Better living through Kumtek

I was at Euromart at 808 Dot Ave to pick up some smoked trout from the cooler but as I was entering, I ran into John Kumbalowski who was carrying out a six pack of Zywiec, the beer of choice in the Polish Triangle.  We got to talking and he suggested we head over to Cafe Polonia for some kishka and cherry brandy.  An order of kishka only goes for eight bucks and we were splitting a plate so I agreed.

Unfortunately, Cafe Polonia looked a bit too crowded for our tastes so we headed across Andrew Square to the Aces High Tavern.  Since we were now on the Irish side of Andrew, we ordered two Budweisers on tap and John proceeded to catch me up on what's going on his life.

Though he works as a installer at Yale Appliance and Electric, John graduated from MIT in the Class of '91.   He hasn't forgotten anything that he learned as a student and, in fact, he has been pursuing his own interests while off the clock at Yale.   He told me he was starting up his own company in order to manufacture jet engines he's designed and patented on weekends and during vacations.  He asked me if I'd be interested in investing.

I answered that I would be interested and I asked the name of the new company.  John replied, "Kumtek.  It's a combination of Kumbalowski and Technology but I spell technology with a 'k' because it looks more futuristic."

I agreed that the k was cutting edge but I advised him he might want to pick a different name.  I suppose there's nothing wrong with the name Kumtek but it's not the kind of name I'd like to drop in polite conversation.  He said he'd think about it and he did seem thoughtful as we finished our beers.  When we parted company, John asked, "What do you think about Baltek?"

I told him it would depend on the pronunciation and we shook hands.  I headed over to Euromart to pick up my smoked trout.  John headed back to the drawing board with his six pack of Zywiec under his arm.

Two Dorchesters

I've been thinking about a statistic I read in the Globe recently.  I'm not going to look it up or link to it because it's a stat that's already been stuck in my mind.  How accurate it may be, I haven't researched, but some variation is part of common, ingrained perception and, quite likely, part of common reality in this part of Boston.

The average household income in Dorchester is $28,000 a year.

Whether that sounds like a lot or a little depends on where you begin to measure.  For our regular readers who live in Hinton, West Virginia, it's a little for the Boston area.  Very little.

Living where I do, by the JFK/UMASS MBTA station (that's the subway to you Hintonites), I don't see any abject poverty.  Believe me: $28,000 will not support a nuclear family in Boston.  The rent on a two bedroom apartment will consume half that and more, not including utilities.  This may explain the lack of nuclear families in Dorchester, but again...I don't see a lot of single parent households where I live, not that I'm taking a detailed census or spying on my neighbors.

Some parts of Dorchester are like the part I live in.  Adams Village, Neponset, Pope's Hill, Ashmont Hill, Jones Hills, Mount Bowdoin, the Polish Triangle, Point Norfolk, Lower Mills; they are all fairly stable, middle class, whatever middle class means.  Let's say the people I pass on the street don't seem to be going without.  They are also primarily located near train stations and they are also predominantly white.

I do not like to dwell on racial differences on the Matrix.  I usually make it a point to avoid discussing them, but they exist.  Different parts of Dorchester have different ethnicities, to be sure,  The same differences in skin color and income that demark other places also occur in the Dot.  It isn't pretty, but it is true.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes not.  Again, it depends on where you start to measure.

If I looked at the tax records for my neighborhood, I suspect the average income isn't dragging the neighborhood average downwards.  This part of Dot is full of college students working part time jobs, but they are paying market rate rents and living, as some scholars do, at the local bars soaking up cheap food and suds.  Just eyeballing the lay of the land, I suspect what lowers Dorchester's median income figures are the neighborhoods roughly west or northeasterly of Washington Street: Four Corners, Codman Square, Talbot Avenue, Norfolk Avenue, Columbia Road, Blue Hill Avenue, East Cottage Street, Bowdoin/Geneva, and other terrain that doesn't have names for its neighborhoods, just a collection of pins on a police station map.

There are two Dorchesters.  Both of them are equally welcoming and equally convivial. I've never witnessed a crime being committed in Dorchester and I have been down most streets and I am out most hours of the day and night.  I have never been uncomfortable.

There is a different culture to the west than there is to the east of Dot Ave, which is an approximate, handy boundary line.  The east is whiter and more asian (whether Vietnamese or Chinese it's hard to say).  The west is darker and more hispanic (or Haitian or Cape Verdean).  You can't really say one side is old Dot stock and the other side is new.  African Americans have been a majority in some parts of Dorchester for more than half a century.  They aren't immigrants.  They are Dorchesterites.

