My family and I have been living in our house for three score and three months. Even a nostalgia fanatic and "dates-nut" like myself was a bit shocked reflecting upon this length of time when I filled out a finance application form today, something I had never done before. A little box requests an indication of how many years one has lived at one's current address (and months too: implying to me that residencies of just a few years may be quite more common situations among applicants than mine). It felt odd to write '6' and then '0' alongside "years." The '3' alongside "months" seemed a tad weird too: reminiscent of an old acquaintance who used to brag about his plump paycheck quite unashamedly and reported the "take home" amount, including the cents, to anyone who'd listen. I don't suppose that living in one place through twelve presidencies and several sea changes culturally and in so many other ways necessarily qualifies one as an expert about America then and now (any more or less than a sixty-something year old who has moved numerous times might have a legitimate perspective on matters), but it certainly entitles one to an observation or two about the past and the present, at least within the narrow bailiwicks of neighborhood, street and home with hopefully, minimally gaseous pronouncements and opinions. There's so much information and material to remark upon after six decades worth of living and I certainly won't and can't tackle such a mountain of history. I would however, like to rivet attention on 1951, the year we moved to our present home and to just try to remind the reader (and myself) of what things were like back then. My personal remembrances are few: as that year closed when I was but nineteen months old. But enough primary sources remain, together with my more numerous memories of the remainder of the 1950s and the wealth of recorded information through film, television, radio and literature, to give us a good sense of what life was like nationally, personally and of course, how things have changed for both.
What little I do remember of the second calendar year of my life is perhaps aided by several black and white snapshots taken by my Mom with our family's old Zeiss Ikon camera with the black leather bellows. There are a couple of shots of my brother and I playing in our new kitchenette alongside a tricycle (permitted indoors with the start of winter and before my grandfather built a large wooden storage shed in our backyard in 1954) and of a calendar on the curtained and windowed back door (leading to our patio and garden) near the wall where a calendar (2012) is still hanging today. The photos clearly show the month and year: December, 1951 and the room's objects are all very familiar, but appear newer, shinier and the space is devoid of the clutter slowly developed through all those then future decades. Less painted surfaces and more polished woodwork describe much of the scene. Flowery, cheerful wallpaper shouts "mid-century, peace, prosperity, domestic bliss!" Our black and gray checkerboard asphalt floor, its unforgivingly hard surface, "living" again in these photos, is recalled for the many glass jelly jars (used as drinking glasses after their sweet contents had been eagerly devoured along with peanut butter and Silvercup white bread by us wee tykes) that it instantly doomed when a little hand or elbow's careless owner suddenly focused on an imaginary Indian or bogeyman he decided needed dispatching with his silver toy six-shooter. T.V. was still in its infancy, or at least still a pre-schooler (as was I). I do remember changing the channel on our ponderous dark brown and mustard colored, black and white R.C.A. set. I accomplished this task with great difficulty, the "clicking" mechanism requiring a certain degree of strength in one's fingers, a power that I was just developing in this year of Lucille Ball's premiere season of "I Love Lucy" and ubiquitous "Hopalong Cassidy" reruns.
But what of the world beyond our little friendly confines? What were folks thinking, what were they dreaming, hoping, fearing, loving, loathing, planning to embrace and deciding to shun? How fundamentally different were we Americans as a people than we are in the second decade of the 21st century? Surely, human nature does not change after a mere 22,000 days. Yet mores, habits, ways of doing things, mindsets and the zeitgeist of 1951 would perhaps be deemed strange, if not unrecognizable entities to very many of us alive today, particularly if born after, let's venture to say: 1970. Some obvious "biggies": did most or even some young couples in 1951, from all walks of life and economic backgrounds, in exclusive relationships, mutually describe their mates as P.O.O.S.S.L.Q.s? That is, did any significant number of young sweethearts in the middle of the 20th century in North America or most of Europe find themselves living together "without benefit of clergy?" Safe to say "NO!", emphatically not. And no cutesy acronym like the one above ("person of opposite sex sharing living quarters") was even invented yet, nor would have such a state of affairs (pun intended) elicited a wink (which, ironically, it rarely does now) or have not been countenanced without at least some contempt for the promiscuous pair. These are just the facts, as laughable as they may strike someone sexually active and not married to his or her significant other in 2012. Not unrelated, the subject of pornography and its seepage into mainstream culture (much like the ocean into the bowels of the R.M.S. Titanic) in the last forty plus years has expanded into our consciousness and daily lives to a degree that would have truly frightened most citizens of the western world in 1951. Smut was just that, the monosyllabic word at mid-century, somehow matching the simple ugliness of that world, that was marginalized back then and that sought the dark in which to operate, much like cockroaches do. "Pornography" sounds, comparatively, like a term that unneccessarily dignifies the tsunami of filth that it signifies. That generally seems so for some reason for words of Greek or Latin origin as opposed to those inherited from our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. But back to our subject at hand: what else distinguished then from now? How about the dreams of the nation's citizens in the year that General MacArthur was fired for having the balls to tell Red China to go to hell (plus the will and the firepower to send them there until a Chicago-styled politician, vulgarian and erstwhile haberdasher pulled rank on the old soldier). What of their hopes in the year that Judy Holliday taught us that blondes from the other side of the tracks aren't necessarily "dumb" and that gave history "The Shot Heard 'Round The World" (a game winning "Chinese" home run that capped a miraculous season for a Manhattan baseball team at the costliest expense of a Brooklyn baseball team and its long suffering and loyal fans' psyches)? Their dreams (those of all our nation's citizens) were quite like ours today, I suppose, but I'll wager that they were more colorful, less nightmarish and simply more numerous and high minded: both day and night. Though living in the new Atomic age, no endless doomsday programs on t.v., or routine governmental cautions about terrorism, or a death toll in the millions from legalized abortions on demand existed nor were these phenomena imagined (save for nuclear war). The dreams and the hopes certainly included children as the "Baby Boom" was in full swing in this year of an official end of the Pacific war against Japan, the relevant treaty signed by over forty member states of the United Nations in San Francisco, a city noted chiefly then, only for its beauty and critical position as a gateway to America's Pacific hegemony, not its present image as the capital of homosexuality, counter culturism, decadence and decline. Life in 1951 was good, as pride, strength, democracy and prosperity were all thriving realities, though perilous times were still with us amazingly, after having vanquished a phenomenally virulent disease known as fascism in a cataclysmic world war.
