For “SonBern,” Polka is Life

By Bill Dungjen
Sun contributor
Even before formally meeting Sonny and Bernie Czerniak, I couldn’t imagine a couple more steeped in the polka. At the annual Cedar Polka Festival (held this year over Fourth of July weekend) it’s impossible not to notice the Czerniaks. At first they appear as a red and white blur on the dance floor, but after the eyes adjust to the light under the big tents, a pattern emerges from that flash of color. Ask any local who that couple is, the ones who seem to never stop for breath, but keep on whirling around the floor, song after song after song, and they’ll tell you, “Oh, that’s Sonny and Bernie Czerniak.”
Photo by Judith Novak

I’ve watched in amazement for years as they dance every song, every night, never missing a step or a beat. It’s not simply the energy or the precision of their polkas, it’s not even the remarkable variety of steps that they manage to integrate into three beats a measure, but the grace and sense of absolute comfort and joyfulness that they exude as they do it. It’s happiness that you sense from them as they rocket around the floor, and why not? They’re having fun. It’s fun to watch them. It’s fun to be blown by on the dance floor by a couple that, while putting you and your partner to shame, manages to function as a well-oiled unit at blinding speed and incredible centrifugal pressure.
Of course, it’s easy to have fun while you polka. You don’t need to have a multitude of steps or handmade coordinating outfits. It’s not necessary to know, and be able to name the difference between the several styles of polka music that most polka bands play. It’s not necessary, but then again, not every couple is as deeply rooted in polka as the Czerniaks.
Sonny and Bernie met at a polish wedding in Leelanau County in the early 1970s that offered a live polka band at the reception. Watching them today, it is easy to imagine the chain of events that led them to this year’s 27th annual Cedar Polka Festival. An introduction, a dance, and as naturally as night follows day, a life spent in each others’ arms to the three-quarter beat of a polka band, any polka band, anywhere. These are Polka People, as Sonny describes the devotees of the polka scene. Not limited to a yearly weekend in Cedar, but spread nationwide, as evidenced by the copy of the Polka Times (America’s Polka Newspaper) on the Czerniak’s kitchen counter.
SonBern, as they were tagged by a polka band of their acquaintance, have traveled all over the country to dance the polka, for fun and in competitions. They are past polka champions in the Frankenmuth competition (Masters division, of course); they have been celebrated by a front page photo-spread in the Green Bay Gazette for their participation in the Polaski Days festival in Wisconsin; they have been to Florida to polka, and have run into admirers who recognized their delightful style from events across the country. If you are remembered from state to state by those who travel from polka event to polka event, you are doing something right. In Wisconsin, after missing, “maybe four songs” out of a day-long polka event, a spectator followed them to the parking lot saying, “At first I thought you were just show-offs, but after 12 hours, you either love it, or you’re just nuts!”
The day in late June when we talked, I was driving past their house outside of Maple City, admiring the lawn mowed precisely enough to grace any PGA golf event, and saw Sonny standing in the driveway. I pulled in and introduced myself, asking if I could take a little of their time. He simply invited me in and introduced me to Bernie and their daughter, Kristin. It was during the story of Kristin’s birth that I realized I was dealing with a family that takes the polka seriously. After boasting of Kristin’s first place finish in the 2007 Frankenmuth Open Division polka competition, SonBern mentioned that her 20th birthday will be this Fourth of July.
Kristin was born after four days of vigorous dancing at the 1988 Cedar Polka Festival. They had danced all weekend long despite Bernie’s advanced pregnancy and had just arrived at her sister’s Cedar home when Bernie’s water broke. By this, their fifth child, Sonny had enough experience to know that they had very little time to reach the former Osteopathic hospital on the opposite side of Traverse City, which was jammed with people. Timed perfectly with the finale of the Blue Angels’ airshow, Sonny and Bernie made a well above speed limit dash for it, arriving just in time for Kristin to make her entrance into the world in the emergency room.
The entire family is deeply rooted in the Polka Festival. Bernie’s late father, Larry Novak, was involved in the beginnings of the festival, when the event was held in the streets of Cedar, polka bands played the parade in the back of dump trucks, a solid mass of people overran the village and were, as Bernie describes it, “uncontrollable.” Novak involved his children in the festival and Sonny and Bernie have carried on that tradition.
Their house, on the day that I visited, was overtaken with red and white rosettes to decorate the tent, buntings for the bandstands draped over the banisters, and boxes of décor to make the event more than just a band in a tent. In fact, Bernie handles the décor for the Polka Mass each year, she hand carved a Polish eagle from foam board for the twenty-fifth anniversary festival and has reworked it for this years event, she creates the color coordinated outfits that they wear for dancing, and has provided handmade centerpieces for the festival tables such as the “Miss Cedar” Barbie doll with an intricate red and white ball gown, sash and jeweled crown.
“You name it, she can probably make it,” says Kristin of her mother’s prodigious skill. In an old newspaper clipping displayed in their home, a young SonBern are pictured at their wedding, and the caption reads, “Service brings couple together.” It wasn’t until I left the house that I realized that the service being discussed was the wedding ceremony and not the larger concept of community service that they embody.
The walls of their immaculate Maple City home are filled with polka festival memorabilia including a giant banner picturing the Budweiser Clydesdale team and beer wagon with the legend, “Sonny and Bernie danced the weekend away,” a gift from the local Budweiser distributor. Yet to be framed is a similar banner picturing Bernie’s father atop the legendary beer wagon as the Grand Marshal for the 1999 Polka Festival parade.
Some folks come to the Cedar Polka Festival just to watch SonBern in action and on many occasions they will have cheering sections seated around the dance floor that wait for them to make their way around again and again. It’s not unusual for them to notice that they are being followed around the floor by curious couples who are studying the technique and they will never turn away a request for tips on a better polka, usually giving them by taking a spin with their erstwhile students who, if they get it or not, all “have a blast.”
Sonny described his daughter’s championship partner in Frankenmuth as having “spaghetti-legs,” this smacks of praise from Caesar as it is an apt description of his own technique. While they attest that they’ve slowed down since the days when they used to polka the entire length of the Cherry Festival Parade route with the Pleva’s Meats float, they still illustrate their experience at the Polka Festival by saying, “We probably have the most fun.”