Funny, its a day ...

Funny, its a day like today when you can see how many of us there are down here at the end of the world.  The Amerikanski are all somewhere eating turkey and whatever.   Its a holiday and we are either in our usual holes in the ground working or somewhere else working.  I decided I wanted something warm to eat.  There's only one place open on the holiday around here.  Guess where?  Jup!  Coffee, cheese danish, and a samitch of cheese and bacon of turkey.  Don't even ask what language in which I ordered. :)  Starbucks came though just fine today. (Hmmm, samitch - that's teksikanski for sandwich on engleski). 

The call from the daughter I mentioned last blog?  Turned out to be a mass text message to the whole family so she didn't have to mess with any of us.  She was too busy to answer the phone when I called her back.  Sigh.  But she did better than the others, none of the rest of them called or texted.  Funny how that bothers me less and less these days. 

I remember the first Bozic after Carole died.  That soon will have been six Bozic past.  The service at the church concluded.  I locked up the building and realized that I was alone.  Easter was the same.  All the holidays were the same.  Even when I made sure that I had showered before I came to church it was the same.  The children didn't call then either.  For years, other people who came into my life made excuses not to be around me on holidays too.  It got to the point that when people put on their supercilious smiles and wished me "Merry Christmas" that I snarled "bah! humbug!" somewhere deep inside of me where no one could see. 

I went away and cooked my own Christmas eve and Veliki Petak fish and kupus according to the season and the Grinch did what he did in private for himself by himself.  I did not realize at the time how many of my brothers and sisters were around me.  By brothers and sisters, I do not mean my parent's children.  When Jesus brothers and sisters (ok, I suppose they were half-brothers  etc.) came accusing Him of being insane, Jesus motioned his hand around the room and said "these are my brothers and my sisters."  As it turns out, I have rather a lot of really nice brothers and sisters whom my parents never knew.  And me, the Grinch, I am not alone any more and so today on Amerikanski Dan Hvala I am thankful indeed.

First of all, CJ's dogs are "babysitting" me this afternoon as the sun slips out of sight.  One is right under my desk.  I can hear him when he scratches.  Another talks to me if I take too long clicking another song to play.

Still another has been laying quietly near my feet for a good while.  We listened to "Second Waltz - Dmitri Shostokovic"  for a while and when we finished that playlist we moved on down the line.  Right now we are listening to "Breze" performed by Irena Vrčkovic. Next up is Vrčkovic with Pidži singing Tam dol na ravnem polju.  Pidži enjoys a bit of  fame in the central Teksas area because they've heard him on the radio and some lucky folk have seen him in person.

You really didn't think that Pidži took Teksikanski music back to Slovenija did you?  If you thought that, the joke is on you.  You've read already here where I've discussed the origins of Tejano music, yes?  You've read how that influenced the rest of the music of the region and you read about the "Commanches" in Blanco County, yes?  Jup.  You got it, the whole blooming Texas music scene is dominated by music with Slavic origins, hi hi :)  If you happen to be an "Anglo" Texan reading this,,, go to YouTube and watch Irena and Pidži and the band work out "Tam dol na ravnem polju."   

If you have your "languages" ear turned on, no "po noci" in the song most assuredly does not mean the same as "panoche" on španski jezik.  The slovenijan expression means "by night" more or less, and the spanoljski means, ummmpf something a bit more crude, yet the root meaning is still something "by night."  Hmmmmm so who is going to pop up and give me a reasonable explanation how this non-hispanic heterographic homophone arrived into Mexican Spanish?  Ummmm.  Gotcha didn't I? 

Ok, one of the doggies has just put in her request for Vesna Maria, so we're going to listen to her for a while now.

Today was Vesna Maria's birthday.  Sretan rođendan Vesna Maria!  We all need to remember the date so she really knows how many friends she has out here next year.  Hi hi, I see at least two pages of birthday congratulations on her page over on FaceBook.  She is a wonderful performer with a wonderful voice.   CJ and I both love to watch her and listen to her voice. 

Someday when I think the time is right I am going to ask a certain question and if the answer is right, and if I've won the lottery by that time, I wouldn't mind a bit if Momir and Vesna Maria flew over and sang something like "Tri palme na otoku srece" at a special occaision after that.  That would just about make the celebration extra fino.  Sigh.  If I win the lottery.  Anyway, me and the doggies have them on YouTube and we can dream. 

Somewhere in one of Patria's songs they say that "a man without dreams is like the heavens without stars."  I believe that and so as long as my sky has stars in it I refuse to not dream.  Another song I would like Vesna Maria and Momir to do on that day is "Ljubav."  Momir knows why.   It has something to do with the video sash958 made with Vesna Maria and Momir doing this song.  Momir, what do you  think?  Should I say why this song is so important to me?  Or should that just be one of those things that goes to the grave with me? 

Another random trip into linguistics.  Mariachi.  A truely Mexican word.  Please explain its Spanish construction for me if you can.  You can not, can you?  I didn't think so.  Mariacke.  Slavic. Polish.  And no this did not arrive with Napoleon.  As I've shown you elsewhere, we Slavs have been arriving in North America in a steady stream since the 1500s.  Just 'cause we didn't raise a flag and build an empire doesn't mean we weren't here.  We were.  We are.   Marian musicians in certain cathedrals.  Trumpets sound the hours in Krakova and in Warsaw.  Hmmmmm.  Originally these were church musicians not from the indiginous culture, in Mexico banished from the church into the streets and to this day allowed to perform religious works only at the Shrine of Guadalupe, or perhaps Christmas Eve in certain show cathedrals or in the streets.  The priests have taught the mariachi they cannot to play in church.  Do you wonder at the anti-clerical feelings in the North of Mexico?  Religion was banned from church.  Ufffff !!!!!   What a concept ...

