. But it is sad that we cannot find an authentic culture at home and have to “borrow” someone else’s.
Bob Goetz and I
When I am not out on the streets…or reading…I spend time on the internet on some of the http://www.couchsurfing.com forums discussing historical, political and cultural issues with members from all over the world…and in the process I am learning something about myself.
I have discovered recently that the word “nomad” is a bad word in China and Central Asia. It means you have no “roots.” That you are “empty.” In other words you don’t have an identity…maybe you are not even a person! I remember that when I was in China I wanted to have a T-shirt made with LaughingNomad printed in Mandarin on the back. The vendor screwed up his face and said he didn’t like it in Mandarin.
Then a woman on couchsurfing from Uzbekistan, in Central Asia, described the word “nomad” in her language. I asked what was wrong with having “no roots” but never got an answer. I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with an attitude of looking down at the “shepherd”…the “peasant” in relationship to more “civilized” people. But what do I know.
In my language “nomad” does not have a pejorative connotation…in fact I think it is quite a romantic notion. Even Bilbao Baggins claims that “All Who Wonder Are Not Lost.”
Then a Swiss woman on couchsurfing describes life in her country:
I and my descendant will be forever citizens of one village, despite the fact that no one has lived there for three generations and my family jumped language barriers. I could ask to become a citizen of Geneva, but I see no reason to do so, since we are in the same country and only 300 km apart.
This sense of belonging – because this is what it is, has a reason: If you should ever become destitute in the world, in another continent or in the next village, your place of origin is requested to repatriate you and care for you until the end of your days. You may never have seen your place of origins, but if Bob Lutz (former CEO of General Motors) would become destitute [he he ;-)] his village of Rheineck, would have to pay for his upkeep until the end of his life.
So it is not about no moving and discovering the world. It is about having roots. And what mobility – economically a good thing – does to it.
So I thought about this some more and this is more or less what I explained to her:
The United States was settled by fiercely independent people. My mother’s parents and grandmother immigrated from Poland in the late 1890’s to escape the Germans and work in the mines in Illinois. They sent the two oldest of 10 children on ahead by themselves by ship at the age of 17 and 18 to scout out living arrangements for the family who followed. But they were really farmers so when they saved up enough money from the mines they leased farms in Iowa and after the Homestead Act of 1903 they migrated to Montana.
My father’s ancestors started out in NYC>NJ>Ohio>Kansas>Oregon all in the space of two generations. So “roots” however defined were left behind. Most people then were farmers and looking to homestead land as it opened up westward. What took my grandparents from Kansas to Oregon was the availability of water. Most people migrated across the country in groups and whole communities resettled together.
Studying genealogy has become popular in the States with a certain segment of an older generation interested in migration routes…looking to find out “where they came from.” I have boxes and boxes of pictures, census data, copies of birth certificates etc etc. My kids,36-42 now living in Las Vegas, Hong Kong and Thailand, have not one iota of interest in all this and when I die it will probably all get thrown out in big black garbage bags.
My mother hated the isolated ranch in Montana (so isolated that they only got telephone land line service less than 10 years ago) so at the age of 12 her parents let her go to Miles City Montana and be a nanny. She was a telegrapher for the railroad in isolated stations in Idaho for 10 years. After her marriage she ended up in Oregon. Distances were great and money scarce and I remember visiting my maternal grandparents only once before they died. My father’s parents died before I was born. Aunts, uncles and cousins are scattered to the wind. The distance from one state to another is often farther than one country from another in Europe. You can put all of Europe in the state of Texas and still have room left over.
After a house fire that took my mother’s first 4 children, I was born later and was raised as an only child on a sheep ranch in SE Oregon. Education was my parent’s priority and as there was slight chance of my qualifying for college after attending country schools, at the age of 12 I was sent to a prep school in another city where I lived with an extended Mexican family. Many of the girls went to boarding schools in Portland Oregon and the boys, mostly Irish sheep ranch kids, went to boarding schools in San Francisco.
Roots? What roots!
Why do I travel so much and am now an expat in Oaxaca Mexico? Because it is BORING where I came from. There is no family in Oregon where I lived most of my life and I often “threaten” my son in Las Vegas that I am going to go live with him lol. I have more in common with travelers and expats in spirit as well as in practice. So that is why, for me, home is where the heart is. And it is true for my kids too. Even my husband who I am separated from is retired in Thailand now.
