"May I photograph your outhouse?" I asked Frania. "Ya, ya," she said, grinning widely while adjusting her babushka.
Frania's home lacked indoor plumbing. The one-hole wooden structure contained the roughest toilet paper I had ever felt. I asked several persons about this item and all responded alike: "What's the problem, Bernard?"
So I shut up and used ointments as needed for skin-abrasion relief.
A striking chasm exists between Poles living in villages and working the land versus Poles living in cities and working for the government or in business. My Sadowski relatives fit into the latter group, whereas all of my mother's family live on farms.
The two cultures reveal glaring differences in financial status and access to health services. For example, villagers receive monthly visits from traveling dentists. Only 30 fillings are allotted per month for an entire village. Emergency health care is 15 miles away. Although I located six family households living in the village, none owned an automobile.
However, full-time city laborers in Polski Fiat earn $300 a month. Miners make a sound salary, by Polish standards, of $400 per month. One of my cousins said his take-home pay as a heating/electrical technician was 57 percent of his gross wages.
Compare that with what Bill O'Reilly recently reported on FOX News about how our various governments cumulatively tax forty-one percent of a worker's wage.
Polish city dwellers usually own older model cars paid for with "cash" due to the fact that Poland's credit-card system lacks sophistication. Still, most residents possess CD players, VCRs, TVs, Nintendo and cell phones - all of which must be paid for in cash.
Cousin Roman, a city dweller, ruefully said, "See this home I live in - it has about 2,000 square feet, and you build or buy it for $62,500. I pay $4 a gallon for petrol, and $8 for a kilo of butter - 2.2 pounds." Roman earns government wages removing truck wrecks from Poland's highways.
Cousin Stanley, a farmer, is on disability and receives a monthly stipend of $125. "How do you manage?" I asked. "We subside by growing many foods on my acreage and bartering," Stanley explained. "My wife bakes and makes clothes. I buy what ever else we need from the sklep."
A village sklep resembles our mom-and-pop bodegas. "Food constitutes 28 percent of our budget," Stanley added. "School costs are the second biggest expenditure - 12 percent. Electric, water and gas bills total 19 percent. I am a diabetic needing four insulin shots per day.
"That, plus other medicines, is 7 percent. Transportation is only four percent of my expenses. But I must pay $2 bribes to government officials to expedite my building application," he concluded with some sadness.
All parishioners, farmer and city-dweller support their church and priests befittingly. Not only is tithing encouraged, folks also pay for special religious services. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"We donate money anytime a priest visits our homes or blesses a gravesite," Stanley said. "If we invite him for dinner it is expected to donate an honorarium."
"So," I persisted, "when I meet priests to ask for research on our ancestor's records, such as birth, marriages and deaths, I should offer him how much?" Stanley responded, "Ya, you give him $20 to $50."
When I departed the rectory after Father Konik searched his books, I handed him an envelope containing my donation. I ended up donating money to three parish priests, all well deserved. The priests allowed me access to genealogy ledgers which were 150 years old.
It paid off in spades. I obtained documentation for my entire maternal ancestral tree. I found birth and death dates as well as the grave sites of my great-grandfather and the burial site of his second wife. We arranged for proper legal and religious transfer of the second wife's bones to her husband's grave and had a new granite headstone constructed. Cousin Stanley supervised the entire affair.
Meeting Bishop Richard Karpinski, Lublin Diocese, was the closest I ever came to meeting Pope John Paul II. He was born in Wadowice, about 100 miles from my maternal ancestor's village. During lunch, we sipped cold beet soup and ate kielbasa with mashed white potatoes.
The Bishop shared a culinary story about Polish pancakes, which he considered his specialty. "I made them once for the Pope on Feb. 11, 1979, when I was working in Rome!" he said with a proud, wide smile.
Requiestscat in Pace.
Web site tip for this week: www.ellisisland.org. It's a great site to locate relatives who immigrated from Europe.
Bernard Sadowski is a freelance writer and amateur genealogist living in Magnolia. Write him at mageditor@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
