Cameos
Remembrances of some of the adults who weren't supposed to hold an inordinate amount of influence in my life. They didn't. Those roles were supposed to fall to parents, to family, to close friends. That position isn't a sure bet, either. The end result of any influence might be measured by credit or by blame or by ability to respond at all ... or perhaps by an inability to respond in time to their affection. In any case, the presence of anyone in our lives is influential. We might view some as icons: some for a little while, some forever. Others are likely to be forgotten. We think we have dismissed them, but in thinking about them at all later on we find that they are not forgotten and have left an impression of sorts with us.
The Promise
A Bargain at Any Price
Doctor Fleitas
Fine Tuning the Pecking Order
Rock of Ages
Thank You, Miss Fleming
The Promise
Parents are always making some kind of plans that affect us. Maybe we're not interested. That attitude holds no water because they've already determined the particular course we're to take.
"You're old enough to work." Start looking or they will choose something distasteful. There's a word that is translated to "degrees"; I thought work was distasteful altogether because it interfered with play. Play is for kids; work is for adults. If I had some control over the selection of a job I could put it to advantage. Work and play worked because when I worked I got paid and the pay would be used to getting some purchasing power under my control. When strangers asked me to work for them I was at the advantage. I could say "no." It was more likely that I would say "yes." They flattered me in asking so I had an advantage over Joe Borghi or Erik Vikingstad or Jimmy Evans or Walton Reid if they weren't working.
What's the reasoning that affects enthusiasm for jobs?
My first job was peddling Look magazines. I saw a great future ahead. I might rise to prominence in the firm. I knew of tales where office-boys worked diligently, gained favor, and in time became the bosses of empires. E.T. Stotesbury did that and he lived in a house near my grandmother. His house had a hundred and forty rooms.
Pete Nolan was going to retire from his newspaper route. He offered it to me at a buying price. I bought a business and at the same time became a limited partner of the owner, himself. I got a penny for each paper that I sold; the publisher got a penny. Being a paper-boy has status attached to it for a while. The root of that feeling takes hold when little boys see bigger ones on the route. (I wish I could do that). It's the kind of job boys will eventually grow away from when something more attractive is offered up. Chances of owning the newspaper at a later time aren't on the list. The romance wore away on those days when rain, sleet, snow and bitter cold battered the carriers on their routes.
When the newspaper fever left me luck filled the vacuum. I was in the grocery store reading my mother's list of things to buy today to the proprietress. Mae Bryant was looking at a bright boy. I read well, I suppose. Mae made advances: "Wanna work here?"
She laid out the duties. I would deliver the groceries in the company wagon: rusty, wobbly and old. I would help stock arriving goods, some on the shelf, others in the cellar. I would sometimes wait on the clients. I would sweep the store at the end of the working day. I would be paid six dollars a week and keep whatever tips given at deliveries.
Her son and a couple of his friends worked at the store on irregular shifts. They were big kids who went to high school and were masters at giving orders little kids willingly followed. They let me listen to dirty stories and clean ones, too. Mae's son, Ivan, alerted me to teachers I would expect to see soon enough. When I would finally enter high school, I would expect to have to suffer under Doctor Zwarg, the toughest of them all. Zwarg was a gym teacher, but he was only a name. I couldn't fully appreciate his power yet.
Mae and her family moved back to Tennessee before I saw Doctor Zwarg in action. The store closed and my mom thought I shouldn't be idle. In the period between my late job at The American Store and prestige gained from working at the Socony Vacuum(Mobilgas) station I wouldn't be left idle. The allowance that little boys get for little chores would eventually be withdrawn although chores would remain and, to be sure, get harder. Chores were responsibilities, part of shared life at home. When kids get out of tune with that, the family might expect problems.
Aunt Dot (Dorothy) was married to a man who was the caddie-master at the Philadelphia Cricket Club. I would hike up to Flourtown and carry golf bags for rich men who knew how to spend idle time. My Uncle Bill was fair. He didn't put me ahead of the veteran toads and older kids. That was a wise course that probably saved me from getting beat-up by people who appeared at the shack before me.
The pay was good if you could drag "doubles," two big golf bags, for three and a half hours and your masters were pleased and they were in a generous mood. Some were ill mannered to underlings out of habit and paid their caddies accordingly. Certain club members were favored by the seasoned caddies and in turn some members chose steady or personal caddies. For a while I "shagged" balls for the golf-pro. That was a job of uneven nature. On dull days there was at least a guarantee of making money chasing cock-eyed shots all day made by disoriented ladies out of bottomless buckets. If the course was busy, shaggers went home with considerably less money than bag-toters.
Eventually one of the club members took a shine to me. Caddies are supposed to be shy. Speak only when asked questions: that sort of thing. This guy was friendlier than my Uncle Bill, the caddie master. He introduced me to his wife. They were concerned, "What do you want to do when you grow-up?"
I was in my I want to be an architect stage. A little earlier when I was in the I want to be a cowboy or I want to be a fireman moods those kind of answers would have gotten cute smiles but wanting to be an architect showed promise. Ah! If I wanted to be a lawyer I might have gotten a patron. If I wanted to be a stockbroker I might have been adopted. His wife told me I was cute. I guess I was in the cute stage. That's over with now.
"Are you ambitious?" My golfer patron inquired with concern.