No one worried about "green" issues. The earth was still a place to tame and to mould into making our lives more comfortable and bountiful. A caucasian man or woman was not constrained to apologize for all the accomplishments of his or her fathers and forefathers. Automobiles were built predominantly by American industries, with no foreign company anywhere near their near peerless positions in the world market today. Vestiges of the nineteenth century were less difficult to find than they are today. I do remember seeing the very occasional horse drawn vehicle as well as trolleys and an elderly gent or two strolling by in a straw cady. Other old timers in "Andy Capp" styled hats, indigent and/or crippled, could be seen gathering junk, especially stacks of old newspapers in seemingly huge, squeaky baby carriages that they negotiated down the sidewalk or alongside the curb between traffic and the pavement (parked cars often being only intermittently situated in the streets of the then almost semi-rural landscape of most of New York's outer boroughs' neighborhoods, like the one I grew up in). Folks generally embraced excellence though as striving and self-improvement, were common virtues. Working class people were known to increasingly attend symphonic and operatic performances, men from all economic classes rooted for their team at major league baseball games more often than not, wearing ties and even suits. The value of a good education was more and more becoming well understood if not attainable for all. Fame and fortune were not seen as goals to be achieved through chicanery or notoriety via sociopathic behavior or litigious maneuvering. Hard work was still valued and not feared or belittled. And yes, immigration was not a critical issue or even of slight concern. Foreigners seeking a life in America waited their turn, by and large, to enter our country LEGALLY and sponsorship and other rules were actually obeyed by government officials as well as aliens. Crime, poverty, ignorance and cruelty were all alive and well in 1951, to be sure. But evil seemed on the defensive and church attendance was at an all time high throughout the 1950s. The greatest abhorrence and object of concentrated shunning was, of course, the communist presence in society. The Cold War was really a natural outgrowth of the deep seated distrust of The Other (a projection, in part, of one's own dark side as Jung asserted) that first germinated, justifiably so, in 1939 and which was now trained upon and aimed at totalitarian regimes around the globe. With the collapse of Nazism and Fascism, Soviet Russia and Red China more than took up the slack of supplying antagonists to feed our fears, and a sometimes mutual paranoia of nations, especially between those of the West and these communist regimes resulted.
Leon Errol was an Australian comedian born in 1881, the same year as my Sicilian maternal grandmother. He eventually came to Hollywood via Broadway and enjoyed more than a modicum of success in his career. I learned of his existence when his film "shorts" were regularly shown on late night television in the early 1970s. A talented vaudevillian, his brand of slapstick comedy was so passe by the third quarter of the twentieth century that it enjoyed a kind of renaissance at that time, being so "out" that it was deemed "in" by certain trendsetters (hence the program's title "Reel Camp"). Perhaps he was emblematic of a world that was starting to pass away when he did, on nearly the very day that we moved into our modest attached brick house in October of 1951. It was a gentler time, when drunkenness was not condoned but was also not yet viewed humorlessly (Errol was quite the rubber legged inebriate through so many of his roles) and his creations of henpecked husbands abounded. These two stock characters of his did not completely die out actually; they were often portrayed by other comics up until and even beyond the mid '60s. Still, this less sophisticated world of silly men who (unlike too many of today's performers with profanities or prurient remarks on their lips, offered to an audience to elicit a harsh snicker or revealing of a flippancy bereft of warmth) instead, touched millions who lovingly recognized in these entertainers like Errol and their work, the truths revealed by such an art of exhibiting relievingly (as all great comedians do), human foibles and weaknesses. It was a changing period if only embryonically. Certain last hurrahs through the close of the decade, thanks to the likes of Berle, Gleason and Skelton, kept the flames of farce and old vaudeville flickering, but the future lay in more realistic family comedies and gimmicky sitcoms ("Father Knows Best" and "Bewitched" were representative of these two genres respectively, in the then near future).
By the chronological measure of my life, 1951 was a very long time ago. Comedy, as so often presented and performed today would be incomprehensible and probably largely offensive to most audiences back then. Despite a world war and the severe wariness towards anti-democratic societies, cynicism was unusual if not rare among Americans. Now this bitterness that passes for mirth in the twenty first century is all too prevalent. We craved normalcy sixty years ago: a return to a time before the war that perhaps never really was, but that we dreamed of in profusion, our hopes stoked by the fuel of peace and the genuine prospects of prosperity. We wanted to be safe and we wanted to preserve what we loved and what we now became increasingly confident of: a world of beauty and promises achievable, conjoined with a healthy conservatism that the war's end encouraged, namely a second chance if we do the right things in the right ways and adhere to our Judeo-Christian and democratic values. Optimism was in the air regardless of the international perils and the old American virtue of the "square deal" was not yet deemed square (the adjective's use as a pejorative not popularly established until the decade's close). A reservoir of trust toward our fellow citizens was only surpassed in importance and in depth by our confidence in ourselves and it was simply an oh, so much better time to be an American.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Mr. Hawxhurst (Part 3)
Like those pages that fall from a calendar in a pre-war film: "leaves" fluttering downward and away, marking the changing seasons, the passage of time, and the flowering or wilting of dreams and hopes…. the days came and went, some thirteen hundred or so of them since that mid-summer day at Rockaway Beach. Our fatherly leader, in war and in peace, General Eisenhower had been retired to his farm near Gettysburg for over three years. A nuclear crisis (among others) and a young American president had both come and gone: the one filled with the darkest of threats and then defused, the other with the brightest of promises and then murdered. Pubescence was upon me and the angst of this stage of my journey was intense though most of my peers seemed oblivious to youthful alienation or mass annihilation while reveling in rock and roll's euphoria, especially as now interpreted by young musicians from England helping us to forget our national trauma. In April a new World's Fair was opening here again in New York's Flushing Meadows after not quite a quarter century. The last one ended with the world at war, an emphatic rebuke to the ideals and yearnings of the international festival's promoters and patrons. Mr. Hawxhurst was then a twenty two year old keen on adventure, sharply inclined, as mentioned, to join friends who had volunteered to fly for the Royal Canadian Air Force against Hitler's Luftwaffe. George's parents still needed him as the vestiges of the Great Depression lingered and both realities short circuited his wanderlust and longings for derring-do. As the new Fair beckoned to a new generation, he fully intended to "see" the world with his children, Mickey and Jamie along with Mrs. Hawxhurst, but now safely from his own backyard.
