The Nation's Pulse/I'm a Pole Watcher
Swick, Thomas
THE NATION'S PULSE I'M A POLE WATCHER S with a group of Poles the 1. 3 first Saturday in June I thought to myself: there may be one or two here who dreamed that one day they would vote in a...
...Postscript: Two weeks later, when the runoff election was held—primarily for the seats guaranteed the Party and its allies—voting took place only in Poland, a tacit admission by the government, perhaps, that the people who had left would not be interested...
...j"7 The organizer of the trip, Janusz, a regional economist at Penn, arrived with his wife and three children, all of whom (with the exception of Janusz) ^ were dressed in T-shirts declaring: "Filadelfia glosuje na Solidarnog6" (Philadelphia votes for Solidarity...
...Not that this section exuded a lived-in look...
...Behind him Janusz's son Lukasz, older than the children but not yet interested in the adults, stared out the window...
...Then a man exited from one and Hania went off to vote for the first time in her life...
...It was my first visit to this realm of the consulate...
...Hania waited, again briefly, for a booth to open up...
...I heard a cheerful mother of three, formerly from Radom, now of Upper Darby, say that her daughter had stayed home to attend her first prom...
...Small red and white Polish flags sold better at $1.25...
...Gradually, more cars pulled up and families emerged, occasionally carrying thermoses and bags of supplies...
...THE NATION'S PULSE I'M A POLE WATCHER S with a group of Poles the 1. 3 first Saturday in June I thought to myself: there may be one or two here who dreamed that one day they would vote in a Polish election, but there cannot be any who imagined that their trip to the ballot box would begin in a parking lot of Lord & Taylor in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania...
...These small human resonances in such grand surroundings made me think of a Sempe drawing...
...I am not one to attach a great deal of significance to unusual occurrences, but it does seem to me somehow meaningful that riding with a busload of Poles going to vote in parliamentary elections I should see for the first time in my life a cow on the New Jersey Turnpike...
...Our friends Leszek and 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 confiding tones...
...Looking out the window we saw on the grass of the median strip a black and white cow...
...Or your mother-in-law's...
...Solidarity's voting information sheets were distributed to every passenger...
...The children occupied the back...
...Hania waited, again briefly, for a booth to open up...
...Photographic equipment was in abundance: it might actually have been possible to deduce people's stage of immigration by the type they carried: Russian cameras for recently arrived wakacjuszy (or vacationers, as Poles who work abroad temporarily are ironically called...
...she said to the attractive young woman seated at the end behind a large logbook, "I didn't recognize you at first...
...There as well, on a much larger scale of course, had been this same subdued, hopeful gathering of national aspirations...
...A number of voters hesitated before depositing their ballots, not because of second thoughts, but because of a desire to preserve the moment on film...
...I heard a cheerful mother of three, formerly from Radom, now of Upper Darby, say that her daughter had stayed home to attend her first prom...
...The flow of people continued up and down the staircase: women in summer dresses, grandmothers who looked as if they were straight from the countryside, a great preponderance of men with mustaches...
...And it seemed fitting that election day at the consulate should echo that visit, being that it was, quite clearly, a direct descendant of it...
...Gradually, more cars pulled up and families emerged, occasionally carrying thermoses and bags of supplies...
...The atmosphere was vaguely reminiscent of a sports club outing: a couple of cloth calendars, one with a picture of Walesa, the other of the Pope, had been hung against some windows, and a bouquet of red and white carnations teetered precariously from the luggage rack...
...A crowd of people milled about on both sides of the street, and a constant flow came in and out the open doors...
...There as well, on a much larger scale of course, had been this same subdued, hopeful gathering of national aspirations...
...They had the hard, rough-hewn, somber look of Polish workers, only slightly diminished by their light-hued summer clothing...
...By five o'clock the first line had formed on the sidewalk outside...
...She checked Hania's name off her list and handed her her ballots;then, smiling at me, said sweetly: "You can't vote...
...p eople moved freely up and down the aisles, exchanging news and by Thomas Swick reading material...
...Or your mother-in-law's...
...There were no empty seats...
...and he held out a knobby, grease-stained hand unaccustomed to the environs of Madison Avenue...
...The consulate in New York returned to its usual Saturday somnolence, and Poles abroad reverted to the more familiar role of distant spectators...
...Things are going quite smoothly," he assured us, then joked, himself a veteran of numerous American elections: "They're giving out free drinks over at Jerzy Urban headquarters...
...Yes, yes, for good," he said when I asked...
