Day 337: Where’s the sickle?
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
337 — Where’s the sickle?
04-Jul-1972
(Tue.)
TRANSCRIPT
Typical sickle on Polish farm
POLAND
Met one more Maryn relative. Also friendly, the
brother of grandma.
Out in the fields, they were cutting grain with a
sickle. Tried it, didn’t do too well.
The land in this area [of Poland] is mostly for
grazing of cows and horses, some grain, and a lot of
potatoes.
Uncle Nick even has his own beehives. Fresh honey.
Here, like my other relatives, they are happy. And
have a pretty good life. They have slightly more
though.
Problems. With normal salaries, the purchasing of
many consumer goods is very hard to do, even if the
goods are available. Only foreign money seems to do
all right.
Every night—dinner, drinks, and talk.
REFLECTIONS
In
the fields. I’m still
in Loczno with uncle Nick’s family and apparently go
out into the fields. I’m not certain how this
arrangement worked back then in Poland. Each family
has a garden (near their house) to grow vegetables
and their staple of potatoes. But how does the “go
out into the fields” thing work? Did each family also
have a section of land where they planted wheat grain
for animal feed? I don’t know.
The
sickle. Here is
the cool part. They actually use a sickle. You know,
like the “hammer and sickle” of communism. Try
cutting down grain using a hand sickle. I apparently
wasn’t very good at it. The opening picture is of a
typical sickle used on a Polish farm (from Wikimedia
Commons). I remember the sickle being one of those
long-handled ones and harder to use (my excuse).
Did I mention the honey bees? You want fresh honey?
Just set up a beehive on your patio.
Family
and life. It appears
that life for most families is based on the values of
very hard work, growing most of your own sustenance
to eat, and good old family values with a good dose
of family talk around the dinner table. In those
days, there was no running off to play games on your
computer, sending IM messages to friends on your cell
phone, or believing that your whole life centered
around saying stupid things on mySpace and Facebook.
Progress.
John
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