There was once a wedding at which I had certian duties.  The bride's father is a mariachi.  He had written a song especially for his daughter's wedding but he was sure his group could not sing in church.  Hi hi hi hi hi, that's exactly where  that sung was first heard.  In Church.  I insisted, and  they played the man's song for his daughter inside the church in front of the altar.  Viva la revolucion!!!!  Bog i Hrvati!!! Dios y la gente!!! God and the people!  Oh dear, I am a bit radical I'm afraid. 

Oh my, here we are, me and the doggies, listening to Vesna Maria sing "Alaj mi je veceras po voji" along with Djerdan - now this is a recording that thrills my heart. 

Now here is CJ, and she really thrills my heart.

pa,

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac
 24 studenog 2011

Kotol

I don't have television.  I did have it for many years, but no more.  One day I realized that I had not turned it on in over a year.  I had been paying for service I did not use for the sake of visitors who never came to see me.  If they had come, I would not have turned the television on.  I would have wanted to talk. 

The day I realized I did had not watched television in all that time was the one day I tried  to turn it on.  It did not work.  The signal converter for my satellite antenna was analog. The days of analog television in these parts were gone.  The satellite company had sent a "smart card" for the change over to HD digital television.  I did not want to look through the stack of unopened mail for that stupid "smart card."  I called the company and told them where they could stick that "smart card."  So that was that.  They still send me mail every week offering to reconnect my service.

I remember when television changed from black and white to color.  Everyone seemed to have to have color television no matter what it cost.  Hmpffff!  I had always watched television in  color.  I did not need a color television, but I had gone along then with that change like  all the other sheep in the Amerikanski flock, but no more. There was no television in our house when I was a kid.  We had books.  Some of them had  pictures in them.  I suppose most of those pictures were black and white too, but I  always saw them in color.  The books which had no pictures at all often had the more  vibrant colors.  These days I listen to books with CJ and the colors are the brighter  still

. 

Colors. Colors are not just colors you know, colors are alive. Tata drew pictures in the  air with his voice.  White split.  A plume of white went back to the green and beyond.  Another plume became whiter still and the red followed not far behind. A plume of black  came rumbling from the dark as though trying to catch up.  All of them leaving a trail of daffodils in their wake.  From the knot to the cauldron across the rolling plains they had come davno davno. Deda had songs about how the old ones put their wives and their lives in great wagons then and traveled far to the red of the cauldron.  Deda had songs about almost everything.

A few times Deda shook me from my sleep early in the morning with a big grin on his face as he softly said "dolaze!"  Under the pretense of going squirrel hunting we went down by where once stood the old school that he had built on his land long ago. Owning the land upon  which the school sits and building the building is one way to guarantee that you will be  president of the school board.  The sound of children playing in the school yard had ended  decades before.  Now, except for the forlorn sounds of the creatures that prowled  before the first colors of the zora painted the forest which had grown up over a few decades, all was quiet.  Deda struck up his one stringed instrument and began to sing such songs that even the wolves lay down respectfully close by and listened.  There had once been a stand of walnuts by a spring in such and such a place.  They found another such place and again planted walnuts and daffodils as they always did. 

"ona orah hory

hikori san"

 They did business with merchants from Petro Varadan, Asmara Khand, Takṣa Khand (which all mean the same thing even though they are not the same place), as well as Gandhara, and with merchants from Hayastan and Vihara where davno davno in each place there had also once  been daffodils and walnuts.  Then came another dieing time.

"mornarice engleski

osjetljiv tremolirati"

The old ones left behind a mountain with their name and a town with their name and came away daleko daleko.  This time the wagons had had wings and flew across veliko more.

"žuti narcisa

rijeka potoka i vode kotača"

The song continued about fire and flight, wagons and roads, rivers and streams, walnuts and daffodils, always the daffodils.

The cauldron is still there and you can see it for your self if you want to see it.  Anyone can see it.  After World War II it was given a new name which seems a bit odd theses days because the name honored soldiers in whose country the cauldron is not but was.  Well, kind of was anyway.  They began as the Česká setina, the Czech Centurions, inside the Russian Empire.  Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, after whom Masarykova ulica is named in almost every major city in Croatia, was involved up to his neck with the Československá střelecká brigáda (Czech-Slovak Rifle Brigade) as they soon were called.  Leon Trotsky, the People's Commissar of War ordered the disarming and arrest of the Legion, thus betraying his promise of safe passage to Vladivostok.  Afterwards the Czechoslovak Legion used heavily armed and armoured trains to control large lengths of the Trans-Siberian Railway (and of Russia itself) during the Russian Civil War at the end of World War I before they were finally evacuated.  In 1923 the Czech Republic renamed the cauldron to Štít legionárov. 

