Mr. Hawxhurst

George Hawxhurst was the father of Mickey Hawxhurst, a playmate of mine and next door neighbor. George was a handsome man with a vague resemblance to Alan Ladd though brown haired. He was not particularly tall, and had tattoos covering both arms that were fully revealed in the summer in the days when sleeveless undershirts were not uncommon. On an especially sweltering day I first espied the only other example of body art that he apparently sported. It was a small dark purplish heart over his own with an arrow piercing, of course, the former. Mr. Hawxhurst would quietly greet you, in any season, if he saw you playing outside when he was coming home from work via the subway enroute to walking up the steps of his stoop. The Hawxhursts did not own a car for what seemed like the longest time in the perception of a grade schooler like myself. When I was perhaps four years old he did briefly own a shabby Oldsmobile, a kind of chocolaty brown colored one with that roundish body typical of most post war cars before the explosion of the eye candy of aerodynamically improved shapes and forms, sexy and lower to the ground (with joyous, primary colors as well as pastels of two and even three tones) that designers brought forth in profusion and great variety, as the advent of the second half of the 1950s marked the realization, expressed through such exuberant creativity, that peace and prosperity were at last a reality.

Mr. & Mrs. Hawxhurst invited my brother and I to join them along with Mickey and his brother for a ride once in that car. Our Mom gave permission and it was quite the adventure to amble into a strange vehicle and to hold onto leather straps covered in soft gray felt-like material dangling just below the headliner and adjacent to the windlace, while standing on the rear seat as we all headed toward a building several blocks away. Mr. Hawxhurst explained that we would be entering a "bar." In a twinkling we did, and the darkness and coolness of the place was very exciting as it contrasted with the summery brightness of the outside daylight. It must have been a late morning weekday and the tavern owners were likely friends of the Hawxhursts and may have ushered us in before the place's opening time. I was so young that I had no frame of reference for when a bar opened or closed or for what a gin mill crowded with customers was like or how exceptional it may have been: coming to this pub at this time. I only knew that I was in a strange and stimulating place where certain new odors and a very grownup atmosphere seemed to envelop me. There was no fear, but rather the sense that we had been permitted to roam in this new playpen and that there were no severe restrictions or warnings about our behavior or expectations about the same. I guess George and Marlene (his wife) found this place a comfort and a haven and they communicated these feelings to us little ones and in turn, we were equally at ease. I was given, along with the other three boys, a drink from the very big man behind the bar. They were each sparkling little tumblers, not much bigger than a shot glass and were filled with wonderfully fizzy and cold ginger ale. Mickey was the first to notice the raised platform and alcove partially enshrouded by dark curtains in a far corner of the room with objects and other mysterious and beckoning forms within it. We asked, almost in unison, if we could go there and the relaxed adults assented, again communicating a certain confidence in this quiet little universe of shadows, cigarette smoke, beer and perfume.

Mickey's kid brother Jamie discovered the set of drums and my brother and I noticed that the huge "desk" close by was a piano, its keys inaccessible, though we were, again, too tender in years to feel deprived of the opportunity of experimenting with its powers. We did know that we were free to use our imaginations that needed no coaxing at this fertile juncture in our development as our energetic little brains, bodies and, of course, spirits soared with the presence of these "toys" before us. We were more than delighted to mime the act of playing a peppy tune as we tickled phantom ivories while touching the keyboard's heavy cover of dark wood. Now Mickey laid eyes upon the tall stick of silvery metal that stood upright in the middle of this alcove with a black cord attached to it and more shiny metal at the top of it looking like a sort of big lollipop. With mercurial invention he clambered onto a wooden chair with a round thin seat, curved back without spindles but a quasi-concentric inner configuration of more curved wood and legs also slightly curved. This enabled him to bring his mouth level with the "lollipop" and to "green light" aspirations he had been nurturing all week: a chance to belt out "Shake, Rattle and Roll!" It was not his volume, but his less than perfect pitch that turned the adults' heads. They admonished us for the first time, but not with the slightest trace of a scolding spirit in their words. "Mickey, do you know how to hum that song like Mommy does when she's cleaning the house?" Mickey warmed instantaneously to the suggestion and just a bit belatedly Jamie also caught the drift of his mother's little talk and calculated about a new game of strumming his fingers on two chairs identical to the one his brother was standing on, but not before he had indulged the impulse to strike twice with one of the nearby drumsticks onto the taut skin stretched across one of the drums. My brother, the oldest of the four of us, needed no modification of his fun. He had terminated our piano duet a few moments earlier as he happily "conducted" our very merry junior band by sawing the air with regal solemnity. It was the first and only time I rode in that car and it was the last time I was in that building until nearly forty years later when it had become a somewhat snooty restaurant (by the standards of our modest neighborhood) serving northern Italian cuisine (after having undergone several reincarnations as a local watering hole). END OF PART 1