My Mom had been hired the previous fall as a legal secretary for the Fair's corporate headquarters situated adjacent to the fairgrounds itself. Ours became, consequently, a fairly (no pun intended) intimate relationship with all the events and exhibits. Passes occasionally issued, discounted tickets and parking privileges all made visits to the Fair a family affair, typically and not infrequently. Going there with Mr. Hawxhurst and his family never occurred to me and besides, I hadn't seen him for some time, at least since the end of the winter. I knew he had been a hospital patient on several occasions, but my focus on school had become quite concentrated, except for the visits to Flushing Meadows, and I only vaguely knew that he had been having "stomach trouble." His several returns home seemed to indicate that things were normal and unremarkable. I was unbelieving when one morning Mrs. Hawxhurst told my mother who told me that Mr. Hawxhurst had been advised that he had six months to live.
All of my grandparents were still living and my experiences with death were limited to a pet cat I doted on back in '57: the fact of her sudden demise (caused by a large truck), hidden from me by well meaning but foolish friends and neighbors, including Mrs. Hawxhurst and Mickey. Mr. Hawxhust had simply said nothing about it, while the others told varying fibs about the feline including that she had simply "run away." Only Jamie, the mischievous one, had an affinity for the truth: "Tim, your kitty cat got squashed by one of the Sanitation department's tar trucks." Besides my tabby, several other adult humans, unrelated or distantly so, had left this vale of tears in recent years also, but this was the first time, in the case of Mr. Hawxhurst, that anyone so geographically close to me had had their mortality precisely defined and circumscribed. I "did the math" with the rapidity of my fevered adolescent brain and wondered aloud if Mickey's dad would be dead before Halloween, and then with logically extended reasoning, the minutiae that followed included wondering if Jamie would, at that point, go Trick Or Treating.
The year wore on. I was becoming quite the little scholar, hiding behind my books as these early teen years were particularly unkind to my changing physique. My "Roman" nose's prominence had become especially pronounced as baby fat continued to evaporate and acne's dreaded visitations became a reality. Baseball was a blissful escape. Imaginary teams and leagues enjoyed with a kindred spirit and "old" friend supplemented the fair weather months of ball playing as well as rabid rooting for my beloved if hapless Mets. Every once in awhile Mrs. Hawxhurst would report to my mom about Mr. Hawxhurst's condition. Mickey was not feeling well now either. Two summers before the trips in the Pontiac, he had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Now there were indications that his eyes were being affected. I did not understand why these unpleasant things were happening to the Hawxhursts and I did not want to dwell on them. Still, I knew that I could not pretend that I was unaware of my neighbors' sufferings.
It was the summer of the civil rights movement's apogee of accomplishment as well as of heartbreak. The war in Vietnam began its first of many intensifications with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Fair continued as the last vestiges of the 1950s were held to our collective bosoms as represented by the festival's motto and zeitgeist of "peace through understanding." They were dying children: the world of international and even national unity and "normalcy" after World War II. The Fair's poohbahs, Robert Moses, et. al. were in their declining years, despite their enormous power; their world was fading away too, even if they did not know it. Mine was receding as well, though my life in its early spring, chronologically supposed, was brimming with possibilities and dreams, if they could only be vividly imagined. I racked up "A"s and averages that sent me into the exclusive ranks of junior high school "eggheads." But somehow, I could not envision the future's incandescence and I thought about Mr. Hawxhurst more and more often as the new school year began.
As I couldn't seem to picture joyous developments for a career path or a social life that might include members of the opposite sex, neither could I or would I turn my attention directly to the world of the Hawxhursts. Still, they were now on my mind daily. One afternoon, shortly after the first of the Jewish holidays in September, my mom stated that Mrs. Hawxhurst had left little to the imagination in her latest report. Mr. Hawxhurst's health had taken a sharp turn for the worse. When I asked her for details, she hesitated. I persisted. Dad advised her that I was growing up quickly and that shielding me from certain realities of life could not go on forever. She agreed and then informed both of us of the extraordinary pain and agony of Mr. Hawxhurst's life as it was being lived now in a hospital. Lung cancer had long since metastisized to most of his stomach and intestines. The removal of part of his colon had been necessary. The nightmarish account included Mickey's dad experiencing unrelenting nausea that resulted in him expelling fecal matter from his mouth. I defaulted to the age old safety valve as depicted in the film "Home of the Brave." There was the moment when the protagonist, a soldier being treated for "battle fatigue" by an army psychiatrist has an epiphany that relieves his burdensome guilt over the death of his comrade: "I'm glad it didn't happen to me!" Still, my incredulity was strong. This had been reinforced by meetings on the sidewalk during the summer, less frequent as in years past, but so normal and pleasant during Mr. Hawxhurst's returns back home. He seemed fine, perhaps walking a bit more deliberately than usual but he greeted me in the way he had always done: simple, direct and with a friendliness devoid of any of the condescension some adults convey to youngsters. He was ever courteous, regardless of whether my parents were present or not. My grandmother had often remarked through the years in her heavily accented English: "he is a gentleman."