In the meantime the Car fell. Back in "U RAJ NIJE PIVO" we discussed Ferdinand Maksimilijan Josip, Carskog izHrvataska and then of Meksiko, who came and went in almost in a twinkling of an eye.  Today's historians look at the Car with disdain.  Maksimilijan after all was a foreigner was he not?  He was an Austrian, probably German speaking, maybe since he was the Car Hrvatska he spoke some of a Slavic Language as well, but certainly not Spanish, so what was he doing in Meksiko anyway?  The official historians dismiss him without remembering that Maksimilijan's last words in this life were "¡Viva México!" 

The man who replaced him also spoke on Spanish as his second language.  His first language was Zapotec.  Hmmm, he was no more of "Spanish" descent than the Emperor.  On 19 June 1867, the rifle shots that rang out on the Hill of Bells killed the Car, the Carica's sanity, and the Mexican constitution which Benito Juárez swore to protect. Not only did Juárez refuse to allow Maksimilian's body to be sent home to his native land, he rejected titles of nobility, the church, the constitution and everything decent. José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz said "no."  The Constitution, you see, forbade re-election.  Amidst the Porfirio rebellion, Juárez died of a heart attack.

Porfirio ushered in the Nova Zora.  This was the era when Cars were Cars, nobles were nobles, knights were knights, bishops were bishops, and entrepreneurs were entrepreneurs. The new Car wore the grand Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of St. Stephen as had Maksimilijan and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour from France. He was a knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.  He wore the Star of the Imperial Order of St. Alexander Nevsky and the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.  He was a Grand Knight of Most Honourable Order of the Bath and in Joe's stash of yellowed old documents is his ancestor's invitation to the inauguration of José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz  as president of Mexico as the dawn rose on the twentieth century.


Like any enlightened Car of the period, taxes on business transactions were repealed.  Telegraph lines began to operate.  Railroads were constructed.  Payrolls blossomed. Prosperity began to show its face.  A middle class appeared. The Amerikanski began again to "lose" shipments of rifles and cartridges near the border.  25 May, 1911, Portfirio sailed quietly away from the maelstrom to France and the Mexican dream receded into the Mexican nightmare as the revolution began.

The revolution had already begun. Seven years later the Car was murdered. He and his wife and his children , the family doctor and the servants were shot.  The reign of terror had spread into Europe where it would remain for a long long time.  Lev Davidovich Bronshtein was a leading terrorist in Europe and in North Amerika.  Marijan, a cousin x number of time removed related tales of the battles fought in Brownsville between the colors.  They were the "Reds" and the "Whites" who were associated with Bronshtein, or Trotsky as he was also known.  Marijan worked for the Amerikanski government but in Teksas he was on his own for the most part.  Several times he found himself caught between the parties whereupon he had to shoot his way out.

Once he was assigned to "lose" rifles and cartridges across the border.  The Federales took some exception to that. He and his partner found themselves trapped on the Mexican side with the sheer cliffs leading to the Rio Bravo descending at their back and the Mexican Federal army at the fore.  There was nothing to do, he said, except to shoot his way out.  Marijan told me that he was assigned by the United States Secret Service to Francisco Villa, to protect the man at the same time General Pershing was supposedly hunting the man.  I might have dismissed his stories as the wild stories of an old man except the University of Texas mounted an expedition to the location he gave for this particular adventure.  There in the desert were the remnants of many Mexican uniforms, and an unmistakable pile of spent brass cartridges where Marijan had made his stand.

Adelita.  A song of the Mexican revolution.  Adelita - a song of the Russian Revolution.  Adelita was a favorite of the Serbian communists as well.  Hmmmm, and no wonder, the practice for the Russian revolution took place right here on the border between Teksas and Tamalipas.  I've been planning to do a video of the song Adelita.  Soon, soon I will do that.

Oh, Bronshtein?  Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río Hernández killed him on 20 August 1940 in Mexico. His aunt is buried underneath the altar of a church here.  Her name was Adelita.  That's all I'm saying. 

Štít legionárov is no longer Štít legionárov, nor is it Stalinov Štít, nor is it in Austria nor Hungary, nor Czechoslovakia, nor Poland any more.  (Did they move the blooming mountain? hehe) Never-the-less, the mountain is still the Kotol.  The mountain is the Cauldron and it will always be so as long as anyone sings "ona orah hory, hikori san" and daffodils bloom. 

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

9 Rujan 2011

JULAJDA POLKA - The Dance Hall Boys

On faceBook there's a page called  "You're Probably From Wharton, Tx..." Those of us who have any connection to the town can drag up old memories and say something briefly to others.  Its amazing the viewpoints and memories that wind up there.  Nearly all happy nostalgic things. For the most part we were a happy bunch.  Maybe we didn't have sense enough not to be happy, but that's how we were. So many have come through the schools and gone on to other places.  The younger ones have different memories from the older folk. Funny, we older folk used to be the young folk.

Sigh, jedno davno i daleko daleko, another long ago and far away thing.

Here's one conversaton from "You're Probably From Wharton, Tx..."  Even though all the remarks here were made out in public, the speakers may not have anticipated just how public their remarks were going to be, so I've xxx'd out the names for the sake of  a modicum of  privacy.  

XXXXXX  Football. Current Tiger Stadium, the field at the Jr. High, and the (now gone) field at WCJC. Did WHS play home games on any other fields? Like ·  · Unsubscribe · 13 hours ago
YYYYYY  likes this.


