AUBURN -- No less proud, it is like a tree which has found the years emptying the nests that once filled its branches.

Where once 4,000 members would celebrate the annual Polish Christmas Eve and New Year's dinner and participate in the traditional oplatec, barely 100 attended the event held Sunday at the Polish Falcons.

The polka music was no less happy. However, as the buffet was carried away, with the white tablecloth rolled up behind it and the tables folded to make way for dancing, rarely were there more than two couples on the floor at the same time.

Times change, explained the president of Falcon Nest No. 74 and his wife.

And, just as many other ethnic clubs that thrived with immigrant members and their children nearly 100 years ago, it is the young that have steadily dispersed, spreading their wings and leaving their communities and traditions, behind.

"Normally, we would have a Polish band here, but now you have a deejay. He is a Polish music deejay, but without the membership, we just don't have the money for a band anymore," said Jerry Sroka, who was elected president in 2006.

As 'Roll Out The Barrel' was introduced, Sroka remembered, with a grin, his failure to pass on his love of Polish music to his daughter, many years ago.

"She was five or six years old. We got in such a fight, she wouldn't even go in the car with me, because I played the music," he said, chuckling.

Following oplatec -- or the breaking of bread, during which those in attendance take a piece, then hand to the next, along with the wish for health and happiness in the new year -- kapusta was served. The dish, made with cooked cabbage, sauerkraut, split peas, and bacon, boasted a tart taste, smoothed by the slightly smoky flavor of the peas -- which prompted many refills of a spoon or fork.

Such Polish entrees, including babka bread, which contains raisins and is honey-glazed and pirogues, help define their ancestry, explained Nancy Sroka. But with each successive generation, portends the possibility of the recipes being lost.

"I never was able to get a recipe from my grandmother and I regret that. I'm very sad about it," she said. "My grandmother came from Poland. She was a woman who did not assimilate easily into the melting pot of ideas, of America. My grandfather did assimilate."

And helped others do the same. As the owner of a bar on State Street, near the train depot, he would meet immigrants disembarking from the train, and settle them into the community, Nancy said. That Polish community was concentrated in the section of Auburn, which included Pulaski Street, just out the doors of the Polish Falcons, Grant, Perrine, Union, and Washington streets.

Read the full report in Monday's edition of The Citizen.