Tag: autobiography

It was a full moon in a clear sky on Thursday. White snow showed the shadows of everything on its surface. We looked on in wonder as the moon rose.

When my maternal ancestors emigrated from Poland to Minnesota, Poland did not exist. It had been partitioned three times beginning in the late 18th Century and completely dissolved for more than a century before 1918. Serfdom had been abolished on May 3, 1791, yet the partition mostly nullified abolition. Serfdom’s vestiges persisted into the mid-Nineteenth Century. My ancestors came from the cohort of former Polish serfs. Our stock was peasant subsistence farmers for whom life in Europe, especially after the end of serfdom, made them want something better.

Maciej Nadolski emigrated from Poland through Philadelphia and took wage work as a coal miner in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He was recruited from there to be part of a new colony near Wilno, Minnesota. Beginning in February 1882, 40 Polish settlers bought land from the railroad in Royal Township, Lincoln County, Minnesota. Great, great grandfather bought his parcel on Sept. 22, 1883.

Most of the Polish settlers in the new Wilno colony didn’t know each other before moving there. The organizing principle of the colony was for the Winona and St. Peter Railroad Company to deed land in Wilno for a Roman Catholic Church and cemetery to support a new, Polish-speaking community to whom they hoped to sell land. St. John Cantius Roman Catholic Church was built in 1883 and served to bring the community together. In this these Polish immigrants began a new, American life.

Lincoln County was one step out of the frontier in 1883. The first white child was born there in 1869. The first newspaper was published in 1879. In 1874 there was a grasshopper infestation that continued for a couple of years. The presence and perceived threat of Indians was real. If the Poles were coming to Royal Township to become subsistence farmers, the county had not previously seen a lot of success in it.

As I study this period and culture, a couple of things have been on my mind.

The historical accounts make scant mention of women. While writing about Nadolski land ownership and the Wilno colony for my book, I had an epiphany that Maciej was married to Franciszka Nadolski and her name appears on some of the deeds. It would be a mistake to leave women out of the story. After considering what artifacts survive from that time, the historical narrative makes more sense: there was a rich cultural life in addition to the hard work of subsisting on the Minnesota prairie.

Until this year, I did not understand that there was a Wilno colony and what it was. When I visited Wilno in 1991, the place did not seem like much. That’s partly because automobile culture had been dominant for a long time since settlement. Early settlers just made do with what they had. The rise of mass marketing and consolidation of business and wealth was yet to come.

The colony developed indigenous solutions to common problems of commerce and agricultural cooperation. While the railroad said they might run the line through Wilno when the original plots were sold, they ended up platting a new town of Ivanhoe (a.k.a. New Wilno) to the south because there would be more land sales to benefit the railroad. As an inland community it is remarkable the hamlet of Wilno survived at all.

The Polish immigrants’ connection to the Catholic Church was a main part of the settlement. If the railroad had not given land to the church, there would have been no colony. While there were established settlers in the county in 1882, they were not Polish. As the Poles arrived, their common language and culture created an insularity as they farmed, congregated, and socialized among themselves. Over time that changed, yet it was a cultural trait that persisted through my grandmother who was born there, and in some form was passed down to me.

In the shade of the spruce tree on Thursday I was thinking about how few cultural connections we have today. Anyway, we don’t have them the way the original Polish settlers of the Wilno colony did. We have many friends and some family. During the coronavirus pandemic we email, text, telephone, and video conference with them a lot. It’s not the same. Broader community connections especially like the church, although other cooperative ventures as well, have been broken by mass communication, consolidation of business, and concentration of wealth. While my ancestors may have escaped post-serfdom life as wage earners in partitioned Poland, in the United States today, with wages stagnant, unemployment high, and jobs that create a sense of community scarce, we may be returning to our serfdom roots.

It seems a long way for them to have come for life in society to end up this way.

My decision to enter the military created a personal challenge. I had protested the Vietnam War in high school and college, and favored non-violent approaches to resolving conflict. At the same time, Father had served in the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II. While he did not talk much about his military service, it was an important part of how his life evolved after graduating from Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida.

Mother took me to register for the draft when I became eligible at age 18. I still have my Selective Service card. People in my birth year were eligible for the draft lottery on July 1, 1970 for calendar year 1971. I took a student deferment to attend the University of Iowa in fall 1970. Because of it, my number would be drawn in 1973 for the following year, after graduation. Rather than take a chance in the 1973 lottery, when the Selective Service drew 125, I canceled my deferment, and accepted eligibility, because my draft number was 128. One could be eligible for the draft lottery only once, so I was off the hook on conscription.

