Near the entrance to the Polish American Society building in St. Petersburg, Fla., just to the right of the glass encasement that doubles as a gift shop and just in front of the first aid kit and the emergency oxygen tank, is a sign. It is small and white, and painted in red letters above the image of a small, hen-like bird is: "Dance at your own risk." This might be taken as a subtle attempt by the elder population that frequents the club to poke fun at themselves, except for this:

Two men have dropped dead while dancing here. Numerous others have broken bones. Not long ago, a woman fell and broke her hip, wasn't able to recover, and died a few months later.

In these cases, members of the club, which last year celebrated its 55th year of existence, will grieve and deliver Polish dishes and make comforting phone calls. But when Sunday comes, they head right back to the Polish American Society.

The polka, you see, must go on.

Says Gerry Milinowicz, a member of the society's board of directors and a staple of the club since the early '60s, "I tell people, I tell them, 'When I'm 100 and I'm dancing the polka and I drop dead, don't revive me. Because I died happy.'"

In all likelihood, the Polish American Society will not exist 20 years from now. Too many of its members are well into their 80s and 90s. Too few are younger than 60. Adele Cizneiwicz, the club's vice president and, at 87, its longest-standing member, estimates that the average age of members is 70.

But while they can still dance, they do. On Sunday afternoons, vodka glasses empty, accordions burst to life, and high heels punish the large, polished dance floor. There are swing dances and folk dances, waltzes and, of course, polkas.

And in between the dances, there are stories. There are stories of love and stories of loneliness. Stories of hope and stories of hurt. There are war stories and funny stories and embarrassing stories and drinking stories.

And then, of course, there are the dancing stories.

ADELE CISNIEWICZ:

Every so often, a few of the society's members have a contest. They plop down on the red vinyl seats scattered throughout the club's low-slung building, located on Beach Drive Southeast, and compete to see who has been with the club the longest. "Fifteen years," someone will say. Another might yell "21!" A select few will bellow a number in the 30s.

Adele Cisniewicz doesn't speak up until the end.

Then she lays down her trump card. "Forty-nine years," she says. And she smiles to herself.

Since Adele joined the club in 1957, she has watched it evolve through the economic boom of the '70s, which allowed a generation of Polish-Americans from the north to retire in Florida and pushed the club's membership past the 700 mark, to now, when deaths and a lack of interest from second and third-generation Poles have sent membership plummeting to right around 200.

Adele danced her first polka in 1922, when she was 4, at the urging of her grandfather. In college, she and five friends started their own all-girl polka band - The Polka Chips - piling into a Ford station wagon on weekends and weaving through towns in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio. Their venues weren't ritzy - they played in barns mostly - but boy, would those barns fill up quickly.

"When they found out that six girls were coming to town, that got them out there pretty quick," Adele says. The band made $30 a night on average, splitting it six ways.

When Adele moved to St. Petersburg from Cleveland with her husband in 1957, it took less than two weeks to find the Polish American Society.

"That was back when there was just a dirt road out front," she says proudly.

Over the years, she has held six of the organization's seven officer positions, from president to treasurer, and currently works as both the club's vice president and recording secretary. She is considered the ultimate authority in matters involving club history, from the best dancers to the name of that young Italian couple that used to frequent the dance hall. Oftentimes, rookie members (which is to say, those who have been around only 20 or 30 years) say things like, "I'm not sure, but let me ask Adele. She would know." And almost always, she does.

Adele lives alone now, in a comfortable apartment on 58th Avenue North. There is crystal ware in the living room, authentic Polish costumes in the closet and perogi in the freezer. Her husband passed away in 1980, after years of battling various medical problems. Sometimes, she says, it gets lonely. Used to be, Edward, her close friend, would keep her company, but he passed away in 1999. Died from too much polka, Adele suspects. He had been scheduled to have surgery for an aneurism on a Monday. The day before, he insisted on going dancing.

"We're not going dancing tonight," Adele told him.

"Oh, yes, we are!" he responded.

So they went and they danced and Edward grinned, even though Adele could see in his eyes that he was struggling. The next day, after a nine-hour surgery, he suffered a stroke. Nine days later he was dead.

"He had to dance the polka," says Adele, shrugging. "Just one more time."

ARTHUR BLUJ:

On Sunday afternoons, Arthur Bluj, 63, pulls on his fiery red blazer, combs back his dark hair - which is only now starting to show signs of gray - and makes the short drive to St. Petersburg's Polish American Society building for three hours of polka. Or, more precisely, for three hours of polka with beautiful women.

Arthur loves women. All kinds, really, but especially ones of the beautiful variety.

If you were ever to meet Arthur, he would probably tell you about his three girlfriends. He might also tell you of the number system he has developed for his female companions, perhaps as a way to keep them straight. Girlfriend No. 1 he tends to leave at home on most occasions. Girlfriend No. 2 has been known to join him for a Sunday afternoon polka, but she's currently in Chicago, trying to sell her house. (It is important to note here that, if No. 2 is able to sell her home for a large sum of money, Arthur is prepared to move her to the No. 1 spot.) Girlfriend No. 3 is always bugging him to go swimming with her, which may or may not explain why she's No. 3.For the most part, Arthur, a widower, doesn't bring his girlfriends dancing with him. This way, he has more freedom to work the room. As Arthur puts it, "I dance with four or five girls here. I make them real happy."

In an effort to make them happy, there are certain dance moves that Arthur has worked hard to perfect.

"Me, I like to spin 'em out," he says, pretending to twirl a woman in front him. "When I spin 'em out, I tell them, 'I can enjoy more of you this way.' (With this, his eyes scan an imaginary partner from top to bottom.) They like that."