"Yes, sir."
It pays to say sir. It's a civilized mark of respect in this part of the world. In some sub-cultures respect meant giving your profits to gangsters. He had a proposition. "If you can earn twenty five dollars in a week, I'll match it."
Now that's incentive. My mom noted a change in my attitude toward going up to Flourtown to caddie. I told her Mister(X) had promised...... I wanted to be at the club early. Twenty five bucks was no small effort. In 1948, a caddie might make a dollar and a half lugging a bag for eighteen holes: sometimes as much as two dollars. In the given week I made thirty-four.
Mister X (I do remember his real name) got the news from me; $34! I was elated. "Well," he said, "that's nice." And he walked away, I never got the twenty-five dollars.
Gee! I know people who would analyze things and ask questions and give answers beyond mine. They heard earlier questions like " Are you ambitious?" After the reneged promise it was fated that I didn't become an architect. But that was just a phase, like wanting to be a fireman or a cowboy. Or ambitious.
A Bargain At Any Price
James Melton was an opera star. He was an American who got roles at The Met. That's an accomplishment because Americans weren't supposed to be capable of doing well in grand opera — as stars. It's analogous to soccer playing. Credentials were dependent on being from somewhere else: anywhere but America.
A man who lived in our neighborhood reminded me of James Melton. He sang at The Met; in the chorus — occasionally. Sometime, when I walked by his house on Tulpehocken Street I would hear him warbling scales. That's not the sort of thing that would draw people to sit on the step or the grass to listen to. I had no appreciation for classical vocalism anyway so to me his voice exercises were only a cacophony. If he sang Celeste Aida or Vesta la Gubba it would sound foreign to me.
His wife shopped at The American Store. I delivered the groceries in the wobbly wagon and she, or he when he wasn't upstairs practicing for his next appearance as a spear-carrier, would direct me and the boxes of food to the kitchen. A good tip was given to me for my work. And some friendly chatter. They were nice people.
When I turned sixteen I got a better job offer and I took it. It's okay at fourteen to work in a grocery store but there's no prestige if comparisons are made between food markets and gas stations. Boys have love-affairs with inanimate objects. The car was a stronger one than most others.
"Do you know how to drive?" You have to have credentials (experience). It's good that my boss-to-be didn't ask for particulars. Some of us got experience through joy-rides made in cars we "borrowed" while their owners were away. Today I recognize that as car theft. We took the cars back after testing them but if we went to court that wouldn't have been considered.
"Yeah!" The job was mine. I would pump gas for Socony Vacuum. That's Mobilgas.
The guy who sang in the chorus at The Met was a regular customer at the Socony station. When he arrived at the pump I'd fill the tank. "Check the oil? Check the water? Check the air in the tires?" All that was in the script, even for those who asked for a dollar of gas. We had a rag to wipe the windshield, another to clean away gasoline spilled on the fender. Ken, the driver, had done all these things already so I didn't have to lift the hood or wipe the windows or check the tires.
He kept this car in a rented garage on the end of my street. He spent a lot of time tinkering, fine tuning and polishing for Sunday afternoon drives. He and his wife would dress-up, she in blouse and long skirt and a hat held down with a silk scarf, and he in a greatcoat, cap and gloves. They were showing-off, not in the immediate neighborhood where they were known, but on all the roads beyond it, On those days when the weather was fair they'd pull down the canvas roof and go for a vanity-soaked ramble in the big green Rolls Royce touring car. It purred nicely from his spoiling. People in the outside world ogled it and them with envy as they watched it quietly roll by.
A Rolls Royce! That's the kind of car that chauffeurs drove for Doctor Barnes, the King of England, and the better millionaires around. James Melton and Ken the chorus singer drove for themselves. In a neighborhood where Chevys and Nashes and Studebakers and DeSotos were seen, Ken's Rolls Royce somehow escaped criticism and jealousy perhaps because it was a twenty-two year old car. It was an old car with the steering wheel on the wrong side.
Ken and his wife would move away to Watertown, New York. Would I like to buy the big green Rolls Royce touring car with the steering wheel on the wrong side? It had a magneto, a device that predated a starter button, something you don't see in cars anymore either. It had a gas tank that took a lot more fuel than others and got a lot lower mileage to satiate its twelve hungry cylinders under the long hood. It was a car that sixteen year olds should be prohibited from driving at any price.
"How much?" I asked at the offer for the car that I watched him care for on many afternoons in front of the garage he rented to protect it from mean weather.
"Nine hundred dollars?"
My dad couldn't afford that. That car's twenty two years old. C'mon pop, I'd say and he'd say it's twenty two years old. Besides, I couldn't take care of my bike, my bedroom and my clothes. He'd be right.
Nine hundred dollars was a lot of money. I made fifteen dollars a week at my part time job. If an adult made a hundred dollars a week, he was doing well. For a little more that nine hundred dollars he could buy a new Ford or a Plymouth and he wouldn't have to spend forty hours tinkering so that he could have a smooth Sunday afternoon drive.
Five years later the economic climate was better and I bought an MG-TC, a little roadster with the steering wheel on the wrong side. I paid the former owner $1200 and spent a lot more keeping mechanics busy doing things that Ken and my Uncle Gene did on their own too fragile antiques so that they wouldn't break down during Sunday drives that were orchestrated to cause people to ogle with envy. When my MG fell into ruin from abuse I bought a new Studebaker Hawk for $2100, x dollars down and so much a month for so many years. And in all the years since I've never paid as much as $900 for any of the cars I've owned.
