sometimes as i get older i will remember a blast from the past...now at the time in western NYS...there were no malls...we had Plazas know now as strip malls, but there was one just outside the city limits of Buffalo that was huge...several 100's of yards long, and room for 100's maybe 1000's of cars...as we walk to the place our car was parked the was this man taking with his hands as much as speaking and in broken english saying "I lost the car"....now in that area at that time  [the '60's] there were a lot of first and second generation polish emigrants in  the area, dang probably half my school were polish, there at the time was a polish language radio station in the area...so he helped him find his car..but i remember my best friend at the time GW...at 16 he was 6'5 and 265lbs. with very little fat, but his dad was a riot, he was the first US citizen in his family...he was born on the boat as his family came to the US and as it was under US Flag...a great guy...he once said to me "If someone calls me a pollack that's okay, that's what i am...but if some one calls me a [blank] pollack i get mad
[ for the blank substitute your fav 4 letter word]
i grew up in a school system that was 80 to 85 percent, german or polish or a mix of both, all either farm kids or factory kids....the toughest kid in school was named Barbara...nobody messed with her, well other then me....i loved a challenge....still do... the weird thing is today this would be impossible...if you checked the pocket or purse of 90% of the students in my High School, there was a pocket knife, if you looked in the closet of 80% there was either or both a 22 rifle and/or a shotgun[and i  mean both the girls and the guys]...they were tools, we were rural kids...we never used or even thought of them as weapons[unless of course you were a woodchuck]...i always got a kick out of listening to my elders talk about the "Good Old Days" and laughed about it [obviously not to their faces]...yet i find myself doing now exactly the same thing...
[ if you thing this post is not PC then fine...i have no time for that...just too old and grumpy]