Everybody’s Related to Aliens

Chicago is often criticized as being a segregated city, but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. Chicago is like a microcosm of the world. In my neighborhood, for example, there’s Cuba on the southeast side of the street, Puerto Rico to the north. There’s Poland to the Northwest, and Mexico to the southwest.

Because of this world within a city, an easy way to acclimate yourself to a new culture is to visit restaurants and bars within
one of Chicago’s ethnic enclaves. Restaurants provide an opportunity to practice basic survival skills, such as saying hello and ordering food. Bars, on the other hand, can offer a much broader opportunity for conversational practice- with the types of folks who like to hang out in bars.

One of my favorite bars is right in my neighborhood. The owner, a brilliant armchair historian and hardened misanthropist, provides the conversation and free vodka, is democratic in insulting all customers, and in fact mandates that you drink the free vodka. On overhearing a casual mention of the word “mariachi”, he’ll summon a band of mariachi musicians. On a slow night, he’ll light a puddle of vodka on fire. If there’s still any chance of boredom, he’ll allow customers to play with his sword collection.

Proving that he is one of the world’s hardest workers, he is usually passed out on his own bar on account of drinking too much of his own vodka. The rest of us are left clutching the part of our abdomen where we estimate our livers to be. I’ve never had a dull night there, but admittedly the free mandatory vodka makes it very difficult to go back there with any regularity.

My girl and I discovered another bar down the street that is slightly less dangerous. Like the other bartender, this bartender interprets the American custom of waving good bye, saying thank you, and attempting to walk out the door as a cue to crack open a couple more beers. Any attempt to wave off the drinks fails, as does any attempt to tip. “Not for money, for friends,” she says. So, by mandate, this had become our new home.

On our most recent visit to the “safe” Polish bar, we sat in safety at a table a few feet from the bar, when a staggering drunk crashed over our table and broke our glasses. My command of the Polish language is still very weak, but I’m pretty sure the first thing the drunk said after a few minutes of profuse apologies might roughly be translated as “may I borrow your girlfriend?”

To keep myself from assuming that Poland is a nation of Chris Farley-esque table crashers and girlfriend snatchers, maybe it’s time to learn about Poland in other settings. I am half Polish, after all, and I wasn’t born knowing how to crash tables.

Back when my brother and I made our first discovery about Ignacy, I guarded my ancestral “documents” with my life. After my brother and I went our separate ways, I found myself a cheap motel in Vermont, where the caretaker shared with me her sentiment that the latest high school shoot-em-up perpetrator “should’ve gotten more of them uppity folks.” This was one of those motels with the old school “locks”- you just wedge a wooden board in front of the sliding glass door. So, I did my best to hide my prized copper mining documents in my backpack, reassured only by the fact that modern criminals haven’t figured out yet how to pull off a “genealogical document robbery and follow-up ransom note.” Needless to say, my documents and I made it home safely.

As it turns out, the world of genealogical research is full of extraordinarily helpful people. At Chicago’s branch of the Church of Latter Day Saints’ family history library, you can order microfilmed copies of European church records for just the cost of shipping. When I had the soberingly obvious realization that the transcripts were in Polish (a language I didn’t know), the woman in charge of the volunteers gave me a lift to a local bookstore to pick up a Polish dictionary. The volunteers at the Polish Genealogical Society of America devote an entire Saturday morning once per month to helping out researchers like me. One of the volunteers even follows up between the monthly sessions to offer additional help.

If you’re willing to pay a few bucks, you have even more options. The sprawling databases of Ancestry.com, contain census, birth, death, immigration, and other vital records. This is the product of countless hours of transcription, most likely by army larger than this world has ever seen. An army of genealogical researchers- Mormons, for sure, but also senior citizens pursuing what may be this demographic’s most pervasive hobby. Ancestry.com isn’t cheap, is often maligned by many genealogy purists who like to do their research the old-fashioned and inexpensive way, but it is quite a comprehensive database and worth a short term membership to quickly find and retrieve a good number of key documents.

As it turned out, an unsolicited listserv post by one of the volunteers at the Polish Genealogical Society of America turned up an address in Poland- someone with the same last name as my great grandfather Ignacy, living in the very same village that he had left some one hundred years ago. This is a village with two streets, and just a few houses. Coincidence?

My brother, who lives in Montana, doesn't have a telephone. But, every once in a while (I'm using the term "a while" very loosely here) he'll show up unannounced at my doorstep. When I'm lucky, I'm actually home ... [Continue reading this entry]

Most of us have been told at some point in our lives, "never forget where you came from." The longer you’ve lived, the more eclectic the mix of hellos and goodbyes, chicken pot pies, black eyes, and alibis that ... [Continue reading this entry]

There are three pages to this travelogue: Page 1 describes the world of genealogical research and my orientation to Poland. Page 2 describes the hardships of language barriers and the search for long-lost cousins. Page 3 describes my return home to Chicago and ... [Continue reading this entry]