“Hey,” the bartender said, “I’m a Polack. Whaddaya want?”
“Yeah, well waddaya think I am, Japanese?” quipped the woman, and the guys at the bar, dressed in factory clothes and baseball hats, laughed and raised their glasses in a toast to ethnic solidarity.
Dave Uchalik walked in during the banter, sat down at the bar and chugged a Budweiser. He is a pale man in his early thirties and he was dressed according to local custom, in a work shirt and Tigers baseball cap. But unlike his father, who worked at the nearby (and now defunct) Dodge Main for forty-one years, or Lillie’s other patrons, who are still on the line at the GM plant that took its place, Uchalik is no auto worker. He is the leader of a rock band called the Polish Muslims, the founder of what he calls, facetiously, the Hamtramck sound.
“Hamtramck is the Liverpool of Detroit,” Uchalik said, draining his Bud. “This is heavy-duty industrial territory. When I was a kid, my father and I both wanted me to escape the factories. He said, ‘Get an education.’ But I figured I’d just play the guitar instead.”
Uchalik is a pretty good guitar player, and the Polish Muslims do their share of straightforward rock, but his real forte is as a lyricist and commentator on his native city and its folkways. “We do a kind of Polish rock ’n’ roll,” he said, wiping his granny glasses on his blue work shirt. “For example, we’ve got a song called ‘Love Polka Number 9’ which we sing to the tune of ‘Love Potion Number 9.’ That’s one of our big numbers.”
Dave Uchalik’s version sounds nothing like the Clovers’:
I went out Friday night with you know who,
That bobcia with the size 12 bowling shoe.
She feeds me kielbasa and she makes me drink that wine
And then she likes to dance that Love Polka Number 9.
Uchalik’s lyric vision of his hometown comes from his days at St. Florian’s school and his nights in the bars along Joseph Campau Avenue, the city’s main strip, where Polka bands and Polish dancing are as natural as country music in Nashville. Growing up in the Motown era, he gravitated to r&b as well, and the result is a unique fusion, possible only in the Warsaw of Wayne County.
“I use the things that go with this place,” he said. “Polish foods, bowling, overweight people, the polka, bobcias—that’s Polish for ‘old women.’ ” Although his parents speak Polish fluently, Uchalik admits that he knows only a smattering of the language—just enough to get by in a town of less than twenty-five thousand that still has a Polish language newspaper.
“As far as the name—the Polish Muslims—is concerned, we were just sitting around a bar a few years ago having some cocktails when we came up with it. There was nothing racial about it. A few older people were offended and once a guy jumped on the stage and tried to take the microphone away from me, but most people think the name and the songs are funny. After all, if you can laugh at yourself, you can laugh at anybody.”
Uchalik’s sense of humor is nothing if not irreverent. When Pope John Paul came to town a few years ago, he composed a tune for the Pontiff, “Traveling Pope,” to the tune of Ricky Nelson’s “Traveling Man.” “I like to think of the pope listening to that one in the Vatican,” Uchalik said, popping the top on another Bud. (Uchalik was not the only one inspired by the pope’s visit. A local car dealer, Woodrow W. Woody, caught a video shot of His Holiness waving to the crowds in front of his Pontiac dealership. In the picture, the pope’s arms are extended in what appears to be a benediction of the auto showroom, and it has become a fixture of Woody’s advertising.)
The Muslims, who also feature some female backup singers called the Muslimettes, play mostly around Hamtramck, with occasional gigs in Detroit and the suburbs. A local bandleader, Big Daddy Marshall Lachkowski, has been helping them, and the band has a loyal following. Several of the guys at the bar smiled in recognition as Uchalik recited another of his favorite compositions, “Bowling USA,” which is sung to the tune of the Beachboys’ “Surfin USA.”
I’m getting my new ball drilled, I’m gettin’ it back real soon.
They’re waxing down the alleys, they can’t wait for June.
I’m watching Beat the Champ now, you can’t tear me away.
Tell yo mamma you’re bowling, bowling USA.
“That’s Hamtramck all right,” said the bartender as he came over with a refill. “Polacks and bowling balls.”
