The end of an era – a reflective MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When I was talking with my mom on Thanksgiving, she happened to mention that the weekend before saw the final broadcast of the Family Polka Program. I expect none of you have heard it or even heard of it – heck, I haven’t listened in more years than I can remember, but it was still a sad realization for me.

Step back with me to the early 1970s. OK, back a little farther, first. My Uncle Mike was heavily involved promoting polka events in Baltimore for years. He and Aunt Jean won trophies for their dancing, and they knew all the bands. He’d been on local radio shows talking them up, and eventually, someone got him to do his own show. He asked my dad, his brother in law, to help out. So one Sunday morning in the early 70s on the now-defunct WISZ, 1590 AM, a country music station, the Family Polka Program debuted. Their theme song was the Automobile Polka – I can’t remember whose recording they used, but it was catchy and an excellent choice on their part.

Uncle Mike had a huge collection of polka records, and he’d gone through every cut, rating them all. He’d pick the show’s line-up every week, and include dedications for birthdays and anniversaries. Dad eventually starting writing and recording their commercials, talking with their sponsors to find out what they wanted to feature that week or month. I went along to assist the engineer (Jerry Gray was his on-air name, but his real name was Polish and I couldn’t spell it for you if you tortured me) by giving him the albums in order and telling him which cut to cue up. I also answered the phone when people called in with requests – those were usually held over till the next week, since Uncle Mike planned everything in minute detail.

In 1973, I joined the Navy and moved way out of range of the little station. In the ensuing years, the program moved to another station or 2, with changed days or times, but the basic formula remained. Dad and Uncle Mike got their FCC licenses so they didn’t need engineers, so Uncle Mike and Aunt Jean would alternate with Dad and Mom as their schedules allowed. That was until Uncle Mike accidentally left his mic on one time and said something that should not have gone out over the air – his license was pulled. So his daughter and her husband took over their part of the schedule. Eventually, Mom and Dad got tired of it, and my sister and her husband stepped into the rotation with my cousin.

And so it went for a lot of years. Until a few weekends ago. And now the show is no more. Like I said, I haven’t listened in more years than I can remember. When my dad died, my sister and brother-in-law made and taped a tribute show and sent me a copy. I still haven’t listened to it 4 years later, and I doubt that I ever will.

I guess I just want to remember the early days with Dad and Uncle Mike and Jerry in the raggedy little studio in Glen Burnie, following the preacher on Sunday mornings. I want to remember my dad doing the commercial for the chicken place, saying “Tastes so good, you’ll even hate to throw away the bones.” I want to remember those opening chords of the Automobile Polka.

Funny how you can miss something you forgot that you had…

2

::Polkas in to be the first to respond::

Cool OP, FCM. We had similar experiences going through Christmas stuff over the weekend. Some of it was just me remembering some of my first Christmases on my own, some of it was my brother and me remembering childhood Christmases.

::Polkas off to work::

3

Thanks for the interesting MMP, FairyChatMom; what a moving tribute to your Dad and Uncle. I think the only polkas I heard growing up were the ones played on Lawrence Welk, so it’s not something that I’m that familiar with.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I’m off to work and will have to post more later on today.

4

Good OP there FCM. Funny how stuff we haven’t thought about in years will randomly wander back into our minds ain’t it? Maybe now’s the time to listen to that tribute tape. Maybe that’s what your subconscious is tellin’ you. Or, maybe you’re just hankerin’ for a good ol’ fashioned polka.

Sis pulled down a lot of stuff from mom’s attic this past week. When I talked to her on Saturday she told me she’s been through a lot of old pictures and mementos (mementoes?). When I go back up there for Christmas we’re planning on sittin’ down and goin’ through it all to start some kind of, I dunno, family history project maybe. I think it’ll be fun and sad to look through old pictures, drawings, etc.

In other news, this bacon/egg/cheese croissant I’m munchin’ on as I post is tres nummy!

Happy Monday Y’all!

5

What blows me away is the evocative power of things and sounds. If you listed to that tribute, 1000 memories would flood your brain… My childhood memories mean alot to me-I wish my sister were here to share them with me. My remaining sister was away at prep school for most of my childhood, so we don’t share our childhoods at all (which is weird, but another thread).

Nice MMP-sweet and poignant and well, nice. I’ve never polka’ed (I’ve worn polka dots–does that count?).

I am off for one day, to run errands and stuff. More later, maybe.

6

I ain’t Polish, so I don’t know from polka.

What I can tell you from personal experience (painfully gained last Thursday and Friday) is that it is imprudent in 2006 to rely on a New York City subway map that was printed in July of 1997.

Apparently the 9 train no longer exists, and hasn’t for some time. It’s the 1 or your feet. Maybe the bus. I don’t know; I don’t get to the west side much.

End of a different era.

7

rigs don’t forget about that paper, young lady.

