10. Roomers
During our
early days on North Tripp, my parents took in roomers to raise cash.
One roomer
was a short scarecrow of a man who smoked cigarettes with a holder. His sunken cheeks, pencil thin mustache, and
yellowish complexion made him the creepiest looking person I have ever seen.
He was
followed by a woman who could move her arms in only one direction. She could open a door but not close it, lift
the toilet lid but not flush the toilet, and turn on a light but not turn it
off.
This last
bodily malfunction particularly rankled my mother, who was a notorious light
turner-offer. This roomer left after a
little while, perhaps because she grew tired of being followed around by
someone constantly turning off lights.
When she moved out, our days of running a rooming house ended.
And I got a
room of my own.
11. Art’s Place
Big, ugly
pimples appeared on the backs of my hands.
Topped with little red bulbs, they oozed pus if I squeezed them.
“Leave those
alone, Billy,” my mother warned me. “You’ll
only make things worse.”
Week after
week the routine never varied. Once a
week my mother would take me to the doctor’s office on Irving Park Road. He would prescribe a different ointment each
time. The pimples remained.
They were an
embarrassment. Already self-conscious
because of my spindly arms, now I tried to pull my cuffs down to hide my hands. The pimples just wouldn’t go away. And then one day . . .
Another boy
and I were at Art’s house, trying to come up with a game that we could play
with toy trucks in a pile of dirt in the back yard.
“You can’t
play, Billy,” Art said. “You can’t put your hands in the dirt.”
That did it.
Within a week the pus stopped oozing and the pimples vanished. Why not?
If you can have psychosomatic illnesses, why can’t you have psychosomatic
cures? Don’t tell me I can’t play in
the dirt. That’s what I came here for.
My mother looked at my now-clear hands, harrumphed, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “God’s will will be done.”
 |
| Billy--Elementary School Days |
Art was a
Belding classmate. He, his parents, his sister,
and their dog lived in one of the biggest houses in the neighborhood. His parents made their living from two
ballrooms, bought a new Buick as soon as cars became available after the war,
and were the first family in the neighborhood to own a television set.
Boots, their
dog, was the star of the family. He was
a mid-sized, mixed breed male of medium height, with a shiny black coat except
for white hair on his paws. Boots was a
friendly mutt, and he loved to play with us kids.
We would use
a tennis ball inside the house, rolling the ball into the long, narrow
kitchen. Boots would charge after it,
slip on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, and slide, crashing into the dining table
and chairs—then get up with his teeth clenched around the ball and hustle it
back to us. More! More! In the basement an electric train was set up
on the carpeted floor. We would place an
object on the tracks and sic Boots on it.
The voltage, low enough so that we couldn’t feel it, would give him a jolt
through his whiskers. He would step
back, stare at the tracks, and try again.
When a fire truck went by with its siren going, Boots would lift his
head and sing along with the truck’s siren.
When no fire truck was available, one or all of us would howl, and Boots
would howl along too.
Art’s father
would intervene, telling us to “leave the poor dog alone.” We would obey, but Boots wanted more. He would stand there, his legs slightly splayed,
his eyes gleaming as he looked from boy to boy, beseeching More! More!
Somebody
poisoned Boots. He recovered, but the spark
had gone out of him. There were no more
fun and games, just a placid dog who was satisfied to have someone pet him or stroke
his neck.
Art lived
next door to the fire station. The
firemen there were big-city firemen in the truest tradition of the time. On a hot day, rare in Chicago, they would open
a hydrant so that neighborhood kids could drench themselves in the cooling
spray. They were also hefty, partly from
sitting around the fire station and partly from imbibing at the saloon whose
back door was just across the alley from the back door of the fire station.
The firemen
raised chickens in a yard beside the fire station. When chicken was on that night's menu, a
fireman armed with a hatchet would come out of the fire station, chase after
several of the hapless birds, and kill one at a time by chopping off its head.
From Art’s
back yard, the beheading was easily viewed, and Art and I and other boys used
to stand and watch, partly to snicker at a portly fireman huffing and puffing
while chasing the birds, but mainly to be amazed at the sight of a chicken
continuing to run with its head cut off.
Art was
growing up faster than I was. As our
time in elementary school neared its end, he became less and less available for
Saturday get-togethers. His story was
that he knew a girl who, on Saturdays when her parents weren’t home, would have
Art over and the two of them would go into her room for a romp in bed. He embellished his story with this remark: “Her
brother’s home from the navy. He
understands.”
Yeah, sure. Her brother understands? Maybe the brother truly didn’t care that
someone was screwing his sister, but my sense of gullibility was rapidly
draining away.
After Art
and I graduated from Belding, I went to high school in Chicago, and Art’s
parents sent him to the Valley Forge Military Academy, a prestigious prep school
in Pennsylvania. His first few weeks at
prep school wore on him, so his dad decided that a visit from me might cheer Art
up and be a treat for me. That it was, with
a ride to the airport in a Buick, the weekend with Art, and a flight in an
airliner.
Despite the
generosity of Art’s father, my opinion of him suffered a serious hit when I
heard him refer to women as “broads.” I
guess my sensibilities were just too delicate for me to live in the same world
as Art and his father. Art and I never
saw each other again after my trip to Valley Forge.
12. Another
Stupid Boy Stunt
|
|
The journey
began with a ride on the Irving Park Road streetcar and the el as far as the
Loop, the city's downtown business district.
From the Loop, we took an electric interurban train, the South Shore
Line, known in full as the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad. The train headed south from the Loop to steel
mill country, Chicago's far southeast side and the northwest corner of
Indiana. From there, the train skirted
the south shore of Lake Michigan, then rolled east to downtown South Bend.
It was a
trip that should have been loaded with impressions and lasting memories—the huge
plants and towering smokestacks of the steel mills, glimpses of Lake Michigan,
the funeral itself, and a ride in an automobile. Because we didn't own a car, a ride in any
kind of car was a rare treat for me, even if the car did nothing grander than
go to a cemetery.
|
|
Mourners had
gathered in someone's house after the trip to the cemetery. A meal was going to be served. My father and several other men decided to
play poker. He had taught me the
fundamentals of the game and the combinations:
a pair, three of a kind, full house, straight, and so on. I probably knew enough to think that I knew
everything.
Moreover, I
could have really been grandly obnoxious about that time. You see, a few months earlier my sister had
had her first child, thereby elevating me to the lofty status of uncle. My own uncles were gray haired and aging, so
for a long time I was quite self-absorbed with the idea that I had become an
uncle at the tender age of seven.
None of my
friends was an uncle or an aunt, so I was one up on the crowd of kids that I
hung around with. Whether anyone else
was impressed with the knowledge that a seven-year-old uncle walked the face of
the earth made no difference to me,
for I did
enough gloating to make up for the deficiencies of others.
Anyway, for
a while I stood silently at my father's shoulder, watching the cards being
shuffled and dealt, seeing pots being opened and built and dragged in, and
listening to the players grumble or crow about their cards. Then my father was dealt a hand—exactly what
the cards were I don't now know—that overwhelmed me.
He kept a
poker face, but I didn't, and I blurted out what he held.
Did he
ever explode! Not only with words
but with an accompanying glare that just about drove me into the floor. Where did that come from!
Fortunately
for me, my father had a temper that spiked but did not stew and simmer. His outburst then couldn't have lasted more
than a few seconds. Then it was over and
done, for him, but not for me.
It was the
only time that my father ever spoke harshly to me, and I certainly gave him other
opportunities. But he was a very quiet
man, and when a person says little, what they do say tends to stick in your
mind for a long time.
***
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