Attacking the nuns to get the good news

Babcia was ready for her next step.  She ran through the corn fields and wheat fields.  She ran down the dirt road to Saint Stanislaw's Polish Catholic Church.  The nuns were all decked out in their early Catholic attire at the time.  Long plain dress with long sleeves, the habit around the head that would leave a permanent mark right smack dab in the middle of their foreheads forever.   Babcia was ready to pounce on these nuns to get her mission accomplished.  It was morning vespers and the nuns were praying their hearts out.  They did not even notice Babcia come in.  Babcia pranced around the church and not one nun stopped their morning prayer.  Babcia thought, "How else can I get the attention of these nuns?  I got to break them from this monotony.  Then the light dinged again in her little head.  The church bells...The church bells.  She would go and ring the church bells.  They can be heard for miles in this Polish Catholic Community.  Babcia was on fire with her thoughts.

Babcia went to the bell tower.  She made the leap of faith and grabbed those ropes and started swinging.  She rang those bells right during silent meditation.  The nuns obviously startled did not know what the hell or rather heck was going on.  They slowly got up from kneeling on the hardwood church pews.  Attempting to remain calm the nuns huddled around the Mother Superior.  Mother Superior was not so calm.  Somebody was going to pay for disturbing morning vespers. Babcia, of course, could not hear the commotion of the nuns because she was swinging full force in the bell tower.  The sounds of the chimes were deafening to my Babcia.  She was clueless of the consequences this would entitle till Mother Superior took a paddle to Babcia's bottom.   

Now the question is will she ever have the ability to obtain her sole purpose of teaching English in this very Polish Catholic Community.

Learning English on the side

Babcia was determined to learn English.  Every time her family went to Green Bay she would pick literature written in English.  This is when her obsessive behavior known as "hoarding" began.  She would pick up not just one English newspaper. Oh, no she would pick up three of the exact same newspaper.  Of course, she could not yet read English so she thought they each said different things.  The more times they traveled to Green Bay, the more literature she would pick up.  She only weighed 89 lbs but she sure could carry that in weight of English based newspapers.  She was addicted.  Hiding them in her coat, she was sure nobody was on to her evil plan to convert all her Polish speaking family, friends and neighbors to English speakers.  She had mission and damn it she was going to succeed.  Her closet became so full of English literature that she figured she better start to learn how to read everything.  She did not know where to turn.  Then one day she thought, "I bet the nuns at Saint Stanislaw's know English."  It was like a light dinged in her head.  Of course her given name was Lucia,"Lucy" in English, meaning light, and it started to flicker like it had never flickered before.  She was ready for the next brave step.

The Early Days

Well, if you are Polish and proud of it, you know babcia is Polish for grandma. My babcia grew up in a very Polish Catholic Community, Pulaski, Wisconsin.  She was a non-conformist from an early age.  She was going to be a teacher.  Not just your typically everyday Polish teacher.  She was ready to jump in and teach English in this Polish Community.  It was almost as if she was committing a mortal sin. " English in our schools, what kind of shit is that?"  They all wondered if this move to English would make her forget her Polish roots.  Babcia was the youngest of her 14 brothers and sisters.  Her father, a gambling man and drinker, lost two of his three farms.  The children all worked the farms except, babcia.  She was going to make something of herself.  She was going to beat all the odds.  She was going to teach English in Pulaski.  Of course, she forgot one crucial aspect of teaching English.  You have to be able to speak it and read it in order to teach it.  Babcia was just like all the other children in school at that time.  They were learning Polish.  How to speak it, write it and read it, when they were in school.  And at home they were speaking and writing and reading in Polish.  There was no need for English in this community.  In the Catholic Church of  Saint Stanislaw, the mass was not in Latin.  It was in Polish.  There just was not this need that babcia thought there was to introduce a new language to this community.