History /
An American studying medicine in the PRL 1978-1985: my story [142]
Every group has its characters and our group of Polonia was no different. Ziutek, or Barry as he like to be called, was an ebullient, fast-talking, used car salesman-of-a-guy, who always looked as if he stepped right out of a "Saturday Night Fever" movie set( open button-down silk shirt replete with thin gold chain nestled in a field of sparse chest hair). This Chicagoan by way of Poland was always happy which naturally made all us Polonians mistrustful of him. "No one can be this happy, this consistently and be worthy of trust" was the prevailing sentiment. I suspect Ziutek, pardon me, Barry was well aware of what people thought of him but as all "naturally high" people of his ilk do they keep on being happy. To hell with the rest of us! He kept on smiling, laughing and slapping backs. This thickly-accented Windy City refugee would have made a superb political operative (perhaps he is).
Despite his efforts to make us all comfortable in his presence, Barry had one disquieting feature which he was utterly powerless to control namely his one prosthetic eye. Speaking to someone with a glass eye is a very uneasy exercise. Anyone who has done it knows of what I speak. You don't know which eye to focus on! It really keeps you off balance. But you know what? As in all uneasy situations in life, one gets used to it. And so it was with us in DS Piast: we all got used to it.
The month was December, the year 1978. Both PT, my roomate, and I were stressing over the fact that neither of us had a place nailed down to spend Sylwester (New Year's Eve). "What were we going to do" we mused? "For God's sake we can't spend it here in the dorm" moaned PT! "We've got to figure something out" I remember saying nervously.
So it was like a scene from a movie. I remember shortly after saying those words, our short-statured, monocular, Slavic-accented genie-of-a-man came into our room and said " any of you kurwas want to spend Sylwester with me and my family"? Unanimously, PT and I answered "sure where does your family live"? The answer floored us. "Bukowina" he said.
My God, we're going to a Góralski Sylwester!!..............................
