Part Five in the Memoir of the Generic Old Man:: "Getting around in Chicago, Christian Scientists, and Canaries" (?)

 

15.  Getting around in Chicago

Hail to the Grid

We—the boys and I who hung out at the corner store—played a game that elevated our activities above stupid boy stunts.  The game used Chicago’s layout, a grid. 

The game’s rules were simple:  Starting from the corner store, each player had to name as many north‑ and south‑running streets as he could and name them in the proper order.  When each player had finished with the north‑south streets, we applied the same rules to the east‑west streets.  The winner was the boy who named the most streets in the right order.  It was a game without prizes, the only reward being the chance to do what boys do well—show off, in this case knowledge.

The grid is a planning tool, a means of organizing urban growth.  It is also a map, a systematic ordering of streets and addresses that help a person get around in Chicago.  The explanation given here is one I took from the Chicago Studies project at the University of Chicago: 

Chicago streets run either N-S or E-W.  Exception: there are a few diagonals.

Every street has a PREFIX—N-S or E-W—to tell you how it's oriented.

The street grid has a CENTER at State and Madison, downtown, in the Loop

Street numbers go up as you move AWAY from the center.

Address numbers increase by 100 per BLOCK.

Eight Chicago long blocks equal one mile.  A short block is one-half the length of a long block.     

EVEN numbers are on the North/West side of the street.

Chicago's street SIGNS reference the grid, with the name of a street and its prefix

MAJOR streets mark each mile away from the center.

About diagonals:  Diagonal streets--there are few of them--follow trails of indigenous people.  Other diagonals are not streets but interruptions and barriers—embankments of railroad tracks and expressways. 

 Streetcars, and More

Streetcars, buses, subways, and els (elevated trains) took me from my home to anywhere else in the city. 

When I was growing up, Chicago had an excellent public transportation system.  I’ve read that it still does, and Bill Vandervoort, on his Chicago Transit and Railfan Website, makes a point that is just as true today as it was decades ago: “Chicago is an area where public transportation is extensively used, even by those who can afford automobiles.”

Our family did not have a car, and among neighbors who did own a car, it was a thing left parked during the workweek, in a garage, or sitting by the curb, stationary, like a chrome and steel altar, worshipped from across the front lawn until it could be fired up for a weekend drive to the country or used just to go for a spin.

So we walked, from our house to the streetcar line on Irving Park Road two-and-a-half blocks south, or one-and-one-half blocks north to the bus stop on Montrose Avenue.  These were north-south blocks, each one an eighth of a mile long.  An east-west block was half that distance.

The Irving Park Road streetcar line was a major thoroughfare with grocery stores, clothing and department stores, restaurants, and bars.  The Montrose Avenue bus was good for trips to the beach or a fishing pier at Lake Michigan.  Both routes offered frequent service and connected to other routes and types of public transit.

We lived seven miles northwest of downtown—the Loop—but you couldn’t get there from here.  A transfer was necessary, to the el from a streetcar or bus line.  Some el trains dove underground and became subway cars.  The subway went under the Chicago River, and puddles of water were visible from subway car windows, allowing a rider to wonder if the tunnel was leaking, and, if so, would the whole thing collapse?

The trip to downtown from our front door took forty minutes to an hour via the city’s system of public transit.  An alternative was a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad commuter train, from a depot in our neighborhood to its terminal just outside the Loop.  The train was faster, more expensive, and didn’t run as often.

A streetcar was driven up front by a motorman—that was his job title, although it sounds like the name of a cartoon character.  The conductor stood on the back platform and collected fares and handed out transfers.  The conductor also had the task of hooking up the trolley pole at the back of the car if it became disengaged from the overhead wire, which sometimes happened, especially when making turns.  Electrical power of 600 volts DC was supplied via the trolley pole from an overhead wire.

When I was a kid I paid seven cents to get on board a streetcar and obtain a transfer.  The transfer was a coupon that allowed its holder to do an unlimited amount of riding and transferring in the system.  Prices have gone up since then, and I read today that the fare system is a complexity of zones, turnstiles, transit cards, and separate fees for fares and transfers.

When I was young, I got a kick out of a streetcar ride.  As an adult I have ridden public transportation in Chicago, other U.S. cities, and England, and it's easy to find fault with it, but there is always one aspect of it that I truly like today—I can leave the driving to someone else.

“Don’t go to the South Side”

At some time during my years at Belding, I developed a serious case of wanderlust:  I simply had to see what was beyond this place called Irving Park, so I traveled.  I walked a lot at first, then used public transit as my excursions grew longer.  To return home, I usually did the simplest thing—retraced my path.  No map, no great navigational skill needed.

My parents gave me an inordinate amount of freedom.  They never questioned where I’d been, what I’d been doing.

Only once did they lay out any kind of rules for me: “Don’t go to the South Side.”

That was, and still is, fairly common advice about Chicago, and it’s advice that needs to contemplated before blindly following it.  It’s advice meant to keep a person alive and safe, for bad things did happen to people on the South Side.  And, rightly or wrongly, the bad things seemed to be associated with the South Side’s racially segregated neighborhoods.

But the South Side is the largest chunk of the city, and it’s virtually impossible to live in the city or to be a tourist visiting it without going to the South Side.  In the South Side are major universities, teaching hospitals, beautiful parks, great museums, a major league ballpark, and the longest stretch of Lake Michigan beach in the city.  The South Side also has enclaves of the wealthy, neighborhoods of ethnic and cultural diversity—and pockets of poverty, despair, and crime. 