YYYYYY Wow, I hadn't thought about field at WCJC in long time. My sister was cheerleader there and for wrestling fans "Stone Cold" Steve Austin played football at WCJC as well.... 12 hours ago · Like


ZZZZZZ It's been so long now, refresh my memory on exactly where the WCJC Pioneer stadium was located. I went to games but I'm foggy on the locale.  10 hours ago · Like

XXXXXX It was on the WCJC campus, in a field just behind the buildings. In the early 60's, they decided to build more offices or classrooms or something and needed the room. That's when the high school had to begin playing their games at the Jr. High, which had been the high school. Around 1970, they built the current Tiger Stadium. When the games were at the Jr. High, there was not enough seating. So the band had to set up chairs in concert formation near one end of the visitors' side. We couldn't even see most of the game.  4 hours ago · Like

ME pioneer stadium was still there in 'xx/yy ,, don't know after that, I was gone a good long time about an hour ago · Like

XXXXXX Yes, that's right. I can remember the cheerleaders dancing to Julida Polka on the sidelines.  33 minutes ago · Unlike ·  1 person

ME you betcha !!! were you in the band in those days?


XXXXXX  Some of the best times of my high school. Percussion. Graduated 'XX.

Oh dear, and there followed a few messages behind the scenes in which XXXXXX remembered my dad and XXXXX reminded me about a mother who taught Geometry.  I wanted so hard to please that dear lady because she had always been so kind to me and she worked to hard to help me get it, but I was such a flat liner back then ,,, and for that,  after I got out of the Air Force, God sentenced me to about 25 years hard labor at a job in which one of my functions lay at the intersection of Plane and Solid Geometry.   No one has any idea how many times I thought of Mama Rock or how many times I begged God's forgiveness for failing her. But God was relentless in His punishment. It took me about 10 years, but I got to the point where I could look at a truckload of logs and know, just know, how much veneer and how much lumber that load would produce.  I got to the point where I could gaze out upon a sawmill floor and tell you accurately how much was stacked out there and I could look at an aerial photo and tell you fairly accurately how much timber was standing on a particular plot.  Maybe Mama Rock would have finally been proud of me,  but I never could do the math. That's a job for the accountants, God bless them, or these days for my computer.  I still have a problem with math.  

In the band, XXXXX was percussion.  I was a few years ahead. I played clarinet, and we both have the same memory: "the cheerleaders dancing to Julida Polka on the sidelines."  Some Friday nights over in Pioneer Stadium you might have thought the Julida was our school fight song as often as the band struck up that song.  Oh heavens, our side  of the stadium would sound out along with the band.  You knew we were there!  So many people knew all the words back in those days.

I put this song over on  CANOVALS on YouTube back on November 4, 2010. It hasn't been one of my most watched videos, but a good number of folk from Czech Republic, Slovakia, as well as Texas and the United States seem to have enjoyed it as well as a few folks from all over Europe and even from far away India.   Even Hrvati from Australia were singing along with the song.

Maybe you noticed we've switched back and forth between spellings for the song "JULAJDA" vs Julida.  Hej, so a Hrvat has a Czech Song on his Hrvat pages.  Ok, it's Teksikanski Czech anyway.  Hej hej, that's just how it is, don't worry about it.  The song was and is part of our lives and maybe always will be.  Play it at my memorial service when the time comes, will you please?

Dennis Svatek, once one of "The Dance Hall Boys" from Texczechpolka  on YouTube and were kind enough to allow me to use their recording of the song.  Dennis lived next door to Wharton in Boling for part of his life.  I used to listen to  this recording on KULP - EL CAMPO when they played it as I was passing through at the right time of day.

Someday I will make another video to go with this song.  It deserves a better video than I knew how to make at the time . It was meant a bit as a dream sequence going by to youthful days. The little mouse all tucked in  and sleepy - that's me.  Maijka moja used to love to sing this to me.  Hej, its a happy song and it passed for a lullaby in our house.  Dear Mom.  I liked the turtle playing the keyboard in the video - if keyboards had  existed back then that's about how Mom might have looked with her kerchief on her head playing.  Yes,  XXXXX, I was remembering our cheerleaders.  I hope they don't mind that I used the dancing mice to represent them. :)

Here are the words - sing along with Dennis as you watch the video:


Ten panský kočí, má modré oči,
On se mě vyptáva, kde já spím v noci. 


R.:
Julajda, Julajda, já mám tě ráda,
Julajda, Julajda, já tě ráda mám. 


A já spím sama na naší půdě,
Žádný tam za mnou vylézt nemůže.

Čtyři tam lezli, jeden tam zůstal,
Jak jsi se, Pepičku, jak jsi se vyspal. 


Já jsem se vyspal, ale jen málo,
Mně se tam něco hezkého zdálo.


On English these words are approximately:

The carriage driver, he has blue eyes,
He is asking me where am I sleeping at night.


R.:
Julida, Julida, I like you,
Julida, Julida, you I like.


And I sleep by myself in our attic,
Nobody can climb up there to see me.


Four of them climbed there, one stayed there,
How did you, Joe, how did you sleep.


I slept, but only a little,
I was dreaming about something nice.



Now you just must understand these are not the words we sang when we sang this on english - "I got the honey if you got the money" was how the refrain went on english.

What's funny is the song was probably first sung on polish or on english.  It was written by Walter Solek, the Polish - American song writer / radio polka show host.  Solek was with the Krakowska Orchestra organized by his brother Henry, with which he recorded on the RCA Victor label.  Julida was his first major hit after World War II with Columbia Records.  It vaulted him to the top of the charts in the polka scene for a number of years.  His motto, Bringing people together through music!" helped him compete with Elvis and the Beatles.   A member of St. Stanislaus Church, Solek's seventy-five year career in music ended in 2005.  

