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| A lone farm in the middle of nowhere. Photo by Craig Lifton |
America, a world leader in technology, has grown a lot of the last century.
Even as Detroit is currently going through a horrible economic turn, the people
of the Motor city have leaded our nations innovation. America has been the
home to people from all over the world, from different skills sets, languages
and cultures. One polish family settled in the Detroit area, with skills to build
and run a farm. With a rich culture and a fascinating language these farmers
carved out land and started on their dream. Decades have passed and the
family has changed and their culture is now on the verge of disappearing in
this fast changing world filled with technology.
Andrew J. Paluch, retired master electrician from Ford, farmer, son, brother,
husband, stepfather, and father-in-law. Born and raised in a rural area just
south of Detroit, Michigan. A graduate of Michigan State University. Devout
Catholic. A man who has the changing times around his farm that progress
of technology has not affected much.
In the 1950’s, according to www.historyofdetroit.com, the population of Detroit
was at it highest with 1,849,568. The percentage of foreign-born residents was
at 276,470 or 14.9% of the populace. Andy was born into a family of Polish
immigrants who had set up residency in the town of New Boston, Michigan.
First settled in 1827 and to this day only considered a unincorporated
community, New Boston sits adjacent to the Detroit Metro Airport. With one
traffic light, and its crown Jewel Gibbs Sweet Station, New Boston appears to
be a place time forgot.
Andy’s earliest memories date back to when he six or seven years old in the
1950’s. He could recall working on the family farm, the same one he now
works on everyday to keep the family business running. The farm consists
of a little three-bedroom house, a hen house, a barn, a large shed for a
combine, and several smaller buildings. The farm sits on more than 43
acres of land, which back in the 1950’s was more then 80 sprawling acres.
A small sign by the roadside advertises what produce is being currently sold.
The view is an experience in the Americana of farming. In the barn children
swing on a rope suspended over hay bales and a gathering of farm cats.
On the Paluch farm you can find everything from soy beans to corn growing
along neatly plowed rows. The only livestock on the farm is a small flock of
chickens, which their eggs are collected and sold. Just like today, the fresh
produce was mostly sold right there on the farm along the side of the road.
More would be sold to local stores or restaurants. Hey is bundled up and
sold to others farmers for livestock. Today, the hay from the farm is sold to
a new horse track that was recently built on property that once was another
farm.
Andy’s family use to use a team of horses to do most of the work on the farm
that now they would use tractors or trucks to do. Andy grew up in a time some
would call the second American agricultural revolution according to Growing
A Nation. By the end of the 1950s the amount of tractors on American farms
would outnumber horses and mules. The horses were used in the place of a
tractor, pulling, cultivating, and working with the rows and rows of corn. Today
Andy keeps an old John Deere tractor and cultivator running, replacing the
team of horses of his youth.
Andy can recall cutting the string bundling the corn so people could shuck
the corn. The string would hold together 15 some corn stalks so they wouldn’t
blow around. Another of Andy’s fond childhood memories that revolves around
the farm is celebrating Christmases with all of his family present in the
basement of the farmhouse.
One of the greatest impressions of that time for Andy is how some of the
people in the town would go out of their way to help each other, working
from one neighbor’s property to the next neighbor’s and so on. To Andy it
was a true feeling of cooperation.
“If someone needed a helping hand everyone jumped into help,” said Andy.
“These are things that you don’t see much of anymore.”
When Andy considers the difference of language in the United States he
comments on the horrible use of foul language and the lack of respect shown
that can be heard today.
“You had very little foul language, people respected each other and we
respected elders and used sir, or ma’am,” reflected Andy. “Today people
call their elders by their first names.”
Andy was raised to be Catholic, going to church everyday with family,
attending a local Catholic school, and prayer at home.
Tradition was important to Andy’s family as he was growing up in his Polish
Catholic family. Andy thinks back to how his family had their own little
customs and would always eat meals together and so would most of the
other families he knew back then. Today Andy observes that these traditions
have fallen to the way side, and do not happen much anymore.
When it came to the diet of his childhood, Andy said that processed food
was not existent at his home. Diet’s of today didn’t exist and they ate things
like pickled pigs feet, which you wouldn’t find today in an average home.
“My Dad would save grease from cooking,” Andy said. “If we didn’t have
any butter we would use the grease on bread or biscuits and that was fine.”
As a child growing up on a working farm in the 1950’s, Andy didn’t have
much time for recreation but when they did he and his family would play a
little baseball and catch in the yard. During the winter months a small pond
would freeze and would become the family ice rink. Most of the other
activities would also be outdoors related like basketball and ridding bikes,
unlike the children of today.
In the last 6 decades, technology has changed the small farming community.
“We had a phone, but it was a party line with four or five neighbors who
used it so we had to wait if we needed it,” remembers Andy. “Now we
have Internet, email, most people don’t talk anymore.”
Even in the Motor city there were a few highways and main roads. Back
in the 1950’s both humans and farm animals used the few rural roads in
the area.
In his childhood Andy recalled that much of his family and friends spoke
both Polish and English. Polish was used to communicate between family
and friends of polish decent. The problem, Andy recalled, was that in the
1950’s most American’s frowned upon people speaking anything other then
English. As most of the older generation has gone on, the use of the Polish
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A barn cat at Andy's Farm. Photo by Craig Lifton
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language has slightly disappeared.
Andy is still asked today to translate Polish but notes that it’s not easy to
provide a translation because that most of the languages words and phrases
have one meaning that doesn’t literally translate well into English. Outsiders
of the Polish side of the family may hear random Polish phrases and words
tossed around the kitchen with a laugh or a dirty look.
The modern world stomps into this quaint corner of the old world and wipes
clean the ways of the old polish customs. A family of polish famers has
dwindled down to one ageing matriarch, a few older children and sprinkling
of grand children who have very little knowledge of the polish culture. As time
goes on, the plan for the farm after the mother passes on is grim. Andy
explains that he and his siblings will sell off the farm and divide the proceeds.
That will be the end of almost a hundred years of history for the polish farm
and then of a culturally rich heritage.
References
Statistically Speaking…. Retrieved on 12 June 2012 from
http://historydetroit.com/statistics/index.php?era=4
Growing A Nation. Retrieved on 17 June 2012 from,
http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farm_tech.htm
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