HAMTRAMCK, MICHIGAN
For those of you not familiar with Michigan, specifically a city called Hamtramck, let me give you a little background about this once vibrant Polish-American community.
In the early 20th century this is where my family (both maternal and paternal) originated from. Being 100% Polish from both sides of my family, this is where both sets of my grandparents lived. It was known, and still is among many, known for the Polish-American diversity. The place where you can buy pierogis (potato, cheese, sauerkraut, fruit filled dumplings) and paczki (also known as the jelly-filled doughnut you eat on Fat Tuesday- the day before Ash Wednesday).
On every street corner, up until recently, were bakeries that sold the Paczkis and every meat market along Jos. Campau (pronounced Joseph Compo) sold pierogis, fresh (never the smoked variety) kielbasa, golumpki (also known as stuffed cabbage rolls) and so many of other Polish delicacies.
Well this past weekend, we headed down to Hamtramck for the Labor Day weekend festival- which used to be called the Polish Festival.
Here are some things we saw in this unique store
This store was so cool! SO many things to see...
Need an old bowling alley lane? Well they had one...
Need some old hand saws... yup, they had tons of those too
Want a chalkboard instead of a wipe-board for school? Yup, they had a few
And the traditional Kielbasa with sauerkraut and pierogis (lunch time!) as well as a view of Jos. Campau.
While it was a VERY hot day (hitting 94-degrees with a heat index of around 100) we had a great time. Hamtramck is quite a drive from our homestead but it was fun... we drove around our old neighborhoods too; and enjoyed reminiscing.
Pre-Birthday Storm Clean-Up
While Thursday is my 50th birthday... I will be spending my pre-pre-birthday day (as my oldest daughter calls it) cleaning up outside. We had a horrible storm come through here yesterday evening.
As we were (binge) watching a TV show on Netflix and enjoying some quite time before bed... we heard these repeat bumps and bangs on the roof of our house.
After peeking out some windows, we saw the reason for the things that go bump in the night.
Luckily no damage to the cars, windshields, house windows and no loss of power. thank goodness, but I will be checking things out real close today; I took tons of pictures and even a video; just in case.
Mr Golden D asked me why I was walking through the yard last night and videotaping... well, you never know if the roof was damaged... if there would be damage to one of the vehicles, etc and at least I'll have proof of storm and damage.
