The Polish Blog

I used to be Polish. I grew up Polish. I was 42 years old before I found out that I wasn't Polish. Today, the politically correct term would be Polish/American and would garner some sort of minority affirmative action benefits. But, as it turned out, I would have had to have eventually given back my government pierogi stamps and 'fessed up.

As I was growing up, Polish was the language adults spoke when they didn't want the kids to understand. It was also my grandfather's native tongue and, as an old man, all he wanted to speak. I attended St. Stanislaus, a Polish speaking Catholic Church. All of my neighbors were first or second generation immigrants from Poland. Most of my uncles acted Polish.

My earliest food memories include pierogi, halupki (golumpki), potato pancakes, kotlet shabowy, goulash, barsczc, poppyseed rolls, kieffles, Vodka and beer. And fat aunts carrying trays of food to the tables. To this day, I do not know where all of the food came from - or went.

When I got a little older I was able to sit in my grandfather's (Tata's) living room and mostly understand the adult conversations. It turns out that they were talking about boring adult stuff. Or maybe they knew I was in the room and waited until I left to start talking about the neighbor's wife.

My name is John. My father's name was Frank. My family nick-name while I was growing up was Junco (Young-co) and my father's was Fennie. Our Polish given names would have been Jan (Yawn) and Frannek.

It was not until sixteen years after my father's death that I knew the truth.

My younger brother Edward's first wife's name was Elaine. She decided to do a family tree and celebrate our Polish heritage. It turns out that as an entire extended family of four sons, two daughters and countless grand-children, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, nobody was smart enough to figure out the family mystery. Or even know there was one.

My grandfather was Russian. As a child his parents moved to Poland. During the First World War my grandfather, Ignatz Bonyich, was a foot soldier in the Russian Cavalry. After the war he emigrated from Poland to America and entered Ellis Island as Ignatz Bonos. But he had grown up speaking Polish and gravitated to a Polish speaking neighborhood when he got here.

Later, in the early 60's, my father, Frank, and his brothers, Eugene, John and Edward, all further Americanized our family name to Bonus. They had two sisters, Nellie and Caroline, who were both married with children by then and the name change was moot for them. I believe the change from Bonos to Bonus was to either stay one step ahead of bill collectors, the law or jealous husbands. It seems more romantic that way.

So, there you have it. I tell people I used to be Polish. And now I am Russian. Does that make me Polussian (pollution)? Or polUSsiAn?

Whatever. All I know is that I was 42 years old before I found out that I wasn't Polish. Which kind of sounds like a Pollock joke in itself. Doesn't it?


The preceding blog was 100% true.

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