East plus West equals the middle ground, which is somewhere near Field's Corner.

I've been thinking about this over the past few months and, unlike my usual folderol, I thought I would work through more serious musings in public.  I'm trying to develop a Dot-view that is more panoramic than the one I have now.  As I say, I have been almost everywhere, but as a transplant, I have been almost everywhere as someone passing through, or as someone from Savin Hill,  rather than as a native.  A fellow citizen, perhaps.  Some people live in a Dot microcosm.  I am  one of them.  I want to take in more of the macro view.

I don't usually solicit comments but I invite you to add your observations and thoughts.  Let's discuss.

The secret to clear skin

I was wandering around the Polish Triangle today, that area bounded by Columbia Road at its base and Dot Ave and Boston Streets at its sides.  These two last two converge at Andrew Square, hence the "triangle" in Polish Triangle. 

Walking the sidewalks, I noticed all the women I passed, no matter thier ages, had skin close to perfection.  The older ladies had some crow's feet, a few worry lines and frown lines and laugh lines, but overall their complexions glowed like freshly churned milk.  As for the younger ladies, I wish I knew the Polish equivalent to the phrase, "Ooo-la-la."  All the passing people were speaking a language heavy on the consanants in unfamiliar combinations.  I overheard a lot of sz, cz, tz, scz, sctz, ctsz, tczsk, etc.  Accent marks were flying through the air left and right.  That's were the 'Polish' comes from in Polish Triangle.

I stepped into the Baltic Deli at 632 Dot Ave, a block from the T station.  It's more than a deli, its a grocery store too, the way all the Polish delis are in the Triangle and Andrew Market is really a liquor store.  I bought some pickled beets and noticed that the cashier had a complexion like a waxing moon.  The cash register is right next to the sausage counter and the juxtaposition of this vision of clean pores and polished marble beauty posed next to kielbasa links, mysliwska, jalowcowa, and kaszanka didn't compute.  I looked around and I learned an ancient Polish beauty secret.

You can eat all the fatty, smoked pork packed into natural casings that you want and still look like you bathed in milk this morning.  All you have to do is balance your diet with ample helpings of 'winter vegetables.'  Cabbage, beets, parsnips and potatoes counteract the corroding effects of city air close by the interstate and along a major thoroughfare.  Pickled carrots and squash reverse the capillary-clogging effects of a diet rich in fatty meats and perogi.  If the refrigerator section of Baltic Deli is any indication, beer shouldn't be thought of as an accompaniment to a meal; it is really one fifth the menu.  I like that thinking and I think I can adopt that regimen.

Walk around the Polish Triangle...  It is like walking through a training ground for both the Mr. and Miss Universe pageants.  It's only because Dorchesterites are so naturally shy that Massachusetts hasn't won the Miss America crown every year.  Maybe it's time.  I met a young lady at Baltic Deli this afternoon who could be a contender.


    
The real gourmet Polish sausage, pickled and fresh, is found between Andrew Square and Columbia Road, between the southen border of South Boston and the northern boundary of Dorchester in the Polish Triangle.  Take the Red Line to Andrew Square and head south, either along Dorchester Avenue or Boston Street.  Both are lovely boulevards chockablock with visual diversions and little shops.

A perfect Boston cocktail?

You can buy beer by the pint at a good price in Dochester, Boston's biggest and best neighborhood, but what about cocktails?  Can a sophisticated palate purchase a fine sipping drink in the Dot?

Early actuarial calculations based on first hand experience point toward the negative.  Dorchester is good at some things.  It rests on a bedrock of natural strengths that can be dependably quarried to everyone's satisfaction.  Subtlety is not one of Dorchester's stengths, however.  This is a part of Boston more attuned to the rhythms of the pile driver and the staple gun rather than a paring knife or muddler.

I had a Dottini at Ashmont Grill last week.  It is a sweet  concoction along classic martini lines.  Instead of gin and vermouth and an olive, it tarts up the recipe with some kind of sweet liqour, some other liquid and a garnish to replace the salty, green olive.  My Dottini had three candies resting at the bottom of the glass.  The candies?  Ha-ha!  Dots.  The gummi confections didn't absorb a bit of alcholic flavor and really didn't dissolve enough to add any nuance to the sipping experience.  It was a good enough drink, and Heaven knows Dorchester is all sweetness and light, so the symbolic, "I'm drinking a Dottini in Dorchester" joke wasn't lost on me.  I don't really have a sweet tooth, so this one-note  beverage didn't hook me.  I do think, however, that a giant Dot candy statue should be cast in bronze in the parking lot opposite the giant Clapp pear that resides on the southern edge of Edward Everett Square. 