Luckily, Arthur is also more than willing to offer first aid assistance at any point. "I tell the girls, 'If you get dizzy when you're dancing, you let me know, because I'll lay down on the floor with you and give you artificial resuscitation.' They like that."

Arthur was married for many years. But his wife, Vivien, passed away two years ago. ("She's an angel now," he says). He had spent three years courting her, taking her to the Saturday night polka dances at a church in New York. And oh, did she love to dance. Now, Arthur fills the void with bingo and bowling and church dinners and whatever else he can find to do. Usually he does it with women and polka.

Make no mistake, he wishes it were Vivien out there with him on Sunday afternoons, twirling and jerking, moving and shaking like they did all those years ago. But it's not, and so he makes do.

And the other women, see, they like that.

BILL AND POLKA PAT:

Polka Pat: "Lenny Gomulka was playing the night Bill and I met. I walked in and he asked to buy me a drink. He asked to buy me a drink, and then he asked me to dance. And I wouldn't date him, because he was from the north. He was living in New York at the time. I didn't want to be a 'Florida Fling.' So I would only see him at the club, and we would dance and whatnot. But he tried. Oh, would he try."

Bill: "I tried and I won, didn't I?"

Polka Pat: "He would call, but I wouldn't answer. I screened his calls. He was planning on moving down here, so I said, 'When you move, then I'll date you.' And he said he was planning on moving down here, so I started dating him."

Bill: "I moved down here so she would marry me."

Polka Pat: "But he didn't know I was going to marry him!"

(A little background: Pat Caldwell is originally from Cleveland but moved to Tampa, Fla., in 1989. She worked four years as a DJ for WMNF-FM 88.5, a St. Petersburg radio station that plays polka music from 2 to 4 p.m on Sundays, and three more on PBS's "Let's Polka TV." Bill Hadersbeck is a retired civil engineer who moved here from New York in 2000 to court Pat. Before he moved, he used to come for the winters.)

Polka Pat: "He was very open when he was asking me out."

Bill: "I tried every line in the book."

Polka Pat: "He asked to buy me a drink, and we had a couple of dances. And at the end of the night, I was getting a little nervous because he was wanting my phone number and everything, and so I left when he went to the bathroom. And he didn't like that very well. I saw him the next time I came to the dance and he was here. He came over and he said -"

Bill: "Don't you ever do that again!"

Polka Pat: "Don't you ever do that again! That's what he said. He would always call me, but I would never call him. But I had to start respecting the persistence. He was so persistent with the phone calls. He was so honest. Just a gentleman all the way. He did things the right way."

Bill: "And I was still in New York at this point, and along came her birthday, and I flew down and surprised her with a birthday party right here. Right here in the club!"

Polka Pat: "Right here! He bought me a birthday cake, and everybody celebrated with us. And he's been doing that every year since, too. Every birthday, he has a big cake, and he celebrates it. Then we went to Disney World. And that was our first actual weekend together. We met my daughters while we were there, we had dinner, and everything just went right. He kind of melted my heart. I had already melted his, I guess. I was single for so long. ...

"We got married right here, right in the club. Feb. 17, 2001. Five years it's been now. And we had a beautiful wedding here at the club. We sure danced."

STEVE MITZEWICH:

Steve Mitzewich has round, puffy cheeks, large-rimmed glasses, and a New York accent thicker than hippopotamus skin. He has a full head of white hair, done up in an Elvis-like comb-over, a smile that's been known to make women swoon, and a bumper sticker on his Saturn that reads "I Love Polka."

He is also, as it happens, one of the Polish American Society's most talented dancers. As one onlooker mused at a recent Sunday afternoon dance, "Steve's got magic in his legs." Steve can dance almost any type of polka, and there are a lot of different types of polkas, he explains. His favorite type of polka, however, is the "Tick Tock." His signature move involves him dropping repeatedly into a crouch, so that his butt nearly touches the floor. Down and up. Down and up. This does not seem to tire Steve out.

Don't ask me how I do it," he says, "Don't ask me how I get down anymore."

Steve is 79, but he has decided that it sounds better to say, "In five months, I'll be 80." So that's what he says.

Steve has been polka-dancing since he was a child living on New York's East Side. These days, he and his wife Renie often go dancing three nights a week - Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This is how he got so good, he says - all the practice. This is also how he and Renie were able to win the Senior Citizen Polka Contest at the 1988 Strawberry Festival in Plant City, Fla. In front of 7,000 people, no less

Then, more recently, his health began to go south.

"So far I got nine angioplasties, three hernia operations, a prostate problem, arthritis and diabetes." He lists these simply, like one might list the types of power tools kept in his garage.

Mostly, though, Steve doesn't have time for health problems. When he was hospitalized in 1990 after a heart attack, he had a single question for the doctor: "Doc, am I going to be able to dance?"

Yes, the doctor answered, but not without a lengthy recovery period. So Steve did what any loyal member of the Polish American Society would do. He showed up to the club the very next Sunday, took a seat on the edge of the dance floor and tapped his foot to the music. For four weeks he did this. Then one Sunday he tried a slow dance. The next week he did the same thing. The week after, he tried a faster dance.

"Three months later, I was doing the full polka! Right back at it!"

"That's what you've got to do," he adds. "You can't sit around and worry about it. No way!"

Interested in more? Click here to see the related multimedia project "A slice of Poland in St. Petersburg."

Back to "Southeast" | Back to "On the Beat" | Back to the Poynter Summer Fellows main page