What to do when I am “old.” My son’s Thai wife says “Mom, I take care of you!” Well, I would never saddle her with that but she could arrange a nice apartment with a live-in Thai caretaker for me near Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok Thailand where they have great respect for elders. My hope is that my kids never put me in a nursing home in the States!
Besides, “family” members are often only related by virtue of blood. No guarantee that they are close at all! Statistics show that most domestic violence in the states occurs at Christmas time!
I really think there may be something true about “wandering” being in our DNA. I read an article recently that researchers have discovered a place in the brain that is related to novelty.
However, finally, at the age of 65 I think I REALLY know now what it means to be American and I am American all the way down to my “roots.”
This is actually kind of funny…
My husband wrote me and our three sons an email the other day telling us what he wants done with his body if something happens to him in Thailand…where he lives…where he has regular bouts of road rage…while driving…or dodging threatening cars while on his motorbike. I have to admit, drivers are worse in Thailand than they are in Mexico and that is saying something!
My husband:
I just stumbled onto a site re USA embassy procedure for a death of a US citizen in Thailand. The embassy makes an effort to notify the next of kin, coordinates wishes re transfer of the remains, organizes and disperses the personal property and forwards all the official necessary documents.
Not always a palatable subject but I do have some preferences: -no need to transfer any remains — arrange for a cremation in Thailand, ashes left under a tree anywhere. And prefer no memorial service. – I have little personal property of any value in Thailand (beatup pickup, obsolete computers, generic TV, poorly functional gold clubs and misc shorts, T-shirts and sandals). I will arrange for local dispersal.
I am registered with the embassy and receive their periodic updates, warnings etc. It is a worthwhile feature. Statistically, most likely, I will be around for a while. But an accident –esp with my motorbike riding is always a possibility so when I saw what the embassy does I just wanted to express common sense wishes.
Also in Thailand the medical profession goes to inappropriate heroic measures to prolong life. Shutting off a ventilator is apparently not an option so step in if I am incapacitated and veging inappropriately…
Not anticipating checking out anytime soon but just wanted to simplify any decision making……..
A friend recommended Effexor for road rage but received no comment…:))
Son number 1 who lives in Las Vegas:
Ok.
As long as we’re on the topic.
My preferences.
I want to be buried in the middle pasture at Black Butte Ranch. I’ve often thought about this. It’s the happiest and most serene and most beautiful place I can ever remember.
I dont care if it’s my whole body, but I think the BB folks would NOT be cool with something like this (full burial in public w/o permission with guests passing by with frowning faces) so it will probably have to be clandestine. So that means cremation and then plunk me under a cow pie somewhere while no one else is aware of whats going on.
Im serious. I dont want a headstone. I dont want to be in some no name cemetery.
As far as my belongings, I dont care about any of it. Disperse it, share it, trash it. It wont matter to me. My estate attorney, he’ll help with all that.
Ok. Got it? Black Butte Ranch. Cremated. Buried in the pasture, maybe a couple meters off the bike path that cuts across it. NO sign or maker. I just want to be where I can see the sisters, Mt Washington and Jeff.
K?
Got it?
Good. Im not kidding.
Afterward, hike up Black Butte, stand at the top breath the clean eastern oregon air and think, “it’s good to be alive and not under a cow pie!”
You dont all have to be there, but at least got to be one of you otherwise it wont happen.
(My day is coming, just like everyone else’s)
Then son number 2 who is married to a Thai wife and lives in Thailand:
creamate me, add the ashes to soil, grow a pot plant and my friends can smoke me.
Not a peep from son number 3 who lives in Hong Kong…yet…:))
I told my husband that in Mexico, where I am, any unclaimed bodies are cremated…no charge! :)) Of course all this is predicated on at least one of us being around to honor various wishes.:))
But all is duly noted..and recorded here…:)) Mainly so as to not drive future genealogists crazy who would uselessly be looking for headstones.
Backpacked The Hippie Trail In The 60’s? If Not It’s Not Too Late!
Taking the kids to Mexico, the grandparents to Hawaii and ourselves to Central Asia in the mid 1990’s on an 18 day trek in the Atlas Mountains had pretty much been the extent of our international travel together. Bob had climbed Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilomanjaro and some of the lesser mountains in Nepal and Tibet but he thinks climbing mountains is a thing of the past for him. “Crossing borders and boundaries…climbing cultural mountains much less painful and ultimately more rewarding,” he says.