As a child, I obeyed my parents’ rule and did not go to the South Side—except one time when, as a joke for my own amusement, I stepped across the Madison Street dividing line for a few seconds, just to say to myself that I’d been to the South Side.  I also went with school-led field trips to sites on the South Side.  And as an adult I drove my family into the South Side so that we could go to the Museum of Science and Industry, one of the best educational bangs-for-the-buck anywhere.

But as Little Billy Paxson, I did what my mother and father told me to do.

16.  Our Sunday Morning Ritual 

We had a Sunday morning ritual that began with church.  My mother was the major domo of everything in our family, including religion.  From religion, we went directly to the Harz Mountain Canaries.  Sounds like quite a jump; no problem.  

Onward Christian Scientists

My mother opted for Christian Science.  Or the little storefront church on Central Avenue.  Or the church on West Cullom that performed immersion baptisms.  Depart she did, but she always came back to Christian Science.

Christian Science was the creation of Mary Baker Eddy (1821‑1910).  Eddy injured herself by slipping and falling on ice in February 1866.  To heal from the fall, she recuperated by resting in bed and reading the Bible.   

As a result of that experience, Eddy claimed that her religious beliefs and not medical intervention cured the injuries that she had sustained.  Thereafter, she devoted herself to teaching the healing aspects of Christianity.  To name her version of Christian healing, Eddy coined the term Christian Science.  To have a pulpit, she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist.  To spread the word, she wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875).

Rooted in the Bible, Eddy's beliefs derive from Christianity.  But how does the word “Science” fit in?  Or the job title “Christ, Scientist”?

It's hard to imagine the world's best‑known hippie leaning over a beaker or timing rats in a maze.  Of course, that's a perspective taken well after Eddy.  Still, it's even harder to flash back to Eddy's time and lump Christ in with scientists whom she should have known of—Darwin, Pasteur, Mendel.

Eddy wrote in Science and Health that “The term Science properly understood”—meaning the way Eddy understood it— “refers only to the laws of God and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man.”

Well, of course.  Nothing says that you can't define terms any which way you want to.  Here Eddy had the support of the authoritative Humpty Dumpty, in Through the Looking Glass: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” 

 Science and Health omits any reference to laboratory science or the systematic pursuit of knowledge via the scientific method.  That kind of stuff is for the literal, logical mind, not the mind of the true believer.  Or maybe I missed a key definition, which would be easy to do, considering that Science and Health is cursed hard reading, thick with page after page of assertions, non sequiturs, and abstract ideas. 

Science and Health anticipates the skeptic: “Because the Science of Mind,” another of Eddy's terms for the healing power of her faith, “seems to bring into dishonor the ordinary scientific schools, which wrestle with material observations alone, this Science has met with opposition; but if any system honors God, it ought to receive aid, not opposition, from all thinking persons.”  The back of her hand to the nonbeliever.  If you don't believe in Christian Science, if you don't see the light as lit by Mary Baker Eddy, you are not a thinking person.

Christian Science especially appeals to people who do not like the idea that an all‑powerful God allows sickness and death.  According to Christian Science, God is wholly good and is a God of love; that is the only reality.  Sickness and death are not real.  Therefore, faith in God will help a person rise above the seemingly real aspects of sin, sickness, suffering, and death.  

Christian Scientists who carry their faith to extremes are the ones who refuse medical attention when deathly ill.  Those are the Christian Scientists who make headlines.  Other Christian Scientists go to doctors, the use of which is not forbidden by church doctrine. 

Christian Scientists develop and strengthen their faith by prayer and reading.  A daily lesson is important to Christian Scientists; the lesson consists of passages read from two works—the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health.  

The church operates reading rooms that provide access to Christian Science publications.  Church services are largely devoid of ritual and are conducted by members elected to serve as readers.  The church has no clergy, but it does have a cadre of practitioners who devote full time to healing via prayer and counseling. 

My mother the skeptic bought into Mary Baker Eddy's creed.  But my mother had another approach, besides the healing aspects, to Christian Science: “There are so many well‑to‑do people who are Christian Scientists,” she liked to say.  Maybe she was hoping for some of that wealth to rub off on us.  She simplified Christian Science beliefs into the catchphrase “mind over matter.”  To the Christian Scientist, mind and God are the same.  To be more precise, there are, or could be, two minds—the human or Mortal Mind, and the real or divine Mind.  Noting the capitalization is important for anyone who wants to follow Eddy's references to Mortal Mind and Mind.

The Mortal Mind doesn't count, according to Eddy, for it is “Nothing claiming to be something. . . the opposite of God, or good.”

However, Mind, the divine Mind, is “the only I, or Us, the only spirit, Soul, divine Principle, substance, Life, Truth, Love; the one God; not that which is in man, but the divine Principle, or God, of whom man is the full and perfect expression; Deity, which outlines but is not outlined.”

Now that explains everything.  And makes me wonder, in my crabbiest moments, whether Mary Baker Eddy hit her head when she fell on the ice.

If I stubbed my toe, my mother would say to me, “Just tell yourself it doesn't hurt.  It's all mind over matter, Billy.  The toe doesn't really hurt.  You're just letting yourself believe that it hurts.”

Cursing and grunting “Ouch!” were frowned upon; neither provided the true cure, and cursing, of course, was vulgar.

By my mother's expedient credo of mind over matter it was not necessary to pray over the sore toe or read something written by Mary Baker Eddy; all I had to do was stop wincing and tell myself to believe that “It doesn't hurt.”  Go through this often enough, and you build up a pretty good tolerance for pain.

