Different Slants

Part 4 

After Buddy was released from ‘The Slammer’, as my Dad always phrased it, his relationship with my Dad resumed like nothing had ever interrupted it, like World War II, for example. 

Buddy the Hun was unavailable to serve his country in that war because he was already serving his sentence in that same government’s Federal Penitentiary.   

When they had their first post-prison reunion in 1951, Buddy was trying to decide how to make a living.  My Dad suggested Buddy try becoming a jeweler like he himself had done, after the war.  My Dad laid it out for him: No heavy lifting, the merchandise would never break down, like say, a washing machine, for instance, and (not a small part of my Dad’s reasoning in this situation of career repair) it was distinctly possible to run a store selling jewelry as a cash business. 

Buddy the Hun thought it over, especially the ‘cash business’ aspect of it.  Because to Buddy’s way of thinking, he wanted nothing further to do with the Federal Government of the United States—including paying any taxes.  He figured he’d already paid them enough in years of his life. 

 Buddy knew he had lines-of-credit waiting for him, and he was also fairly certain he could obtain an ample supply of easy-to-move merchandise like diamonds and watches.  What he didn’t know, like how to convincingly portray himself as an experienced jeweler, he would learn.  And his old pal Izzy would be there to help him, as long as it took. 

So, with old chits to collect for time served, Buddy the Hun became Buddy the Jeweler, by appointment only. 

Time passed. 

Decades. 

Now we’re back in December 1977. 

A week before I made the decision to propose marriage to Joyce, I called my Dad—the former jeweler—and asked him where I should go to buy her a ring, since I knew nothing about jewelry, carats or what something like that should cost.  Being a jeweler wasn’t genetic. 

My Dad told me he knew a guy “who would take good care of me”, and to let him make a phone call to arrange a meeting, first.  I said ok. 

A couple of days later, on December 27^th, my Dad called me and told me to meet him Downtown at 5 North Wabash, under the elevated tracks, or in other words…at the location of his former store from long ago.  He must have thought I had no recollection of his place, but I did. 

He told me he had an old friend there, a guy named Buddy the Hun, who would sell me a ring on December 31^st, the same day I planned to propose. 

I first thought, 

“Buddy the Hun?  Is he serious?” 

(Read on …)

Part 3 

In the furniture store’s office, there was a secretary who answered the phones and did all the filing as the various orders came through from all the salesmen who worked there.  She was a young black woman who set up all the appointments, called “leads” (and pronounced like “leeds”) for my father and the other salesmen to go out and try to make sales.  She was a pretty woman—I met her several times when I was a child—with a big smile and a friendly, cooperative attitude.  She was very popular with all the salesmen.

Her name was Lorene. 

One morning, in 1958, when my father came in as usual to pick up another stack of leads waiting for him in his box on the wall so he could contact potential customers and make arrangements to see them, he was surprised to see Lorene sitting at her desk, quietly crying.  He had never seen this happen before. 

After a moment, not sure if he should intrude in her privacy, he asked Lorene what was the matter?  Was she sick? Did one of her relatives die?  Could he help her somehow?  My father was very chivalrous and protective of women, and seeing her sitting there crying in that office was disturbing to him.  He told me all about this incident years later, just like he told me one hundred other stories about his life. 

Lorene blew her nose, wiped her eyes and told my father that she’d broken up with her boyfriend because he was always drunk and he kept hitting her.  Now he was stalking her and refused to leave her alone no matter how much she pleaded with him.  She was terrified and felt she was at his mercy. 

My father became angry upon hearing her words.  A completely different situation than he was expecting from her.  Flowers wouldn’t do it, this time.  He had three sisters including his baby sister Estelle, then 34 and now 86.  In my father’s immigrant world no one touched the women.  A rule had been broken. 

