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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Airport 2007

I was offered a free plane ride this week. I turned it down. I had two reasons. First, when I traveled extensively with my job, my rule of thumb was (because of parking and airport delays) "If it took six hours or less to drive -- don't fly." Secondly, air travel sounds like a cross between a bad Stephen King story and life in Communist Russia.

You never know what some lunatic has planned for your trip and government regulation gives you no choices or recourse in anything. You are essentially the captive of a bureaucratic nightmare and the target of every psychotic nutjob with a chemistry set.

As an air traveler, if you believe that you are being treated unfairly or inhumanely, you are not permitted to complain or get angry about it. At that point, you have become an "unruly passenger"; subject to detention, fines, imprisonment and loss of that little pocket knife your father gave you for graduation 30 years ago.

If you pleadingly reach out to touch the sleeve of the minor bureaucrat (screener, ticket taker, stewardess, etc.) standing between you and the reasonable world -- that constitutes assault. This is where you get tasared, other passengers tackle and kick you, the airplane is turned around and you make the half-hour news cycle, half-hourly, for the next three days. All because you've already read the June issue of Newsweek and the bitch stewardess wouldn't let you trade with someone else.

None of this takes into consideration the 10-hour delays -- after you've boarded the plane; the lack of air conditioning; the overflowing toilets; the lack of food or beverages; claustrophobia; or the other obnoxious people around you. And the over-riding fear that maybe this will be the flight that the towel-heads get their shit together again.




You cannot conveniently carry anything that makes life convenient. You have to remove your shoes and other articles of clothing. You are subject to indignities for which you cannot complain. Many of your personal items are subject to confiscation. And you wait for hours in lines like cattle.

In the mean time, you and everyone around you, are suspicious of you and everyone around you.

** Last week a man from Iraq was stopped before boarding a plane. He had a stick of gum, a small rock and a piece of wire stuffed into his rectum. He said they were there as a "comfort" to him.

** Yesterday, a couple was arrested in the Honolulu airport for posing as police officers. The couple had a third person in handcuffs and claimed to be escorting a prisoner. They tried to board the plane carrying weapons. Fortunately, their paperwork didn't check out and all three were arrested.

** US Airways passengers reported some suspicious middle eastern types to airline personnel and the airline, apparently agreed with the assessment. The suspicious passengers were detained and questioned. It turned out they were Muslim Imams. Now, the six Imams are suing everyone involved, and US Airways is turning over the names of the passengers who originally complained, for the suit . . . After the repeated interminable terminal announcements to report "anything" suspicious.

** Then there was the man who was not permitted to go to the restroom during a one hour Southwest Airlines flight and had to relieve himself in an air sickness bag.

All in all, I think I am going to change my rule of thumb for air travel. "If I can possibly get there any other way, during my lifetime -- don't fly."

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