Despite my mother's good health, she complained of always being tired.  “I'm so tired,” she'd say, and in a few days she'd be off to see a doctor or buy a new and different medicine.

She was picky about doctors.  A doctor had to find something wrong with her and prescribe a suitable medicine.  Most doctors understood the unspoken rules and complied.  Otherwise, those who told her that nothing was the matter with her, would be abruptly dumped.  Away from the doctor's ears my mother would deliver her valedictory: “The old fool.  What does he know?”

And despite her belief in “mind over matter,” her dresser top was a clutter of vials and bottles of nostrums and potions.  Some of the stuff was prescribed, some she'd read about or saw advertised, and some she'd heard about from a fellow sufferer.

From time to time, my mother went shopping for religions.  We were Presbyterians for a while, and occasional attendees at a storefront church where the pews were folding chairs and where the music and services were very energetic, to say the least.  But no matter where she strayed, she always came back to Christian Science, bringing along my father and me, who followed meekly in the footsteps of our shepherd.

Now, About Those Canaries

In the grand scheme of life-and-stuff it is truly propitious that we were Christian Scientists while we lived on north Tripp.  Timing was everything.  When services ended at church, we hurried home rather than miss a minute of a radio program that starred . . . canaries.

Canaries singing on the radio were popular from the 1930s into the 1950s.  The most popular singing canaries were a breed called Roller.  A little of their story is told in this excerpt from the website Old Time Radio Catalog.        

“Coal miners probably brought the birds into the mines so their song could help brighten their dark environs, but they soon discovered that the tiny birds were especially susceptible to the poison gasses which collected in some mines. As long as the canary kept singing the miners were safe, but if the bird expired it was time to get out. Miners in Germany's Harz Mountains were able to breed a canary [the Harz roller] whose song was so melodious that the birds became too valuable for use in the mines.

“Germany was still reeling from the economic ravages of the First World War in 1926 when ambitious Max Stern realized that German thrift and industry would serve him well in America. He set about collecting on old debts to finance his trip to the New World when one friend, a pet shop owner, said that he could only repay with 5,000 Harz roller canaries. Stern accepted the birds and negotiated free passage to New York aboard the Hamburg-American Steamship Line. Although he arrived in New York not understanding a word of English, he managed to sell his singing birds at the Astor Place John Wannamaker Department Store.

 “After opening an office at 36 Cooper Square, Stern returned to his native Germany several times, returning each time with more and more of the colorful, melodious birds which he sold to Sears-Roebuck, Woolworths, R.H. Macy, and other retailers. By 1932, Stern was the largest livestock importer in the United States and began supplying feed with the Hartz Mountain line of pet products [with a t added to the name].

“A small craze graced the radio waves in the form of Singing Canary programs. One of the earliest examples was the Mutual Network offering, American Radio Warblers on Sunday afternoons from 1937 to 1952. The program was sponsored by American Bird Products, a birdseed supplier, and featured organist Preston Sellers with canaries in cages near the organ. The Hartz Mountain Master Canaries began broadcasting from WGN Chicago. Since the Hartz Mountain line had expanded beyond birdseed, the program featured sketches of other pets pitching products like dog chews and cat toys.”

So our Sunday ritual ended to the tune of the chirping and singing of canaries, accompanied by an orchestra or organ playing well-known classics.  It was a cheerful ending to a solemn morning.

***

 

Good People: Part Four of "A Memoir of a Chicago Boyhood, 1932-1951"

13. The Eddie Brisson Room

 

In the middle of our Tripp Avenue apartment was a room that had a radio in it and chairs; it was a place to sit and talk. 

My mother had staked out a comfortable chair on whose arms she stacked astrology magazines, a Bible, and Christian Science reading material.  Somewhere in all that printed matter was guidance, solace perhaps, maybe a solution to the dilemma that life can be.  She liked to read astrology magazines.  With those guides she plotted her horoscope, trying to chart her best path through the future.  For true guidance, however, she turned to the Bible and religion; these were her mainstays.  

 

She often reminded me that I had been born on a cusp, a juncture of Scorpio and Sagittarius.  As she saw it, I would enjoy the zodiacal fruits offered by both signs.  The best of all possible worlds would be mine. 

My father’s tastes were simple and clearly defined.  One, he would listen to a Cubs game on the radio, or, two, when no Cubs game was available, he would read the newspaper.  A typical Chicago newspaper—there were several— in those times was thick, a book.   He would commandeer a discarded one during his commute or at the garment factory where he worked.  I swear he read every word, for his reading of the paper would take from after dinner until bedtime, nine o’clock or later.

We called it the living room; in today’s home it might be the family room.

We probably should have called it “The Eddie Brisson Room.”

Eddie Brisson was about the only visitor we had.  Friends of mine would come in for a few minutes; so would neighbors.  Salesmen and the occasional politician never got beyond the front door.

But Eddie Brisson often came to our house on North Tripp—to sit, to stay awhile, and to talk. 

Eddie Brisson dressed well, always wearing a suit and tie, and was of medium height.  His most eye‑catching feature was his shiny, bald pate fringed by jet‑black hair. 

Whether Eddie Brisson was a friend of my father's or my mother's I don't know.  Regardless of who was responsible for inviting him over, he was well-liked by both my parents.  “He's French, you know,” my mother cheerily whispered to me whenever Eddie Brisson came.  Having a Frenchman in the house warmed her Gallic roots and brightened her up.  Technically speaking, he wasn't French, but an American of French descent.  No big deal.  My mother reshaped his lineage until it pleased her.