It was with great surprise that only several days after mom's revelations to us, that I saw him again. He and Mrs. Hawxhurst were visible through one of their screened-in porch windows on a mild afternoon when I had returned from school. I mustered the courage to enquire after his health. "Just been to the dentist. Got a good checkup" he offered. "Oh, good" I responded, pretty much stuck for anything else to say. "Oh, had a tooth pulled too. Didn't hurt a bit." Then Mr. Hawxhurst seemed to defer to his wife, their marital bond's "true love ways" beyond my immature grasp. "Okay to show Tim?" It seemed a tad silly, but thinking about it today, the privacy that we, as good neighbors mutually respected, and that was so frayed by recent events, was restored in some very tiny way by making the display of the result of an extracted tooth not a casual thing. Thusly, she looked at me and smiled as she gave her permission conditionally to her husband: "Just a quick look!" He stepped outside into the sunshine, a gaunt and stooped figure whom I pretended not be startled by. He opened his mouth for less than two seconds revealing a gap between two of his lower teeth that was neither shocking nor uninteresting. "Oh, boy" I remarked and then waved goodbye as I thought of the horrors of his diseased alimentary canal and wondered if brushing his remaining teeth was really not futile at this point. I never saw Mr. Hawxhurst again, alive that is.
My dad and his friend had arranged for tickets for us to attend the World Series, a Sunday game in the Bronx. My passion for baseball was usually boundless. But my lowly Mets had failed to win the pennant of course, and their chief tormentors, the Cardinals were playing the hated Bombers. "A pox on both your houses" I thought, amazed at my first Shakespearean allusion, thanks to our enlightened ninth grade English teacher's curiculum that included a trip to Stratford (Connecticut) to attend one of the Bard's plays on the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. But my anemic rooting interests were further enervated by the passing of Mr. Hawxhurst the day before. Tomorrow would be his wake, only my second, the first being that of our parish pastor two years earlier. Ken Boyer's game winning grand slam homer had caused quite a ruckus, even in the enemy territory of Yankee Stadium and I forgot, for a little while, about tomorrow.
Tomorrow came and many others too. For the Hawxhursts, sorrow dogged them pitilessly. A priest's homily after Mickey's death twenty years later at the age of thirty four might have impressed some congregants when he explained George pre-deceasing his sons (Jamie was the first to follow his dad, five years before his brother in a hunting accident) as a kindness from God. But how to explain Marlene's forty more years, the only understandable, natural event: her mother's passing ten years before hers? Both Marlene and Mickey had died on Father's Day. These seemed appropriate coincidences (or were they synchronicities?) just as Jamie's demise had come curiously, on the September day that Pope John Paul II celebrated mass at that same, though refurbished House That Ruth Built, not far from those palisades and man-made canyons of George's youth. END.
My Mom had been hired the previous fall as a legal secretary for the Fair's corporate headquarters situated adjacent to the fairgrounds itself. Ours became, consequently, a fairly (no pun intended) intimate relationship with all the events and exhibits. Passes occasionally issued, discounted tickets and parking privileges all made visits to the Fair a family affair, typically and not infrequently. Going there with Mr. Hawxhurst and his family never occurred to me and besides, I hadn't seen him for some time, at least since the end of the winter. I knew he had been a hospital patient on several occasions, but my focus on school had become quite concentrated, except for the visits to Flushing Meadows, and I only vaguely knew that he had been having "stomach trouble." His several returns home seemed to indicate that things were normal and unremarkable. I was unbelieving when one morning Mrs. Hawxhurst told my mother who told me that Mr. Hawxhurst had been advised that he had six months to live.
All of my grandparents were still living and my experiences with death were limited to a pet cat I doted on back in '57: the fact of her sudden demise (caused by a large truck), hidden from me by well meaning but foolish friends and neighbors, including Mrs. Hawxhurst and Mickey. Mr. Hawxhust had simply said nothing about it, while the others told varying fibs about the feline including that she had simply "run away." Only Jamie, the mischievous one, had an affinity for the truth: "Tim, your kitty cat got squashed by one of the Sanitation department's tar trucks." Besides my tabby, several other adult humans, unrelated or distantly so, had left this vale of tears in recent years also, but this was the first time, in the case of Mr. Hawxhurst, that anyone so geographically close to me had had their mortality precisely defined and circumscribed. I "did the math" with the rapidity of my fevered adolescent brain and wondered aloud if Mickey's dad would be dead before Halloween, and then with logically extended reasoning, the minutiae that followed included wondering if Jamie would, at that point, go Trick Or Treating.
The year wore on. I was becoming quite the little scholar, hiding behind my books as these early teen years were particularly unkind to my changing physique. My "Roman" nose's prominence had become especially pronounced as baby fat continued to evaporate and acne's dreaded visitations became a reality. Baseball was a blissful escape. Imaginary teams and leagues enjoyed with a kindred spirit and "old" friend supplemented the fair weather months of ball playing as well as rabid rooting for my beloved if hapless Mets. Every once in awhile Mrs. Hawxhurst would report to my mom about Mr. Hawxhurst's condition. Mickey was not feeling well now either. Two summers before the trips in the Pontiac, he had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Now there were indications that his eyes were being affected. I did not understand why these unpleasant things were happening to the Hawxhursts and I did not want to dwell on them. Still, I knew that I could not pretend that I was unaware of my neighbors' sufferings.