Here's a thought. Suppose I found a way to get $900 and went over to Tulpehocken Street and knocked on Ken's door. "Here's the money." The man who was nice might look at me, a little puzzled at his own joke. "I was only kidding. Nine hundred dollars? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
Dr. Fleitas
Speaking as a boy, and remembering what my companions thought, I knew that we had heroes more important than those that were created from imagination by writers. Writers raised up the deeds of real people too, but into legends that were truth somewhat stretched. We got that sort of tampered history early-on as the stories about George Washington were contrived to excite our patriotism. He tossed a dollar across the Potomac. (Subsequent leaders tossed a lot of money into the Sargasso Sea of no return.) He chopped down the Cherry tree and confessed. When he grew-up he conspired in some spare time with a thrice-wed Philadelphia woman to design a rather nice flag that was constantly subject to revision. (A sign that other things written in stone could be changed as well.) Rumors abounded about him because he was larger than life. Some popular artistic renditions were somewhat off the mark and if you depended on the portrait found on dollar bills, you wouldn't be able to pick him out in a line-up. Wags led us to believe he had wooden-teeth. They were ivory, I think, but dental surgeons always have had a tough time rebuilding vacancies behind lips.
We liked Washington. And Honest Abe, the rail-splitter. And Teddy Roosevelt, the great Rough Rider who would be president. Boys were the stuff that might be presidents.
Who did girls like in their gender? They never talked to us about heroines. There were great exemplars, to be sure: The Blessed Virgin Mary, Joanne d'Arc, assorted queens in Europe, Betsy Ross, the old lady who hung Betsy's flag defiantly from her window as the British made a show of force on her street, and Mother Bloor.
It seemed to me girls had their best chance in the medical world. Prominent figures could inspire them to extraordinary vocations: women like Madame Curie, Sister Kenny, Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. She made more sense then the men in Crimea who were immortalized nicely so that school-boys could proudly recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade." It's a good poem but in the end none would really want to be the object of such a grotesque tribute owed only to stupidity. We didn't know that. Our heroes were infallible and that's why Custer, above his poor men, survived in romantic exaggeration.
The drug store on Chew Street was fronted by a display window. Big glass jars sat on either side. They were filled with colored water: mysterious potions, we thought. Parke-Davis, a pharmaceutical company, supplied art work related to medicines. The pictures of the month showed Greeks or Mesopotamians or Incas doing something medical. Madame Curie appeared on one of them. So did Alexander Fleming poking around bad bread and finding penicillin. My favorite was Walter Reed curing malaria. The girls had their saints and the boys had theirs. A pestal and mortar, symbols of the trade, completed the display in Doc Shaffer's window made into a shrine.
Medicine was wonderful as long as we didn't have to take it. Little kids played "doctor." The girls generally were satisfied with being the "nurse" and that was logical because Sister Kenny, who we thought was a nun, was a (British) nurse (er, she was an Australian). And Florence Nightingale was the mother of all nurses.
Playing "doctor" was seized upon by toy makers who sold little doctor kits that contained stethoscopes and phony syringes and prescription bottles full of candy and thermometers and tongue depressors. Little kids followed basics at exam time, not going beyond stuff included in the kits. (There were no advanced bags containing the equipment proctologists and gynecologists used).
All this made trips to see the doctor a little less scary. His examining room was full of curious things. Husky hyperdermic needles weren't among the favorite objects that might be seen on visits. If we only went to the doctor to have the same things done that we practiced on each other, the eight years or more that they labored in schools would have been ridiculously wasted. As in barber shops, magazines were set on little tables for those who waited and lollipops were handy to assuage discomfort visited on children.
"Discomfort" is a word that doctors (and dentists) used to lie to us to describe pending excruciating pain. "You're going to have some discomfort," Run for your life; this is going to really hurt. You can bet on it. In other applications, discomfort meant bad fitting shoes or broken seats in theaters or being near people who might not like you.
I wasn't a sick kid so I didn't spend a lot of time at doctors' offices. I made the usual trips for inoculations and lollipops. The candy wasn't worth the pain. Those visits were planned because my parents knew their responsibility was to do their part in preventing epidemics. Contagion was taken seriously and if a kid was infected (mumps, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, measles, TB, and any other catching disorders beyond poison-ivy) a quarantine sign would appear on a window of the house to keep friends, neighbors, relatives and bill collectors at bay. The sick kid was kept in bed until danger passed. If there was any consolation to him, it would be that he was doted over and got better food: no liver or other hated fare. It was sympathy time. Chicken broth was cooked.
All things considered, I wasn't much into wanting to repair things whether it was the human body or broken toys and later my automobiles. When they didn't work it was time to throw them out. It's a lack of patience, I guess. Or maybe it was a lack of discipline toward details, the ability to do jigsaw puzzles or put watches back together. So, I never had any inclination to be a doctor.
"Doctors make lots of money. Sometimes they even help people." That's a quote from a comedian, Dayton Allen. Maybe that idea replaced the Hippocratic Oath in more recent times. But when I was a kid the doctors I saw seemed to be true to the Jean Herscholt film depiction: firm and kind.