...In fact, there was an endearing casualness in the way that people made themselves at home...
...Five or six of them stood in a row, red and white ribbons attached to each curtain...
...We stood awhile watching the people as they waited to vote...
...Solidarity's voting information sheets were distributed to every passenger...
...A boy of six or seven sported a green one designed to resemble a frog, with two eyes set at the front and a tongue inserted between the bifurcated visor...
...Thursday's issue of the New York Times, with a front-page story on the Soviet weightlifter denouncing the KGB, was eagerly passed around, as was the article by Timothy Garton Ash, "The End of Communism in Poland and Hungary," from the current issue of the New York Review of Books...
...Japanese cameras for immigrants...
...And then I remembered the Pope's first visit to Warsaw—ten years before, almost to the day...
...Joanna soon connected to the group, having left their two daughters with Leszek's mother, now visiting from Warsaw, and bringing along Joanna's brother, Marek, more recently arrived...
...W e dipped into the Lincoln Tunnel and passed easily through the Midtown streets, coming to a halt in front of the consulate at the corner of 37th and Madison Avenue...
...T he same amiable bustle lasted 1 through the afternoon...
...I was an electrician in Poland," he told me, "but now I'm an auto mechanic...
...The children occupied the back...
...Photographic equipment was in abundance: it might actually have been possible to deduce people's stage of immigration by the type they carried: Russian cameras for recently arrived wakacjuszy (or vacationers, as Poles who work abroad temporarily are ironically called...
...Passengers not occupied with reading engaged in conversation...
...She was not grazing, but lurching awkwardly backwards in visible terror at the traffic...
...she said to the attractive young woman seated at the end behind a large logbook, "I didn't recognize you at first...
...though except for the occasional, salient susurration, the collective sound seemed no different from that produced at any lively American cocktail party...
...Upstairs, sunlight filtered through tall windows and sparkled from a chandelier...
...Damian is an ophthalmologist, working at Temple University for a year, and his family had joined him only a week before...
...Arrows set atop stands and printed with the letters A-L and M-Z pointed into two adjoining halls...
...Marek sat reading an article from the Journal of Immunology, while Janusz, standing in the aisle, debated voting strategy with Leszek and Joanna...
...A day of family milestones...
...The sofa in the center hall, at the foot of an enormous red and white banner strung from the window, was a popular place to pose: once we saw three large men squeeze rather comically onto it with expressions of imperturbable dignity...
...Grzegorz behind me had finished with the Times and returned to Paul Fussell's The Boy Scout Handbook...
...Postscript: Two weeks later, when the runoff election was held—primarily for the seats guaranteed the Party and its allies—voting took place only in Poland, a tacit admission by the government, perhaps, that the people who had left would not be interested...
...I noticed that in this room people were eschewing the booths for the top of a piano sitting in the corner...
...He told me he was a doctor by training who had come to the States for a year and stayed fifteen...
...Passengers not occupied with reading engaged in conversation...
...At one point in our conversation the bus slowed abruptly, all heads turned to the left, and we heard the word "krowa" coming from the front...
...It was my first visit to this realm of the consulate...
...Gilt moldings trimmed the sides...
...Shirts were worn with a flat collar open at the neck, and the Polish fashion of socks and sandals prevailed on the feet...
...Solidarity had urged its supporters to cross out the names of all the Party candidates who were running uncontested, but an older man, sitting one row from the back, objected to such a ploy, arguing that it would simply give the Party the opportunity to choose whomever it pleased...
...There were no empty seats...
...You can have your own picture instead of Walesa's," she advertised, to a chorus of laughter...
...The temperatures were mild and the shadows slowly lengthening...
...And some of its members, he insisted, were not as bad as others...
...Our friends Leszek and 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 confiding tones...
...He invested limited hope in the elections, but explained: "If I myself didn't vote, if I hadn't come today, I would have felt badly inside," and he clutched his shirt in front of his heart and crumpled it in his fist...
...I still haven't acclimated," he told me, in tion at the Wistar Institute...
...This meant that Iza's first excursion in the United States was going to be to her own consulate to vote...
...He told me something of his background: Solidarity activity, arrest during martial law, seven months interned...
...Yes, yes, for good," he said when I asked...
...The temperatures were mild and the shadows slowly lengthening...
...Mirek, another Penn economist, appeared with his wife Marzena, who teaches in the Slavic department, their four-year-old daughter, Klaudina, and Marzena's mother, who had come for a few months from Gdansk...
...when coming for visas I had always been shepherded into a smaller, more hushed wing...