I did land around dead center of Downtown Crossing this week at the Marliave.  My first impression is leaving me wondering why it took so long to stop in.  It is old fashioned inside and I am often downtown switching from Green or Orange Line to Red, so the pop-in convenience is an added plus.  What  really won me over at the Marliave though, was its cocktail menu.  They may have beer on tap but I didn't notice.  They are selling hard liquor attractively packaged, and the menu is a joy to peruse.  I ordered the Molasses Flood.

Rum, molasses, lime, bitters, a hint of seltzer.  It isn't a strong drink but its a good one.  It's really good.  Anything that marries molasses with bitters has to be good to sip.  It's named after the tragic North End Molasses Flood of 1919.  There are better ways to commemorate tragedy than to name drinks after them, but at least this cocktail ignites some historical lesson-themed conversations around the bar rather than the usual sports-obsessed debates you find in Dot dives.

There is no reason Dorchester cannot inspire a bit of sweet and bitter mixology.  These two sensations brew in Dorchester every day of the year around the clock with the cream usually rising to the top.  Dorchester is a place of champagne tastes on a draft budget, though.  As gentrification looms, we may find more Marliaves than Saint's Diners in the Dot.  Heaven forbid the day the Saints go marching out.

The Lech Walesa Bridge

Motorists reaching the butt end of Morrissey Boulevard will find that construction is in progress on the Lech Walesa Bridge. It's understandable if you may not have heard of this bridge. It's not really as prominent a landmark as the Tobin and the Zakim Bridges. Its not as attractive as the footbridge in the Public Garden. In fact, the Lech Walesa Bridge isn't picturesque at all.

I doubt anyone has informed the former President of Poland, a renowned anti-communist and labor organizer, that Boston is home to a bridge named in his honor. It's nothing much to look at. In fact, if there weren't repairs going on, few people would know they were crossing the Lech Walesa Bridge. Because there is commonwealth-funded construction, there needs to be a sign describing what is done and what political authorities are responsible for this feat of civic engineering. The sign has raised awareness of Poland's post-glasnost politics.

Before the repaving, everyone thought of this as the overpass to get from Morrisey Blvd to that annoying Columbia Road rotary.

What majestic geographic feature does the Lech Walesa Bridge cross? Mount Vernon Street, a potholed, utilitarian, urban artery that connects the Harbor Point Shopping Center (a Shaw's supermarket and a liquor store) with the back side of the UMASS Boston Campus. The views from the bridge are as inspiring as its architechture. Function followed form in this case. The Lech Walesa Bridge is no Zakim. Nobody earned any overtime designing this gem. It is a featureless, by-the-numbers, concrete overpass. It was probably named Municipal Overpass #633 in the design stage but some bright legislator got the idea in his head that it would serve as a fitting tribute to the President of Poland.

On behalf of Dorchester as a whole, I would like to formally apologize to Lech Walesa. His life, its struggles, its successes and the effect he has had, not only in Poland but on the world community, deserves better than having his name plopped on any piece of infrastructure that happened to be unnamed at the time. It was only fate that this overpass didn't have a name attached to it. The unintended slight is nothing compared to the Mikhail Gorbachev Sewage Pumping Station located in Lower Mills. The Nelson Mandela Storm Grate on Van Winkle Street is another example of a poorly considered honor.

Dorchester is home to a Ronald Reagan Dog Walk, the Winston Churchill Aluminum Can Drop-Off Center, and the Buzz Aldrin Community Compost Heap. Dorchester knows how to recognize greatness. It's just a little fuzzy on how to commemorate it.

Shazam!

The door in Dorchester is always open. The porch light is always on. There's always some soup being kept warm on the stove top. There's always room for one more at the table. Strangers welcome. No one leaves this house hungry.

Do you like coffee? Do you like tea? I bet you'll like Dorchester and it will like you if you give it a chance. Do you like soda pop? You'll find Dorchester sufficiently fizzy. Do you like sweets? Do you like romance? Do you like to daydream? Do you like clean streets, manicured parks, decent schools, friendly neighbors, efficient public transportation and room enough to stretch your legs, exercise your muscles and reach your hands to the stars that twinkle like promises overhead. You can reach the stars in Dorchester. They are caught in the waters of Dorchester Bay and they wink against the lapping shores of the Neponset River. You can touch them. You can drink them. They tickle.