Joseph Fleitas practiced among the rich of Chestnut Hill. We were "blue-collar" from Germantown and were treated with the same consideration because Dr. Fleitas took the views of old Doctor Hippocrates seriously.
I'm primitive. I got a bad wound on my wrist when I fell while fleeing from an uneven fight over at the lots. Splinters and gravel were lodged deep under my wrist. I couldn't move my hand.
I'm a coward. I hid my injury from my parents. That evening I ate my meal with awkward lefthanded sloppiness; the right arm drooped at my side. Maybe by the next day it would heal. It didn't. It hurt.
My parents were alerted by Jimmy Evans. He saw something dangerously wrong. I looked for a miraculous cure. I had heard about miracles.
Any cure would have to be by the skill of the doctor. My small protests were rejected and a little work with the knife followed. I'm a lousy patient partly due to my own apprehensions and mostly because I'm scared to death of doctors, dentists, and others who can only offer alternative, inferior discomfortures to miracles.
Doctor Fleitas attacked my injury professionally. He washed the wound in three stages. First, after a visual assessment he washed away dirt and germs with a purple solution. (Is it going to hurt?). That's analogous to iodine vs mercurochrome. I'd get the purple stuff but he cleaned his hands with green soap. Then he poked and probed and produced a knife. (Is it going to hurt? Now it's time to avert my eyes. Ow! Ooh! Ow! Some of that noise will be heard before cutting time). When he finished I sheepishly asked if he was finished. He ignored me because he was explaining some things to my mother about a wonder-drug, a "sulfa" powder that was being used to treat wounds against infection and it worked with great success in the campaigns in the Solomon Islands. I thought he told my mom that I would be the first civilian given "sulfa." She was assenting to its use. "Is it going to hurt?" The kind doctor never answered these questions because they didn't have to be answered. If something (other than needles) was going to hurt, he'd brace the patient with the understatement that there would be "a little discomfort." Yeah!
Joe DeMatteo wanted to be a doctor, but Joe felt faint at the sight of blood: cuts, bloody noses, stuff like that. He eventually became a physician but in high-school days he still had some nagging fears about looking at blood. He had signed up for a field trip to Temple University Hospital for students who might want to pursue medicine. When he heard that the kids would observe an operation he panicked.
"Ron, you wanna go instead of me?"
We arranged the transfer of the invitation. Great! I was motivated by an immediate concern about a test in Economics I.
I was in a select group: two kids from Central High, one from Northeast High and me. The other three probably became doctors. Our host, a doctor, rattled on about the profession. He apologized to us because the highlight of our visit, the operation, had been cancelled.
We weren't to be cheated. he took us to a lab where students practiced on cadavers. We were in a room full of corpses that were dissected and sawed-up. He led us to one and proceeded to pull at sinews and empty veins and nerves and bones and whatever other goodies were inside. We were all in minor shock. When the touch and tell lecture was over he pulled a cloth from his pocket and wiped his hands.
Back at his own office he continued his seminar. He lit up his pipe that he kept in a skull with the top removed. We were at the end of our day at the medical school. The doctor stiffled a sneeze and pulled a cloth from his pocket and blew his nose into it and wiped his nostrils. The three doctors-to-be didn't notice what he had done.
We thanked our host and walked down to the elevator. I was giggling. One of the other kids asked what was so funny as we rode down to the lobby. I explained that the old doctor was using the same rag that he wiped his hands with after handling the dead woman back in the lab to blow his nose. He sagged back against the back of the elevator and rolled his eyes.
Fine Tuning the Pecking Order
It's better not to view mistakes as harbingers of things to come. We'd simply give-up, I guess it's human nature to tilt against the inevitable; think of the alternative.
Some kids are all thumbs. They trip over their own feet. They walk into trees and furniture and they drop things. They're clumsy but chances are most of them will grow out of all that stumbling and find some success. Some people argue it's a ploy to avoid having to dry the dishes (crash!).
Others work hard at avoiding responsibility. "Duck!" They become so good that they will never find it. They're experts. What a contradiction. Some experts get paid a lot of money to reveal a little of what hard work will do.
Part of life is sheer luck. It is. It begins where you are born, but there are no guarantees that the poor will always grow-up poor and the rich stay so. Intervening factors, unpredictable forces, might present themselves and become interdictory, sometimes with or sometimes without response.
When I was sixteen I didn't have any certain-direction. I wasn't in the will, either.
In industry, if you have a boss who has a son who hangs around the place of business, chances are that he will be the boss when the old man croaks. The fathers might be respected but their heirs-to-be are subject to some ugly criticism and sometimes it's deserved. Part of that attitude comes from a resentment swelled by knowing that their only credentials are their birthright. That doesn't necessarily translate to ability. From the certain knowledge that this is true, a wider definition of the word "ass-hole" was born. It has nothing to do with physiognomy.
In a small family business or a proprietorship sons are excusable additions to the boss-system. It's likely that these kids are there against their will. When the time is right, they'll go in the navy or go to college or marry and work for someone elses father.
Frank Johnston eyed things (and people) as they passed by his gas-station much like an owl looking at mice. He wasn't a predator but the look was similar. Frank was born in Scotland and fate took him to Clearview Street across the road from Tommy Nethery's house. There, he and his wife raised two children: a girl and a boy.
