Their Entitlement To America, Part Two

“Changes In The Neighborhood, The Imaginary Line”

As my former neighborhood moved toward 1900, there were some changes in the ethnic origins of immigrants moving into the area. There were still some Germans coming, although by this time, some were coming from the eastern European parts of the German-speaking world, as opposed to the earlier German immigrants, who tended to come more from the western European sections of Germandom.* A large part of the new immigrants came from Poland. At that point in time, there was not actually a country of Poland, but rather only the geographical term. Much of Poland, including Warsaw, was then a part of the Russian Empire. Germany controlled a part of western Poland, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire controlled a smaller part of southwestern Poland.

These newly arrived Polish immigrants began to settle in the far southern blocks of the area, gradually supplanting the former occupants, many of them people of German background, although remnants of former German inhabitants remained for many, many years thereafter, as, for instance, the ice plant** still bore the family name of it’s German founders, and their descendants still owned it at that time. Around the time of World War One, and then after that war, more Polish immigrants came, also settling in the same general area, but also expanding somewhat beyond the initial blocks in what came to be called “Polish Town,” or more commonly, the derogatory term used for Polish folks, “Pollock Town.” (Remember Archie Bunker calling his son-in-law, Mike, a “Pollack?”) Many of these immigrants went to work in factories, where neither a lack of education nor English language skills were a notable hindrance. Their American-born children lived through the Depression and helped win World War Two, where some of them died fighting for this country. They were Americans, not just Polish-Americans.

A Catholic church was established in that particular part of the neighborhood for what became a Polish majority there. And if you wanted genuine “Kielbasa,” this part of town was the place to go, as one of the shops made their own. At holiday time, you had to place your order well in advance to be sure to get part of a fresh batch. In those days, this kind of stuff didn’t come frozen or vacuum packed in plastic with an expiration date of stamped on it. It was totally fresh and perishable. Interestingly, we actually lived along the main street in “Polish Town” briefly before moving a few blocks northward, just over the line that most people considered the boundary to “Polish Town,” but I was really, really little, and I only vaguely remember us living there.

Also around the World War One era, many immigrants came to the neighborhood from the western Ukraine. It is important to emphasize “western” Ukraine, because these people were not Eastern Orthodox in their religious beliefs, but rather “Ukrainian Catholic,” and they came from towns and villages that gradually transitioned into Poland. They too settled in the same general area as the Polish immigrants. The two languages were close (both are Slavic), and I recall many Polish and Ukrainian speakers noting that they could understand each other fairly well. A “Ukrainian Catholic” church was established, and in fact, I grew up just a block away from it. The church was actually just a block beyond the imaginary dividing line with “Polish Town;” that is, it was just outside of “Polish Town.” The house where I grew up was just four houses north of that line, while the slaughterhouse and meat packing company established by German immigrants (and still owned at that time by their family members) was just on the “Polish Town” side of the street. One street over, and also just on the “Polish Town” side, was a butcher shop, also established by German immigrants, and owned by their descendants.

Just because most people thought of this one street as dividing “Polish Town” from the rest of the neighborhood didn’t mean that there was some sort of segregation. Some Polish and Ukrainian families had moved beyond that “line” and, believe it or not, they didn’t turn into pumpkins or any other such thing. Nor did any of us non-Polish or non-Ukrainian folks suddenly develop the desire to visit Warsaw, or join the Communist Party. In fact, the neighbors on either side of our house*** were Polish. The husband and wife to the north of us were both older folks, and spoke very little English. Their two kids, a son and a daughter, both adults by that time, had been born and raised in America and spoke English and Polish. Their daughter and her family lived just three houses north of us and she visited her parents daily. To the south of us, the husband and wife also spoke very little English, and I just can’t recall if they had kids or not. They certainly didn’t have any kids around my age, or I’m sure I’d remember that. Directly across the alleyway from them there was another Polish family, a husband and wife, older folks, and they too spoke virtually no English. The lady next to us would go out on her back porch and call to the neighbor across the alleyway, and the old lady would come out to her gate, and the two would chatter away for long periods of time. I guess what bothered us was, we couldn’t understand a damned thing they were saying! I still wonder if they were talking about us at times.

To be continued….

(A “Word History” is below the notes)

* Notice I’m not always using the term “Germany;” that’s because not all European Germans lived in Germany proper. I will soon be doing some articles about the Germans in history, and my take on why they became so belligerent in the first half of the 20th Century. If you are a somewhat younger person, let’s say under the age of 40 (and certainly under 30), you may well think of bratwurst, beer, and Oktoberfest when you hear the term “German” used. And to be quite honest, in the last couple of decades, that might well even be true for folks older than about 40, but in the somewhat more distant past, I’d venture that when Americans heard the word “German,” their thoughts were more of Hitler, World War Two, concentration camps, and perhaps the wall dividing Germany since the early 1960s, which also symbolized the division of Europe into pro-West and pro-Soviet spheres, and the possible clash that could erupt along that wall at almost any time.

** Ice plants were common back then, although there’s no question that the more modern types of refrigerators that were becoming available were putting a major dent in their business. Still, many businesses bought blocks of ice in bulk for storage of perishable items. This plant also sold bags of ice cubes, crushed ice, and blocks of “dry ice.” And just so you younger folks don’t think Americans didn’t know much about “technology” in those times, the ice plant had a type of “vending” system for individuals to buy ice. You selected the kind of ice you wanted, put coins into some slots (like on a washing machine in a laundry mat), pushed the coin holder in, and out came your ice through a chute below, either a block of certain weight, or bagged ice cubes or crushed ice, just as you had selected. As kids, we’d go to the ice plant on hot summer days and there were always chunks of ice, large and small, lying around on the dock where the plant shipped large quantities of ice blocks and dry ice to businesses. And it seemed that every kid developed that American sense of entrepreneurship, as we would get some money together, get a small wagon, go buy a block of ice, get an ice shaver, and some “Kool Aid” of various flavors, and go around the neighborhood selling snow cones, or “ice cones,” as was a common term back then. The customer had to supply his or her own glass and spoon. Hey, you can’t have everything for a nickel for a small or a dime for a large! Hmm, I wonder if some of these ruthless business people we have today tried hard to start rumors when they were kids that there was an ice shortage, or a “Kool Aid” shortage, just so they could reap more profit?

*** We were renters, and we lived in the downstairs of a double. When we first moved there, the owners lived upstairs, but the husband died a year or two later, and the landlady moved to another part of town, either with or near her daughter’s family. A Polish family, husband, wife and son, then moved into the upstairs. Both husband and wife were the American-born children of Polish immigrants and spoke English and Polish.

Word History:
Woe-This word, both an exclamation and a noun, seems to go back to some Indo European base, as Latin, Greek, Armenian, Welsh and other Indo European languages all have some form of the word, but I can not find that root word. It may have just been an exclamation type of word. Whatever the more distant origins, it also is present in the Germanic languages, and usually has the connotation of "pain, misery, suffering, either physical or emotional," as German has "Weh," (pronounced "vay") which means "pain." By the way, the German word for Christmas, "Weihnachten," has "Weih," which is another form of the word, means "Night of Pain," after the pain endured by Mary while in labor and giving birth. Icelandic, a North Germanic language has "vei," and one source has Dutch with "wee." In Old English it was "wa," with a long "a" sound.