Pure Doggies

--> Okay! I will admit it right up front, I thought that Barb Cerri and mi esposa Sandy's all-in-one-day adventure trip out and back to Adams to make pierogi was not their best idea ever. Turns out it was.

Cioci Florence Romaniak mentioned to Sandy, her niece, that Saint Stan's was making fresh pierogi on Saturday morning in the huge kitchen under the same church that we were married in, 46 years ago. 

 How much fun could that be? How many senior citizens will show up for that? Even Sandy thought that it would be all babcis  (grandmothers). Six or seven people would be there, I thought.

Well actually there were around 75 people, and not all were seniors. The volunteer ages started at five. Among the mostly-Polish folks were an Asian-looking person and an Indian woman from Oklahoma who had married an Adams Massachusetts native Polish American. I enjoy putting in a whopper of a story, or a cowboy tall tale, in with the facts -- but I do not need to in this one.

 

 Why make hundreds of pierogis? Well! To support the Polish Parochial School that is still operating. Although there are only, for example, nine children currently in second grade there.

All day long Cioci Flo would bring people by to see Sandy and they would play the Guess Who I Am game. Yes! Millie Czerwinski was there. She is 96 now. She was a close friend of Cioci Genevieve who lived in the yellow house on Valley Street. They had two sons and three daughters. Two became nuns. One married a Gwosz fella. They lived right next door to the Strezpeks. You remember? After 50 years we don't even remember the names of the streets, never mind the people, but Sandy did well with it. 

Two of the original nuns were there, dressed in their habits. Sandy and her brother Brian and her 342 Polish cousins all attended the Polish School. Most of them still have their welts from being hit with wooden pointers. All of them still have the abnormal, but real, fear of being locked in the closet.

Some of the older Polish women asked Barb if she was Polish. She said no. Their faces fell. But then Barb said she had Czech blood, and the old folks cheered and said, "Close enough," and Barb was given her own babushka and accepted. Sandy told her own whopper, that Barb came from Chicago to be there. Well she did, but not directly – that was thirty years ago.

The pierogis that they made Saturday were filled with kapusta. Someone drives to Northampton and buys 100 heads of cabbage directly from a Polish farm for this delicious filling. (???!!!???)

Henry Ford gave the volunteers ideas on how to go about making hundreds of pierogis. If you heard how to say “pierogis” for as many times as I have written “pierigis” you no longer would call them Pure Doggies. I can't even write it out phonetically for you. My Mom, Nora Lemanski, taught me how to say it. They definitely had a production line going at the church. Sandy said everyone worked hard and there were no slackers.

 

All the food -- I just couldn't write pierogis again -- will go on sale at the Saint Stanislaus Kostka Bazaar on Saturday November 23rd. They always sell out quickly.

Next Saturday they will be making cheese pierogis, my favorite. See you there.

Your friend,  

Bobby Lemanski Bacon   

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Christmas card from Adams

Sandy,

Thank you so much for the wonderful photo album and especially for sharing in our pierogi workbee at  Saint Stanislaus Kostka Hall.

It was a pleasure to have both  you and Barb there to share in the fun and success.

In total we made:
cabbage  4,356
cheese & potato 5,036
782 dozen

And nearly sold out. At days end we had about 70 dozen left to sell after Mass.

Thanks for helping to keep the tradition alive.

We hope you can join us next year.

With wishes for health & happiness in 2014.

                                                                                    Suzanne

You never know where the Seabees will strike next . . .

 

November 11, 2013

My cousin Craig Garofano, and my friends Bill Thibideau, Chet Urbati, Larry Anderson and John Waltner, all were in Vietnam as Seabees. A childhood friend, Marine Russ Roulier, stayed there forever. 

Sometimes on a Cajun dance floor, sometimes just walking down a street, a sticker on the back of (usually) a pick up truck, "Seabee" written across a ball cap, sometimes from a commuter's "Bus Stories" high in old New Mexico, you will hear of the Navy's Construction Battalions: The Seabees. Construction Battalions. Get It?  C.B's  

We build. We fight. We build airfields and barracks and roads and harbors. A leading general during World War ll said, "The only problem with the Seabees is that we don't have enough of them." There were 256,000 of us.

After the Ninigret Music Festival this past year, Sandy and I visited Davisville, Rhode Island, at Quonset Point. It once was the largest Seabee base in these United States. Dad shipped out from there in '44 headed to a beautiful tropical island in the Pacific called Okinawa. He was there on the day I was born.

Bacon R.F. 693-10-63   

Construction Electrician CEW2

10 being the month, 63 being the year that I enlisted in the United States Navy Seabees

Son of Erie Canal

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This spring Sandy thought that I should extend the canoe launch dock behind the casita. I waited until November first, which turned out to be a seventy-degree day, partly sunny and no mosquitos

 We have had very little rain. October was the sixth driest ever on the South Shore. Normally the water goes up to the original dock but never over it. The water source comes from some ponds miles away off Temple Street in Duxbury. The streams west of us flow into the South River.

Although from our casa it looks like a one-mile long pond, in actuality it is the Green Harbor River. Years ago the Garretsons on Route 3A, Moraine Street, dammed it up to fill their cranberry bogs. It is called Green Harbor River because after winding through the Green Harbor Golf Course under Webster Street it ends up in the Atlantico in Green Harbor. Green's Harbour being named for the very first resident of Marshfield. William Green was the first mate off a ship named the Mayflower who built a cod salting business here on the point in 1621.

When the rain and snow comes, our canal will fill and be around four or five feet deep. That will be enough to get our canoes to the pond or when it freezes, a nice walkway to go out and ice skate. Yah! You can fish also.

© Chris Bernstein/CDB Photos

This is Chris's aerial photo, taken before construction of the canal. The gunite swimming pool was completed in 1978. To the left you can see all of the Elricks’ house. They were already here 41 years ago when we built our original house. You almost can't see Garage Mahal, built in 2004. You cannot see the Tea House (1972) or Cabana (1978), the screened-in hammica room (2013) or even the Casita (2001). The Egans built the house to the right in 1980. They are long gone, to Pennsylvania, but are coming up for Thanksgiving. Dead center towards the bottom of the photo is a large green pine tree. To the right of it is the original dock. I can see it but you probably can't.

I sit out here at the end of my day to watch the sunset. You can only see one other house. There is no traffic noise. We are thirty miles from the Cape Cod Canal and the same from Fenway Park. On a windless night you can hear the Fenway Faithful when Big Papi launches one to right field. 

Come over and listen if you don't believe me. You get the feeling that you are in Vermont or New Hampshire. You hear only ducks and birds and coyotes and frogs and peepers. Early one morning this summer I heard a deer bellowing.

Our Grandson Abel is going to love the new construction.