I am having a large case of the giggles right now. See, among the many things that my agency does that I don’t have to fool with is a program that deals with people with mental health diagnoses. It provides for a lot of services ranging from helping out with paying for meds to dental services (I have no idea why dental services, it just does). Well, earlier this morning I answered the phone (I tend to momentary lapses in sense sometimes) and the person on the other end asked to: “speak with that woman what’s in charge of teeth.” SNORT So, I put her on hold and buzz my co-worker who handles that stuff. “Yo, teeth lady, the woman on hold wants to speak to that woman what’s in charge of teeth!”, says I. “Bite me!”, says co-worker. “Just what I’d expect the woman in charge of teeth to say.”, says I. Then I put the phone call through. Co-worker is now doomed, doomed I say, to being called teeth lady. SNORT

It’s stuff like this that gets me through my day. :smiley:

8

Hello, Ex! How many miles of exercise did you get? Think of all the extra chocolate you’ll be able to eat in good concience now. Wait. I think I horribly misspelled that.

That was a lovely OP. It’s amazing how much you can miss things that you completely forgot about. My grandparents died when I was six, and many, many years later I happened to be in a stor ethat smelled exactly like their house. All sorts of memories I sisn’t know I had flooded back.

Time to drink tea, eat breakfast, do the laundry, and run off to work. Whee!

9

Great OP, FCM. It reminded me of my childhood in the 70s, and in particular, visiting my grandparents on my mother’s side. They bought and lived in an old converted 19th-century schoolhouse with the peaked, thatched roof and school bell tower and all (though the bell had long since been removed). It was beautiful. As a schoolhouse it was pretty small and was obviously of the sort where everyone was taught everything in the same room during the school day. There was a sizable kitchen obviously meant for two or three cook staff and there were several rooms off the side of the main classroom – for the teacher, principal and whomever else was on staff, I presume. At any rate, I spent numerous Christmases there in the 70s and the earliest part of the 80s, often spending an entire weekend there. Sometimes I’d spend as long as a week if my father (whom I lived with – my mother split when I was young) needed them to look after me for a short period either for the purposes of work or for a band job he had to play out of town. (He was a jazz trumpet player)

I don’t recall a whole lot from those days – some special moments, certainly. But one thing I do remember is the TV. It was a black & white set, probably only 20 inches or so. It was hooked up to a motorized antenna on the roof of the schoolhouse that they could control from the general TV area. I didn’t remember it so much for anything I used to watch, though; in in spite of the huge antenna high up on the building’s peak, reception on all but local channels was fuzzy, especially in bad weather. What I remembered most was that there were three shows my grandparents never missed on that old set: Little House on the Prairie, Lawrence Welk, and Polka Time. At the time I thought nothing of it. “This,” I thought, “must be what old people listen to.” They weren’t Polish, or any flavour of slavic, really; grandmother was Canadian and grandfather was an ex-marine in the British navy, and no one else that I knew listened to Polka, so I figured it must be a grandparent thing. Perhaps this was why I appreciated the SCTV spoofs of Polka shows so much. (“And I’d-a like to thank Miss Viviyachki for the cabbage rolls and the coffee.”)

If you were to ask me to name a Polka song other than Beer Barrel Polka, I’d give you a blank stare. Just the same I can’t think of Polka music without thinking back to those early days of my life.

So, it’s Monday once again, and it finally happened in the GTA. It snowed over the weekend – and it stuck. It wasn’t much, just a light dusting, enough to cover the ground in a thin blanket of white crap, but it hasn’t melted, and it probably won’t with the current weather. It was positively frigid this morning, getting down around -7C or so. It’s still frigid out. Ick!

Oh, and some (one? Anyone? Bueller?) of you may remember the continuing saga of The Company Next Door. The ones who have had their side windows broken three times over the past year-and-a-bit. The ones who, after the last incident a month and change ago, installed no fewer than 3 security cameras in the immediate vicinity of said windows (just below Camera 2 against the far wall in the linked pic)? Well, we now have evidence of its effectiveness as a deterrent against the guy coming back and doing it again: It isn’t. Not a single bit. As a matter of fact, it appears as though this guy took it as a challenge to his right to vandalize, because this time he broke all three windows. He made it through both the outer and inner panes of the left window this time, too. Same M.O. as last time: What appears to be just one rock hurled at each window. It’s easy to determine because he’s not the world’s most accurate pitcher. Still, he didn’t need accuracy to do his damage. So now their front office is a bit al fresco on this, the coldest day of the season so far. And there’s no telling if the guy did this Friday night or last night, so they could have been airing out all weekend for all we know.

Now I guess we’ll find out of their security tapes reveal anything. (My bet: Nope. At best, maybe a guy in a hoodie or balaclava if they managed to capture anything at all) We’ll also see if they upgrade those damn windows. For all they’ve spent on repairs and revamped security measures, they should have just installed four-inch-thick glass in those frames. That would’ve stopped a few sizable rocks. Hell, that would’ve stopped a Glock 9.

10

About 18 years ago, my cousin Joey (the messican) married nice Whatsername (oh yeah, Debbie - the woman of Polish perusuasion). The big wedding featured both a mariachi band, and a polka band. You’d be amazed at the similarities in the musical styles.