Just a few minutes ago I found out that my friend from High School is gone.  His family has kindly allowed me to dedicate this little video to Bob McCulloch who was a good friend and one of the smartest guys I ever knew.   I swiped this photo from his sister's FaceBook page with her permission.  Except for the mustache, that's the same smile Bob had in high school all those years ago.

Bob McCulloch

JULAJDA POLKA  

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

3 Rujan 2011

Santa Ana

Santa Ana.  No, no, NO!!! You must pronounce this correctly.  You must not say this name as Santa Ana like "Santa" [tiny pause] "Ana."  You must say it as though it was written Santana.  And for my sake, please do not say it Sigh-yunta-Yan-ah as so many Anglos do if for no other reason perhaps than to make the hair on the back of my neck rise as though they had scraped their fingernails across the surface of a metal table.  Pronounce the "a"s as on croatian, or on polish, or on latin or even Spanish.  Perhaps say the "a"s as the "a" as on english "father."  

In the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield, Illinois, there is a a prosthetic cork leg captured by American armed forces during the Mexican American war.  It once belonged to Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón.  The "Napolean of the West," as he liked to call himself, lost his leg during the great "Pastery War" of 1838 to French grapeshot while he was harrying the flank of a French advance against the  Mexican army to collect monies owed to France and to French citizens from a relatively lawless Mexican regime.

Most people think of the "Texas Revolution" as the small matter where  Texas freedom lovers objected to Santa Ana's revocation of the Mexican Constitution with his "Seven Laws."  The real Teksikanski revolution, however occured much earlier when the Teksikanski had joined in the general revolt  against the Hapsburg regime which controlled Spain and her holdings in the  New World.  Santa Ana had been the officer who attempted to put that rebellion  down too.  Santa Ana worked hard to earn himself the title of the "Villan of  Texas History" and he succeeded.

Oddly perhaps, grants made by the decree of the Spanish King are still honored in the laws of the State of Texas and they have been honored by the Supreme  Court of the United States as well.  In the  1950's there was an effort by the United States to bring oil well drilling in the Gulf of Mexico under their  control.  They succeeded of course, by force majure if not by law - except  along the Texas coast.  Texas was and is a nation.  By international law recognized in writting by Mexico, France,  England, Belgium, the Netherlands,  the German states, and the United States, Texas has jurisdiction twelve miles out to sea. That detail was to make a considerable difference in which entity governed the territory offshore from Texas. Texas levys its own tax on  minerals extracted from that territory.  No other coastal state of the United States has nearly so much jurisdiction as does Texas.

According to the US CIA World Factbook, the economies of the world ranked by nation were United States, Peoples Republic of China, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Brazil, California, Canada, Russia, India, Spain, Australia, and in fifteenth place in the world ahead of New York and Mexico is Texas.  Poland was in 30th place.  The Czech Republic held the 45th spot, and Slovakia the 60th.  The Republic of Croatia was in 66th place ahead of Serbia in 74th.  Here in Texas, which no one lists among the slavic lands of  the world, the legacy left by Peneda, that "Spanish" explorer from St James Bay in Dalmatia, and the legacy left by Lucac, the Croatian oil engineer, and the legacies of so many many others, thrives in an economy about as large as the entire Russian Federation. The state tourism slogan is "Texas: It's like a whole other country," and there is more truth in that than sometimes meets the eye.  A case could be made that, over all, Texas is the most prosperous Slavic nation in the entire world.

Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón (remember  how to pronounce his name correctly would you please, was an ignoramous.  He dropped out of school to join the infantry where he learned the tactics of Commandante Joaquín de Arredondo. Arrendondo's favorite tactics were ignorance and brutality.

flag of the Republic of the Rio Grande

Francisco Xavier Mina from Navarre was a student at the University of Zaragoza in 1808 when the revolt against French rule began.  After Ferdinand VII returned to power Mina left for England where he met Winnfield Scott who encouraged him to strike  against Spain by invading Mexico.  This was but one of many challenges to imperial  authority that convulsed New Spain.  Each of which was met by mass executions,  purges and by "ethnic cleansing."  Arrendondo and Santa Anna were in the midst of all this, seemingly enjoying the blood which flowed in their wake. In the Federal District of  Mexico, mouldering in storage at the Chapultepec Museum,  is the flag of the Republic of the Rio Grande which lasted 283 days before General Arrista, one of Santa Ana's supporters utterly destroyed it in a battle at Saltillo. Afterwards there was a blood bath in the Rio Grande Valley during which many of the inhabitants learned to keep silent, very very silent.  Even today, knock on Carlos' door and ask for Carlos.  Carlos will say "no se" (neznam) and shut the door.

Because of his lack of respect for human beings as human beings, because of his  lack of respect for the Constitution of Mexico, because of his sheer ignorance of the facts, Santa Ana (say his name correctly please) lost the last legal argument he might have had for the lands between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rivers in Texas.  No one was going to tell him either.  Santa Ana had shown his disregard for the people of the north.  He had brutalized them, butchered them, betrayed them and no one was going to tell him anything.

