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More Polish stories...

The best wedding food is at Polish weddings....they put on a feed bag, like no other place...no rubbery chicken, no dried out beef, no simpy appetizers...no, no, a Polish wedding reception is a meal fit for a king, queen, and commoner alike...

Heaping bowls of Polish Sausages, Mashed Potatoes, Sauerkraut, sliced beef in gravy, pierogis stuffed with potatoes, cheeses, and meats, steamed veggies, and wonderful pies, and pastries...all served family style, and all eaters stuffed to the gills....

When I was a young lady, one of my coworkers had a son who was getting married, and she was throwing a big bash, and invited several of us...her brother owned a well known Polish restaurant on the outskirts of Chicago, and it was there that the reception was held...it was grand...

But this restaurant also is situated in close proximity to several large cemetaries...and besides being a regular restaurant, and a place for wedding and other receptions, ,they also catered to large funeral parties...after having buried the deceased, often the family likes to treat mourners to a nice lunch...this very same restaurant where I went for the wedding reception, was where the funeral luncheon was held for my husbands grandfather....even tho my hubbys family is Sicilian, they held the funeral luncheon at this Polish restaurant, and they said, a finer meal could be found nowhere....

So, there is another view of a Polish restaurant...

Habs....Kielbasa is so wonderful, and sounds so yummy the way you describe it...

One last Polish story....

When my brother died, in 1981, me and BigDom and the boys, were by that time, living near Ft. Bragg N.C....actually BigDom was in Germany at the time, but me and boys were in NC...so me and the boys went back to Chicago for my brothers funeral, and since it was just three weeks before Christmas, we decided to stay in Chicago, help mom and dad through this time, and we could spend Christmas with them...

Now Michael was very much into collecting comic books and baseball and football cards....since we were in Chicago, he figured that we could find some big stores for him to shop in for his collections....we found a really big store listed in the phone book, somewhere on the south side of Chicago...I was not familiar at all with the south side, having been raised on the Northwest Side, and married life was with BigDom on the far North side...

But I figured it would be an adventure to scout out the South Side...so off we went...this sporting store was in a fairly busy, large shopping district, so there were many stores around....

Since I was so unfamiliar with the South side, I wrote down the street names where we were parked....that should have been the first clue that we were definately in a Polish area, because one of the streets was called 'Pope John Paul' street....

As we walked past all the stores, I noticed that all signs of advertisement were in two languages, English and Polish...and when we found the sports store, the salepersons spoke both English and Polish, as evidenced by they talking to many customers in Polish...

Both of my boys were quite amused at hearing fluent Polish being spoken...being around a military base, they were used to hearing German, and Vietnamese, and Japanese, and Spanish being spoken...but Polish speaking, was a new experience for them...

I have not been back to Chicago since 1981...more than 20yrs....so I dont know what the situation on these neighborhoods is at the present time, dont know if these areas have changed much, or if they still remain the same...