While Eddie Brisson and my parents talked in the living room, I retreated to the kitchen to do schoolwork.  Sooner or later my mother would track me down and whisper in my ear, “He's French, you know.”  She always whispered his nationality to me, as though being French was something I should keep secret.  Or maybe being French was something that Eddie Brisson was ashamed of.

 

“Brisson is a French name,” my mother would emphasize, in hushed tones.  That could be, but my parents and the name's owner pronounced the name BRISSuhn, instead of the more Frenchified BreeceOWN.

 

My parents always referred to him as Eddie Brisson, never Mr. Brisson or just Eddie, but Eddie Brisson in full.  Maybe they called him Eddie to his face, but around me they used both names.  Even now I find it hard to write his name unless I type it out as Eddie Brisson. 

 

Late one afternoon Eddie Brisson arrived during a terrible storm.  Rain and hail slammed into the house.  Gusts of wind shook the place.  Doors and windows rattled.  Lightning flashed nearby. The lights blinked, once, again, several times.  Thunder crashed.

 

In the midst of this incredible racket and deluge, Eddie Brisson drove up, parked, and bolted toward the house.  My parents opened the door to let him in.  He stood in the front hall, shaking water from his fedora and with his hands trying to brush his clothes dry.

 

I stood nearby.  I was a shameless admirer of cars and people who owned cars, and Eddie Brisson owned a car.  It was a long, black thing with four doors and highly polished chrome that glistened brightly as rivulets of rainwater washed over it.

 

Who knows?  He might look at me standing there like the village idiot, slack‑jawed and wide‑eyed, and feel sorry enough for me to take me for a drive, even though the weather was fit only for Noah.  A ride around the block would have been enough.  That's all.  Anyway, I stood there, absorbing my parents' and Eddie Brisson's greetings to one another: 

“You're soaked, my parents said.

 

 “It wasn't raining on the other side of Elston,” Eddie Brisson said.

 

“Isn't that interesting.  Come on in and dry off.”

 

 “Yes,” Eddie Brisson said.  “The sun was out until I crossed Elston.”

 

“Well, fancy that.  You mean it wasn't raining on the other side of Elston?” 

“Yes,” Eddie Brisson said.  “Clear as a bell.  The sun was out all over the place on the other side of Elston.  It didn't start to rain until I got to this side of Elston.  Right after I crossed it.”

 

“Well, that's sure interesting.  It wasn't raining on the other side of Elston.”

     

“Yes.  It's sure different.  But it's sure raining here, isn't it?”     

“Well, how strange.  Not raining on the other side of Elston.”      

Is that how adults talked?  Saying the same thing over and over?  And on and on they went, yakking about the weather.  Small wonder that I found the radio more entertaining. 

Without Eddie Brisson around, there wasn't much talk in our house.  I had little to say, preferring to lose myself in listening to the radio or reading.  That left my parents to fill the air with words, which they didn't do. 

My father was a quiet man.  When some graduate student writes a dissertation about quiet men, the findings will show that the genus laconicus occurs in three species. 

One is the strong, silent type who knows how to use words but prefers not to.  The second is  the dour, gloomy ignoramus who doesn't have the slightest idea of how to use words.  The third possesses the wisdom to know when and how to use words and use them well. 

My father would have fallen into the third category.  He was serene and pleasant about saying nothing.  His silence was of the benign, smiling type, and when he did talk he said only what needed to be said.  By saying little, he said a lot. 

My father's reticence was probably inborn, although it could have come about because he was verbally outgunned by my mother.  Whenever anything serious was discussed between them, my mother closed off the discussion by saying, “Don't argue with me, Walt.  I know I'm right!” 

My mother was wordier than my father, but she sorted her wordiness into a limited number of predetermined topics. 

  One was her omniscience: “Don't argue with me, Walt.  I know I'm right!” 

Another favorite topic was her health: “I'm always tired,” she would say to anyone who would listen.  Or she would remark about her age: “I'm no spring chicken, you know. 

And her favorite motto: “A job begun is half done."  If I was ever slow in starting any chore that she assigned to me, and I often was, I was bound to hear, “Now, Billy, just remember—a job begun is half done.” 

My mother also held the honored position of being skeptic‑in‑residence.  One of her favorite remarks was “The old fool!  What does he know?” 

With that remark, she questioned the wisdom of radio commentators, politicians, neighbors, relatives—anyone.  All that was necessary was to voice an opinion that she did not agree with or deliver a statement of fact that she did not know for sure to be one hundred percent the gospel truth.  No sooner would the speaker utter the words than my mother would issue the challenge, “The old fool!  What does he know?” 

She did change the gender of the question if the “old fool” happened to be a woman.  Then the remark became, “The old fool.  What does she know?” 

Age, however, had nothing to do with being classified as an “old fool.”  That was the case when Paul Harvey, one of America's most durable radio personalities, started broadcasting his commentaries on a nationwide hookup in 1944.  At that time, Harvey was twenty‑six years old.  My mother liked Harvey, but even he provoked her into snorting, “The old fool!  What does he know?” 

When she had house cleaning to do or when she was working in the kitchen, the radio was her companion.  She liked pop singers, but if the vocalist was not up to her standards, her bellowed complaint echoed through the house: “Oh, shoot him!  For God’s sake!”  Or, “Put her out of her misery, will somebody?” 

She listened to the National Barn Dance on Saturday nights.  It was a sacred event, almost like going to church.  For two hours, Chicago radio station WLS aired “an entertaining broadcast of corny jokes, country music, hymns, folk songs, and down-home yarns,” according to WTTW, Chicago’s public television station.  

