It felt good on this hot July day, sitting eating strange food, listening to strange music and hearing strange words fill the air. It felt good. The food, the polka music and a feeling of security surrounded me. This feeling, although I did not know it at the time, stayed with me, weaving its way into the growing fabric of my childhood and my life.
The friends I went to school with were as American as I was, yet, we were all a family of immigrants. My Mom was third or maybe fourth generation Irish with a mixture of Scotch thrown in while my friends families were mainly Eastern European. Their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents came from places like Poland, Hungry, Lithuania and Germany. We all spoke English, some with a southern twang and some with an European accent but we still were Americans.
It was not strange to be invited to eat with school friends and their family. Their food might have a different name then what my mother called it but it was really all the same.
Like when I would be playing at someone’s house in the Kossuth Colony at supper time. Instead of sending me home, my friend’s mother, always set a place for me.
The best time was when her mom fried Blinkies and served them with applesauce. The crunchy taste of the crispy, lacy potatoes cakes with the Sweet Applesauce was enough to make anyone say, "Thank you for letting me stay."
My mom made Potato Cakes or Patty Cakes and where my friend’s mom would grate raw potatoes, my mom used leftover mashed potatoes that had a sprinkle of onions mixed in with them.
There wasn’t any applesauce but once in a while she fried up the last two or three apples in butter and brown sugar and we had them. Oh, boy, they were good. Maybe, even better. But really, it was the same recipe one from Poland and another from the mountains of Appalachia.
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