TooLongOut
12 Aug 2019
History / Modern myths and legends about communist past in Poland [227]
As I tell my American friends about communism.... communist Poland was great place to grow up and I would not trade it for anything. People did not have much and spent more time socially and made more with less. I got great education for free thru Liceum and almost made it to top level university before "things" came up and I ended up in US in middle 80s. As 10 year old boy I could walk across the town in the middle of the night and not have to worry about sexual predators and other sickos. This does not happen in US now and it has not in the 80s when I arrived. Communist police did "take care" of questionable characters pretty quickly. As 14-17 year old I could not wait till Fri with couple other budies to go fishing in country side.. public lakes .. under the tent and no one CARED. Farmers would give us patatoes for free and corn when in season, we would stay up on water edge with big fire and fish all night. Try doing this in the US. There are so many laws and regulations that before you pitch the tent, you would have local police dragging you off. I miss those years. Pretty sure is different now.
Obviously, once you grow older, your career and option were limited and most of the people looked for options outside.
I would not also put 70s Polish Fiats down .... If I recall correctly, 70s and early 80s Honda/Toyotas in US market were not much better. My father used to pull out entire engine block out of 126 in an hour or two to replace something. The car would be good to go after lunch. For 2 cyclinder cars, they did good... in 1985 ? we drove from Poland to Russia (Ukraine?) and back to Poland via mountains thru Czechoslovakia.
As I tell my American friends about communism.... communist Poland was great place to grow up and I would not trade it for anything. People did not have much and spent more time socially and made more with less. I got great education for free thru Liceum and almost made it to top level university before "things" came up and I ended up in US in middle 80s. As 10 year old boy I could walk across the town in the middle of the night and not have to worry about sexual predators and other sickos. This does not happen in US now and it has not in the 80s when I arrived. Communist police did "take care" of questionable characters pretty quickly. As 14-17 year old I could not wait till Fri with couple other budies to go fishing in country side.. public lakes .. under the tent and no one CARED. Farmers would give us patatoes for free and corn when in season, we would stay up on water edge with big fire and fish all night. Try doing this in the US. There are so many laws and regulations that before you pitch the tent, you would have local police dragging you off. I miss those years. Pretty sure is different now.
Obviously, once you grow older, your career and option were limited and most of the people looked for options outside.
I would not also put 70s Polish Fiats down .... If I recall correctly, 70s and early 80s Honda/Toyotas in US market were not much better. My father used to pull out entire engine block out of 126 in an hour or two to replace something. The car would be good to go after lunch. For 2 cyclinder cars, they did good... in 1985 ? we drove from Poland to Russia (Ukraine?) and back to Poland via mountains thru Czechoslovakia.