Retired shipping employee/Passion: Mushrooms
In Berwyn this year`s Houby Hunt–houby is Bohemian for ”mushroom”–was a bit of a bust. ”The weather forecasters didn`t cooperate,” says 84-year-old Joe Beranek, the town`s official mushroom maven. ”Houby like to get their feet wet. This year the soil was too dry.” Beranek emigrated to the United States 80 years ago from what was then Bohemia and now is part of
Czechoslovakia. He comes from a long line of mushroom connoisseurs, yet he didn`t become one until he retired, after 51 years, from the Railway Express Agency.
Now, each October, he haunts the forest preserves in search of the elusive fungi. ”The sport requires a minimum of equipment–just a knife and a shopping bag. Houby hunters are loners, too. They are a lot like fishermen;
they prefer to go by themselves because they`ve got their favorite spots. It`s exhilarating to find an edible mushroom. There are 100,000, maybe 150,000 kinds of mushrooms. Even an expert can`t know them all. I stick with four or five–the cauliflower mushroom, the meadow mushroom, boletus, and the puffball. I write songs about houby. I have one I wrote to the tune of the Bohemian National Anthem and another to `Santa Lucia.` ”