Wanted: a good, loving, capable woman who lives in Dorchester. Send a picture of apartment. You can't swing a yardstick in Dorchester without hitting a good, loving, capable woman. You can't walk a block without bumping into some Dot-bumpkin who will excuse himself and say, "Golleeee, Mister, I'm sorry!" He'll shake your hand, dust off where his shoulder hit yours and offer to buy you a cup of coffee. If you really lost your balance, he'll offer to buy you a sandwich to go along with the coffee.

From the northernmost tip of the Polish Triangle, along Dot Ave's hypotenuse, to the third point on Morton Street, Dorchester is full of the salt of the earth. Some people feel small, confused, crippled, almost. They move to Dorchester and they have a secret word that gives them strength and power to overcome their limitations. People excel in Dorchester. They make good despite what others may think. In Dorchester, a little goes a long way and a lot of good things happen where the sun shines. What's the secret word? If you have the urge to ask, "What is it?" you should come and make a visit.

You bet your life in Dorchester. You take your chances and you roll your dice. Every Dorchesterite's a winner. Luck is always a lady in the Dot.

I dream of Yoon

In my dream, Mayoral Candidate Sam Yoon walks into the New Store on the Block (847 Dorchester Avenue). He's buying a bag of pork rinds, a bottle of Mountain Dew and a pack of honey-berry flavored Backwoods cigars.

The guy behind the counter says, "Scrubby! I thought you gave up on vices. You know this stuff's no good for you." In my dream everyone calls Candidate Yoon 'Scrubby.' I have no idea why but he doesn't seem to mind.

Yoon pulls out a cigar and puts it in his mouth. "I'm a politician now," he growls around the butt end, "I live large, a man of the people. I enjoy blowing good smoke and I like to nosh on pork products, the more deep-fried the better." He lights up his cheroot indoors and, this being Massachusetts, I realize this is only a dream. Yoon seems puffed up, taller than he appears in photographs. He grins like a buffoon and there's a hint of malicious twinkle in his eyes. He pays the counterman with corroded pennies that he counts out twice before handing them over.

I'm next in line, holding a twenty-five cent box of Boston Baked Beans. As Candidate Yoon turns to make his way out of the store, he bumps into me. "Sorry about that, sport!" he exclaims. "I've got my eye on the election so I didn't see you there. Going to vote for me?" he asks.

I reply that I'm undecided. "I'm sure you'll make the right choice when the day comes," he says and he slaps me on the back so hard he knocks the wind out of me. I am deflated by his enthusiasm. "Now excuse me, gents. I'm headed over to Eagle Liquors to pick up a liter of eye-opener to go with my Mountain Dew."

"Hold on Scrubby," the guy behind the counter says. "Something's wrong with you. You're not yourself. Keep this up and you'll turn into this!" The guy hands Yoon a photograph and Yoon's face drains of color. He looks like he's seen Marley's ghost. Chagrined, he hands the photo back face down.

He says, "Can I buy a comb?" and he offers up a crisp dollar. When the purchase is complete, Candidate Yoon combs his hair. He tucks in his shirt. He puts down his pork rinds, his Mountain Dew and his cigars. "You can keep these," he says, "I think I'll just be myself. Being a politician can do horrible things to a man."

As Candidate Yoon leaves the store, I call out to him. "I hope you win, Scrubby," I say.

Is it only a dream?

An overlooked minority

Dorchester is a large neighborhood within Boston that contains a kaleidoscope of ethnicities. Most famous and enduring over the past century has been the Irish, but there are others. Vibrant South Vietnamese, Cape Verdean, Haitian, Latino Carribean, African American and WASP communities also have a strong presence. The Native Americans that originally inhabited Dorchester's shorline and hillsides have all but disappeared, but there is another ethnic group that has been here a long time and that has largely escaped notice.

I was strolling Mt. Ida Road that borders Ronan Park in Dorchester's highlands. This is a tidy neighborhood of three-deckers, much like you find elsewhere in the Dot, the main difference being the spectacularly sweeping water views of Dorchester Bay far below the hilltop's summit about a half mile away, if that.

Tacked next to a basement door was a sign written in a curious script, sort of a cross between Norse Runes and Greek. It didn't make any sense to me so I collared a passing teenager and asked him what the sign said. "I can't read it," he told me, "but that's the local soccer club's headquarters. They play in the park on Wednesday nights." He held out his hand and I gave him a quarter for his translation. Then I knocked on the door.

