Arrival

I arrived at LAX on the third of July in 1985.  I don’t celebrate it as an anniversary, but it always reminds me about my first few months in the Promised Land.  There were Taxi reruns that summer and then high school began in September.  One of the things I remember most is the heat.  I had six classes that semester: four hours of ESL, PE, and math.  You’d think that it would have been the four consecutive ESL classes that got to me, but no, that wasn’t it.  In fact, I felt most at home during those four hours.  I didn’t feel embarrassed when I couldn’t answer a question or didn’t understand instructions.  None of us did.  PE, however, was the pits.  The class met at one in the afternoon and we did something outside most of the time.  Polish climate was much much cooler than it is even now, and definitely cooler than SoCal’s.  So there I was, playing softball during the hottest part of the day.  Adolescence is an embarrassing time of life, but add to that 90 degrees and a game this immigrant had never heard of, and you’ve got yourself one traumatized teen.  I’d look around and no one appeared to be bothered by the weather all the while sweat poured down my reddened brow. Then, manifesting all the color characteristics of a beet, I'd sit sweating it out in an un-air-conditioned algebra classroom. I may tolerate heat now (St. Louis + 90 degrees = midnight in July.  Bring it!), but I still don’t get softball. 

Pole Spotting

Most of us immigrants can spot another immigrant from a mile away.  Familiar habits, fashions, speech, occasional racial profiling (high cheekbones and substantial ears, for example), help us make or avoid contact with each other.  In Chicago, Pole spotting is like shooting fish in a barrel.  For one, all of Polish Chicago smokes, and does it smoke!  If you want to locate a group of Poles, look for a plume of cigarette smoke and there they’ll be (these habits make my own nonsmoking commitments difficult).  I have no problem spotting fellow Poles because, in addition to smoking, we have a unique fashion sense.  For example, ladies prefer dramatic hair jobs: brunettes go super dark, coloring their hair charcoal black, while blondes go super blonde, coloring their hair platinum white (I just spotted a lady in her early sixties with punk-red hair).  A few of the ladies compromise with really chunky black/platinum highlights.  As for men, it’s stupendous, impressive moustaches.  These are giant, bushy staches that seem to grow only out of East European soil.  In addition, both genders have a tendency to overdress.  Whether shopping or praying, we put on our Sunday best.  This is a throwback to the old country.  As my grandma always says, you never know who you’re gonna run into.  On a related note, I’ve met more than one Pole over the years who, upon arrival, commented with shock and/or scorn about the natives’ inelegant public appearance.  I got a few looks just yesterday when I went Polish grocery shopping wearing worn-out khaki capris, an old black tank top, and no make-up.

Obviously, language is the surest way of spotting a fellow immigrant.  Speech in Poletown, as in any other immigrant community, has its own fashion sense.  Like all immigrants, we code-switch and use English words as part of our Polish vocabulary. Thanks to A, I found a great example of Chicago-style code-switching on youtube.  It pivots on the word “four-footer,” which, when used while one is writing or speaking Polish, gets spelled as “forfiter” and pronounced as “fourfeeter.”  The youtube clip where this comes from has become a Chicago sensation.  So much so that a few talented young men made a musical parody of it titled “forfiter blues.”  On youtube, the short description below the original clip references a popular Polish television travel/nature program titled “Pepper and Vanilla” and describes the clip in both languages:

Z cyklu "Pieprz i Wanilia" Popularny film na Youtube przedstawiający Polaka w zetknięciu z dzika naturą.

From the "Vanilla & Pepper" series, Popular clip from YT showing Polish man and the wild nature. LOL:)

In the clip, the man filming and feeding the wildlife uses the word “szwagier” repeatedly, apparently addressing his brother-in-law, as well as the word “kurwa,” a more than emphatic Polish cussword.  Beware of the foul language in both the original and its parody. 

The original (someone added subtitles by translating his Polish into English and vice versa):

 Now, “forfiter blues,” which is really well done! 

“No bierz ta kurwa kure [take the f***ing chicken]! There you go…”

Refrain: “Jest piekny.  He’s beautiful!”

“Uciekaj kurwa stad [get the f*** out of here].  Get outta here.”

The original forfiter made it on the Polish TV station POLSAT as a fun news story about Poles abroad.  Poles everywhere have begun to spoof it (I found dozens of clips!).  Here is a spoof from a vacation in Tunisia (a popular destination for Polish tourists):

All of this led me to other videos made by CeZik, the guy who made “forfiter blues.”  My favorite is his bilingual performance of Aerosmith’s Cryin’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icPdaH_w8d4