Men in black
As the colder weather starts to bite, discreet groups of men clad in black garb and traveling in pairs have suddenly appeared on the streets of Warsaw. At a glance, they look like sinister security guards. One usually carries a rope with a black ball looped around his shoulder and each wears a square cap, padded coat with silver buttons, broad belt with a silver buckle and carries a black leather bag. But these men in black are not out to collar criminals they're chimney sweeps touting for business.
For most of us, sweeps generally belong to the realm of film and fiction. They appear either as artfully besooted men dancing over rooftops and singing about having "a lovely 'oliday wiff Mary" in improbable cockney accents, or as pale consumptive children forced down narrow shafts by unkempt, gin-soaked brutes. All very Disneyesque or Dickensian and worlds removed from the reality of a profession that is still practiced in much of Poland.
Before 1989, all sweeps belonged to a cooperative that set the rules and regulations and assigned work. Although government controlled, it was modeled on an ancient guild system. An apprentice attached himself to a master for three years, accompanying him on his rounds and learning the craft. After graduating as a journeyman, the sweep could go out on jobs with a partner and in another three years could sit for the master's examination.
The guild method of training is still followed today, although the chimney sweep association, Korporacja Kominiarzy Polskich, is now its own governing body and many sweeps start their own companies independent of the association once they reach master status.
But the most fundamental shift in the nature of the chimney sweep's job has resulted from the rise of new heating and building technologies. In the old days when everyone heated with brown coal, work was plentiful, harder and, above all, dirtier.
Ireneusz Andrzejczyk, one of eight sweeps working for Andrzej Kalenski, who has his own company, has only been a sweep for seven years but has heard stories of how it was in the past. He said changes in construction methods have meant a radical change in work habits.
These days, more buildings are heated by gas and more people use gas for cooking. There is no need to clean soot from chimneys, and sweeps are more concerned with inspecting and clearing dust and debris from ventilation shafts. Hence the ball and rope, which the sweep drops down the shaft. If the ball hits an obstruction, the sweep and his partner go to work on unblocking it. The weight of the ball is often enough to do the trick, but occasionally the old-style brooms come into play.
Although he didn't start working as a sweep until he was 24, Kalenski feels his profession is a young man's one. He pointed to the building he was working on, an older apartment block on ulica Solec. Reaching the chimney meant carrying a ladder up six flights of rickety wooden stairs, then crawling through a two-foot square opening onto a steeply sloping roof. Once there his only aid was a small platform, or "sweep's bench," attached to the chimney pot. At this location the bench was useful, but Kalenski said such benches are often rotten and more dangerous than the roof tiles.
As he worked, his mobile phone rang. Six stories up and using the time honored tools of his profession, he answered the call and booked an appointment for later in the week another example of modern technology changing the sweep's world.
But there seems to be one thing about chimney sweeps that will never change the folkloric connection with luck. Most people still touch a button when they pass by a sweep. Why? No one seems to know. When asked about the various traditions concerning sweeps and good luck, Kalenski became tight-lipped perhaps for sweeps it is bad luck to speak of good luck.