The people at Lillie’s are not the only ones proud of their ethnic heritage. Hamtramck’s official slogan is “A touch of Europe in America.” Surrounded by the Third World city of Detroit, it is an island of Second World sensibility. The street in front of the city hall is named Lech Walesa Avenue, and there is a letter from the Solidarity leader on display on mayor Bob Kozaren’s office wall.
Kozaren is a St. Ladislaus boy who has been in office since 1980, and his walls are festooned with Hamtramckania. There is a picture of its Little League championship team making an appearance on the Lawrence Welk show (“This is a great sports town, home of Rudy Tomjanovich and Jean Hoxie”), a bronzed record of “There’s a City Called Hamtramck” by local favorite Ted Gomulka (“Mitch Ryder was a Hamtramck boy, too”), and lots of framed photographs of American presidents on state visits to the Polish capital of Michigan.
“There is a saying, ‘If you want to be president, you have to come to Hamtramck,” said Kozaren. “FDR, Truman, they’ve all been here. JFK was invited for the first time because of his Polish brother-in-law, Prince Radziwill. And when Dukakis came this year, we spelled out his name in Polish sausage. He took a part of it back to his hotel room with him. We got into the Guinness Book of World Records with the world’s largest kielbasa.”
Kozaren is a strong Democrat in the old UAW mold and, unlike other leaders of the towns around Detroit, he had nothing but praise for Coleman Young. Hamtramck was badly hurt by the contraction of the auto industry in the seventies and the closing of Dodge Main. Kozaren and Young collaborated on a plan to open a GM plant on the site of the old factory, on a plot of land partly in Hamtramck and partly in Detroit. This entailed demolishing the Poletown neighborhood, a project that aroused emotional opposition from its mostly elderly residents; but Kozaren believes that it helped save his city. “On the whole, it was the best thing that could have happened,” he said.
Coleman Young played a big part in the Poletown drama, and Kozaren is grateful. “Coleman is a dedicated mayor,” he said. “Some of the suburbs condemn him because he keeps Detroit in mind. But people didn’t leave him with much. He came along after the riots, and everyone wanted to strip Detroit clean. They even took the ball teams. People around here want to separate the suburbs from the city, but it just won’t work.”
One reason that the Poletown demolition generated so much emotion was the fear that it would lead to a loss of ethnic identity. But that doesn’t seem to have happened. The small city looks as if it has been caught in a time warp—its modest frame houses are immaculately tended, its downtown is a long strip of mom-and-pop restaurants, five-and-dimes and friendly taverns. Six churches—four Roman Catholic, one Ukrainian Catholic and one Polish National Catholic—anchor its neighborhoods.
In contrast to the demolished business streets of Detroit, commerce bustles in Hamtramck, and the booster spirit is alive and well. Once a week, its middle-aged merchants gather at the Polish Century Club to eat middle-American cuisine (sample menu: hot canned chop suey with boiled rice, white bread, red Jell-O and milk), sing “Vive Le Rotary” out of a stenciled songster, and listen to motivational lectures. There are outings (“Tuesdee at the yat club, for a swim in da lake”), softball leagues with teams sponsored by sausage companies, church bazaars and, every September, a monster ethnic festival that attracts tens of thousands of former Hamtramck people who now live in Warren and other Polish-American enclaves east of Detroit.
“Growing up in Hamtramck is like growing up in a fraternity,” said Kozaren. “People may leave, but they retain their ties. It’s a city where we have sidestepped time.”
> Not every member of the fraternity is happy with the quaint old-world flavor. One dissenter is Bob Zwolak, whose combination bicycle shop and weekly newspaper, The Hamtramck Times, shares a block on Joseph Campau with the Ukrainain Reliance Credit Union and the General Sikorski PLAV Post #10.
A strong critic of the local establishment, Zwolak uses his paper to attack perceived malfeasance—even his own. In the summer of 1988, the Times carried a front-page exposé of a candidate for Wayne County Clerk who sent registration notices to deceased voters. According to the paper the culprit was—Bob Zwolak. “Of course, there’s nothing illegal about it,” he explained. “The list comes off the registrar’s computer. So a candidate wouldn’t necessarily know who had died.”
“In other words, you had no way of knowing.”