So in 2002, after Bob retired from 35 years as a pediatrician in Salem Oregon and I retired as an educational administrator and after raising our three sons, Greg now 41, Doug 39 and Josh 35, we rented our house and set off for a year around the world with only our backpacks. But we didn’t honestly do the “Hippie Trail.” Landing in high-rent London in February, we forged our own trail and moved quickly through France, Spain and Portugal. Looking for warm weather we finally found it in Morocco.
Then back to Southern France, Spain and Italy before moving on to Athens, the islands of Sifnos and Santorini in Greece, Cairo and Luxor in Egypt and finally to Nairobi Kenya where we took an overland truck with about 15 twenty and thirty-somethings from England, Australia and New Zealand for a month and a half through East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana) and across to Namibia on the Atlantic and down to South Africa where we, desperate to be in one place for awhile, rented an apartment for a month in the beautiful Cape Malay district of Capetown.
After a few days in a bed and breakfast in Soweto, the Black township near Johannesburg, we flew to Mumbai, India…in hot July…which, after Rajistan and New Delhi, made Bangkok Thailand feel luxurious! After backpacking through Thailand, Burma, Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia we spent two months in a cold wintery China with no central heating and gratefully ended the year on a beach in the Philippines.
A year eventually became four years. A few months after we returned home, Bob took off for Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.
When Bob returned home, and with our then unmarried sons living in Las Vegas, Thailand and New York, we found ourselves ready to hit the road again. So in July 2004 we rented the house again, flew to Frankfurt Germany, traveled across Eastern Europe including my maternal ancestral home, Poland, and on to home stays in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Then we took the Trans-Siberian Railway across Asian Russia and through Mongolia to Beijing…spending two more months in China before going on to Southeast Asia again (Burma, Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos). After a month driving around the island of Bali we returned to Thailand.
In the meantime, our son, Doug married his Thai girlfriend so we spent several weeks in Krabi Province visiting them…Doug and Luk having barely escaped the tsunami with their lives the day before we arrived! They now live in a little Thai-style bungalow on the island of Koh Samui and welcome visitors.
We emailed our renters to not pack up anytime soon, however, and we sublet a furnished apartment from September 2005 to January 2006 in Brooklyn so we could be near our son Joshua who was a chef at the Tocqueville Restaurant near Union Square in Manhattan at the time. Upon arrival Josh and Amy, who was getting her PhD in history and was teaching at Rutgers University, surprised us with wedding plans that would take place at the Brooklyn courthouse in two days!
Our oldest son Greg who is an anesthesiologist in Las Vegas, visited us later in New York.
January 2006 saw us in Thailand again…I spent a month in Bangkok getting dental and medical work completed and then to Koh Samui Thailand to spend a month with Doug and Luk while Bob disappeared somewhere in the Thai environs. After Bangkok I went to Chiang Mai in Thailand for a month and on to Laos for the rain festival in April.
With the renters out of the house by this time, Bob flew back to Salem on March 29, 2006. I flew back to Bangkok to catch a flight to the States at the end of April. I visited my son Greg in Las Vegas before continuing on to Salem to pack up my stuff for my move to Oaxaca Mexico June 1 2006. Bob rented the house in Salem for two more years and returned to Thailand with a year-long visa in August 2006.
Josh and Amy and about a dozen friends celebrated their “real” wedding on Poipu Beach Kauai Hawaii in July. Josh then took a position as Chef de Cuisine of the new “One East On Third” restaurant at the Hilton Hotel in Beijing China. Amy followed at the end of her term teaching at Rutgers in September 2006. She taught history at an international school in Beijing.
A year became 6 years. I obtained a one-year Mexican visa to live in an apartment in Oaxaca City. Oaxacan teachers were striking and had been camped out in the Centro for a month when I arrived June 1 2006…at once educational and harrowing. They have been striking every year for the last 26 years. They were finally driven out of the city on November 25 2006 by Federal Riot Control Police using tear gas and arrested and beat scores of people…many were innocent bystanders.
I drove nearly 4000 miles from Oaxaca to Salem, Oregon in August 2007. Being in my house in Oregon felt like I was on vacation.
I returned to Asia in February of 2008 for Chinese New Year and visited Josh and Amy in Beijing China for 12 days. It was unearthly cold so I went south to Kunming and then Jinghong China. Next was Bangkok Thailand in March for unending dental/medical care. In May Doug, Luk and I flew to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia to renew our visas.
