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Cashing In
Out With The Old and in With the Euro
[1/14/2002] |
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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CZAREK WIKLIK
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WESTERN CITY:
A taste of the States in south-west Poland |
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| This Land Is Your Land |
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The Wild West is the new economic frontier |
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By JAN STOJASPAL | Western City |
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Posted Sunday, May 25, 2003; 17.12BST
It must be hell to be the sheriff of Western City, a rowdy gold-rush town somewhere along the Arizona-New Mexico border. Gunshots are constant. The local bank gets robbed twice a day. Heavy use has polished the gallows to a deep shine. But Sheriff Peace doesn't complain. The trigger-happy gold prospectors turn out to be school children firing at targets from BB guns at eight cents a shot, the bank robbers are his old friends, and the executions are staged. A popular Wild West theme park in southwestern Poland, Western City is a childhood dream come true for Jerzy Pokój, a.k.a. Sheriff Peace, and evidence of Poland's enduring love affair with the United States.
The infatuation runs deep. Police wear baseball caps as part of their uniform. The NHL and NBA receive prominent coverage on Polish TV. The American flag is used to sell everything from boxer shorts to potato chips. And homegrown rap music has become the chief voice of Poland's young unemployed and disadvantaged, in a way unparalleled elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Last October, a survey conducted by the Warsaw-based Public Opinion Research Center found that Americans are the best-liked foreigners in Poland, ahead of the Italians, French and English. "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world," says Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's biggest daily. "It is more pro-American than America."
The relationship has long been a close one. Millions of Poles emigrated to the U.S. early in the last century to flee poverty and political persecution. And some 50 years of cold war struggle are credited with making possible Poland's liberation. In recent years, the U.S. administration has been Poland's loudest cheerleader. "They pump us up," says Ewa Krysakowska-Budny, an English teacher from Krakow. "We don't feel inferior around them."
At Western City, Pokój, a squat, potbellied man of 48 who struts around in a cowboy hat and boots with spurs, says a close relationship with the United States is a must, both because Poland owes the U.S. its freedom from communism and as a guarantee of future prosperity. "Had it not been for President Reagan and Pope John Paul II in Rome, we would still be speaking Russian," he says. "The friendship must continue. The success of Poland depends on it."
A former mountain guide and rescuer, Pokój doesn't speak English, nor has he ever been to the U.S. But he has seen enough westerns and read enough books on the Wild West (his private library contains some 600 titles) to be considered something of an authority. Western City opened on July 4, 1998, and today attracts up to 1,000 visitors a day. On a recent afternoon, the place was jammed with some 150 school children, many of whom had traveled from as far as Warsaw, a six-hour bus ride. They were chasing each other, plastic tomahawks in hand, ordering French fries with ketchup, having one-dollar bills printed with their faces on them, and plunking down change to ride a mechanical bull. The children were having a great time, but Marek Langner, a 30-year-old sports teacher who came with a group of 45 Warsaw fifth graders, was bored. "The Americans have no culture," he scoffed. However, in other respects, he agreed with Pokój. "Friendship with America is more important than European Union membership," he said. In Western City, the bond between Poland and the United States is one thing that's not make-believe.
With Reporting by Andrew Purvis/Warsaw
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