She turned the volume up.  There was no escaping it.  No matter where in the house I went, I heard banjos strumming, fiddles scraping, and people singing through their noses (that’s what they sounded like to me).

Trivia.  Two of Chicago’s most popular radio stations are WGN and WLS, both on the air since the 1920s.    Sears Roebuck owned WLS; the Chicago Tribune owned WGN.  WLS stands for World’s Largest Store; WGN for World’s Greatest Newspaper.  Ego at work here?

Other than Eddie Brisson, we had little company.  The alderman stopped by now and then for short chats.  He was a selfish sort, however, for he showed up only when he wanted votes.  And during the war, the air raid warden came to the door from time to time and reminded us to pull down the window shades and turn off the lights during practice air raid alerts. 

The truth of the matter is that we weren't the kind of people that you'd knock yourself out to go visit.  Both of my parents tended to be cool and distant, perhaps a familial trait, or perhaps a trait in keeping with people who had grown up during a more restrained time.

 Any kind of friendship or affection in our family seemed best demonstrated by remote control.  It was as though the other person's body radiated a force field which said, “That's close enough.”  Hugging was out of the question, whether side‑by‑side or full‑frontal.  I don't remember seeing my parents kiss each other, not even a peck on the cheek, nor did I ever see them sleep in the same bed.  And they shared little of the good‑natured banter heard in many marriages.

What few guests we had came and went without being offered food or drink.  Alcohol would never be served in a house run by my mother; coffee and soft drinks weren't offered either.  I was, however, allowed to invite friends in for a glass of milk and piece of my mother's devil's food cake—a delicious dessert that won her neighborhood acclaim.

Eddie Brisson must have fed and watered himself before he showed up.  No amount of deprivation at our hands kept him away.  He was a good, faithful friend. 

In all, Eddie Brisson's visits were worthwhile.  In a home where the residents spoke very little, Brisson inspired talk, and much more.  He was the catalyst.  Stir him in with Walt and Lou, and they became animated, smiling, happy.  It made no difference whether the talk was about the weather or any subject under the sun.  Even if the grist mill of adult talk ground up nothing more than air, talk was still good medicine.

Whenever Eddie Brisson left, I stood at our front window, watching him get into his car, lean over the wheel and start the engine, shift into gear, and drive away.  I imagined myself sitting next to him, noting the black hair under his fedora, seeing him stare at the pavement winding under the wheels of the car.

Eddie Brisson was all right in my book, even if he never did give me a ride in his car.

14.   Earl Was One of Them 

I have three vivid visual memories of my time at Belding.  A lot of words have come and gone, but these pictures stick:

One, the entire student body, along with teachers and other school employees, sat in the auditorium and listened to a radio broadcast of the Cubs losing the seventh game of the 1945 World Series. It was almost as much fun as going to a funeral. 

Two, I was late leaving school one afternoon and was running to get out.  I turned a corner and crashed into the principal.  In a split second I knew that I was going to get royally chewed out, for the school rule was walk, do not run.  Not now, however, for she smiled and stepped out of my way.

Three, each school-day morning, before the first bell rang, a cluster of boys approached Belding, walking along Tripp from the direction of Irving Park Road.  How many boys?  I don't know--three, four, six maybe.  The number varied.    They had a lot of socializing to do, and they moved around in the group, trading places to talk with one another.

One of the boys was Earl.

Earl was a grade, maybe two, ahead of me at Belding. I didn’t know him personally, but I often saw him outside, going to or coming from school, hanging out with his friends. They were an animated group, lively and laughing, and Earl was chatting and laughing with them.

Earl was a cripple.  We could say that word back then, but today I shouldn’t be so blunt.  By any name, some evil thing—a birth defect but more probably poliomyelitis—had all but destroyed his ability to use his legs. Crutches clamped to his forearms helped him lurch through a crude walking gait.

He hung out with his buddies.  He was one of them.  He did everything they did except play sports or field games. He would sit in a chair on the sidelines, but he was not sent inside out of sight. 

I suppose that I could have learned a lot from remembering Earl hanging out with his pals, but what strikes me the most is that these healthy, normal kids accepted a cripple in their group.  Earl was one of them. 

***

At Dirty-six, Part One of the Memoir "Something to Do," by William C. Paxson

Introduction

A friend asked me, “Did you like your childhood?”

I was stumped.  How was I going to answer that? The question came from the wife of an air force buddy of mine.  Several of us, all in our eighties, were sitting around reminiscing, and now someone had brought up the subject of childhood, with a question directed to me:  Did I like my childhood?

How would I know?  That was a long time ago.  And what difference does it make whether I liked my childhood?  Life goes on—and I’m happy that it does—regardless of how I feel about it. 

When I think back over my early years, I can recall dark moments, but all in all, I had a rich childhood, what with all that Chicago had to offer.  My parents gave me an inordinate amount of freedom, and I used it.  An excellent public transportation system took me anywhere I wanted to go in the city, my bicycle took me out to suburbs and farmland, and railroads took me to the other worldliness of the Fox River Valley.

I set out to describe that childhood in these pages.  A week and three pages into the project I found myself playing solitaire instead of tapping out words.  I had written about my childhood in an autobiography that I wrote a couple of decades ago, and now I was wondering, why am I doing this again?  Maybe my ego is out of control.  What kind of person writes only about himself?

So I came up with reasons for writing another autobiography.   One, this work will cover only my boyhood, from birth until I graduated from high school; the previous work attempts to cover my entire life.  Two, in rereading what I had written before, I realized I had left out material that could be of interest to readers, so what I plan to do with this version is to put in the stuff that I left out the first time around.  Three—and here I succumbed to a full-blown attack of arrogance—just about anyone could have had the adult life that I had, but only I could have had my boyhood.