Josh and Amy since moved to Hong Kong in August 2008 where Josh is the Executive Chef at the American Club and Amy taught school at the HK campus of the same school where she taught in Beijing.
Bob and I separated in 2005 and he is living in Thailand in Jomptien, south of Pattaya. He returned to the States in May 2008 to visit our oldest son Greg in Las Vegas and his mother in Portland, Oregon and take care of some business.
I returned to Oregon in June 2008 to spend the summer and fall of 2008 in Oregon. I rented out the house in Salem and returned to Oaxaca Mexico on November 1, 2008 where I live in a beautiful apartment in the Centro with a veranda overlooking Conzati Park. I returned to Salem on December 17th, in the middle of an ice storm, to pack up some kitchen and personal belongings on December 29…via Las Vegas where I spent Christmas with my son Greg. After returning to Oaxaca, I then took a short journey through mountain villages in Guatemala for two weeks…returning to Oaxaca through San Cristobal Chiapas.
The end of September 2009 I joined Greg’s father in Las Vegas and then up to Salem Oregon for a month to see son Doug, some friends and Bob’s 93 year old mother. Then Bob flew back to his home in Jomptien Thailand and I flew to Hong Kong to see son Josh, (newly divorced) then Thailand for 5 months…a good amount of dental work…and a month on Koh Samui with my daughter-in-law and her mother to help them set up the new beach restaurant that my son rented. Watched the demonstrators rally but left before the burning of Bangkok. Then back to Hong Kong for a week before flying back to Oregon for a couple weeks and home to Oaxaca via Las Vegas. Whew! I didn’t care if I saw another airport again!
However, I missed having a car to visit mountain villages in Oaxaca, so in September 2010 I flew to Oregon where I spent a month with my son Doug who was visiting there from Thailand, negotiated the purchase of a Nissan Xterra, and drove to Las Vegas where I spent 3 weeks with my son Greg. Then picked up a Oaxaca expat friend near Palm Springs and drove across the border at Nogales…no searches…no stops! 🙂 On to Guadalajara, Guanajuato and then Queretaro to see an old expat friend. Then took the new toll road from just south of Queretaro straight across to Puebla and down to Oaxaca.
You can view pictures and videos I made of our travel by clicking on the links under “My Links” on the right side of the screen if you scroll down a ways.
With kids scattered all over the world, thank goodness for Video Skype.
Eunice “Zoe” Goetz
Oh, I forgot. I hitch-hiked through Europe with a friend the summer of 1965.
In the beginning of this country, the New England colonies were being settled by the Puritans who endeavored to spread their intolerant “purist” religion across much of rest of the country. But from the time the Dutch West India Company sent Henry Hudson in 1609 to form New Amsterdam, Manhattan has been a rough and tumble place attracting the flotsam and jetsam of the rest of the world. New Amsterdam only occupied the tip of Manhattan and the “wall” along Wall St. was meant to keep both English and Indian raiders out of town. When the English showed up in in battleships in New Amsterdam in 1664 , Governor Stuyesant surrendered without a shot. King Charles II promptly renamed the colony after his brother the Duke of York.
Later, the Reverend John Moore whose descendents include my son Josh’s eighth great grandfather in his fraternal ancestral line, moved to the newly formed Newtown in Long Island in 1652 and became the first minister in the village. In the winter of 1655-56, he returned to England, probably to receive ordination. Moore returned to America in 1657, and died in September of that year. Moore, described as an educated man and excellent preacher, had descendants who were prominent and influential in the town and church, including two bishops of the Episcopal Church, two presidents of Columbia College, and Clement Clark Moore, the author of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. The Moore family developed the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan. The Moores’s ancient home in Newtown was torn down a few decades ago. A park off Broadway marks its location. See what comes of genealogy research? You never know where your ancestors will turn up.
Our family’s fraternal Hunt line also began in New York beginning with Ralph Hunt of Newton Long Island…one of the Hunt’s marrying into the Moore line. After moving from Long Island to Trenton New Jersey with his father Jesse, George Hunt, Josh’s GGG Grandfather, accompanied Capt. Moore, his brother-in-law, to Clermont County Ohio. “George and Sallie Moore Hunt emigrated the fall after their son, John Moore Hunt’s birth in 1816 to Batavia in Clermont County Ohio where George followed the profession of school teaching, and was the first schoolmaster in Batavia and subsequently taught two years at Columbia (Ohio). He returned to Batavia and settled on a nearby farm where he died in his sixty-eighth year. A History of Clermont County reads: “The oldest teacher remembered in the village [Batavia} was George Hunt, an old-time pedagogue, but withal an excellent teacher, with a discipline equal to military rule, who taught from near 1819 to 1822.” Ref: “History of Clermont County-1880” By Lewis Everts.
