I will take a little break from pitching my books and share a memory from my childhood. A musician playing the other night at my son’s brewery announced the band’s next song would be a polka. It turned out to be an Irish polka, not quite the same I remember hearing as a girl. But it prompted a sweet memory — dancing the polka with my father.
People in my hometown of Fairhaven will remember the late Antone “Hawk” Medeiros, who was so active in adult and youth sports the town named its recreation center for him. He was deeply involved at St. Mary’s Church at the bottom of our street — carrying the statue of Our Lady of Angels during the annual feast’s parade and passing the collection basket at the early morning Mass.
Dad was a showman who enjoyed making people laugh with his performances at the church’s annual shows and appearing in costumes at town events.
He was also a great dancer.
When I was a girl, our family attended so many weddings and events where a band would be playing crowd-pleasing music that got people onto the dancefloor. There were events held in the Polish club off Alden Road.
When he wasn’t gabbing with people he knew, Dad would be on the dancefloor with my mother. My sisters and I had our chances. If it was a waltz, we stood on the top of his shoes as he swooped us around the floor. But the best dances were the polkas. Holding my father’s hand, together we would do the polka’s lively three quick steps and a hop to the song’s oom-pa-pa, oom-pa-pa as we circled the room.
I recall the Pennsylvania Polka and the Too Fat Polka, which had those memorable lines: “Oh, I don’t want her, you can have her. She’s too fat for me.”
Polka originated in the Czech Republic before it spread through Europe. At the time, Fairhaven, especially the northern end where my family lived, was filled with the families of those who emigrated to the U.S. from another country. The neighborhood was a melting pot of mostly Portuguese, Polish, and French Canadian people. My grandparents, who lived near us, came from the Azore Islands.
Traditions people had in the “old country” were often still celebrated. And one of those was dancing the polka. (Oh, yes, there is the chicken dance although I never participated in that one.)
One of my favorites? The Beer Barrel Polka. Here’s how a stanza goes:
Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run
Zing boom barrel, ring out a song of good cheer
Now’s the time to roll the barrel, for the gang’s all here.
Ah, yes, oomp-pa-pa, oom-pa-pa.
ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: One of the few pieces of schoolwork I still have from when my last name was Medeiros.