It was the summer of the civil rights movement's apogee of accomplishment as well as of heartbreak. The war in Vietnam began its first of many intensifications with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Fair continued as the last vestiges of the 1950s were held to our collective bosoms as represented by the festival's motto and zeitgeist of "peace through understanding." They were dying children: the world of international and even national unity and "normalcy" after World War II. The Fair's poohbahs, Robert Moses, et. al. were in their declining years, despite their enormous power; their world was fading away too, even if they did not know it. Mine was receding as well, though my life in its early spring, chronologically supposed, was brimming with possibilities and dreams, if they could only be vividly imagined. I racked up "A"s and averages that sent me into the exclusive ranks of junior high school "eggheads." But somehow, I could not envision the future's incandescence and I thought about Mr. Hawxhurst more and more often as the new school year began.
As I couldn't seem to picture joyous developments for a career path or a social life that might include members of the opposite sex, neither could I or would I turn my attention directly to the world of the Hawxhursts. Still, they were now on my mind daily. One afternoon, shortly after the first of the Jewish holidays in September, my mom stated that Mrs. Hawxhurst had left little to the imagination in her latest report. Mr. Hawxhurst's health had taken a sharp turn for the worse. When I asked her for details, she hesitated. I persisted. Dad advised her that I was growing up quickly and that shielding me from certain realities of life could not go on forever. She agreed and then informed both of us of the extraordinary pain and agony of Mr. Hawxhurst's life as it was being lived now in a hospital. Lung cancer had long since metastisized to most of his stomach and intestines. The removal of part of his colon had been necessary. The nightmarish account included Mickey's dad experiencing unrelenting nausea that resulted in him expelling fecal matter from his mouth. I defaulted to the age old safety valve as depicted in the film "Home of the Brave." There was the moment when the protagonist, a soldier being treated for "battle fatigue" by an army psychiatrist has an epiphany that relieves his burdensome guilt over the death of his comrade: "I'm glad it didn't happen to me!" Still, my incredulity was strong. This had been reinforced by meetings on the sidewalk during the summer, less frequent as in years past, but so normal and pleasant during Mr. Hawxhurst's returns back home. He seemed fine, perhaps walking a bit more deliberately than usual but he greeted me in the way he had always done: simple, direct and with a friendliness devoid of any of the condescension some adults convey to youngsters. He was ever courteous, regardless of whether my parents were present or not. My grandmother had often remarked through the years in her heavily accented English: "he is a gentleman."
It was with great surprise that only several days after mom's revelations to us, that I saw him again. He and Mrs. Hawxhurst were visible through one of their screened-in porch windows on a mild afternoon when I had returned from school. I mustered the courage to enquire after his health. "Just been to the dentist. Got a good checkup" he offered. "Oh, good" I responded, pretty much stuck for anything else to say. "Oh, had a tooth pulled too. Didn't hurt a bit." Then Mr. Hawxhurst seemed to defer to his wife, their marital bond's "true love ways" beyond my immature grasp. "Okay to show Tim?" It seemed a tad silly, but thinking about it today, the privacy that we, as good neighbors mutually respected, and that was so frayed by recent events, was restored in some very tiny way by making the display of the result of an extracted tooth not a casual thing. Thusly, she looked at me and smiled as she gave her permission conditionally to her husband: "Just a quick look!" He stepped outside into the sunshine, a gaunt and stooped figure whom I pretended not be startled by. He opened his mouth for less than two seconds revealing a gap between two of his lower teeth that was neither shocking nor uninteresting. "Oh, boy" I remarked and then waved goodbye as I thought of the horrors of his diseased alimentary canal and wondered if brushing his remaining teeth was really not futile at this point. I never saw Mr. Hawxhurst again, alive that is.
My dad and his friend had arranged for tickets for us to attend the World Series, a Sunday game in the Bronx. My passion for baseball was usually boundless. But my lowly Mets had failed to win the pennant of course, and their chief tormentors, the Cardinals were playing the hated Bombers. "A pox on both your houses" I thought, amazed at my first Shakespearean allusion, thanks to our enlightened ninth grade English teacher's curiculum that included a trip to Stratford (Connecticut) to attend one of the Bard's plays on the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. But my anemic rooting interests were further enervated by the passing of Mr. Hawxhurst the day before. Tomorrow would be his wake, only my second, the first being that of our parish pastor two years earlier. Ken Boyer's game winning grand slam homer had caused quite a ruckus, even in the enemy territory of Yankee Stadium and I forgot, for a little while, about tomorrow.