I would guess that he noticed my comings and goings up near his house. Three of the kids on Clearview Street were in my patrol so a lot of horse-play was in order. Thirteen and fourteen year olds are seen and heard. I might add that chances are that they are not the perfect Boy Scouts.
"You!," He beckoned to me from the door of his office at the Mobilgas Station. "How old are you?"
"Sixteen"
"Can you drive (a car)?"
I nodded.
"You wanna job?"
You bet!
I was hired and he laid down what he expected from me. When customers arrived at the pump they were to be greeted with curtesy. "Fill <@145>er up?" Ask that! They might have thought they wanted a dollar or two but they might weaken to the suggestion to "Fill <@145>er up?" Tell them you will check the oil. Check the water level in the radiator and in the battery. Check the air pressure in the tires. Be friendly. Check their tonsils. There's a Sunoco Station across the street and an Esso Station a half-block away. You don't want them going there to be flattered. Always try to sell oil. That's where the profit is.
The gas station had an office where Frank held court with his cronies. When they appeared he'd lean back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He was happy in the company of his pals. They were all minor raconteurs with an endless flow of balony, news to be shared. Housewives held forums at the porch or the beauty salon or the grocery-store. Men had theirs at Thompson's saloon, the barber-shop and more selectively with the "steadys" at their gas-stations of choice: at Wrigley's(Sunoco), at Wilkins'(Esso), at Johnston's(Mobilgas, Socony Vacuum) and maybe at Knapps(Atlantic) at Cliveden Street.
The pecking-system at the workplace was as natural as the basic original observance in barnyards. I had prior experience at the caddie-shack and at The American Store. Those at the bottom, I found out, get the toughest work. Adam Smith, the father of capitalist reasoning, didn't distill the reward of rude labor into his work because to some measure it would encourage incentive among the lesser class and incentive got people to higher positions so they could boss their lesser fellows around. If everybody was bright there wouldn't be a working class. You will get the better pay if you delegate the unpleasant stuff to others. And you can't succeed without the lesser classes doing the hard work. Smith wasn't a romantic. He was from Scotland.
When the boss was around he'd be into loud conversation with his pals, D'Ambrosio the contractor and Gross the Democratic committeeman and others. There might be loud laughter. If I was close-by he'd shoo me away to chores. "Clean the rest-rooms" or "paint the curbs and driveways" or "sweep out the garage" or "fill the oil racks." That was part of things; kids don't mix with adults. If they do there's something fishy about to happen. They were probably telling dirty stories and they weren't going to be accused of sharing them with children.
When the boss was away it was a good bet he was fishing with the priest from Little Flower Church. I'd like to see the anglers, the Presbyterian and the Catholic who both spent a lot of time berating each other's religions when they were in other company. There are loop-holes in bigotry.
Others worked at the Socony-station. Fred came up on some evenings. He told dirty jokes. He made pithy comments about customers that had they reached their ears would cost him his job. John "worked" the day-shift. My arrival (overlapping the two shifts) clarified his identification. He was a bum. I did his work. If he knew the boss would be away for awhile he would lie on the lube-ramp and I'd raise it up so he could have an unnoticed nap and I'd get stuck with his assignments. Frank's son, the college student, appeared occasionally and would crack the whip over all of us. John looked busy when the kid was around.
Frank's son wasn't always aloof. If he wanted to be entertained he would ask what my crowd was planning to do or what we had recently done. I would give descriptions. He gave no indication that he wanted to join our gang. Even so, young Frankie had some valuable contribution, good advice I'm sure, toward my better understanding of things.
I was describing adventures. " I went over to Frankford to this old house with my boy-friends and we..."
"Whoa," He frowned. "Listen. Don't say boy-friends. Boy-friends are what guys like Jackie and Bert and Anthony have. You know what I mean?" Those guys had strange reputations, like Frannie ( who Frankie didn't know).
I knew what he meant. Here's a lecture worth listening to. My sister had girl-friends. That's okay for girls to have girl-friends, even when they are older, but boys, Frankie warned, don't have boy-friends when they are old enough to know what girl-friends are.
Kids want to please bigger people. That's partly because if they don't please them the older people can be nasty...and they win. We knew that.
I was brooming the deck. That was a daily chore and it was better to take the initiative and sweep up outside before the boss barked the order to do it. He did it anyway. If I was stacking oil cans he'd say "Sweep up around the islands." If I was sweeping he'd say the oil was low on the racks. I accepted that because it was all part of work.
"Put that car on the rack." He pointed toward the Dodge. "Lube and oil change. Oil the springs. Graphite the locks. Wax the door springs." Etc! Then he jumped into his jeep and drove away. That's the sort of thing that made Frank tolerable. We got breathers from his carping. On a scale of harshness, he was number three. His son, who had no intention of inheriting the gas-station, was number two. John, who had no inclination to work at all, was the winner.
I raised the Dodge up on the rack. I drained the oil and did all of the other things. I lowered the car and put in six quarts of forty-cent oil (premium) and did all of the other things. I backed the car out of the garage. Good timing. Frank drove in at about the time I noticed the six quarts of oil, once in cans, later in a crank-case, now on the garage floor. Six quarts on a floor covers a lot of ground. The boss noticed it, too.
