Pierogi Queens and The Polish Precision Lawn Mower Team
It was so fucking hot, Chicago melted. Lake Michigan evaporated leaving behind three startled carp and a land-locked yachtsman, half-crazed from the heat.
Fifteen miles to the southeast, the annual Pierogi Fest was gearing up in defiance of the sweltering sun suspended ten feet above the bubbling asphalt. The Pierogi Parade and ensuing encampment of beer gardens and potato venders promised the largest gathering of drunken Polacks outside of Warsaw.
Of course, there was no curbside parking to be found within a twenty-block radius of the parade route. I had to pull the Ford into a stranger’s driveway a half mile away from Whiting Boulevard.
“You sure they won’t mind?” The wife asked.
“Why the hell would they? I parked far enough on the grass; they can pull in and out of their garage if they needed to.”
I barely had the lawn chairs pulled out of the Ford’s trunk when I met the first crazy person of the day (discounting the wife). I could tell he was crazy by the pink derby hat he wore along with the fluorescent orange shorts held up by lavender suspenders. His lime green mesh shirt peeled back like a foreskin over the dead catfish pale expanse of his belly. He pushed an old timey wheelbarrow chock full of dilapidated gardening equipment.
“Ja got stuff some marcher cando!” The old Polack hollered at me.
I nodded my head as though he made perfect sense. Mercifully, he continued pushing his bullshit further down the street.
The walk to the parade route nearly ended me. In the ten minutes it took us to walk the distance, we shed half our water weight. Our shoes squelched with every step. Insects, birds, small mammals quickly descended upon our wet footprints, wetting their whistles before the moisture dissipated.
Already, there were hundreds of citizens, suburban refugees, lining the streets. Many were decked out in the white and the red, the Polish warbird emblazoned on ball caps and T-shirts usually accompanied by the country’s motto: KISS ME, I’M POLISH. Always accompanied by the picture of an ass.
“There’s a place to sit.” The wife motioned toward a sickly tree, twisted and gnarled from the heat. It didn’t offer enough shade to cover the bunions on the wife’s big toe.
In the amount of time it took my heat-addled mind to register the location, the Gorecki clan had claimed it. Now, I could have slapped Hubert Gorecki around a little, sent his family away in shame, but he was mobbed up with the Polish cartel, which would have entailed retribution somewhere down the line. I let him have his day.
Also, there was another spot, a swath of curb, that looked a bit more enticing. It was a eighteen inch space next to a young mother monitoring her a baby carriage. The wife didn’t argue when I motioned toward the area. She was painfully aware of my obsession with heavy breasted young women wearing wife beater tops.
“Hot enough for you?” I asked the young lady as we situated ourselves in her immediate vicinity.
She looked at me as though I were an idiot.
“The heat,” I muttered, scooting myself further away from my wife and closer to the eight inches of cleavage steaming from the evaporating sweat.
The procession began soon after we settled in. The mayor of Whiteham led the parade. He rode on a platform bolted to the back of a golf cart. It was a fitting mode of transportation considering the amount of time he spent on the golf course. A banner affixed to the cart read: DON’T ASK FOR MIRACLES; I’M A MAYOR, NOT A SAINT.
I wasn’t sure how lower crimes or less exorbitant land tax could qualify as miracles. No matter. Like his campaign promises, the mayor quickly disappeared replaced by a gaggle of Polish housewives who labeled themselves the Babushka Brigade. They numbered twenty, all of them twirling around, whirling dervishes of mono print house dresses. They gripped brightly colored feather dusters like fluffy rocket pops. The crocheted babushkas, all in varying shades of pea green, instilled a disconcerting sense of dread the Polish referred to as “marriage.”
In keeping with the time-honored Polish menstruating tradition, each woman wore only one sock. No, that’s not an entirely true statement. Likely, they were not all women. Polish humor favored transvestitism. The gender reversal laughs were proportional to the bra size being stuffed. Either that, or a few of the ladies had neglected to shave their legs these last five years.