“Well,” he said, looking sheepish, “I was the city clerk. But what the hell, I believe in freedom of the press.”
Zwolak struck me as an honest man, and I asked him how his city had managed to hang on to its identity in the midst of so much suburban flight. People at City Hall had portrayed Hamtramck as an open, friendly city, a picture that caused him to laugh out loud.
“There are about six hundred thousand Poles in Michigan,” he said. “That’s forty percent of all the people who actually vote in this state. We are the biggest ethnic group in Michigan except for the blacks. And Hamtramck is the symbolic center, the capital. Our officials judge people by their ethnic background. You’re Polish, no problem. But other people want something, forget it. No way. This should be America, not an extension of a foreign country. If the church wants ethnicity, that’s fine—but not the entire municipal government. What other ethnic group is still left except the blacks? Only the Poles.
“Hey, when I was a kid I lived for a few years in California,” said the crusading publisher. “And you know what? While I was out there, I realized something about Hamtramck. It isn’t reality—it’s Disneyland.”
The Polish Disneyland was in full swing on Labor Day, when Hamtramck threw its annual ethnic festival. Pierogi and kielbasa stands lined the streets, and women in babushkas carried white cardboard boxes from the Oaza bakery in both hands. On an improvised bandstand near the corner of Joseph Campau and Cannif, Dave Uchalik and the Polish Muslims were entertaining the members of the fraternity.
“Yak shmash, Hamtramck,” he called, and the crowd cheered. He turned to his drummer. “Ready, Yash?”
“Ready, Stash,” said the drummer, and the band struck up “Love Polka Number 9.” People began to dance, heavy work shoes clomping on the pavement in time to some internal metronome unheard by the average ear. Uchalik pranced around the stage, the Muslimettes banged tambourines and Polish flags flapped in the damp breeze.
A thin black man in a white robe and turbanlike hat stood on the corner, next to Tondryk’s Electric, surveying the scene. Although blacks account for perhaps 15 percent of Hamtramck’s population, there were few at the festival, and his outfit aroused my curiosity.
“Excuse me, but are you a Muslim by any chance?” I asked.
He waited a while before answering. “Yeah man, from Kansas City,” he finally said, tugging on his scraggly beard.
“These guys are called the Polish Muslims,” I told him, and he digested the information slowly.
“Ain’t never heard nothin’ ’bout no Polish Muslims,” he said, after a moment. “Don’t look like they servin’ Allah up there, not to me it don’t.”
On the bandstand, Uchalik got ready for his next number, “John Paul One, John Paul Two” (to the tune of the Beatles “Obla Dee, Obla Da”), dedicated to Hamtramck’s favorite pontiff. “For all you do, this song’s for you,” he said, and the crowd cheered, although some boos were mixed in. “Hey,” Uchalik said, “I know His Holiness can take a joke. One, two, three, four; ready, Yash?” “Ready, Stash …”
Helen Livingstone Bogle was perplexed. “Where are all the Polish people?” she asked.
Mrs. Bogle was sitting in her living room in Grosse Pointe, leafing through albums of family photographs and memorabilia. Her life story was there in the yellowing pictures—the family home on the lake, next to the Dodge mansion, where she had been born in 1921 (“I’m not the least bit self-conscious about my age”); photos from Grosse Pointe Country Day School and the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut, where she had been polished and prepared for society; tintypes of maternal great-grandfather Travgoot Schmidt, who reputedly owned more real estate than any other man in Michigan, and of paternal grandfather William Livingstone (“Just the most elegant teddy bear of a man”), who founded Detroit’s Dime Savings Bank and once served as the president of the American Banking Association. There were also more contemporary mementos, including twenty-nine snapshots from “the nifty trip we took last year to Kenya.” Mrs. Bogle is a born archivist, and her chosen subject is the history of her family, which is, in its way, the social and commercial history of Detroit.
Reminders of the family’s prominence are not confined to Helen Bogle’s albums. Her grandfather, William “Sailor Bill” Livingstone, raised the money to dredge the channel of the Detroit River that now bears his name. The marble lighthouse on Belle Isle—the only one of its kind in America—is named for him as well.
