When I was a kid growing up in the Warrendale section of Detroit in the 1970s, the Polish presence was everywhere. Warren Avenue was “the Strip” of our turf, and it was littered with family businesses with difficult names like the Jarzembowski Funeral Home. There was the Kozy Korner, with Kozy being short for a name I can’t begin to spell. The houses were mostly small, two- or three-bedroom homes that began growing in the 1940s.
I grew up on Ashton Ave. The Herman Gardens projects were across the Southfield Freeway, easily viewable from my bedroom window. They were built to house servicemen returning from WWII. By the 1970s, Herman Gardens was becoming one of the most dangerous projects in Detroit. As kids, we would play outside at night in the dark (Detroit was too broke to install street lights). When a police chopper showed up over Herman Gardens, its searchlight beaming, looking for a “perp” — which happened frequently — we knew it was time to go inside.
Kowalski sausages were sold everywhere. Most of the kids I knew at Saints Peter and Paul Elementary School had last names like Jablonski, Hejka, Szuper, Balinski, Zmuda, and Polchlapek. I could name more, but as my school days friend Melissa stated, “It would be easier to say who didn’t have Polish names — Ballard and Downey.”
Many of the kids’ grandparents lived in a nearby Polish enclave called Hamtramck.
Same thing happened closer by in Chester PA. We had to go back and rescue the last hold-out friend of the family there. She could not leave her home even to shop she was so terrified after multiple muggings and beatings.