John Moore Hunt’s son, Charles Moore Hunt, Josh’s GG grandfather, fought for Ohio in the Civil War and spent 11 months in the Andersonville Prison…surviving to move to a farm in Klamath County Oregon.
Josh’s maternal ancestors, the Johann Mroczynski’s immigrated from Poland, through NY in 1892.
We take local electric trains three hours north from Warsaw to Ostroda where we book into the Park Hotel on a lovely lake that caters to German-speaking tourists many of whom are coming to the former East Prussia to revisit lost homes and distant relatives. In fact while there we get a glimpse of a crackly BBC news report of an organization of older Germans who are demanding recompense from Russia for lost land and money during WWII…comparing themselves to the victims of the holocaust! President Shroeder, of course, refuses to intervene on their behalf, reminding them that the whole mess was due to their own country in the first place.
We luck out and find a pretty English speaking taxi driver in the line-up outside the Ostroda train station who agrees to take us the next day on a 20 minute drive (with liberal European speed limits amounting to no limits at all) to my ancestral village of Szczepankowo. And by village I mean village. Besides three or four homes with cobble stone lanes leading away from the main road, there is one tiny market. The village and the surrounding lush farmland looks like an 18th century pastoral painting.
While I walk around taking pictures of cobbles and pigs, the driver notices what appears to be the remains of a compound-like rock wall in the trees and overgrown grass across from the market. When she asks the old man in the market who lived there the response came: “Oh a rich man used to live there a long time ago.” Since my great grandparents sold their land in order to bring their 10 children to America and since anyone in 1890 who owned land would have been considered rich, and since my ancestors lived in this village as far back as the early 1700’s, I’d like to think I found their home…even if it wasn’t.
Five minutes away is Pratnica, a small town where we visited the church that my ancestors attended. Two priests, one 82 years old and a younger one originally from Gdansk, came to the door to the well-maintained quite large rectory and welcomed us in…offering candy and a viewing of copies of church records since the original were sent to Germany during the war )and since have been photographed by the LDS Library).
They let us into the church, which burned down twice in the last century…with one huge original rock cemented in near the foundation. But a rector’s chair was dated 1602 and we are told that a large hollowed out stone standing just inside the front doors is the original baptismal font. A Polish descendent like myself from Wisconsin donated nice new church pews in the 1970’s. The older priest remembers that one old Mroczynski lived nearby but has been dead several years. We drive to the home nearest his old one to visit an old woman who might remember him but there is a big lock on the door and no one is at home except the chickens and ducks.
Before leaving Pratnica, we stop for a bowl of soup at noon and our driver is happy to see Duck Blood Soup on the menu-a dish my grandparents always reserved for special occasions. We order our favorite made with rich dark smoky mushrooms from the forest.
On the way back to Ostroda our driver, in her early 30’s with two young daughters, tells us that there are few jobs in Poland and that her husband went to Ireland two years ago for work. She visited once, she says, but “things were not the same anymore so we must get a divorce.” (Skeptical Bob thinks there is more to the story.) But by this time we have made friends and she invites us to her parent’s home where she lives with her two girls on the top story. Her mother is in the hospital getting radiation and chemotherapy for breast cancer that she says is very common in Eastern Poland…due, everyone here thinks, to the Chernobl nuclear disaster in Russia about 25 years ago. We pick plums and apples from their backyard orchard. On the way out her father offers us Polish beer but we have already had coffee and cake in his daughter’s apartment and I feel bad turning him down.
My great grandmother was born in Radom…another visit to Poland some day.
Before leaving Poland we tank up one last time on pierogis..little savory pockets of noodle dough stuffed with mushrooms or other vegetables, meat or cottage cheese or sweet ones filled with blueberries or other fruit…just like my grandmother used to make at home. Oh, and I buy a CD that is popular in Poland right now…romantic songs sung by a thrilling Polish Zucchero. “I like very much,” says the young little blond in the music store. Read More
Laughingnomad 