Sometimes I hear Malaguena and still think “POLKA!!”

swampy, there used to be a place I’d go to when I worked downtown in the Big City that made the very best ever bacon, egg, cheese croissants. All buttery, and bacon-greasy and mmmmm.

I haven’t had one in years from there, so today I despise you and your croissanty goodness while I nibble on this 3 day old, stale date and pecan bread.

11

MMMMMMM… buttery bacony croissant… :smiley:

Hee, Beer Barrel Polka. Know what’s fun? Well, for some of us anyways… Singing hymns to the tune of Beer Barrel Polka. A surprising number of hymns from the Whiskypal Hymnal fit the tune quite well.

12

I don’t really know. How far is it from Penn Station to Columbia University? 114 - 32 is 82 blocks, but I have no idea how to convert that to miles. It’s better all around to just suffer on the 1 train.

And you mispelled “mispelled”.

13

Pthibbit. No, I didn’t.
What do I want for breakfast? Goulash or shepherd’s pie?

14

Howdy Ex! So, are you wanderin’ around lost in NYC with your laptop? :smiley:

LiLi, I suggest a buttery bacony croissant cause it’d bug the heck outta MBG if he knew two cool kids had a butter bacony croissant for breakfast.

Speaking of laptops (notebooks, whatever) I mentioned it at the end of last week’s MMP but in case somebody didn’t see it, my Christmas present to myself this year is a Dell Inspiron Notebook. It might be here sometime this week. I’m excited.

15

Where I grew up, everybody knew polkas. Every band in town knew at least one polka to get them through the night, and if you played at weddings, you knew a half-dozen or so. Even if you were playing and Irish or Italian wedding, there was still polka-ing to be done before the night was through. That’s just the way it was. Down here, though, no one knows any polkas. I’ve asked, often.

It got really cold last night. It ain’t too warm this morning, either, but at least the sun is out.

And I saw something on The Weather Channel yesterday that tickled me. It was for our Local on the 8’s, and they said something like “more clouds than sun.” Well, duh, of course. There’s only one sun, so if’n we see two clouds that’s automatically “more clouds than sun.” And don’t get me started on “mostly unny” and “partly cloudy.”

16

Hey everyone! Strange goings on at Casa Perro this morning. We had a black out at 0200. That tripped the main breaker just enough to give me light, but not heat. Someone has stolen my paper this morning, and the Public Works department is vacuuming out the storm drain in front of the apartment, so Maggie Wonderbeagle will be barking and foaming at the mouth for the next couple of hours.

FCM, I like Polka, I used to watch Lawrence Welk as a child, and darn it, I liked it!

MBG, I noticed the similarities when the guys next door were blasting mariachi music on the truck stereo, with I was listening to my German Drinking Songs CD.

swampy, thanks. I already worry I will start singing the Bob Rivers “O Come All Ye Greatful Deadheads” lyrics at Mass instead of “O Come All Ye Faithful”. Now I have to worry about this too?

Hey Ex!

17

Good morning, everyone! Unfortunately, I have very little polka experience, so I can’t contribute much to that.

But, after 11 months in the Bell Tower, we almost finished the library this weekend. I say “we” because Roomie did take something down to storage, but for the most part, I did all the work. Which I suppose is fair, because I’m the one that’s so gung ho it get done. My mother offered me a visit from the Merry Maids for my birthday–which means I don’t have to mop the floors, so I’m off to the website to make an estimate appointment!

18

My problem is with “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” I don’t know if I ever knew the words to the real song, but all I ever hear is “The Restroom Door Said ‘Gentlemen’.” I’m hopeless. Oddly enough, I think I could probably muddle my way through “Adeste Fidelis.” :smiley: Which I think is pretty impressive for the Irish-Catholic-half-Jew-Pagan girl.

Double post, I know, it’s tacky. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

Good OP, FCM. The only time I ever listened to polkas was when I visited my grandparents in Fort Worth; they never, ever missed Lawrence Welk. Papa Tigs grew up in an area where they had regular dances featuring polka bands. I’m not sure if he likes polkas any more than I do, however.

But what I liked most about your OP was remembering the old stuff. When my dad died, I spent most of a week going through his entire life. His mom had saved every single thing she could from his life – every report card (through college!), his Boy Scout scarf and a bunch of pins, including his Eagle, every mention of him in a newspaper from either a piano recital or Boy Scout stuff, every edition of the college newspaper he worked on for one year, photographs, the only complete baby book I’ve ever seen – it was just amazing. I really got to know him better through all of that. I wish I’d known about it before he died.

And next week while visiting, my mom has planned to go through lots more stuff she’s been saving up, so it looks like I’m in for another walk down memory lane. I’m really looking forward to it. There’s something comforting about those old memories, isn’t there?

I didn’t sleep very well last night, so I’m going to have a quiet day just working, I think. I’ve got a couple errands to run at some point, but other than that, it’s definitely a nesting day. I love nesting days; I’m just a born nester, I guess.

Hee, Gaudere strikes again! :smiley:

20

Nope. I’m back in civilization and the laptop is busted.