After graduating from university in May 1974, I stayed in Iowa City contemplating next steps. When Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on Aug. 8, 1974, a weight was lifted from me and almost everyone I knew. This freed me to take a long tour of Europe, a modern-day equivalent of the 17th and 18th Century Grand Tours. I returned to Davenport as winter set in. I worked a couple of jobs in 1975, yet living in my home town wasn’t for me. I remained restless about what would be next.

When the Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, I revisited joining the military. Without the danger of the Vietnam War, my father’s service came to mind again. I discovered a program to enlist for Officer Candidate School to become a commissioned officer. I took all the tests, went through various hearings, and despite frowns from the panel at my shoulder-length hair, was accepted. I enlisted in the program and left for Fort Jackson, S.C. in January 1976, the Bicentennial Year.

Why did I enlist? I felt the U.S. Army at the end of the Vietnam War was a despicable mess. The March 16, 1968 My Lai massacre of more than 500 people, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed, was particularly on my mind. I believed the only way to address problems like My Lai was for people like me, who valued non-violent means of conflict resolution and common decency, to enter the military and do a better job of leading it. Father’s military service played a role in my decision, as did the opportunity of youth and being single. I have no regrets in following my father’s footsteps and joining the Army.

DAVENPORT, Ia. (Dec. 28, 1975) During the last three days I have heard two significant quotes and several metaphors well worth remembering here.

Christmas Day as I escorted my Grandmother down the front stairs (of the American Foursquare) and as the sun was sinking in the west, she said, “The day we have prepared for so long is gone.”

Also Joe, on the eve of his 24th birthday said, “The ink has dried on the last year, and already it begins to fade.”

Both of these touch home for me at this time of my life.

Journals, Dec. 28, 1975

THOMASVILLE, Ga. (Dec. 7, 1997) For the past three weeks I have been wrapped up in the transition between CRST and Oil-Dri. The time has gone quickly and with the 12-16-hour days, I have had little time for reflection. It was only Friday night I did something for myself — I went to Walmart and bought some shaving cream and underwear.

Yesterday, after five hours at work, I drove toward Tallahassee and went to a Goodwill store, a large bookstore, and got groceries — to last me until I fly home on Friday.

What I observed is difficult to put into words. Mostly it is difficult because I am not accustomed to writing observations. But I will attempt something now.

On Georgia Highway 3, near Ochlocknee, is a huge clay mine. Across the street is the Oil-Dri plant which processes the clay into absorbents and cat litter. The reason I am here is to train these people to provide the transportation services needed to move products to market. This is something Oil-Dri was doing on their own, but in a changing economic environment they now chose to outsource the function.

People are very nice, and determined to preserve their way of life. What that means, I am not sure, but I detect that many in the area do not have a lot of money, and things like a person taking home a bag of rolls from the farewell luncheon, and statements about living in Cairo or Moultrie because a person cannot afford to live in Thomasville, are revealing.

Yesterday I took my clothes to a coin-operated laundromat where there is a wash, dry and fold service. The proprietress is a woman who will, for 75 cents a pound, wash, dry and fold clothes. There are two very young children who stay with her — they are young enough to be grandchildren. When I returned to pick up my clothes, there was a gathering of older females who were of an age to be daughters/mothers of the others. The proprietress indicated that Iowa was a long way from that coin-operated laundromat.

Saturday afternoon I drove south on 319 toward Tallahassee. As I entered Leon County, I remembered entering that county with my parents when I was seven or eight years old. I am not far from where my father spent time as a teenager. I liked the road with the trees reaching over the road surface — Spanish moss hanging from them — a cozy drive on a busy road leading to shops, and eventually, the airport from which I will fly home.

It was inside Walmart yesterday afternoon I was inspired to buy this paper and continue my journal from Georgia. The idea of writing in it as an escape and as creative endeavor seems inviting after 23 straight days of endless activity. I never know if I will write volumes or if this will be my solitary entry as Monday comes and I move back into a work mode — engaged in what must be done.

It is a place of solitary enjoyment — as usual, I know not when, if ever, I will return to read these writings… or if, like the writings I had stolen in France, they will just be gone forever — to be composted into some other matter. Now, it is rewarding to put the words to paper, and so, on what is turning into a retreat weekend, I am at this table writing.

It is in writing down thoughts I am able to move on to the next activity. It is like putting money into a repository where it is unseen and as such out of my attention — letting me be free to engage in new thoughts. I have left the curtain closed in my room. I can see it is light outside, and when I emerge, I will have a fresh view of what potential there is in my environment.

Now it is time to end this journal entry. I have come to this place in my day and the promise of my future calls me. I have used this morning — the three hours since I woke up — to bring focus to what I am doing. Now mental activity pulls me toward work. Indeed, that is the reason I am here in Georgia.

So now, I will close this page, this entry — go to the exercise room for an hour, then begin writing in other actions, the next phase of my career as an Americanist.

~ Lightly edited from my personal journal.