Wisconsin Folklore

16 Gamroth the Strong

16 Gamroth the Strong Harriet Pawlowska legends celebrating great strength are common in rural and industrial settings and, not surprisingly , they flourish in Wisconsin. Indeed farm and factory hands, particularly when they are members of new immigrant groups at the bottom of the economic ladder, are often stereotyped by outsiders as being "all brawn and no brain," or "strong but stupid," or "having a size 52 shirt and a size 2 hat." But insiders typically regard them as gentle, playful, helpful fellows possessing awesome power. In the summer of 1975, Jerry Booth of Bruce told me of Sylvester "Syl" Urmanski, part of a contingent of Polish immigrant farmers in western Rusk County, who could easily heft laden oil barrels. Once his grain wagon broke down on a railroad crossing. With a train coming and the horses unable to pull the wagon free, Urmanski put his shoulder to the load and averted disaster. In 1979, while doing neldwork with traditional musicians in the Ashland area, Imet a stout Norwegian guitarist and hymnsinger, George Dybedal, who was reputed to have rigged a special harness that nt around his shoulders and a pony's belly. Standing on his barn's second level, just over the horse stall, he did deep kneebends and hefted the beast from the floor. In 1984, when Itaught my Folklore of Wisconsin class for the nrst time at the University ofWisconsin-Madison, a Milwaukee student told me about "Crusher" lisowski, a gravel-voiced professional wrestler whom I had admired during my own grappling career. Apparently the Crusher's favorite training method was to get a keg of beer from a neighborhood tavern, toss it on his back, jog to the shores of lake Michigan, drink the keg, then weave back with the empty. In the early decades of this century, while growing up in Oconto County, Mary Agnes Starr heard a whole cycle of strongman tales from Claude Nicholas, a former lumberjack. They concerned a French Canadian farmer-logger louis Cyr: "According to Claude Nicholas and many other lumberjacks and old lumbermen, the name of Paul Bunyan as a Badger state woods hero was unknown in Wisconsin lumber camps prior to the turn of the century.... Many an old FrenchCanadian -American lumberjack who could not recall a single Paul Bunyan tale could go on at length about louis (looie) Cyr. They invariably ended with the phrase, 'He didn't know his own strength'" (Mary Agnes Starr, Pea Soup and Johnny Cake [Madison: Red Mountain Publishing, 1981],35). Albert Gamroth, the Silesian strongman, was similarly acclaimed among fellow Trempealeau County immigrants. The stories of Gamroth were recorded by Harriet Pawlowska. Hailing from Detroit's Polonia, Pawlowska was a student of folklorist Emelyn Gardner at Wayne State University when, from 1939 to 1941, she undertook neldwork in Hamtrammack that resulted in the finest extant collection of Polish American folksongs, Merrily We Sing: 705 Polish Folksongs (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961). From 1946 to 1947, Pawlowska worked on a survey of Polish culture in Trempealeau County under the direction of Edmund Zawacki of the University of Wisconsin's Department of Slavic languages. Photographs and scores of ethnographic questionnaires from the unpublished survey form part of the archival collections of the State Historical 159 Part Two. Storytelling 16.1. Mrs. Thomas Walek at her Friday morning baking with an outdoor oven, or wielok, holding fifteen to sixteen two-pound loaves of rye bread ordered by her Polish American neigbbors, Independence, 1947. State Historical So<:iety of Wisconsin. Zawacki Collection, (WHi) X3 34457. Society of Wisconsin, as do copies of sound recordings made for the Archive of American Folk Song at the library of Congress: AFS recordings 8575-8637, 59 discs containing the speech, traditions, legends, and folksongs of Polish residents of the Town of Independence. Reprinted from Badger Folklore 2:3 (1950): 7-9. Somewhere along in the early 1850s, a young Silesian serving in the German army heard about the wonders of America. Some of his comrades had received letters from relatives in the new land which told of its unlimited opportunities, and the talk which followed these letters fired the imagination of Albert Bautch, the young Silesian . After he returned to Popielowo, his native village near the Oder River, even the responsibilities of married life could not drive away his restlessness. In 1855, he organized a small group of emigres who were willing to stake their future in America with him as their leader. In this group were his brother-in-law, Jacob Sura, with his wife and children, two fellow villagers and their families, and, of course, his wife and their two children. A sailing vessel took them across the Atlantic and down the S1. Lawrence River, Albert Bautch's descendants could not tell me at which point this band of voyagers boarded a train, which eventually took them to Chicago, but they know of the near tragedy which met the Silesians in that city. It was there that Bautch discovered the loss of a small trunk and with it the address of a Chicago cousin who was to help 160 PAWLOWSKA: Gamroth the Strong him get a start in the new land. For the next seven years, Bautch and his group worked their way from Chicago to Milwaukee, then down to New Lisbon in Juneau County, and finally up to Trempealeau