The Babushka Brigade were followed by Stosh Zalewski, the 2023 Pierogi King, holding court from the bed of a white GMC Denali. I’m not sure how he came to be elected Pierogi King, but he won over the people’s loyalty by lobbing fistfuls of candy at their heads.
The kids learned quickly to catch the candy on the fly. The streets were so hot, anything touching the ground immediately melded with the pavement. Chocolate. Bubblegum. Hands.
Also handing out candy were this summer’s Whiteham’s little league champs, the Industrial Strip Twins, sponsored by The Region’s premiere gentleman’s club. The Twins were represented by the three outfielders since the other six players and the third base coach had spontaneously combusted on the baseball diamond during the season.
The members of the Whiteham’s Scottish Rite Freemasonry Guild took a break from their secret society activities and charity potluck dinners in order to hob nob with the Polish community who viewed Freemasons with the sort of superstitious hostility they usually reserved for wizards and psychiatrists. They lubricated their way into the Polacks’ good graces by doling out Tootsie Rolls for the kiddies and canned goods for the adults. A 16th degree Mason handed me a packet of Chili-flavored Ramen Noodle Soup. It was as though this man used his mysterious Freemason powers to ascertain the dearth of home-cooked meals cursing my household.
Even more popular than the spiritual ancestors of the Knight Templars were the Pierogi Queens. These three women each tipped the scales at over three hundred pounds. Valerie Lewanowski. Sheryl Matursak, and Bethany Betustak. I knew them from high school. At some point, I’d had sex with each of them, back before they’d gone on their crash diets. They rode mechanized scooters and managed to wave in every direction except mine.
Suddenly, there was a muffled pop and a dispersing cloud of ash and charred flakes where the Pierogi King once stood.
Screams from the rabble heralded the arrival of Whiteham’s Pride, the golden boys of The Region, The Polish Precision Lawn Mower Team led by the field marshal, Felix Wojciechowski. He inexplicably wore a fuchsia ball gown while he pushed an antiquated sickle mower.
He stopped near where I sat, still trying to chat up the young mother seemingly unaware that her child had dehydrated into what amounted to a cornhusk in a diaper. The field marshal blew into a nickel-plated whistle and the strangest group of deranged Polacks found outside Krakow’s kink club Domi Busi lined up in two single file lines behind him.
Twenty-four men pushing, pulling, or carrying busted-up, broken-down, outdated lawn care equipment converged. A middle-aged man (I can only assume he was middle-aged, Polish males usually look like they’re either twenty or sixty with nothing in between) dressed as a can of Spam jerked along a burned-out push mower. Another Polack who’d begun the parade dressed in a seventies era beige tuxedo had stripped down to two socks and a yellowed pair of bikini briefs carried a stringless weed whacker. Most were balding or afflicted with oddly barbered hairdos. Beet red, bulbous noses ruled the day. There were businessmen dressed as clowns, clowns dressed as winos, and winos dressed as businessmen. One guy drove a Polish riding lawn mower, which was nothing more than an old push mower tied to the back of a rusty Schwinn bicycle.
With the parade momentarily halted as the Pierogi King’s subjects swept up his charred remains, the Polish Precision Lawn Mowing Team went through their drills. From their two-line formation, they veered between each other’s ranks, laughing and reeking of cheap whiskey. From where I stood, it appeared to be some sort of synchronized clusterfuck, sort of like our government but with better equipment. They moved diagonally left to right. I noticed the Polack from earlier, the guy wearing the pink derby hat. He was still muttering gibberish, smiling with the only three teeth he had.
And then the parade was over. The wife stared at me with abject horror, thinking we’d traveled all the way from Alabama for this? No. Not so much the parade as the resulting orgy of Okocim beer and fried potato snacks. When I turned back to get one more eyeful of the young mother’s cleavage, she’d already left without providing me with any way to get ahold of her in the future. I found women to be funny that way.
Later, in the beer garden, the mayor of Whiteham raised a plastic cup of flat Old Style beer in memory of the Pierogi King, Stosh Zalewski. Unfortunately, I was unable to raise my own cup of booze, since I was still outside the canopy behind four hundred other Polacks waiting to gain entry, just enough Polacks to screw in a light bulb by popular consensus.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