It turns out this cellar is home to Dorchester's own Etruscan-American Football Club. A man with an easygoing smile let me in and I settled onto one of the formica chairs that were arranged around a scattering of formica tables. There were twelve other people in the room, an equal mix of male and female, all of them affable and ready to answer whatever questions I had.

My first question: "I thought Etruscans were extinct. How is it that you are in Dorchester?"

A young lady with a thin nose, dark, curly hair and a complexion like a fava bean, answered, "The Etruscan community has been in Dorchester for over 20 centuries. We don't like to make a big deal over it. We don't have much political interest and so we don't have much political influence. Our community has been based up here on Mount Ida for longer than most of Boston remembers. Nobody bothers us so we don't bother anyone else. Etruscans learned a long time ago that it's easier to keep a low profile and not challenge the majority."

My second question: "How come there isn't a newspaper like the Haitian Reporter or the Irish Reporter available at convenience stores so I can keep up with developments in the Etruscan community?"

An aquiline man in his mid-30s stepped up to answer. He told me that the Etruscan community is well-knit, everyone knows everyone else and that Etruscans, as a rule, don't like to air their business for anyone else to see. "We take care of ourselves," he said, "We don't need a newspaper to know what's going on. After all, as you can see from the sign out front, our letters don't have a regular type font a publisher can pick up at wholesale. Our native tongue doesn't translate easily anyway, so why bother?"

This prompted my third question: "Is Etruscan a dead language?"

An old woman wearing the same beatific smile as everyone else in the room except me stood up with the help of a walker. She curled a limp fist and and tapped it on one of the tables, "As long as one of us breathes, Etruscan will be no more dead than Latin." She sat down again and sipped at a chipped teacup of grappa.

Dorchester is a big neighborhood full of many secrets and many small communities that escape the wide angle lens of the major media. Dorchester's streets are full of surprises. You never know what you'll find in Dorchester, be it the solution to ancient mysteries or the next big boy band. After I left Mt. Ida Road, I headed over to the New Store on the Block in the Polish Triangle. I bought a couple of scratch off tickets, and a Dorchester Reporter. I asked the Dominican guys behind the counter if they knew any Etruscans. The eldest of them answered, "We don't get many Etruscans here. Our customers are mostly Polish and students." His younger apprentice added, "We also have a few Dominican regulars, though."

No Swine Flu in Dorchester

Though I am a dues-paying member of the Casimir Polaski Post #1 of Polish Amrican Veterans in New London, Conn., I don't have a drop of Polish blood in me as far as genealogical records can tell. This must be readily apparent since when I visit the Baltic Deli or Euromart on Dot Ave or D&J Market on Boston Street, all grocers deep within Dorchester's notorious Polish Triangle.
Before I can utter a word, the counter help, who have been speaking Polish to everyone else in the store, addresses me in English. I'm not complaining, but I am wondering how they can tell. What inborn gland activates this Polish radar?

Easter kielbasa is a traditional Polish dish and, with Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Easters all having recently passed, I thought I could score a good deal on a two-foot link of the genuine article. I went to one of these stores and was immediately told when I stepped up to the sausage case, "We don't use Mexican pork." I was told this in English.

I wasn't thinking about trichinosis or Legionnaire's Disease (another fraternity to which I belong) when I considered what to have for dinner tonight. Now, I was suspicious. The lovely lady behind the counter said, "We've been getting a lot of questions this morning because of the Globe article about a swine flu epidemic in Mexico. Now I start every transaction by stating our pork is not Mexican. We guarantee none of it comes from south of the Ohio River. There are no worries here in the Polish Triangle." That was good, if not necessarily fresh, news.

"Can I have two feet of kielbasa?" I asked. "Of course," she answered as she proceeded to separate two curled, pink links from a rope of ground meat and spices smoked in natural casing.

"Is the casing imported?" I inquired, feeling mischievous. "No, sir," she replied, "This sterilized intestine comes only from USDA certified Massachusetts hogs. If not, you can rest assured, the donor came from Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, or upstate New York. We like to use trusted, local suppliers. We may depend on Pennsylvania suppliers but you won't find Maine casings here. Mainers only know how to fish lobsters and grow potatoes, but their hog raising practices don't measure up to close scrutiny as far as we're concerned."

The kielbasa weighed down my satchel with pure, local, Polish goodness that didn't add a smidge of gravity or drag as I pedalled my way home. I put the kielbasa in my refrigerator for later use but even with the fridge door closed the lady of house said, "You've been shopping. Something smells good here." Indeed it did. Something was good in the house and it was free of the fear factor of impending disease.

