A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #84 My Grandpa the Character

Weight: A scale still remains a scale
Mood: Content and good but a little sad
 
 
This weekend was the big Cedar Polka Fest, the yearly event to celebrate the village’s long standing Polish history. Cedar even has a Polish Art Center which also celebrates all things Polish from arts and crafts to food and drink. I went there for the first time a few weeks ago with Sara, the place was hopping. Who knew!
 
For a village with 100 permanents residents, it is really happening. We even have a decent coffee shop!
 
I felt a lot of nostalgia this weekend as I watched people eat brats and sauerkraut while I devoured pierogis. Polka music came and went while the old folks sat in folded chairs around the dance floor watching the dancers. People would walk around with shirts that said stuff like “I am hers because I like her pierogis” or “Polish for life” or some other cutesy quote.
 
My maternal grandparents are from Germany, the Danzig region which is now modern day Gdansk, Poland. Even with the wars shifting the region back and forth between Poland and Germany (and various Prussias), my grandparents were resolutely German and had a German last name (Preiss) which was the anglicized version when they came through Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century.

(Me and grandpa in 1979ish)

 
I grew up with a lot of German traditions and food. Kielbasa and sauerkraut were staples in our rotating menus. I used to eat sauerkraut direct from the can. There were trips de rigueur to Frankenmuth ever year for the Oktoberfest and polka festivals. I learned how to polka at a young age, spinning across the laid down temporary wood floors or smoothed cement holding my grandfather’s hands while my Aunt Jackie chain smoked on the side. After the dances, my aunt and grandfather would drink German beer while I sipped on some kind of pop and they would talk shit in German with their newly made friends.
 
Holidays were much of the same as my grandfather’s 11 siblings would filter in and out of house playing cards and talking fast in German. Cheap cigars would burn slowly in strategically placed ashtrays while the women, and of course the cousins, cleaned up. They were always playing euchre; the game of Germans everywhere.
 
My grandfather was obnoxious, loud, and very amiable. He dated a woman, Pauline, during the ‘70s whom he referred to as The Polak. I was the third oldest grandchild but probably the favorite since he lived with us. He never forgot a birthday or a holiday which was so much more than what my own father did.
 
I would also visit him at his various homes during my growing up years and at the nursing home he eventually ended up. It was so disheartening to see this big (he was 6’4 – 6’5) boisterous man wasting away in bed because he was so sick. He was always trying to break out of where ever he was and he was no different in the nursing home.
 
Grandpa is what they call “a character” and I loved him very much.
 
Rather than continue on, I invite you to read “D3buck S0d Farm and Gift Shop” which I wrote on his birthday in 1997, six months after his death. I just re-read it for the first time in a decade or so. I had forgotten his various exploits, his drunk driving, his various interments in the mental hospitals (he was also bipolar).
 
You can tell I’m angry because I was always angry in my 20s. Some off that hasn’t really changed now in my 40s. But my character of a grandfather, he was the best.
 
 
Wonderful Thing
As I don’t drink caffeine, I’ve got big taste for root beer which, as far as I know except for Barqs in a bottle, caffeine free. My current favorite brand is Faygo Root Beer in a glass bottle since they use real sugar. I’m a good Michigander.
 
 
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
MAC’s Ruby Woo turns out to be the winner for blue-toned red lipstick search! Combined with BITE’s lip primer, it lasted through several bottles of water and food. A++ will def wear again.
 
Links to Read That Are Not (Terribly) Depressing
It’s been a quiet week.
 
 
Get vaccinated and mask up! There is a pandemic going on.

lisa x

 

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