My family is mostly Irish, though you can't tell by my name. My brother and I don't look very Irish, but my father's family certainly does. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where there is a very large Polish population. So we always fit in pretty well with the short, dark-haired Poles.
Now I live in Cincinnati, which has a huge German-ancestry population. Everyone is tall and blonde, and here I am -- little and dark-haired. My husband's family is all tall and blonde. When we visit Pittsburgh, my husband always says he feels a head taller than everyone else, though here in Cincinnati he feels just average. My parents have moved, and when we attend the church closest to their house, it's usually full of another short, dark-haired group -- Italians. My husband calls it the Mafia Church, which may actually be true. There is quite a bit of Mafia in Pittsburgh. There was a little Italian restaurant a few miles from the house I grew up in that was reputed to be popular with the Mafia, and one of my high school friends used to bartend at Mafia weddings (other weddings too, of course). One of my former bosses here in Cincinnati used to think I made the Mafia stuff up. She didn't believe there really WAS a Mafia anymore! Costume content: None, really. Although I hear that because of the Polish population now being more prosperous, ridiculously expensive First Communion dresses are now popular. A store near my parents' house, the kind that sells $300 Christmas dresses for 8-year-old girls, now stocks similar First Communion dresses. I made my daughter's dress, but the girls in her First Communion class generally had the $30-$60 department store variety. Gail Finke _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