County where the group took homesteads near the present site of Independence. Trempealeau County pleased the Bautches and the Suras, and they wrote glowing accounts of their successes in America to their relatives and friends back in Popielowo, urging them to join the homesteaders. You must believe me when I tell you that our own Missourians have nothing on the Silesians when it conIes to demanding proof. After ten years of urging and coaxing, a group of four or five young men, chosen by the villagers for their alertness and wisdom, left Popielowo for Trempealeau County to investigate the merits of the new land. They sent a report of their findings back to the Old Country, and in the next thirty years nearly half of Popielowo and the neighboring village ofSielkowice settled in the area between Arcadia and Independence. It was in the first wave of this immigration that Albert Gamroth and his brother came to Trempeauleau County. Both Gamroths were men known for their prodigious strength, but it was Albert who left in his wake a series of strongman tales of legendary proportions. He had already established a reputation for his amazing physical strength before coming to America. In the words of one of my informants, it was said of him that "when he served in the German army, he once leaped upon a horse and broke its back with the impact of the weight of his huge form." When working his land in Upper Silesia, he often used his teeth to lift a large bag of grain, and carried it thus for some distance. In America, his tremendous strength often proved to be a useful gadget to the founders of the new community. "They say, although I never saw it," confessed another of my informants, "that Albert Gamroth carried a granary, 12' X 16', across the road at New City, with the help of another man, probably one of the Bautches." Today, New City is but a fork in the road a mile out of Independence. Its mill is torn down, its tavern and its store were moved to Independence shortly after the latter town was incorporated in 1875. What remains at the crossroads is the farm of Albert Bautch, the leader of the trek from Poielowo, and the founder of the Polish community of Independence. The farm is now operated by the fourth generation of Bautches. But to get back to Gamroth: "They say, although I never saw this, that Gamroth could carry fifteen or sixteen grain sacks tied to his back, from the threshing machine to the granary." As his reputation spread, there were those who liked to challenge Gamroth. One day he was asked if he could throw some grain onto a threshing machine with his customary ease. "Cofnijcie sie, chlopcy. 10 wom pokoze" (Move over boys, I'll show you how it's done, he said). He picked up the ptichfork and lightly flipped an oversize heap of grain over the machine. He did this two or three times, looked at his challengers, and walked away. One day a fellow driving a wagon loaded with bricks became mired badly. Gamroth came up to him, heaved the rear end of the wagon with one shoulder and started the wagon on its way. 161 Part Two. Storytelling A fourteen-year-old lad who listened while his father told me this incident looked at the father scornfully and said, "Ah, that isn't true." "I didn't see it," explained the father, "but that's what they say." "It's possible," said the wife, "because he was a mighty fellow, but he never used his strength to hurt anyone. He was slow of movement, and slow of speech, but kind. His bywords were 'Cofnijcie sie, chlopcy' (Move over, boys) or 'Co chcecie, chlopcy? Jo wom pokoze' (What do you want, boys? I'll show you how it's done)." He liked to lift an ox by its tail and swing it around and around. A powerful plaything for a powerful man. During the Christmas season, it was customary to celebrate Niedzwicdzia or the Festival of the Bear. A man, dressed in a fur coat and covered with as many trimmings as could be found to further the illusion of the bear, was led through the streets by a group of merrymakers who danced and cavorted about to the music of a group of strolling players. On one such occasion, Gamroth led an ox around instead of the customary bear. When the party came to the door of the tavern, to further the hilarity, he lifted the ox in his arms, and to the amazement of his companions, carried it over the threshold into the tavern where the fun continued. One day three or four men, who were trying to stand a telephone pole in its assigned place, met with considerable difficulty. Gamroth came by and drawled out in his customary manner, "A cos to chlopcy chcecie zrobic? (Well, what do you boys aim to do?) Cofnijcie sie (Move over)." He continued to the men, who did not understand his language. Then he picked up the pole and put it in its place without any difficulty. In America, his feats of wonder included not only lifting, moving, or carrying objects of tremendous size or weight, but also the handling or brushing aside his fellow men as if he were a character of Jacob's Fairy Tales. Two men were fighting one day when Gamroth came upon them. He pushed one of them "lightly," when the poor devil fell, insensible, to the ground. "Jo ino qo loko puknol a on pod na ziemie," he explained, confused. (I only gave him a light poke, and he fell to the ground.) His own strength did not impress him; sometimes it confused him. People say that he was careful about "poking" men after that. 162 ...