You can read about it here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.   Early Stupid Boy Stunts

 

I don’t care for guesswork, so let’s start with a few facts:

 

              Who  William Charles Paxson

             What   birth

             When  November 22, 1932

            Where  Chicago, Illinois

               How   No abnormalities noted

               Why   Good question

The world began for me—I remember nothing before this—with a stupid boy stunt.  I don’t know how old I was.  Four would be a good guess.  I was running through the house, stiff-arming against a wall to stop.  My parents were watching, smiling, tolerating my need to burn up energy.  Okay, showing off is what I was really doing.

I stiff-armed to a stop against a kitchen wall, pulled back to turn around and run the other way, and couldn’t flex my arm.  The elbow was jammed, and it hurt.

That was not my first stupid boy stunt.  At some time before that, as my mother told the story, I went to a birthday party for some other little kid and came home sick. My mother called a doctor.  Doctors made house calls in those days, and one came to examine me.

“That boy’s not sick,” the doctor said. “He’s drunk!”  Someone at the party had given me beer.

Like any true sot, I recall nothing of the incident.

My mother liked to tell that story, smiling and laughing as she related how a doctor described her son as drunk.  I never did understand why she found it so entertaining, because she loathed anything to do with alcohol.  If she had had a hatchet and lived a few decades earlier, she could have marched alongside Carrie Nation, destroying taverns hither and anywhere. Instead, the thought of a blotto toddler in her own house, no less her own flesh and blood, brought on severe giggles. 

 

2.  Lou and Walt.  Billy (!)

 

He called her Lou, she called him Walt.  I called her Mother; he was Dad to me.  It would have seemed logical if I had said Mom and Dad, but Mom seemed to me to be too casual a term for the woman who was my boss. 

My parents were old enough to be my grandparents, my mother being thirty-nine years old when I was born, my father fifty-two.  I doubt that I was the product of a midlife, lust-crazed tussle.  Instead, at stake here was old-style family planning: have children to support you in your old age.

They called me Billy, a name that I hated.  Too many people, especially those who wanted to tease a little kid, knew the words to a popular folk tune titled “Billy Boy.”  In the song, "Billy Boy" is asked various questions, and the answers all deal with his quest to marry a girl who has a serious personal problem:

 

            Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?

            Oh, where have you been, Charming Billy?

            I have been to seek a wife, she's the joy of my life

            But she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

 

Like much folk music, “Billy Boy” lives on and on and can be heard on YouTube today.

 

3.  Who Were These People?

Lucille Catherine Beuchat

My mother liked to say of herself, “I'm a Beuchat.”  She was French‑Swiss, and proud of it.  A lot of Germans came to the United States when her forebears did during the nineteenth century.  So did a lot of Irish and Poles.  None of them, however, could hold a candle to the French‑Swiss, a minority among immigrants yet the best of the lot, to my mother's way of thinking.

 

Some of her kin spelled the name Beuchaw, others Beauchat.  Beuchat, however, is the spelling shown in the official Swiss records of births and deaths in her father's family.

 

She pronounced the name “BEWchat,” sounding the “t,” as did many of her relatives, saying the name to rhyme with “few chat.”  It was too much to expect anyone other than a Frenchman to master the Old Country pronunciation, with that heavily nasalized first syllable and the last syllable somewhere between “shah” and “shaw,” the “t” being silent.

 

My mother's father was Louis Celestine Beuchat.  He was born in La Chaux‑de‑Fonds, in the French‑speaking canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on September 1, 1856.  Louis's wife, Erma Marie Miche, was born in Moyenmoutier, in the department of Vosges, France, on February 12, 1860.

 

They lived about a hundred miles apart in Europe, and apparently did not meet until they arrived in America, around 1880 or 1881.  Family lore has it that she came here to be a governess, he to visit relatives.

 

By 1882, Louis and Erma were married and residing on Long Island, New York.  Their first child was born and died there, living a couple of months short of a year.  By 1886, they were in Illinois, eventually settling at Barrington, a village thirty‑five miles northwest of Chicago.  There they farmed on 445 acres and operated a dairy. 

 

It was at Barrington that my mother, Lucille Catherine Beuchat, was born, on October 13, 1893.  She was one of five children, three boys and two girls, who survived infancy.

 

My mother's birth date was the subject of a long‑running sisterly debate.  My mother maintained that her birth year was 1893, while her sister, my Aunt Elsie, argued that my mother's birth year was 1892.  My mother's retort to Elsie's position was that Elsie was jealous and wanted her (my mother) to be older than she was.

 

My mother's birth certificate shows October 13, 1893.  However, that birth certificate wasn't issued until a half century after her birth.  The birth date on the certificate was attested to by one of her brothers, my Uncle Albert.

 

Albert would have been eight or nine when my mother was born, depending upon which birth year is correct.  At that young an age, it's highly doubtful that Albert remembered exactly when his sister came into the world; he was probably out playing or milking cows at the time. 

 

Therefore, when my mother deemed it necessary to have a birth certificate, Albert probably went along with whatever birth year she told him.

 

But the 1900 census shows my mother's birth date as October 13, 1892.  The census also erroneously records her father's birth year and haphazardly spells three siblings' names:  Marcelle was written as Marshall, Elsie as Elsa, Lucille as Lucy.  It's all too easy to imagine a Yankee census taker going up to the door of the Beuchat farmhouse, listening to someone jabber at him in an American‑French patois, and then writing down what he thought he'd heard.