I saw some papers a few days ago.  Yellowed papers. Old papers. Papers which appeared as if they may have been yellow when they were new.  How they survived here where the humidity is high would have been impossible except these papers were free of acid  when they were made. Joe had dug these papers out of a strongbox somewhere and he brought them to me to see.

There was the Baron Esparza y Garza arriving at Los Brazos De Santiago Matamoros in 1700. Between 1680 and the teens of the 1700s, there was significant resistance to  the Hapsburg regime all over eastern Europe.  The Hapsburgs had responded by killing protestants, especially protestant pastors.  Protestant warriors were food for the ravens.  Some people managed to come away from those disturbances.  The warrior Esparza (the Scatterer) came by way of a ship from Barcelona.  There he was when Matamoros faced the sea.  There there is the family when Matamoros moved  inland away from the ravages of huricane driven seas and mosquitos to the vicinity of the old courthouse in Brownsville.  Here in these papers was the family when the city moved away across the river in the late 1700s to the present site of Ciudad Heroica Matamoros.  They stayed on the north side of the river.  There was the proof I wanted to find that Matamoros was not named after Mariano Matamoros but named originally after Saint James of Compostello who had once come to lead the hosts of heaven against the heathen.

In 1793, Francisco Pueyes and Manuel Julio Silva, two Franciscan missionaries established  parish south of the Rio Bravo in about the location of the main plaza of Matamoros today. They named their parish Villa de Refugio in honor of "Our Lady of the Refuge of the Estuaries." It wasn't long before most of the town moved south of the river around the church.  The name Matamoros moved with it and in 1826 a decree from Mexico City announced to everyone that the town was now Heroica Mariano Matamoros after a hero of the revolution and so the name was finally Mexicanized and St James was forgotten.  Except ... there are some who remember.

Presidente Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón (say it correctly please) wanted so badly to press his claim that the border between Texas and Mexico was the Nueces River.  He fought wars to force his claim.  He went to Washington to talk to the Americans and got no where because he did not know the history of the settlement of the region.  He didn't know, and the survivors of his brutal attacks kept their mouths shut and put the paper work that might have helped deep in the bottom of  strong boxes which they kept out of sight.  Santa Ana failed in his life long quest partly because he dropped out of school and he didn't care to know what he needed to  know.   

Santa Ana lost the hearts of the people here and he lost again and again on the battle  field.  Any one who wants to say the Americans took this land by force from Mexico ought to think these matters over.  That's not how it was.  And that's not how the people who have lived here a long time think.  Mexico slapped them in the face and threw them away.  Memories are long.  He could not win this land without knowing the backgrounds of the peoples who lived here and he could have never controlled it. The Americans don't much control it now. The new immigrants don't have any sense of this history.  Perhaps in another generation it will be completely forgotten.  But today we remember.

There were other things in Joe's hand which were of interest to me, sometime I may get around to telling other stories - stories about others of his relatives - like Col Cavazos whose great grandchildren I went to high school with up in Wharton County.

There's one story I must relate today.  This story is for Kotasierota.  My freind,  have you gotten this far down in all this reading?  Home.  We talked about Home. Daleko daleko i davno,  far far away and long ago, Home.  Missing Home.  Well the joke is on us my friend.  We found the first Polish folk in Texas arrived in time to help with the battle of Goliad and the Battle of San Jacinto.  Heros of the wars against the Prussians and the Russians.  Defeated, transported by the Austrians to become heros again.  But in Joe's documents I discovered they were not the first people from Poland in Texas. Ummm  lets try 1700.  Dominski was the name he went by.  Think the man was homesick?  I do.

In the 1860's the Dominski family were heros.  There had been a little ethnic cleansing  going on in Texas.  In Texas?  Da! In Texas - ethnic cleansing, you bet, and I'm not  going to apologize for phase one of the cleansing program.  The first Roman Catholic missionaries to the San Antonio area in 1718 stumbled upon a horror.  There were in those days "Indians" who were simply freakish perverts.  The men's idea of courting a woman was to rape her and then pass her to his buddies so they could rape her.  A woman was simply a utility for their violent "pleasure."  If she became submissive enough and pleased the gang enough, when she got pregnant they might dump her off  along the San Antonio River to have the baby.  After the baby was born, they might  come get her again and either kill or simply abandon the baby to die.  When she was too old for their taste, they might dump her off by the river again. Some of the "old" women would rescue some of the babies and care for them.

The Roman Catholic missionaries were justly horrified at what they found.  They built a  chain of mission forts close together which served as armed women's shelters.  The children had a chance to grow up in fairly secure and decent surroundings. These hoodlums managed to maintain their presence. The Spanish government and later the Mexican government seemed  unable to assist the church in bring law and order into the area.  This was not a "white" or European issue. Other "Indians" in Texas were being raped and pillaged by these thugs as well.  The Texas Rangers were assembled and they rode against these demons. For the most part they were exterminated.  Some survived and much of the gang activity in the San Antonio area follows the ancient pattern with the same result.  They are finally arrested and imprisoned or executed.  Don't some bleeding heart liberal go screaming "noble savage" at me or tell me these "native Americans" have the right to a culture of abusing women.  No one has that right. Not now. Not ever.  Come to rape my woman and you die, I don't care what your culture is.  The Texas Rangers did the right thing.