Sailor Bill was a close friend of Henry Ford. “He loaned Henry two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to buy out his partners,” Helen Bogle said proudly, and showed me a book with a warm personal inscription from the auto magnate to the banking mogul. Next to it was a history of the Republican Party, authored by her protean ancestor.
On the wall in her living room there was a handsome oil portrait of a distinguished-looking man, her father, Seabourn Rome Livingstone, the former president of the Detroit stock exchange, as well as an oil painting of her parents’ yacht. The mantelpiece was crowded with pictures of various Livingstones and Schmidts.
Mrs. Bogle’s mother was a local golf champion, and her aunt was on the U.S. Curtis Cup team; it is from them that she inherited her athletic bearing and square-jawed, handsome looks. She paced about the house with an energetic stride, rushing downstairs for her childhood silver loving cup, upstairs for a photo of a family summer home (since sold to the state as a gubernatorial mansion), back downstairs to show an ornate dollhouse of her youth that she had found and reclaimed from her grandmother’s ballroom. The tour was accompanied by a stream-of-consciousness discourse on glorious times, now gone forever.
“Detroit was a small town in those days,” she said. “Everyone knew everyone else. I still can’t believe that Henry Ford [II] is gone. He was our link to the outside world, like a head of state. He bought my cousin’s house. As a girl I was driven to school in a chauffeured car. I was born with a platinum spoon in my mouth, and I was terribly closely held. But I was curious.”
Helen Bogle’s curiosity led to her take up a brief, highly unorthodox career as a photographer, and later to go to work as a fund-raiser for the Detroit Institute of Art. There, for the first time, she became the victim of discrimination. “My superior gave me a hard time because I had had a coming-out party,” she recalled. Harassment included being assigned a desk without a telephone. The young fund-raiser overcame that particular hurdle by calling the head of Michigan Bell, a family friend, and directing him to have a telephone installed forthwith.
During her years at the DIA, Detroit was still controlled by people Helen Livingstone Bogle knew as uncles—members of the auto aristocracy and their allies, the captains of business and industry. Now that the city has fallen into more callused hands, she rarely ventures into it.
“Very few Grosse Pointe people bother to go downtown nowadays unless it’s to the symphony or the museums,” she said. “The papers make it seem unsafe [Mrs. Bogle subscribes to one Detroit paper, as well as the New York Times and the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette]. Well, I suppose it is unsafe but there’s no need to publicize it on the front pages. Why not have a new society page for criminals? If you want to see who shot whom, just turn t
o Section D. The colored people—what do you call them nowadays, blacks?—well, I have known marvelous ones. But you cannot overlook the crime that is creeping out,” she said firmly.
When Helen Livingstone Bogle was growing up, there were no colored people in Grosse Pointe. “There used to be the point system here, of which I did not approve. We do have some black families now, though.” She pondered the change. “I should think they’ll be terribly lonely,” she said, not unkindly.
Notwithstanding the arrival of several black families, and a handful of Jews and Italians, Grosse Pointe seems to the outside observer to be pretty much what it has always been—a WASP bastion of privilege and wealth. Once restricted by explicit agreement, it remains off-limits to all but the richest and most socially confident, by virtue of custom and the astronomical cost of its stately homes. But Mrs. Bogle is anything but an outside observer, and to her experienced eye, deterioration is everywhere.
“Grosse Pointe is land poor,” she said. “My cousin is subdividing the family estate—ten acres. Things have changed so. I don’t have one family house that I can show you, except my grandmother’s. It’s this damn ADC [Aid to Dependent Children]—people don’t want to work anymore. You simply cannot get help. Where are all the Polish people?”
To demonstrate the fallen condition of Grosse Pointe, Mrs. Bogle donned a mink jacket and led me on a nostalgic tour of the area. Her first stop was her girlhood home, now part of a church, which is situated next to the Horace Dodge mansion. “Mrs. Dodge built the most beautiful house, which was a duplicate of the Petite Trianon. It had a seventeen-car garage with cinnamon-colored doors,” she recalled. “And her boat, the Dolphin, had a crew of seventy-five.”
Near the Dodge mansion she stopped at a nondescript building. “This is the Grosse Pointe Club,” she said. “It’s known as the Little Club.”
“Known to whom as the Little Club?” I asked.
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