My father asked Lorene for her former boyfriend’s phone number.  She hesitated, unsure what this friendly Jewish man had in mind.  But then she wrote the boyfriend’s number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him.  My father assured Lorene he would solve her problem.  That was his whole persona.  He would either become the Lone Ranger himself, or knew where to find someone else who would assume the role.

A few days later, my father came into the furniture store to pick up his leads from Lorene, and she quietly asked him to step inside of her little office.  He went in there, waited and then she whispered to him, 

“What did you say to him?  My boyfriend called me up last night screaming about cement shoes or something like that and then told me he was through with me, that we were over.  He said he’d never, ever call me or follow me again.  What did you do?”    

(Read on …)

Older Sister                                                                                                                                                                                                    Wherever you are                                                                                                                                                                                                       I hope it’s all                                                                                                                                                                                                                Periwinkle                                                                                                                                                                                                               Fuchsia                                                                                                                                                                                                                       and                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Mauve

The daughter                                                                                                                                                                                                               of an                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Interior Decorator                                                                                                                                                                                              Ought to                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Dwell in Eternity                                                                                                                                                                                                       In a                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Universe                                                                                                                                                                                                                        of                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Subtle colors

You                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Were the Perfect one                                                                                                                                                                                          

You                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Did everything                                                                                                                                                                                                  Right: 

Dressed right

Acted right

Great grades

Perfect parties

Perfect in Hebrew School

Perfect house

So polite

Not like your                                                                                                                                                                                                        Little brother                                                                                                                                                                                                           The                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Hell Raiser

But secretly                                                                                                                                                                                                      Bonnie,                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Maybe                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I’m the side of you                                                                                                                                                                                                     No one                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Ever saw

Not so perfect                                                                                                                                                                                                          But                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Far more                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Free

To me                                                                                                                                                                                                                           For the longest time                                                                                                                                                                                               You                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Were the standard                                                                                                                                                                                                    Of                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Excellence

What                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   I                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Wished                                                                                                                                                                                                                             I                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Could be

Perfect

(Read on …)

First Bedtime Story for MJ, by her or his (currently deceased) Great-Grandfather Israel, to the (as yet) unborn great-grandchild, as told to, once upon a time, the present grandfather-to-be.

Dear MJ,

On the first day of Spring, in 1912, I was in the same situation as you are right now in May 2010.  Meaning, I was comfortably parked in my mom’s tummy at the end of my first three months. 

I don’t remember that time, and you won’t either, but since I’m no longer walking the Earth, and you aren’t born yet, we are also both in the same sort of situation of not being able to communicate directly with each other.  No matter.

I have subconsciously willed my son, your grandfather, Grampa Bob, to write this story for you, because one day he will tell it to you, and after that you will read it for yourself.  If stories aren’t written down especially family history stories, they just float away into the clouds.  I can’t take a chance with this one, since it is actually centered on you, MJ.    It has love, war, danger, “faraway places with strange sounding names”, some twists and turns and a pretty good ending, too, because I don’t want to let my great-grandchild down.

I told my son many stories when he was a small boy, because I am a story teller, as was my father Jacob, before me.  I lived long enough to see your Grampa Bob become a pretty good story teller himself.  Must be in the blood.  It could be that you will be one, too, one day.  Well, here’s a tip about that, MJ:

People love a good story.  Not too long, with a good beginning, a solid middle, and an ending worth waiting for.  This story has all that, and you can start practicing  writing your own stories, after reading this one about your ancestors, when you begin to feel the need to write them down.  And you will.  Just wait.  Because I will be waiting for you to get there, MJ, and I have all the time in the world. 

Here we go:

I was born on the first day of Autumn in 1912, on the West Side of Chicago.  My mom and dad, Rose and Jacob, were immigrants, just like your mom Nicole’s parents are.  Everyone in my part of Chicago was from some other country.  This was a time when there were still horses pulling wagons all over Chicago, with people selling things out of the back of them.  There were places for those horses to drink some cool water on hot days all over the city, too.