His coincidental arrival probably saved me from being a liar. I'm creative, I'm told. (Scenario: clean up the mess somehow; sprinkle-or dump-saw dust over the affected area to suck up the oil; shovel it up into a trash can; tell the boss it was the old oil; get caught in the lie and be fired.) Old owl-eyes made a quick assessment. The actual scenario: a burst of laughter; clean up the mess as noted; deduct six times forty cents from my pay; tell everyone he knew who spoke English that he had never seen such a dumb kid in all the years that he owned the gas-station (he emphasized it was eighteen years). He might have fired me but his sense of humor would get good mileage. For awhile he'd invite me into the office when friends stopped-by and recount the episode about the dummy who forgot to put the plug back on the crankcase and unwittingly gave the Dodge an enema. Har! Har! Har!
D'Ambrosio lived next to the gas-station. From the back window of the garage there was a good view of D'Ambrosio's yard. A yard is a yard is a yard, usually. I noticed that a tree, maybe fifteen feet from the window, looked odd. The trunk up to about eight feet was covered with grease. I asked the right guy about that: John, the bum! "Wanna see somethin?" He pointed the grease gun at the tree and fired off a gooey volley that splattered onto earlier hits.
John was born too soon. Today he could have a retrospective art show at any campus that has nice trees. John the latter day Dali or Moore or Serrena. Wow!
I was impressed. What's art anyway? Here's proof that it's what the viewer appreciates. In this case it was a study in mucus-bark. I gave it a few shots myself on dull days.
No-one complained as far as I knew. Not Frank, a tight Scot who could have weighed the cost of all that lube grease wasted. Nor Mike D'Ambrosio, nor his wife and kids. Squirrels don't count, I guess.
We were never robbed. It's misleading to say I grew up in a time when there were no robberies. There were, but not around where I lived. When people came in for gas, we'd give them change from the big wad of bills in an overalls pocket, and no-one said "Stick'em up," a somewhat common response these days.
At night things were quiet. The boss went home for dinner. Things would be easy unless someone wanted a flat tire repaired. Like at any workplace, predictable customers appeared with a regularity that made their arrival kind of swell. Hey, there's Ken or Bill or Charlie, and they're all a welcome sight here unless they've brought a flat tire in for repairs.
We'd get a good story for sure. If Fred was working he and the customer would swap dirty jokes. I could listen because Fred viewed me as a fellow worker. The boss looked at me as a kid.
On Saturdays Frank would distribute the pay, Cash! No taxes for part-time help in easier times. Fifteen dollars. He'd peel money off of a wad almost cautiously like he was like a beggar. He wanted me to look grateful. Whew! The salary was augmented by tips: a dime here, a quarter there, or "keep the change." It pays to keep the customer happy. They'll stay with us and won't be seen at Wilkins' or Wrigley's or Knapp's. If they were, Frank would send out spies and sack the offender.
I had to give five dollars to mom for "board." Still, I had ten bucks (and tips that were nobody's business but mine). I would splurge occasionally and buy a supper from my earnings at Jack's Tomato Pie House across the street: a pizza-pie for seventy-five cents, and soda pop for ten cents. That was stopped after Dick Carr and I left a gallon of coffee ice-cream under our seat one hot Sunday night and the stuff turned to rancid-slop by Tuesday afternoon (when the store re-opened). We were banned for a year.
"Who will look after us?" Family, neighbors, all of the people in the known world: teachers, the cops, storekeepers, ushers at the movie-house, passers-by. That's the success of our demographic condition. When all these collapse. . . or some of them...we've become vulnerable, we might lose a lot more than innocence, we could be destroyed. In the best circumstances we're not totally insulated from potential harm. And it's just as likely that someone we know is capable of the same harm that a stranger could afflict. Odds are that it would be the former.
I was working up a bad sweat doing what I hated most: fixing a flat tire. That was a mean task in 1949. The implements were crude: two tire irons and a mallet and muscle-power. I can remember how I beat the tire off of its rim to get the inner tube out but it's not worth the description other than saying it could be lousy work- according to the type of tire involved.
Ding, ding, ding, ding. A customer arrived. I left the tire and pumped gas.
The man in the car was weird. He must have been an embarrassment to his father. He might have worn women's clothes in secret: Charles Atlas or Tarzan....in women's clothes. When guys are built like Tarzan it's not a good idea to laugh at them. My boss and Fred and John viewed him with disgust. He likes boys. They made jokes whenever he drove away from the pump.
After I pumped the gas I returned to the repair of the inner tube in the garage.
Alone at night in a gas-station in Germantown in 1949 was not a foolish gamble. One might get leprosy before he got robbed...well, almost. There were no alerts about crime-waves. There weren't crime waves. Any robbers around were usually caught and were sent away for awhile.
The man in the car was suddenly in the garage. I don't remember exactly what he said but I do remember that he scared the hell out of me. I do remember that I ran away from him. And I do remember he chased me. I had run two laps around the building when the boss arrived.
Let me put it bluntly. Frank threw him out with some strong advice thrown in. He told me not to take any crap: call for help or lock myself in the office. The incident was over; Frank assured me that "that sonofabitch" wouldn't bother me again. He fortified his strength in those little office conversations with his cronies; "that sonofabitch won't bother my help." I stood near the door to hear the good news. He noticed. "Wadda ya standing around for? Fill the oil racks. Broom the lube room. Lube that Dodge out there, clean the restrooms...."