Tomorrow came and many others too. For the Hawxhursts, sorrow dogged them pitilessly. A priest's homily after Mickey's death twenty years later at the age of thirty four might have impressed some congregants when he explained George pre-deceasing his sons (Jamie was the first to follow his dad, five years before his brother in a hunting accident) as a kindness from God. But how to explain Marlene's forty more years, the only understandable, natural event: her mother's passing ten years before hers? Both Marlene and Mickey had died on Father's Day. These seemed appropriate coincidences (or were they synchronicities?) just as Jamie's demise had come curiously, on the September day that Pope John Paul II celebrated mass at that same, though refurbished House That Ruth Built, not far from those palisades and man-made canyons of George's youth. END.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Talking With Mary
I was feeling better. It was my second ambulation after yesterday's "baptism" with I.V. bag above shoulder level dangling from a sturdy rolling "coat rack", properly shod: snug hospital issue non-skid slippers upon my tootsies, flimsy gown strategically tied in back, and relatively free from pain and certainly from seemingly endless supination. Today's "gambol" was less a celebration of itself (like yesterday's trek of a couple of dozen feet) than it was a mission to meet and greet fellow patients: really a way to give thanks for being alive. A tall "drink of water", a young black janitor, tiny golden rhomboid object attached to an earlobe, was mopping the far left side of the corridor of the ward as I made my way gingerly toward him. "How we doin' today, cap'n?" he sang out. I remembered him somehow. Four days ago he helped steady me as I writhed on a gurney while in and out of wakefulness. Or was this man someone who looked like that person? Would not an orderly instead of a cleaning man have tended to me? There was something familiar about him still, as I said. Just the friendly manner perhaps, that brought me back to another incident in which a totally guileless colored man had enquired of my health as well as the whereabouts of my mommy and daddy. This was well over a half century ago, when I had briefly lost my way just yards from my uncle's brownstone in Italian Harlem. A stranger's concern, wrapped in the natural pleasantness of his personality, his heart unfathomable maybe, but worth a wager about its goodness by the charm of those social skills, was a residual micro-particle of trustfulness that had never been completely blotted out though time and cynicism had accrued as with many middle aged folks like me. My spirits today were buoyant enough to greet this new cheerfulness more than halfway and my response lacked the usual preceding pause that unready and neutral torpidity of everyday life's low levels of vigor and receptiveness usually signal. In fact, I nearly overlapped the janitor's query with my own zippy "Good morning, sir! Wow, who ordered that sunshine?" Raised blinds in the nearby dayroom afforded plenty of chances for splashy yellow-white beams to illumine one and all. A slight chuckle escaped from the cleaning man's throat as he continued to go about his business. I was a bit disappointed that the big bright room was unoccupied, but I soldiered on, noticing my shuffle for the first time and aware of other rooms, all emitting daylight as well and full of the promise of ensconced fellow patients. Next door over I heard the light snoring of a figure whose naked lower limbs were pudgy and smeared with dried blood. As I passed the open door and looked back at the face that went with this body, I thought "Boris The Horrible. I would even say hello to him. Well…. no…" I thought. "I'm glad he's asleep." He wasn't, generally speaking, so much a horror as he was a bore (hence, "Boris"). But the nurses gave him his full alias, never to be erased since that particular morning during my stay in the I.C.U. diagonally across from him where his newly unfettered hands exploited the liberation in a torrent of destructive acts that included tubes being torn from his body and excrement excavated from same and hurled at no one (smallest of consolations) in particular. "Rest, Boris…for as long as you wish…..in peace."
Forward, onward, upward….second chances are not as common as human interest stories on television would lead you to believe. Must and will "carpe diem." No Boris, unconscious or not, can diminish this feeling of rebirth. "Who's in the next room?" I thought, like a kid espying another package under the Christmas tree, hopeful that another toy rather than a shirt awaited. At the entrance to 732B a sign read "Kileski, Anna" and leaning forward thoughtlessly, I winced while glimpsing a tiny gray haired lady sitting next to her bed, perfectly coifed yet robed, and humming to herself. She met my gaze and my robust (or so I thought) "Good morning!" with an intense smile that crinkled her face. "Going home today?" I asked unreservedly. She continued to grin and I nodded a goodbye, unperturbed that language or her hearing may have hindered a response. Her smile was enough.
I turned a corner and there he was. "Mr. Salvemini! Well, what have we here?" "Hi Dr. Krantz! I guess you were right" I offered. He studied me, clinically of course, for a brief moment. "I was coming your way. I see that you're continuing to follow my recommendations. Good. Yes sir, seemed impossible to you at first, but a rapid recovery is indicated in these cases. Now don't get too rambunctious. Five or ten minutes at most of walking is best for another day or two" said my surgeon, clipboard in hand and with a million other things to attend to, his smile fading quickly as he went past with big strides that I marveled at and yes, envied. Now I began to feel some weariness. "The spirit is willing, etc.. etc." I thought. The corridor darkened as other buildings close by formed inner courtyards outside this group of windows and blocked more than some of the daylight. Someone had left an incandescent light on in a room near the far right corner of this dead end hallway where the usual sign admonished about its fire exit door not to be opened and with warnings about alarms, sirens, etc. Almost adjacent and perpendicular to this furthest portal, I saw the familiar bright red exit sign at the door to a no doubt drafty stairwell and entertained a dark notion about there really being "No Exit" a la Monsieur Sartre's famed worldview. "Is my honeymoon with gratitude over already?" I mused. I had to return to my room anyway, but there was no sense getting moody or raining on my own parade. "You're having a good day, damn it!" I argued with myself.
"Hey, what about this room?" I silently protested to my gloomier side. The one with the warm yellow light was not to be ignored. There was someone inside as I heard a voice in apparent conversation, perhaps on a telephone. Approaching more closely, the sounds were clearer now. It was the sweet, somewhat high pitched timbre of a man from old New York. He reminded me of some of my father's half-Irish cousins-in-law from Inwood. Images cascaded out of my memory banks: pitchers of beer, sawdust floors and frequent laughter interspersed with longwinded tales of the "Olde Sod", mundane complaints about the weather and the venting of ancient hurts of the undoing of Jimmy Walker. "Mary! Oh, Mary! Where are you now? Oh Mary, I need you!" The distinctly conversational and loving tone of his enquiries made me certain that a reply was imminent from "Mary." Then he whistled, as if he were calling for a beloved sheepdog on some fog enshrouded hill in Killarney.