 

So the 1900 census was sloppy, and Aunt Elsie could have been wrong.  Besides, there's little to be gained in lying about a year.  Shaving ten years or even five from vital statistics might make a person feel younger, but dropping a mere year is about as rewarding as going on a diet by not putting cream in your coffee.  In addition, a birth year of 1892 would have meant that my mother could have applied for Social Security benefits a year earlier; I'm sure that she would have liked to have used that advantage.

 

Anyway, the principals are dead, and truth is relative when a sisterly argument is involved.  I sided with my mother:  October 13, 1893.

 

The farm left its mark on my mother long after she had moved on.  She and her siblings were bowlegged, a feature she attributed to horseback riding as a child.  Some of her happiest moments were when she talked, bragged really, about how much fun it was for the family to sit down to dinner with the hired men.  Any farm that needed hired men was a big, important farm, something she never let anyone forget. 

 

She was married twice before she met my father.  In her first marriage, she had a daughter named Verdalle, who was born on May 6, 1912.

 

An excellent seamstress, my mother often made shirts for me and my father.  Like my father, she worked in the ladies' garment industry.  It's possible that she was working in the garment industry as a seamstress, one of “the girls” as they were known, when she met my father, Walter Jacquith Paxson.

 

 

Walter Jacquith Paxson

 

The name Paxson fascinates people who like to translate it into what they think are its Latin  parts: “Son of peace.” That translation is a little shaky.  Pax stands for “peace” in Latin; that part is right.  But the Latin for “son” is filius.  Therefore, “Son of peace” would have to be written as Paxfilius. 

 

According to Elsdon C. Smith's New Dictionary of American Family Names (1973), Paxson or Paxon stands for the “son of Pack.”  Centuries ago in England, Pack was a name given to one born during Easter season; the name Pack was supposed to denote suffering.

 

People who imagine the letter t where it doesn't exist often spell and say the name as Paxton.  To be precise, that's not a misspelling but another name entirely, standing for one who came from “Pack's homestead,” a name for any of several places in the England of centuries ago.

 

Since the early 1800s, people possessing the Paxson surname have lived in America; some have left their mark on the land.  The most famous was the historian Frederick Logan Paxson (1877‑1948).  Frederick wrote several important books; his History of the American Frontier (1924) won him a Pulitzer Prize.

 

In addition, the name Paxson identifies a spot on the map of Alaska, at the junction of the Richardson and Denali highways.  The spot is named after Alvin J. Paxson, a pioneer mail carrier in the area.  Alvin established a roadhouse there about 1900; a century later the roadhouse is still about all that's there.

 

But neither the historian nor the mailman can be found in my family tree.  Nor can any of the Paxsons listed in Who Was Who in America or similar references.  As unusual as the name is, well‑known Paxsons don't seem to connect to my branch of the family.  In addition, standard biographical references show no Beuchats.  We are a conspicuously inconspicuous bunch, a comfortable and safe status.

 

The Paxsons in my family tree joined the westward flow of migrants, and one branch settled in South Bend, Indiana.  It was at South Bend that my paternal grandparents were born—William Vesey Paxson, on August 3, 1851, and Mary Alice Jacquith, on September 16, 1853.

 

Located seventy miles east of Chicago, South Bend is one of Indiana's largest cities and is probably best known as the home of the University of Notre Dame.  St. Mary's College, the second oldest Catholic women's college in the United States, is at South Bend.  For a long time the city was home to the Studebaker car company and the Bendix corporation.  South Bend is also known as “Michiana” because it is the trade and financial center of southern Michigan and northern Indiana.

 

My father was born in South Bend on March 3, 1880, a dozen years before my mother.  He was one of five children, two girls and three boys.  Unlike my mother, he had no children until I came along.

 

My father talked very little about himself.  He did tell me that as a young man he had lived in New York for a time, whether the city or somewhere else in the state I don't remember.  He also mentioned that when he moved back to South Bend one of his neighbors was Knute Rockne, the legendary Notre Dame football coach.  This was not a matter of name‑dropping on my father's part.  Instead, he had a lot of respect for Rockne and liked to talk about his accomplishments.

 

As a young man, my father became a cutter in the ladies' garment industry.  Although called “ladies’ garment industry,” its factories made clothing for any gender, any age.

 

He came close to the description of a cutter that Benjamin Stolberg put in his history of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, Tailor's Progress:  The Story of a Famous Union and the Men Who Made It (1944).

 

According to Stolberg, at the time that the union came into existence it consisted of people working in four crafts—cloak makers, pressers, seamstresses, and cutters.  Each craft, Stolberg said, was populated by people with unique personalities.  The cloak makers were philosophers, kibitzers, and folk commentators; the pressers were manual laborers easily satisfied with simple things; and the seamstresses or dressmakers were “the girls,” young women who sat hour after hour, pumping the treadles of sewing machines, visions of romance and marriage filling their heads.  As for the cutters, Stolberg wrote, “They are middle‑class in outlook, like to live well, are good dressers, and good poker players.”

 

I remember my father as being an absolute wizard at poker or any game.  He wasn't bound up in class labels, so he would probably shrug his shoulders at being called middle-class.  He was also a good dresser, as good stands for clean and neat, but not natty, for he didn't have a lot of money to spend on clothes.  His suits were nicely pressed, his tie knotted firmly, a fedora atop his head; his shoes were always shined, their gleam the product of the time, polish, and spit that he devoted to them.  As for living well, that was limited to enjoying as many baseball games as his money would buy and drinking whatever beer he could afford and could sneak by my mother.