Cyrano d'Andrew

Children can be so cruel. Jan Kowalka is forty-three years old, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a good provider for his family, and he is a devoted father to his daughter and son. He lives off Boston Street in a third floor apartment he rents from his parents, who live on the ground floor. His sister and her husband live on the second story.

Jan Kowalka has a big nose, what Jimmy Durante would call a schnozzola. It's a honker. It doesn't look out of place on his face, but if it were on mine it would stand out like the monument at Dorchester Heights. It would be as prominent as the Hancock Tower in Boston's skyline viewed from Columbia Point. He has been called "Buzzard" since he started attending school. So many years later, on job sites and at the Dot Tavern, people around the neighborhood still call him "Buzz." He's gotten used to it. After all, a man is born with a face and then he learns to live with it.

Buzz Kowalka was walking down Washburn Street this morning, trudging through the snow with his lunchpail, when he was accosted by a gang of children. Though they would normally be in school at this hour but a few inches of snow had fallen in Dorchester overnight and the kids were free to have the run of the streets. "Hey mister," one of the rapscallions called, "Your nose is so big I bet I can peg it with a snowball with my eyes closed." Then he attempted to do just that.

The missle hit its mark and Mr. Kowalka's hat was knocked of his head. He couldn't see for a moment and he tripped on the uneven sidewalk that was buried under the eight inches of snow that came up over his ankles. Mr. Kowalka hit his head on a plastic trash barrel and his lunchpail fell into a snowdrift. The perpetrators scattered. Who knows where? Mr. Kowalka's nose was bleeding.

He headed back home and his wife applied a styptic pencil to to his left nostril to stanch the red stream that was dripping over his lips. After receiving first aid, Mr. Kowalka re-fit his hat, re-wrapped his scarf and trudged down Washburn Street again to retrieve his lunch and get to work, hopefully on time

The Devil went to the Dot

The Devil went down to Dorchester. He was looking for a soul to steal. He was way behind and he was in a bind and he was willing to make a deal. He got off the Red Line at Andrew and walked all the way down Dot Ave to Lower Mills. Then he took a right on River Road all the way to Mattapan. At Mattapan Square he took another right, trudging up Blue Hill Avenue. Then he took another right down Columbia Road all the way to Massachusetts Avenue. He wandered through the parking lot at South Bay Center, stopping in at Home Depot to pick up a Phillips head screwdriver and a roll of duct tape that he needed, and then he took Southhampton Street back to Andrew Square.

It was a long, oblong ramble and during it all the Devil didn't meet a single sinner who wanted to barter their soul away. All he got was bunions and, in an odd way, he was sort of satisfied after having trudged so many blocks. He felt refreshed after inhaling that clean, honest Dorchester air. Better a bunion in Dorchester than a flat on Pinckney Street, as they say around Codman Square.

Dorchester is like that. Everyone is content and can't fathom wanting anything more than being where they are. When you live in Dorchester, you are as close to Heaven as you'll ever be in this world. The Devil learned a lesson that day. He headed back on the Red Line to Charles/MGH. His business is better on Beacon Hill and he knew he would make his quota before midnight.

Polka Dot

The Polish part of Dorchester between Columbia Road and Andrew Square was all a-stir this past week. Rumors were travelling like wild fire and excitement was in the air about an impending celebrity visit. The Polish flag has been flapping with local pride on Boston Street in the winds that sweep off Dorcheser Bay.

Word had it that Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra were scheduled to make a stop at the Polish-American Citizens' Club at 82 Boston Street. The reason for the appearance was said to be the release of the orchestra's long-awaited new album, rumored to be entitled. "Lost in the Polish Triangle." Hope and pulses were running high.

As everyone who loves polka music knows, the inimatable Mr. Sturr has accrued more Grammy nominations than anyone in the history of polka. He has been nominated for a polka Grammy Award 23 times. He has won 17. He is a legend in the genre who has captured the hearts of a generation of beer barrel dancers. No wonder Dorchester's population of Polish descent was all a'flutter.

The excitement soon dampened however when the rumors proved to be false, the way word on the street often gets amplified. It turns out that a local DJ has acquired a bootleg copy of a recorded Jimmy Sturr concert that he was going to play at the club. The fidelity of the recording is so fine it would have seemed that Mr. Sturr and His Orchestra was really in the hall. The concert has been cancelled but if all the fervent fan letters out of Dorchester reach Mr. Sturr's heart, there may be an actual appearance after all.