Putting polka music into space
“Iplay a squeeze box and grew up with Polka music, mainly Czech and German style”, says Gene Hackemack of Mcqueeney.
For a few years he had a restaurant in New Ulm and entertained customers by strolling around with his accordion.
He also played with groups all over central and south Texas.
“I love Polka music. It makes you happy. My mother listened to it all the time and finally she bought me an accordion and told me I had to learn to play it.”
As soon as he graduated from Burton High School near Brenham he joined the Marines.
“Boot Camp was a breeze compared to working on the farm.”
He became a medical corpsman and served 13 months in Viet
Nam. Later he was stationed in Okinawa. After his discharge in 1967 he went to work for NASA.
“I was there during the Apollo days when they made the first lunar landing. I did physicals on just about every astronaut that came through there. One of the astronauts, Don Thomas from Cleveland, Ohio and I got to talking about Polka music. He just came out and said, ‘hey why don’t you wake me up with some Polka when I’m in space?’ I said sure. You got it. Do you have any Polka in mind? He said, ‘yeah. How ‘bout the Beer Barrel Polka?’”
Gene and another musician recorded Beer Barrel Polka on a cassette and gave it to Mission Control. This was on July 18th, 1995. The mission was SPS 70. Astronaut Thomas wrote a book Orbit of Discovery about is experience on the space shuttle Discovery.
He has been on four flights, spent 44 days in space and orbited earth 700 times.
“There were approximately six astronauts aboard for that mission. Each one could request his own wake up song. We woke up Don Thomas with the Beer Barrel Polka. NASA, through Don, gave us each a nice plaque thanking us for The First Polka In Space Wakeup Music, which is kind of a neat souvenir to have and they included some patches that were actually flown on the mission. Of course I have those hanging on a wall in my house.”
The song, Beer Barrel Polka, was composed in 1920.
The son of the composer lives in Prague, Czech Republic.
Because of the publicity generated about putting the Beer Barrel Polka into space, he heard about it and invited Gene to Prague. Gene and his wife went and were royally entertained.
“It was quite a treat. He’s a big businessman in Prague and has a restaurant among other things. We were introduced to a bunch of dignitaries and went to a music concert. A lot of photographers were around us all the time and our picture is in his restaurant in Prague.”