Your Great-Great Grampa Jacob was a carpenter from Belarussia, from a town called Megilev, and he had a tough time learning English, like a lot of immigrants did, and probably still do.  He came to America in 1901.  After meeting and marrying his wife, Rose, he came to Chicago in 1915.  He’d go down to a place where people were hiring carpenters and hold up a hammer and saw, so the people hiring could see what kind of work he could do.  He was a very skilled carpenter, born in 1882.  His wife Rose, born in 1885, stayed home taking care of me, my brother Milty and my sisters Molly, Estelle and Sylvia, all your great-great aunts and uncle.  Rose was from Lithuania and she was an orphan.  I was born in Newport, Kentucky, a long, long way from Lithuania and Belarussia!

A couple of years after I was born, there was a very big war in Europe, fought all over Europe by giant armies, first called The Great War, and then, unfortunately, World War One.  People who make wars happen like to give them names and numbers, so the people who come along later don’t mix them up and get confused. 

(Read on …)

As it happens, my longtime wife, Joyce, has seemingly perfect memory and total recall of the names of everything in the Universe, especially movies and actors.  Out marriage, therefore, was evidently divinely preordained.  With her mental plus and my mental minus, I guess there is some mercy for me out there, after all. 

Because when I can write a story like this one, incredibly detailed and with perfect recollection, but still, frankly, can’t remember the name of that nurse or scores of other similar situations, I just call Joyce and she provides the name I need to me, instantly. 

It is easy for me to say, as husbands do, that I love her.  But much more than that, she has made it possible for me to exist with a disability that would otherwise torture me with a selectively frozen mind.  So, I pray God gives me a long life, but selfishly, to be honest I admit, I sure hope he gives Joyce a longer one. 

She has become more than metaphorically my “other half.”  She’s become the keeper of so many of my own memories; we are sometimes like one mind in two bodies.  She is essential to me, and so appreciated.  Why, in the very writing of this story, some viruses—probably Republican—attacked my computer, paralyzing it.  But Joyce, mighty Joyce, vanquished all of them and allowed me to continue writing. 

“Love” doesn’t really cover how I feel about her. 

(Read on …)

You enter a hospital with a name, your characteristic clothes, a personality and a problem. 

Within 48 hours you have been reduced to a chart, a bed and a room number.  The person you came in as has disappeared.  Soon enough you are treated accordingly, as part of the room’s furniture. 

My life is like that famed existential movie, Groundhog’s Day, about a clueless insensitive man stuck in a repeating purgatory until he fundamentally realized how much his callous attitude damaged other people.  Not many movie goers who love this movie understand that he has been trapped in this repeating day for thousands of days.  That is part of what makes that movie profound for me.  He’s in a Hell of his own making.

 Except, people, my life is such that I keep waking up, cut up, in yet another identical hospital bed, somewhere…over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over… 

Except it’s not fucking fiction! 

To defend myself from this reoccurring nightmare, every single time I’m forced to undergo yet another something, I silently re-join the Hospital Resistance, the Bandaged Underground swearing to not take any bullshit behavior lying down, even if I am actually…lying down.  

Casualties?  Always 100%. 

Treat me like an unwanted interloper in your day, or with the standard (and universal) hospital attitude of indifference, like I’m a wrinkle on a bed instead of a real person—and you’ll see the quiet person in Room 405, Bed One swiftly transform into one angry son-of-a-bitch, determined to hold onto his humanity. 

A real person—not a number—in pain. 

So, though this last day I just recounted was not a day I’d chosen to remember, but I did anyway. 

So, listen to me: 

When you go to a hospital and are treated shabbily, don’t take it, man.  Rise up! Absolutely demand respect. It works. Under all your bandages, you are still you.  Plus, you’re paying all of those uniformed pod-people ignoring you a damn fortune.  And when you do that, think of me. 

I’m Spartacus!!! 

(Read on …)