HUMOR

I’ve Got A Problem With Perogies

I think this was the working title of “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria”.

Photo by Anna Pyshniuk

I live in a chronically Polish part of the world, which seems odd since it’s Ohio.

Even where I grew up, out in the boondocks with the corn and the coyotes, our immediate neighbors were Holocaust survivors. My dad worked at Ford with John Demjanjuk (not a Pole, but same thematic ballpark).

My boyfriend’s last name has no vowels and he’s not even from Ohio. He was just drawn here by some mysterious force that drives Polish people to Ohio like lemmings over a cliff.

I think my ex-husband was Polish, but things get a little blurry after marriage number two.

Poles came to Ohio in the 1860s to work in the stone quarries. I still live in a moonscape of sand and gravel quarries. When the gravel company wants to expand a pit, they buy all the houses that are in the way, offer to move the entire house someplace else nearby, and then move all the roads to accommodate the digging.

I can’t even remember what my immediate surroundings looked like 40 years ago even though I still live within a mile of my childhood home. The roads have all been moved…