I boldly stuck my head into the room and saw a gangling, large framed, very old man, taller than the amiable janitor and with most of his very white hair that was neatly combed and parted in the middle, reclining on his bed in a union suit of yellowed white wool with the Dr. Denton styled elasticized cuffs on ankles and wrists. Around this rosy complected man's neck was a very large, thick gold chain with two revealed pendants: a crucifix and an anchor, both of gold as well. There was no telephone in the room and no television set. "Good morning sir, my name is Vincent. I hope I'm not bothering you, but I just wanted to say 'hello.' It's my first big walk after surgery." "Oh, hi ya. Can you sit down? There's no one in the other bed today" he helpfully suggested. "I'd better just stand. It's still a little tough to change positions, sitting or standing. Thanks. Excuse me, but who were you talking to? I haven't seen a nurse since I left my room and the visiting hours haven't started." He smiled in a very pleasant way, like someone who knew a wonderful secret that he didn't resent sharing. "Oh, sonny, I was talking with Mary. I want to see her." His eyes were moist and gleaming…eager: as if he were greeting someone very dear as he looked beyond and above my head and cried "Oh, Ma-ary! It's Kevin." "Was Mary your wife?" I ventured, his sweetness a strong encouragement, quite aside from my crusading gregariousness. "Oh no, she's my friend, our Mary." My sustained quizzical look interrupted his joyful reverie of her and he patiently put me "in the loop": "The Virgin Mary! I want to see her soon. I'm so looking forward to it! Oh, Ma-a-a-ry." I smiled hesitantly. He did not seem to have dementia and there was nothing to really make me uncomfortable. It was, I now guessed, a wondrously novel and oh, so simple way to pray. I, of the brittle brain, who spent decades (both the years and the beads) praying the "Hail Mary" by rote, found this a revelation and exceedingly comforting. "How old are you sir, if you don't mind my asking?" "I'll be ninety eight in September." I quickly calculated that this man had attained the age of reason before the close of the nineteenth century and I became excited about the prospects of sounding out his "primary source" credentials. I could not resist: "May I call you Kevin?" "Mr. Garrity, if you please." "I'm sorry, of course Mr. Garrity. Sir, what is one of your earliest memories?" "He was murmuring Mary's name now, but his alertness was not to be underestimated. "What say sonny?" he said, turning in the bed with its well starched fresh sheets. I repeated the question and his face lit up, brighter than it had already been. "'Rushing the Growler' was a big job for a little boy! That little boy was me." "How old do you think you were then?" "Guess about five, maybe six. Before my first communion." "I've heard the phrase but I'm not sure what it means." "Well, you see sonny, we lived next door to the firehouse on Ninth avenue. I loved the dalmatians they had and they let me help feed them. We had McCurdy's near the other end of the block and after duty hours they gave me the can to refill down there. That was the growler. Seemed about half as big as me. Big metal can. Half a gallon of beer each time. I got a penny for every roundtrip and two cents on Fridays. Didn't want to delay when the big boys wanted another round. So you had to rush." "Weren't you kind of young, sir?" "I was a pretty big sprout for my age and I loved those dogs. Didn't like the horses as much…all that doo-doo in the street. Big Bohemian man pushing a broom all day long trying to keep the street clear. No cars then, sonny, but lots of doo-doo." He sat back, having almost left the bed while reliving those trips to McCurdy's. "Thank you, Mr. Garrity. Can I get you a drink of water or a candy bar?" "No thanks. Got to "see a man about a horse" and then I'll turn in 'til lunchtime. Take care of yourself, sonny." "Thanks, thanks for the stories." "Come round tomorrow, I'll tell you more." "Sure will. 'Bye now."
I started back, my heart full and no longer seeking human contact like a hungry man trying to gather apples. Mr. Garrity had sated me with more than enough food for thought. Little doubt, his race was almost run, but he was like his former self: skipping along or purposefully trudging to McCurdy's, happy in either case and singing a kind of song that required no special vocal talent, but that gladdened the heart at least as well as a Como or a Cole could. I knew that my future statistically, stretched before me, not likely concentrated in an unknown, but maybe precious few weeks or a couple of score of months like Kevin's and I was grateful for the chance to fill that blank slate with redeeming chapters of my story. I was going home, safe again, for hopefully a long while. But Mr. Garrity was going home too, and whether it was to be his apartment or to a beatific place beyond time, he was embracing either future. As I carefully began to ease myself down upon returning to my bed, it struck me: his gift to me. Whether many or few, a certain future hospital stay would one day be, whether I came home or not, my last. Kevin showed me how it could be. With the faith of a child this nonagenarian had held open a door to where no engulfment was to be feared or abandonment was possible: to a place where the heart was always at home with Mary, her Son and all one's loved ones.
Forward, onward, upward….second chances are not as common as human interest stories on television would lead you to believe. Must and will "carpe diem." No Boris, unconscious or not, can diminish this feeling of rebirth. "Who's in the next room?" I thought, like a kid espying another package under the Christmas tree, hopeful that another toy rather than a shirt awaited. At the entrance to 732B a sign read "Kileski, Anna" and leaning forward thoughtlessly, I winced while glimpsing a tiny gray haired lady sitting next to her bed, perfectly coifed yet robed, and humming to herself. She met my gaze and my robust (or so I thought) "Good morning!" with an intense smile that crinkled her face. "Going home today?" I asked unreservedly. She continued to grin and I nodded a goodbye, unperturbed that language or her hearing may have hindered a response. Her smile was enough.
I turned a corner and there he was. "Mr. Salvemini! Well, what have we here?" "Hi Dr. Krantz! I guess you were right" I offered. He studied me, clinically of course, for a brief moment. "I was coming your way. I see that you're continuing to follow my recommendations. Good. Yes sir, seemed impossible to you at first, but a rapid recovery is indicated in these cases. Now don't get too rambunctious. Five or ten minutes at most of walking is best for another day or two" said my surgeon, clipboard in hand and with a million other things to attend to, his smile fading quickly as he went past with big strides that I marveled at and yes, envied. Now I began to feel some weariness. "The spirit is willing, etc.. etc." I thought. The corridor darkened as other buildings close by formed inner courtyards outside this group of windows and blocked more than some of the daylight. Someone had left an incandescent light on in a room near the far right corner of this dead end hallway where the usual sign admonished about its fire exit door not to be opened and with warnings about alarms, sirens, etc. Almost adjacent and perpendicular to this furthest portal, I saw the familiar bright red exit sign at the door to a no doubt drafty stairwell and entertained a dark notion about there really being "No Exit" a la Monsieur Sartre's famed worldview. "Is my honeymoon with gratitude over already?" I mused. I had to return to my room anyway, but there was no sense getting moody or raining on my own parade. "You're having a good day, damn it!" I argued with myself.
