Cinco de Padre

White Sox pitcher Miguel Gonzalez was minding his own business, sitting in the dugout a few hours before Saturday’s game.  When a mariachi band began practicing for a planned Cinco de Mayo celebration, manager Rick Renteria pushed Gonzalez—born in Guadalajara, Mexico—out of the dugout and told him to sing.  Gonzalez was caught on film doing a nice job fronting the band.  And that’s what got me thinking about my father and his polka music.  Given that both genres used the accordion, mariachi and polka are two sides of the same folk-music coin.

On weekends, my father would hole himself up in the basement, working on one project or another; I swear he was working on digging a hole straight to China when he wasn’t rebuilding an old washing machine or something else he found in the alley.  Armed with sledgehammer and/or screwdriver, my dad worked hours on end.  Sometimes, he whistled, other times he talked to himself (“Not too smart there, Eddie”).  Most of the time, he turned the radio to station WOPA and jacked up the volume.  When the mood hit, he’d sing along to the Polish version of Howlin’ Wolf or the people Miguel Gonzalez fronted.

It was Sunday afternoons like that that Ed Bukowski was in his element, working and fixing, singing.  When the neighborhood changed, he saw no reason to move from a house he’d called home and had helped pay for since he was thirteen years old.  I don’t know if he sang to the new neighbors’ music, but I bet he recognized it as a polka by any other name.