But ,,,,,

Then there was another problem.  There were Spanish families north of the Rio Grande who had land grants going back centuries.  There were some Anglos who wanted their land. The Rangers were called in again, and this is the deep black secret no one wants to talk  about very much.  One time the vulture has tasted the blood of a live creature, it wants to feed again and live blood.  The Rangers were sent to the River.  Land owners with the wrong surname and perhaps the wrong color were given the choice to cross the river into a country they didn't want to live in, or die.  Some swam the river, some died.   The Rangers had a problem though. Not far down the road from where they had started on this dastardly mission, they encountered a barony.  Ok, it wasn't a barony, but if it had been in Europe that's exactly what it would have been called.  On it there are still three small communities. The Esparzas and the Dominskis owned it.  It was their land by fiat  of the King of Spain.  And Dominski didn't fit the kind of name the Rangers had been sent to kill.  The thing is, the border folk have had to defend their land against all sorts of folk who wanted to kill them and take their land.  This was like Santa Ana's purges  all over again. They disagreed with the idea that their neighbors should be gunned down.   There was a battle.  Poland won.  This may well be the only battle the Rangers ever lost.

The Rangers left and never returned.  It's amazing that Joe's stash of papers survived all  this time with the humidity, insects, raids by Spain, raids by Mexicans, raids by Teksikans, and raids by Americans.

Sigh, when you leave the Rio Grande Valley by car, be sure and speak only on english to the guys at the immigration check point.  They aren't sure the people from the Valley ought to be allowed into the rest of the United States.  If I haven't told that story  aleady, its a story for another day.  Now I know the definition of Home.  Its the place where you plant your  feet and its the place and the person you would die for or with.

For Dominski that was  his El Ranchito, his family and the people of the river.  For me, this is not the place. These are not the people, though I love them, no doubt of that.  I admire the history  of some of them.  I admire the tenacity of folk who can be and be who they are for 500 years against all odds.  I've been blessed to be part of the history of this place. Some of these folk are Croatians or Slavs like me and I feel close to them, but this is  not Home.  I've a lot more writting to do and some other things to do, but I know now that I will not stay here.  The sunset over the Laguna Madre is absolutely beautiful. Someday, with the right companion, I may want to see a sunset or rana zora na more Jadrana, maybe, I donno. Right now I'm dreaming about the sunset over the Pacific.  Thats even further away from Home, or is it? 

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

Little pieces of paper

Today the river's name is Marecchia. The Greeks called it Αριμινος (Ariminos).  The Greek name survives in "Rimini" which forms part of the name of the region through which this river flows to the Adriatic Sea.  Near here it was that Plutarch says that Julius Caesar, as he was crossing the Rubicon from Cis-Alpine Gual into Italy quoted Menander, saying:  "Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος"  (Let the die be cast).  Caesar would meet with the Roman Senate in Rimini and there begins a story of Empire and power and dominion about which, if  you wish to know more, there have been many notable words written elsewhere.

Three hundred years or so later, Ivan (Ἰωάννης ὁ Χρυσόστομος) stood before Arcadius, the Emporer of the Eastern Roman Empire accused of evil doing and no wonder, Ivan, or John, the Golden Mouthed as he was called,  preached against the abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical and political leaders.  Gaudentius, the Bishop of Rimini, along with Ambrose, rose to John's  defense. Gaudentius was also present at the Synod of Rimini in which  some 400 Bishops of the church rejected the efforts to inject the words "the Son is like the Father" into the creed.

Gaudenitius also ordained a Deacon, a fellow named Marinus the Dalmatian.  Marinus was born on the Island Arba ('dark, obscure, green, forested') in Dalmatia. In modern Croatian Arba is Rab. Marinus was a stone mason who had come over to Rimini when Diocletian forked up the money for a  major construction project in Rimini. When Diocletian ordered the round up and extermination of the Christians, Marinus fled to the hills and hid out in a cave on Mount Titano from which he could see his beloved Jadrana, the Adriatic sea.  He died in 366 AD after leaving this simple will: "Relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine." ("I leave you free from both men" i.e.  free from both Emporer and Pope).

Mount Titano

 These words sufficed as the constitution of San Marino until in 8 October 1600 a somewhat more elaborate written constitution with those words still at the core was adopted by the republic.  Did you know Abraham Lincoln was a citizen of the Republic of San Marino?  Jup, its true.  Lincoln's  reply to the letter sent by the government of San Marino is very similar to the words he would speak at Gettysburg not very long after.

The US Constitution came almost 200 years after the written constitution in San Marino.  In principle, the two documents are amazingly similar. On 3 May, 1791, the Sejm (parliament) of Poland enacted the third  written constitution for any modern state in the world.  On 4 October 1824, the congress of Mexico ratified the "Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States."

In 1835 Antonio López de Santa Anna abolished the Constitution of Mexico with his "Seven Laws."  On the second of  October 1835, some of Santa Anna's troops went to Gonzales, Texas, to retrieve some cannon left there to protect the town from Comanche raids, where upon the Mexicans began to learn the meaning of the phrase "Don't mess with Texas."  The Mexicans, uh, went away empty handed, that is to say - the ones who got away left empty handed.  A lot of Teksikanski have a thing about their firearms, if they got guns, you ain't gettin' 'em. No how, no way. Unh uh.