...There was something about the scene—the soft summer air, the labored faces, the pensive, not quite festive moodthat struck me as familiar...
...Small red and white Polish flags sold better at $1.25...
...He was sweating profusely, either from the heat or the unaccustomed pressure of having to be nice...
...Behind him Janusz's son Lukasz, older than the children but not yet interested in the adults, stared out the window...
...Guest in the house, God in the house," is an old Polish proverb, though one heretofore not commonly embraced by the foreign service...
...Hania and I found seats in the middle of the bus, in front of Janusz's sister-in-law, Marysia, and her husband Grzegorz...
...She came out, looking little changed, walked to the red-and-white-draped ballot box, and dropped in her votes...
...But who knows when we'll get a chance like this again...
...Shortly after nine the driver pulled out onto City Line Avenue and headed toward the Pennsylvania Turnpike...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 25 THE NATION'S PULSE I'M A POLE WATCHER S with a group of Poles the 1. 3 first Saturday in June I thought to myself: there may be one or two here who dreamed that one day they would vote in a Polish election, but there cannot be any who imagined that their trip to the ballot box would begin in a parking lot of Lord & Taylor in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania...
...These small human resonances in such grand surroundings made me think of a Sempe drawing...
...It was easy to tell which children had been in America the longest: they wore the more extravagant hats...
...I still haven't acclimated," he told me, in tion at the Wistar Institute...
...A crowd of people milled about on both sides of the street, and a constant flow came in and out the open doors...
...though except for the occasional, salient susurration, the collective sound seemed no different from that produced at any lively American cocktail party...
...and he held out a knobby, grease-stained hand unaccustomed to the environs of Madison Avenue...
...I don't have the necessary practical sense...
...Thursday's issue of the New York Times, with a front-page story on the Soviet weightlifter denouncing the KGB, was eagerly passed around, as was the article by Timothy Garton Ash, "The End of Communism in Poland and Hungary," from the current issue of the New York Review of Books...
...Five or six of them stood in a row, red and white ribbons attached to each curtain...
...Marek also works at Wistar, as a researcher in immunology, with Leszek virtually across the street, at the University of Pennsylvania hospital, where he has an appointment as a research assistant professor of physiology...
...We were soon joined by acquaintances of theirs, Krzysztof and Urszula, both from Warsaw and now living, temporarily, in West Philadelphia, where Krzysztof has a two-year posiThomas Swick is an editorial writer with the Providence Journal-Bulletin...
...Celina, whom we know from various functions, was working as a Solidarity volunteer...
...Hania and I proceeded inside and up the circular stairway carpeted in red...
...Damian's two boys, by contrast, wore soft, pliable, promotional hats that carried the name of their donor—Gtos Szczecirfski (The Szczecin Voice)— printed on the sides...
...You can have your own picture instead of Walesa's," she advertised, to a chorus of laughter...
...I spotted a journalist friend near the entrance, already wearing the Solidarity election pin, with the names of its four candidates typed in red...
...Once onto the New Jersey Turnpike, I got up to stretch my legs...
...Children appeared periodically from the back, wordlessly offering their cookies and crackers...
...We returned to the main hall to observe the scene...
...We were soon joined by acquaintances of theirs, Krzysztof and Urszula, both from Warsaw and now living, temporarily, in West Philadelphia, where Krzysztof has a two-year posiThomas Swick is an editorial writer with the Providence Journal-Bulletin...
...Hanna, Janusz's wife, took the microphone to sell her T-shirts: $12 for adults, $10 for children...
...Solidarity had urged its supporters to cross out the names of all the Party candidates who were running uncontested, but an older man, sitting one row from the back, objected to such a ploy, arguing that it would simply give the Party the opportunity to choose whomever it pleased...
...Marek sat reading an article from the Journal of Immunology, while Janusz, standing in the aisle, debated voting strategy with Leszek and Joanna...
...She too wore the movement's pin on her fashionable jacket...
...Marysia wore a Solidarity T-shirt, with the red, familiar jumbled script painted black, and a smaller message printed beneath it: "Anotherword for freedom...
...He was sweating profusely, either from the heat or the unaccustomed pressure of having to be nice...
...Hania and I proceeded inside and up the circular stairway carpeted in red...
...He told me something of his background: Solidarity activity, arrest during martial law, seven months interned...
...Joanna soon connected to the group, having left their two daughters with Leszek's mother, now visiting from Warsaw, and bringing along Joanna's brother, Marek, more recently arrived...
...Japanese cameras for immigrants...
...I introduced myself and took the seat beside him...
...Behind her a semicircle of people leaned against the consulate bar to do their voting in less secretive surroundings...
...The atmosphere was vaguely reminiscent of a sports club outing: a couple of cloth calendars, one with a picture of Walesa, the other of the Pope, had been hung against some windows, and a bouquet of red and white carnations teetered precariously from the luggage rack...
...W e dipped into the Lincoln Tunnel and passed easily through the Midtown streets, coming to a halt in front of the consulate at the corner of 37th and Madison Avenue...
...j"7 The organizer of the trip, Janusz, a regional economist at Penn, arrived with his wife and three children, all of whom (with the exception of Janusz) ^ were dressed in T-shirts declaring: "Filadelfia glosuje na Solidarnog6" (Philadelphia votes for Solidarity...
...Looking out the window we saw on the grass of the median strip a black and white cow...
...This meant that Iza's first excursion in the United States was going to be to her own consulate to vote...
...T he same amiable bustle lasted 1 through the afternoon...
...movie cameras for permanent residents...
...A boy of six or seven sported a green one designed to resemble a frog, with two eyes set at the front and a tongue inserted between the bifurcated visor...
...I am a romantic...
...Turning around they displayed a computer print-out image of Lech Walesa, circa 1981...
...He's wonderful," he exclaimed to me with relish, "but mean...
...All around me there was nothing but Polish to be heard...
...He's wonderful," he exclaimed to me with relish, "but mean...
...I stood across thestreet from the entrance, with a small band of Poles passing the time...
...At one point I closed my eyes to listen to the din, expecting to detect a tangled undergrowth of sz's and cz's...
...Change is a long way off," he said heavily...
...Behind her a semicircle of people leaned against the consulate bar to do their voting in less secretive surroundings...
...My wife followed the second (curiously placed on the left) and, after the briefest of waits, reached the registration table...
...I got talking with a man from RzeszOw, in the south of Poland, who now lives in Brooklyn...
...He invested limited hope in the elections, but explained: "If I myself didn't vote, if I hadn't come today, I would have felt badly inside," and he clutched his shirt in front of his heart and crumpled it in his fist...
...Damian is an ophthalmologist, working at Temple University for a year, and his family had joined him only a week before...
...movie cameras for permanent residents...
...It was easy to tell which children had been in America the longest: they wore the more extravagant hats...
...And some of its members, he insisted, were not as bad as others...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 25 THE NATION'S PULSE I'M A POLE WATCHER S with a group of Poles the 1. 3 first Saturday...
...p eople moved freely up and down the aisles, exchanging news and by Thomas Swick reading material...
...Then a man exited from one and Hania went off to vote for the first time in her life...
...But who knows when we'll get a chance like this again...
...The bus was already parked near some trees at twenty minutes to nine when my wife, Hania (who is Polish), and I arrived with another couple, Damian and Iza, and their two young sons...
...I don't have the necessary practical sense...
...She too wore the movement's pin on her fashionable jacket...
...Gilt moldings trimmed the sides...
...Shirts were worn with a flat collar open at the neck, and the Polish fashion of socks and sandals prevailed on the feet...
...Once onto the New Jersey Turnpike, I got up to stretch my legs...
...The flow of people continued up and down the staircase: women in summer dresses, grandmothers who looked as if they were straight from the countryside, a great preponderance of men with mustaches...
...The sofa in the center hall, at the foot of an enormous red and white banner strung from the window, was a popular place to pose: once we saw three large men squeeze rather comically onto it with expressions of imperturbable dignity...
...Marysia wore a Solidarity T-shirt, with the red, familiar jumbled script painted black, and a smaller message printed beneath it: "Anotherword for freedom...
...Hania and I found seats in the middle of the bus, in front of Janusz's sister-in-law, Marysia, and her husband Grzegorz...
...Arrows set atop stands and printed with the letters A-L and M-Z pointed into two adjoining halls...
...I spotted a journalist friend near the entrance, already wearing the Solidarity election pin, with the names of its four candidates typed in red...
...Not that this section exuded a lived-in look...
...the thick carpets and long curtains seemed to be getting a much-needed airing...
...My wife followed the second (curiously placed on the left) and, after the briefest of waits, reached the registration table...
...Despite the opulent surroundings, no one seemed to feel the least bit awed or out of place...
...I am a romantic...
...I was an electrician in Poland," he told me, "but now I'm an auto mechanic...
...I stood across thestreet from the entrance, with a small band of Poles passing the time...
...Celina, whom we know from various functions, was working as a Solidarity volunteer...
...Celina...
...I introduced myself and took the seat beside him...
...He told me he was a doctor by training who had come to the States for a year and stayed fifteen...
...Grzegorz behind me had finished with the Times and returned to Paul Fussell's The Boy Scout Handbook...
...Celina...
...We stood awhile watching the people as they waited to vote...
...Upstairs, sunlight filtered through tall windows and sparkled from a chandelier...
...By five o'clock the first line had formed on the sidewalk outside...
...In fact, there was an endearing casualness in the way that people made themselves at home...
...The sun was already warm in a cloudless sky...
...She was not grazing, but lurching awkwardly backwards in visible terror at the traffic...
...Hanna, Janusz's wife, took the microphone to sell her T-shirts: $12 for adults, $10 for children...
...A painting reminiscent of Tiepolo, depicting bare-chested maidens through diaphanous clouds, occupied the ceiling...
...We walked to the other room, where a portly consulate official of the peasant/bureaucrat variety asked if he could be of help...
...I asked his profession...
...There was something about the scene—the soft summer air, the labored faces, the pensive, not quite festive moodthat struck me as familiar...
...Mirek, another Penn economist, appeared with his wife Marzena, who teaches in the Slavic department, their four-year-old daughter, Klaudina, and Marzena's mother, who had come for a few months from Gdansk...
...Children appeared periodically from the back, wordlessly offering their cookies and crackers...
...I asked his profession...
...Damian's two boys, by contrast, wore soft, pliable, promotional hats that carried the name of their donor—Gtos Szczecirfski (The Szczecin Voice)— printed on the sides...
...I am not one to attach a great deal of significance to unusual occurrences, but it does seem to me somehow meaningful that riding with a busload of Poles going to vote in parliamentary elections I should see for the first time in my life a cow on the New Jersey Turnpike...
...She checked Hania's name off her list and handed her her ballots;then, smiling at me, said sweetly: "You can't vote...
...when coming for visas I had always been shepherded into a smaller, more hushed wing...
...I got talking with a man from RzeszOw, in the south of Poland, who now lives in Brooklyn...
...The bus was already parked near some trees at twenty minutes to nine when my wife, Hania (who is Polish), and I arrived with another couple, Damian and Iza, and their two young sons...
...I noticed that in this room people were eschewing the booths for the top of a piano sitting in the corner...
...All around me there was nothing but Polish to be heard...
...Change is a long way off," he said heavily...
...And then I remembered the Pope's first visit to Warsaw—ten years before, almost to the day...
...the thick carpets and long curtains seemed to be getting a much-needed airing...
...We walked to the other room, where a portly consulate official of the peasant/bureaucrat variety asked if he could be of help...
...Things are going quite smoothly," he assured us, then joked, himself a veteran of numerous American elections: "They're giving out free drinks over at Jerzy Urban headquarters...
...And it seemed fitting that election day at the consulate should echo that visit, being that it was, quite clearly, a direct descendant of it...
...The sun was already warm in a cloudless sky...
...Marek also works at Wistar, as a researcher in immunology, with Leszek virtually across the street, at the University of Pennsylvania hospital, where he has an appointment as a research assistant professor of physiology...
...Turning around they displayed a computer print-out image of Lech Walesa, circa 1981...
...A number of voters hesitated before depositing their ballots, not because of second thoughts, but because of a desire to preserve the moment on film...
...At one point in our conversation the bus slowed abruptly, all heads turned to the left, and we heard the word "krowa" coming from the front...
...They had the hard, rough-hewn, somber look of Polish workers, only slightly diminished by their light-hued summer clothing...
...At one point I closed my eyes to listen to the din, expecting to detect a tangled undergrowth of sz's and cz's...
...Shortly after nine the driver pulled out onto City Line Avenue and headed toward the Pennsylvania Turnpike...
...The consulate in New York returned to its usual Saturday somnolence, and Poles abroad reverted to the more familiar role of distant spectators...
...Guest in the house, God in the house," is an old Polish proverb, though one heretofore not commonly embraced by the foreign service...
...Despite the opulent surroundings, no one seemed to feel the least bit awed or out of place...
...A painting reminiscent of Tiepolo, depicting bare-chested maidens through diaphanous clouds, occupied the ceiling...
...A day of family milestones...
...We returned to the main hall to observe the scene...
...She came out, looking little changed, walked to the red-and-white-draped ballot box, and dropped in her votes...
Vol. 22 • September 1989 • No. 9