Rock of Ages
We grow up a little bit at a time. On the way, there are examinations... tests. We get them at school, at choir audition, in the Boy Scouts. We always have to pass if we are to get ahead. If we get a job of any worth there are competitive tests for promotions or a demand to go back to taking advanced courses so that we might not let our craft pass us by. Doctors do it. So do auto mechanics. If you are Catholic or Jewish you have to face-up to self examination to make things right. The former go to confession and the latter make their peace on the Day of Atonement.
Everyone should put some thought into introspection. It might reveal how rotten things can get on a personal basis because of conscious choices. Make a list. Think of unfair things you've done. Note which ones you initiated on your own. Look at others that you did by following some other ass-hole.
If you can't do this you might be the perfect person. You're alone. Chances are, if you can't do this, then those around you better get some distance between you and the air they breathe.
If you recognize those things that deliberately cheated and hurt others, the whole exercise is useless unless understanding them as faults serve as preventatives: to prevent you from being bad, to prevent you to making better account of you own behavior. Recognizing being a baddie is not enough. Archcriminals do, and I'll bet some of them keep scrap books. On the other hand there's no assurance that a contrite heart will have its just reward. The aggrieved might not accept that and beat you into a coma.
It's a pity that bad manners aren't recognized and squashed before they become habit. But then lawyers and salesman would have no foundations for their type of work. A lot of bosses wouldn't know how to manage their help either. Intimidation, terror and ridicule keep the masses in their place.
There are theories about why we act like cattle. Art might be the imitation of life (experiences). But then life (experiences) often imitates art (inventions from a single mind). Fiction itself might lead to reaction that creates realities. Buck Rogers and Dick Tracy and of course Jules Verne got inventors-to-be a lot of work. Accomplished bad deeds have always inspired remedial good work. Accomplished bad deeds also serve as inspiration for soon-to-be malefactors. Good souls are vulnerable. Some people will take advantage, will steal from them, might murder them. Good institutions are sure to be corrupted. It's hopeless. You'll believe what you want.
Mister Butcher lived alone in a tidy rowhouse. He was a widower. He was old, not simply by the standards that sixteen year olds might see. To them forty is old. He was old: passed seventy.
Lonely people are desperate for entertainment. Like Miss Haversham (Great Expectations) they might depend on children to fill some voids. The children should be somewhere else because the circumstance is wrong. Those who seek them out are flirting with tragedy. The relationship between very young and very old depends on admiration — that of the younger toward the older and that cannot be solicited by the older ones among the riff who aren't going to improve by exposure to something better than themselves.
Mr. Butcher was helplessly innocent, maybe in dotage. I guess that he supposed himself to be a missionary and the kids who he invited into his parlor were a bunch of Hotentots. He told us about Jesus. We were Hotentots at Sunday School on a Tuesday afternoon or a Saturday evening. He spoke about his long dead wife. He wept a little. He played the piano, an upright. No boogie-woogie or Rachmaninoff at Mr. Butcher's house. He accomanyed himself at "Rock of Ages" and "The Old Rugged Cross" and other Protestant favorites. His voice was old and quivery but he knew all the words and he cried when he sang. Here's a man oblivious to the trashy kids who were mocking him and who would come back next week to play the charade again.
Inhibitive laws kept us from robbing him or killing him or wrecking his house or from being excessively rude. That law was taught in our own homes and at school when Moses and Daniel and Jesus were considered respectable for their advice even by people who didn't frequent the temple or churches.
At fifteen, kids are incapable of comprehending what will fall upon them at seventy. We'll always be kids. Old men like Mister Butcher were always old. We'll always have our friends and he will always be lonely. But Mister Butcher was protesting and singing "Jesus Loves Me" to the Hotentots. It's futile. We saw the cartoons of the missionaries captured by the savages and being cooked in a big black pot.
We viewed the old lady who lived near the railroad station (on Washington Lane) with the same ignorance. It's not contempt in either case but rather a lack of understanding; it was simply incomprehensible that the hag and the nut were ever like our sisters and us.
I delivered meager groceries to her house when I worked at The American Store. Her house reeked of the odor of near-decay. It was like tapioca gone old. Then ("through a glass, darkly") I couldn't see another time when she at fifteen was eyed by kids once like me ( now Mister Butcher's equals) as their puppy-love, their anticipated date, their most precious object of affection crowding out all other thoughts.
Ah!
Thank You, Miss Fleming
The envelope, please.
And, the award for best teacher whose influence made me what I am today is.....
Forget it. I didn't make it.
That doesn't preclude expressing gratitude, that at this time of life is given posthumously because most of my teachers are supposed to be dead. This is the kind of perception that I used when I was a kid and thought that they were all old then. The tragic consequences of uneven opinion about teachers aren't seen, or understood, when students entertain them. The teachers have to be more careful. They are obliged to subdue the same kinds of prejudice that we find convenient to excuse on our way to failure. Our problem is that we don't see it that way and we might veer into reduced capacity to learn and the teachers are not likely to detect this in time. They are at a disadvantage because they are one dealing with thirty two students. We are at an equal disadvantage because we persist in finding opinions contrary to wanting to learn the subject matter in front of us. We don't know that. We don't understand that. If we did, we would be fully educated, already.