Back in 1833, the Austro - Hungarian Empire did a little round up of some illegal aliens. The Prussian Empire and the Russian Empire had both  objected strenuously to the Polish Constitution and invaded, bringing down what at that time was the largest country in Europe.  Some of the Polish soldiers walked across the border into Galicia where they were arrested.  The Austrians agreed to send these men where ever in the world they wanted to go.  The frigates Guerriere and Hebe set sail from Trst, then controlled by Austria, bound for New York City, Amerika arriving July 14th, 1834.

Andrej Felix Wardzinski was aboard that flotilla.  He made his way to New Orleans where he was recruited by Captain Amasa Turner to serve in the Texas Army.  Wardzinski arrived in Velasco on January 28th 1836 according to Headright Certificate No. 379 issued by the Harrisburg Board

of Commsioners.  On page 171 of the army rolls in the General Land Office Mr. Wardzinski is shown as a member of Captain Smith's Company on Galveston  Island, December 31, 1836.  Comptroller's Military Service Record No. 3102, 9 August, 1837, certifies Wardzinski to have been born in Poland in 1801.  He was five feet, seven and one half inches tall, of light complexion, with blue eyes and brown hair. Occupation soldier.  According to Bounty Certificate 691 in which he was granted 1280 acres of land,  Wardzinski served in the Texas Army from February 13, 1836 to August 15, 1837.  

A despot fiddled and Rome burned we are told.  The Davis boys fiddled and a despot napped. After Francis and Adolph Petrussewicz, John Kornicky and Joseph Schrusnecki who came with Wardzinski were slain with Col Fannin in a manner reminiscent of a later massacre at Vukovar, Sam Houston began drawing Santa Anna eastward.  Santa Anna's supply lines were lengthening.  Houston's supplies were closer thanks to Simon Wiess from Lublin in Poland who was nearby. Around 4:30 in the afternoon of 21 April 1836, Daniel and George Davis began to play their violins:   

"Will you come to the bow'r

I have shaded for you?

I have decked it with roses

All spangled with dew.

Will you, will you,

Will you, will you

Come to the bow'r?"

Over and over again they played the song.  Santa Anna didn't seem to notice or respond as the Teksikans advance silently across the nearly one thousand meters of open ground between the two camps. When they reached point blank  range, the Teksikans fired.  The Meksikans fled.  In eighteen minutes it was all over.  Santa Anna was captured.    

After the Battle of San Jacinto, in which he had served with Captain Turner, Wardzinski drops out of sight for a while and his land was sold for back taxes.  He reappears briefly in the records with the First Tennessee  Regiment of the U.S. Army under Colonel William B. Campbell on June 30 1846 as they land on Los Brazos de Santiago (the Arms of St James -  where Peneda landed in 1519 and about which we talked in Na Naší Půdě Straší). The First Tennessee was assigned with Quitman's brigade to take  Fort Diablo in Monterrey. They were out in front of the attack and  Wardzinski is separated from his unit for a little while during the melee.  Before the smoke cleared he was back in the thick of things.  That day they earned the nickname "The Bloody First."  In 1847 the unit returned to Texas and was mustered out in May.  Afterward Wardzinski fades from view entirely.

Other writers have noted that too many Slavic immigrants to Texas are invisible in the English records.  Perhaps it was because  they didn't speak English and Texas was big enough that it often wasn't necessary.  There were enough Slavs of various sorts here that unless you owned land there was often no need to be on the record anywhere.  Marriages and births were recorded in church records in those times. Sadly some of those records have been lost to mice and mold and are no longer available to us.  There were Anglos who came here too in those times to be incognito and they succeeded.

Little pieces of paper.  Men and women will fight and die for little pieces of paper.  Little scraps of paper which tell the story of their aspirations for just a little bit  of freedom.  Little bits of paper which free people from pope and despot alike.  Little pieces of paper worth traveling half way around the world to defend.  Wardzinski did and he wasn't alone as you saw.  The Polski were not the only Slavs who came to help in the struggles in Texas for freedom, and Slavs weren't  the only ones who joined in this task of love either. All kinds of people joined in the effort for a little piece of paper worth bleeding and dieing for. There are other stories, lots of them, but some of those you have most likely read elsewhere.

There were all sorts of immigrants to Texas. Some were kruh or chleb (bread) immigrants. Some came for the freedom from pope and potentate guaranteed by the fourth written constitution of any nation in the modern world.  Father Leopold Moczygemba would come later to found the first Polish settlement in North America at Panna Maria.  Some had come to fight and die for that little piece of paper and what it meant. For many, no matter how long their families have been here, no much they love this place,  there is an awareness that HOME is far far away.  Far away in time, far away in distance, far away emotionally, sometimes just far far far away. Sometimes all you can do is have a little cry and go on.  Far far away ,,,

On YouTube, you make "friends."  Most of those friendships are  superficial.  Maybe most all of them are.  Usually you don't know any thing really about them except the music they listen or the videos they make. Too many people make videos which border on lewdness.  A lot of the videos you see are simply superficial.  Either way, that may tell something about the individual who posts them.  Sometimes you run across a fellow video maker who somehow injects emotion and skill into their production. Those you respect.  You enjoy their work for the sake of the art, for the sake of the expression.

One of this last sort, kotasierota, one of the kind who seem to be real people, returned HOME to Poland for a holiday not long ago.  Went to a place not awfully far from where Croats once roamed the prairies and the hills a millennium or so ago.  I was jealous, and happy at the same time.  Not all of us get to go daleko daleko ,,, far far away 

Daleko Daleko

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac