Bilinguals of the world unite

[sisyphus]

Oh I'm not Czech. I'm an airforce brat, but have spent the majority of my life in Utah. Before I escaped Mormonism I managed to go on a "mission" to the Czech Republic, which is where I learned Czech. I really like it. There are no Czechs here. The last time I spoke Czech was in a bar a year or two ago. A curious looking old man was reading a slim little book, and I went to ask him what it was after he put it down because he seemed so fascinating. He turned out to be Czech, so I got to practice with him for about an hour or so. And he bought me some beer. Mluvis Cesky? Where do you live, Roc Doc? Pennsylvania?

[RocDoc]

How many years did this mission go for?

Pennsylvania, no. Though that's where the first wave of Eastern Europeans did take up (ca 1910 or so), to work alongside the hillbillies in the coal mines.
The suburbs touching on the western edge of Chicago, up until the end of September which is when we moved about another ½ an hour west of there.
Basically we moved to where the rest of the Eastern Europeans living in those towns moved to escape the Mexican hordes who're now numbering fully 93% of my hometown and then 50+% of the town directly due west of that one.
The second town is where I'd lived for the past 18 years but it's nowhere near as bad as the ghetto which the place where I grew up has turned into.
'Barrio' actually.

But BOTH of these towns formerly had a HUGE Czech and Bohemian presence from the 1900s...there's been a Houby Festival for (I think) 35 years with a big Sunday afternoon parade (running down Anton Cermak Road) which has attracted Grand Marshalls like Ronald Reagan and G. H. W. Bush.
Yes, the area is strongly Republican. And the parade useta be REALLY big with huge turnouts, but the Mexicans are 'Ho-hum who gives a fuck' (as much as this whole thing is, of necessity, bending to them already, begging their organizations to populate the parade) and the East Europeans are either all dead or have moved to DuPage County like us. Way back when, it was a great excuse to walk the parade route from bar-to-bar on a Sunday afternoon, when I wasn't IN it that is.
The World Sokol Festival (basically a Czech Olympics, gymnastic events basically) would be held every 4 years at the high school stadium in town. 'Sokol' means Falcon and the Czechs in ALL the outlying towns established at LEAST 1 Sokol gymnasium for themselves and their kids to exercise to keep healthy. It functioned as a social club as well, with a bar to have a healthy Pilsner after your workout.
Nice organizations, the Sokols. But even those old buildings the Czechs built are either being knocked down or retro fitted for something else.

This area, which is still considered in-close to the city, the inner-ring of Chicago's suburbs was a WONDERFUL place to grow up because of the composition of the nationalities here and their adherence to traditions of discipline, hard work and higher education.
As kids we could jump on the 'L' train and be downtown (the center of Chicago, where the skyscrapers are) in 20 minutes, and for a quarter. _{What an old gaffer I sound like!}
NOW, it's still a great location because driving the expressway will get you there in just 10 minutes. Downfuckingtown.

Now we're at a 40 minute commute. Oh well.

So 'Zimne Piwo!' to ya...that means 'Hello!' doesn't it? ;D

[shin]

Fuckin' wetbacks, ruin everything.

[RocDoc]

Take a town of population 70 000 and make it explode to 90-fucking 3 percent Mexican over the space of 7-8 years.

And try to live there.

Bless ya shin for your near-worthless binary perspective on this.

[shin]

Well I never claimed to be a culture hog, rolling in the slop of the world (bah bah bah-bah-bah, I'm Lovin' It!), so this isn't really about me and my responses. It just doesn't seem like the sort of behavior of someone who claims his worldly travels have given him such amazing experiences into that creature we lovingly refer to as Man; seems more the behavior of an insular xenophobe. I just think that, if you are who you claim to be, you'd be able to appreciate the nuance of staying and becoming ingrained in the new local culture, even if it is Messican. Unless you think they are inherantly inferior and not worth your presence.

[RocDoc]

THIS is a 'defense'?

Slipped right off of the planet...

[shin]

How so? Help me understand my erroneous ways.

[shin]

I mean maybe I really need to understand why a Mexican horde is worth moving away over. I mean for a while there, two of my three roommates were Latino, one Uruguayan and one Mexican. That's 50% of the HOUSE, let alone the town, in which the horde has infiltrated, yet I didn't pack up my bags and leave because of it. I guess I feel I need help in properly understanding the nuance in getting the fuck as far away from the brown people as I can manage.

[RocDoc]

_{Unless you think they are inherantly inferior and not worth your presence.}

This is autobiographical to your existence.

Vast unchecked Contempt amid intense feelings of inferiority regarding your very own self.

Gonna feel better by climbing on the necks of others, you are.
Clueless wet-behind-the-fucking ears snotnose.

Be anything other than an insular xenophobe (which here, is not an applicable term, GIVEN:)when the shits are shooting each other on YOUR lawn and you've got a two year old to raise amid that shit.
While no-one's finishing high school much LESS going to college AND there's a nursery for teenage Moms at the high school with 30-fucking five of them in there.

You know nothing.

[shin]

Wow, on your lawn? Like, actually on your lawn?

[RocDoc]

Expert testimony, shin?
Oh, you're down with the underclass Mexican existence then?
Gangbangers they were then?
With their 5-6+ brothers and sisters, where everyone's hanging out their houses windows in December colorfully hollering at each other?

In your humdrum collegiate Massachusetts existence was it?

Or is this in Utah?

Recognize the existence of stratification of the folks YOU are labelling as 'wetbacks' here.

The police reports AND individual newspaper accounts of teen Moms abandoning babies in closets (in one case) and garbage cans (in another...) 5-6 blocks from where we lived.

The cops we've known as friends were saying 'Fuck this town...soon as my time's up, we're going. These people suck.'

Hey, so my individual accounts of adult life in Chicago are worthless to you, with your dismally uninformed handy little labels of 'OH how inTOLerant you must be!'

Fuck off.

[shin]

Ok, you know, I'm thinking about it a bit, and I'm going back to my hometown's problems with hard drugs in high school. Kids I grew up with were selling heroin on the high school campus, it was totally messed up. It was the Russian mob, as it turned out, that was pushing it on the kids, even using THEIR kids in high school to flood the school with dope.

I mean, I had plenty of reasons for wanting to get out of Dodge, so to speak, but I wonder: was it the Eastern European horde and their filthy corrupting of our pleasant WASP/Judean community that drove me away?

If it was, am I no better than the charges I level at you?

I am such a hypocrite, gosh.

[RocDoc]

How close would you like for it to be?

To like, make it worth YOUR while n'shit?

[RocDoc]

The percentage was 93% Russians with an out-of-control crime rate.
All over the papers just like here....I mean your close cop friends musta told you that they felt they needed to move out because the Russians were so out of control too.

Good GOD you poor thing!
Your existence SO mirrors mine!

[shin]

I believe I just answered your question, and declared myself a hypocrite as well. I'd offer an apology to you, but I don't much care for Eastern Europeans.