 

He and my mother were married in Chicago, on March 3, 1926.  It was on my father's forty‑sixth birthday that this French‑English alliance occurred.  He was short, about five‑four; she was a couple of inches taller.  The first photographs I have of them together were taken in 1933 or 1934; the photos show them to be people of no extraordinary appearance.  He was pudgy and soft‑looking, with a rectangular face longer than it was wide; a mustache that he often sported concealed a slight harelip.  She was a fleshy woman at that time, but a woman who looked lithe and coquettish in a solo picture taken fifteen years earlier.

 

When the farm girl and the cutter got married, Verdalle, my mother's child by her first marriage, was fourteen.  So at the age of forty‑six and previously childless, my father married a woman with a teen‑aged daughter.  He was now a stepfather.  Six years later he would be a father in his own right.

 4.  Renters

Lou and Walt were renters, shelling out money every month to pay for a roof over their heads.  They rented furnished, a more expensive method of paying for shelter rather than having your own furniture and renting an unfurnished house or apartment.  And renting furnished enabled renters to get by with little more than the clothes on their backs. 

During the eighteen years that I lived at home we moved a half dozen times.  For me to write simply that “we moved” does not give credit to my parents for doing the hard work of finding a place to live. 

Assuming that my parents had a list of available rentals—obtainable from Chicago’s several newspapers or by word of mouth—a telephone would help get more information.  But we didn’t have a phone in the house at that time.  Here, it would be helpful to have a friendly neighbor who would lend a phone; otherwise, it’s off to find a pay phone (and make sure you’ve got enough change with you).   Then there’s the need to look at the property before deciding. To perform any kind of a look-see, a car-less family in Chicago would have to rely on a streetcar, bus, el, subway, maybe all of the above.

And there’s the required discussion:  Would this be the right place for us, can we afford it, etc, etc?

My father was the least talkative man I have ever known, and the Quaker in him was not prone to arguing.  He was also an ardent fan of the Chicago Cubs.  At some point the Cubs fan in him must have prevailed, for by the time I entered kindergarten we were living near the Cubs’ home, Wrigley Field.

5.  Dirty-six Days                                                        

In the family archives is an undated photograph cut from a newspaper.  It’s a picture of my kindergarten class at Chicago’s Alexander Hamilton elementary school.  There we are, twenty bright shining faces all in our places—with the home address given for each child.  Things were different then, for I doubt very much whether an editor today would print the home address of anyone of any age unless that address was newsworthy.

We lived in the 3600 block of North Ravenswood Avenue.  We called the place Dirty-six because of the coal ash from trains that ran across the street.  Our house was a few blocks from the Alexander Hamilton elementary school.

Here the plot thickens, because Chicago is laid out in a grid of blocks, and in Chicago a block oriented north-south is twice as long as a block oriented east-west.  The general rule is eight blocks equal a mile, provided that you are counting the long side of the block rather than the short side, so if I wanted to tell you how far in miles or parts of a mile that I walked to get to school, the few blocks I walked to school measured 1.8 north-south (long) blocks and 2.5 east-west (short) blocks.   I didn’t do the math, but I stand by my answer:  a few blocks—not far at all.  And it was all over level ground, neither uphill nor down, and I never had to walk it in a blizzard.

But would my parents have allowed me to walk that distance alone?  That’s a puzzler.  The neighborhood was safe—safety being a factor when talking about Chicago locales—but I was a puny runt who could have injured himself stumbling over a pebble.  How did I get to and from school?  Neither of my parents drove, we didn’t have a car, and the route to and from school was along streets not served by public transit.  The only memory I have of kindergarten is one day I became ill at school and a girl from a higher grade walked me home.

Little Billy Paxson, age
2 years, or thereabouts

Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, was east of our house.  Addison Street, south of our house, ran to the front of the ballpark, Waveland Avenue, north of us, to the bleachers.  Bus service ran on Addison to cover the mile to the park.  My father knew baseball, and the Cubs were his team.  There’s no doubt in my mind that he brought a lot of weight to the choice to live at the North Ravenswood address.

Across the street from our front door were tracks of the Milwaukee Road—the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (CMStP&P).  The Milwaukee Road was the third railroad to connect the Midwest with the Pacific Northwest, following the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern.  Besides serving a transcontinental railroad, the tracks across the street carried commuter trains to and from Chicago’s northern suburbs.    

Trains at that time burned coal for fuel, and coal is one of the dirtiest fuels around.  Rightly or wrongly, my parents blamed coal ash in the smoke from locomotives across the street for the pneumonia that struck me down in kindergarten.  That is, I was told that pneumonia was the culprit, but it could have been any sort of respiratory crud that once every four years sickened me between Thanksgiving and Christmas and kept me out of school for a week.

At Dirty-six my bed was in a corner of a room at the front of the house.  For a time, a visitor entering through the front of the house would be greeted by the sight of a bed with a sick kid in it.  A doctor could offer no cure for the pneumonia, my mother said, so she called in a Christian Science practitioner.

Exactly what a Christian Science practitioner does, I don’t know.  From reading online info about the subject, I gather that it involves prayer and counseling.  Regardless, I recovered and went outside to play in the snow.

Because of the coal ash or for some other reason, we moved.  In a classification scheme of human migrations, this move could have been labeled an “Inner-city Crosstown Streetcar-assisted Family Relocation.”

The truth of the matter is that I don’t remember how we moved, but it could have been performed this way:  We walked the short distance from the Dirty-six house to the Irving Park Road streetcar line, took a streetcar west to the neighborhood of Irving Park, got off, and walked another short distance to our new home.

 ***