"Hey, what about this room?" I silently protested to my gloomier side. The one with the warm yellow light was not to be ignored. There was someone inside as I heard a voice in apparent conversation, perhaps on a telephone. Approaching more closely, the sounds were clearer now. It was the sweet, somewhat high pitched timbre of a man from old New York. He reminded me of some of my father's half-Irish cousins-in-law from Inwood. Images cascaded out of my memory banks: pitchers of beer, sawdust floors and frequent laughter interspersed with longwinded tales of the "Olde Sod", mundane complaints about the weather and the venting of ancient hurts of the undoing of Jimmy Walker. "Mary! Oh, Mary! Where are you now? Oh Mary, I need you!" The distinctly conversational and loving tone of his enquiries made me certain that a reply was imminent from "Mary." Then he whistled, as if he were calling for a beloved sheepdog on some fog enshrouded hill in Killarney.
I boldly stuck my head into the room and saw a gangling, large framed, very old man, taller than the amiable janitor and with most of his very white hair that was neatly combed and parted in the middle, reclining on his bed in a union suit of yellowed white wool with the Dr. Denton styled elasticized cuffs on ankles and wrists. Around this rosy complected man's neck was a very large, thick gold chain with two revealed pendants: a crucifix and an anchor, both of gold as well. There was no telephone in the room and no television set. "Good morning sir, my name is Vincent. I hope I'm not bothering you, but I just wanted to say 'hello.' It's my first big walk after surgery." "Oh, hi ya. Can you sit down? There's no one in the other bed today" he helpfully suggested. "I'd better just stand. It's still a little tough to change positions, sitting or standing. Thanks. Excuse me, but who were you talking to? I haven't seen a nurse since I left my room and the visiting hours haven't started." He smiled in a very pleasant way, like someone who knew a wonderful secret that he didn't resent sharing. "Oh, sonny, I was talking with Mary. I want to see her." His eyes were moist and gleaming…eager: as if he were greeting someone very dear as he looked beyond and above my head and cried "Oh, Ma-ary! It's Kevin." "Was Mary your wife?" I ventured, his sweetness a strong encouragement, quite aside from my crusading gregariousness. "Oh no, she's my friend, our Mary." My sustained quizzical look interrupted his joyful reverie of her and he patiently put me "in the loop": "The Virgin Mary! I want to see her soon. I'm so looking forward to it! Oh, Ma-a-a-ry." I smiled hesitantly. He did not seem to have dementia and there was nothing to really make me uncomfortable. It was, I now guessed, a wondrously novel and oh, so simple way to pray. I, of the brittle brain, who spent decades (both the years and the beads) praying the "Hail Mary" by rote, found this a revelation and exceedingly comforting. "How old are you sir, if you don't mind my asking?" "I'll be ninety eight in September." I quickly calculated that this man had attained the age of reason before the close of the nineteenth century and I became excited about the prospects of sounding out his "primary source" credentials. I could not resist: "May I call you Kevin?" "Mr. Garrity, if you please." "I'm sorry, of course Mr. Garrity. Sir, what is one of your earliest memories?" "He was murmuring Mary's name now, but his alertness was not to be underestimated. "What say sonny?" he said, turning in the bed with its well starched fresh sheets. I repeated the question and his face lit up, brighter than it had already been. "'Rushing the Growler' was a big job for a little boy! That little boy was me." "How old do you think you were then?" "Guess about five, maybe six. Before my first communion." "I've heard the phrase but I'm not sure what it means." "Well, you see sonny, we lived next door to the firehouse on Ninth avenue. I loved the dalmatians they had and they let me help feed them. We had McCurdy's near the other end of the block and after duty hours they gave me the can to refill down there. That was the growler. Seemed about half as big as me. Big metal can. Half a gallon of beer each time. I got a penny for every roundtrip and two cents on Fridays. Didn't want to delay when the big boys wanted another round. So you had to rush." "Weren't you kind of young, sir?" "I was a pretty big sprout for my age and I loved those dogs. Didn't like the horses as much…all that doo-doo in the street. Big Bohemian man pushing a broom all day long trying to keep the street clear. No cars then, sonny, but lots of doo-doo." He sat back, having almost left the bed while reliving those trips to McCurdy's. "Thank you, Mr. Garrity. Can I get you a drink of water or a candy bar?" "No thanks. Got to "see a man about a horse" and then I'll turn in 'til lunchtime. Take care of yourself, sonny." "Thanks, thanks for the stories." "Come round tomorrow, I'll tell you more." "Sure will. 'Bye now."
I started back, my heart full and no longer seeking human contact like a hungry man trying to gather apples. Mr. Garrity had sated me with more than enough food for thought. Little doubt, his race was almost run, but he was like his former self: skipping along or purposefully trudging to McCurdy's, happy in either case and singing a kind of song that required no special vocal talent, but that gladdened the heart at least as well as a Como or a Cole could. I knew that my future statistically, stretched before me, not likely concentrated in an unknown, but maybe precious few weeks or a couple of score of months like Kevin's and I was grateful for the chance to fill that blank slate with redeeming chapters of my story. I was going home, safe again, for hopefully a long while. But Mr. Garrity was going home too, and whether it was to be his apartment or to a beatific place beyond time, he was embracing either future. As I carefully began to ease myself down upon returning to my bed, it struck me: his gift to me. Whether many or few, a certain future hospital stay would one day be, whether I came home or not, my last. Kevin showed me how it could be. With the faith of a child this nonagenarian had held open a door to where no engulfment was to be feared or abandonment was possible: to a place where the heart was always at home with Mary, her Son and all one's loved ones.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)