School counsellors are supposed to remedy that, I suppose. They appear too late and the guys with problems sent to counsellors are looked at not much differently then lepers. Something's wrong. It's going to stay wrong because they can't get to the root of (say) Ronnie's problem because he can't understand that the influence of Bob or Fred (who hate algebra or chemistry) infects his understanding. Ronnie made a choice, oddly in favor of Bob and Fred who he really didn't like, over Dave and George who were doing well and who he did like. Why?
He might have formed an opinion of this or that teacher without Bob or Fred. They would become a convenient reinforcement. They've become allies, bad bed-fellows. Where's Dave? George? They might have been in another room and it's not their fault. Ronnie would make a quick judgement that, if visited upon him or when visited upon him, would in his opinion be unfair.
There are questions that will never be found on test-papers. I would guess psychology was created by those who supposed they had the answers. Psychologist number one would have the answer. Psychologist number two would have the answer, too, but his answer was different than the other one. Number three appears, and his answer will be the right one (for him). It might be that all the answers are right. That doesn't mean there's a cure. If there was a cure, the patient would not have to come back.
Question: Why do I respond to (insert teacher's name here)?
Enter psychologist number three.
"You had a sexual fixation on her." Everything is sexually motivated.
Gee. I responded to Mister so-and-so, too.
"Latent homosexuality. It's your nature." He'll hand me some texts by Frederick Perls. "You're ok."
I think I'm in trouble. Respond and it's sex. Don't respond and there's repression here. Don't respond and it's worse: potential malethrope or something.
I want a second opinion. Enter psychologist number four.
— — — -
I wonder how many kids owe later vocations directly to their response to particular teachers? Teachers are in a favorable position to spark interest in new areas of thought. They're catalysts. I've heard testimonials. But the percentage isn't high, at least within the circle of people I know. Guidance counsellors wait in the shadows at school to guide those who aren't sure. That probably has little influence on direction because those who ended up in their offices were pretty much directionless.
Statistics of that sort don't lessen the importance or the successful impact of teaching. Their job is to teach; they prepare their students to think, to organize, to develop disciplines, to store knowledge beyond rude basics, to hone skills in communication (English) and logic (math). Curriculum is a partial menu and if a kid becomes a car-salesman or a waiter or a flea-market entrepreneur or a house-painter the education he got at school can't be called wasted. At the very least assessment, it put him into a civilized preparatory era, a controlled society, a position where he shouldn't be idle. That, in later life, might make him a little more bearable.
Some people turn learning into tools and apply them in later life, for good or ill. I have a friend who writes and certainly has done very well. He got the "spark" through journalism merit badge while a Boy-scout. I know of another man who did well at marksmanship (merit badge), became an Eagle Scout and later became a sniper and killed a great number of people on an afternoon outrage. A boy in my neighborhood practiced violin after school and became a premier violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra. We thought he was wasting time because we were doing more immediate things like wasting time.
I had the best algebra teacher in the world (Edwin Stein). If I listened I might have gone to MIT or Stanford. I could cite others and the prospects that lay before me. School was a feast. I was at the snack-bar. Worse! (The candy store)
Psychologist number three might have been partially right when I struggled at social studies. My fixation was outside class and Miss Coyle, smart to who was hanging around her relatives, let me know in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to date her niece I would have to pull my grade. There's incentive, although there was no danger of the ninth-graders running off to get married. Even kisses were scarce at that age.
Miss Coyle's trick worked, at least with history and civics and social studies. I should have inquired to see if Mr. Stein had nieces who were fourteen. But chances are that kids get bright without a parade of teachers' nieces as butlers against failure. Maybe gigolos get their start this way.
After the war the victors delegated themselves to clean things up. They were all equal but some were more equal than others. The most powerful were known as The Big Three. That was a little narrow to some thinking and there were enough Frankophiles around to let Charles DeGaulle in on the credits with us and Britain and the Russians so sometimes The Big Three was called The Big Four. The China lobby got our Eastern allies into the club and forevermore The Big Five became the spokes-group for decision making on a global scale. The Five would evolve into the permanent members of The Security Council of The United Nations. That's nice. Where's Denmark? Or Poland? Or Holland? The world would be better "ruled" by countries with credentials, those with real empires who had practiced statecraft for a long time and got results.
Miss Fleming wanted her charges to feel the pulse of the greater dynamics of contemporary history. She put us on a bus and we went to Lake Success to see The United Nations bickering over the fate of tomorrow's world. Idealism, a fuzzy idea, was not going to run hog-wild there any more than anywhere else.
She encouraged us to be participants. A mock Assembly was held at Temple University, a students' "let's pretend United Nations." I was a delegate from an insignificant country that might have resented me representing them. On the surface I liked going to Long Island and to Temple for the immediate relief from the particular day that I was away from algebra and gym and biology. The real benefit was in a developing awareness of other people and their disparate situations.
Her History was alive. It jumped out of textbooks and we were aware that we were participants because we were there. There was anywhere. Our condition was analogous to that of nations. "Importance" might be measured by the position of politicians or entertainers or industrialists or philosophers or scientists weighed against "hidden lives" that might be effectual in smaller dramas unnoticed or perhaps even un-written that at the end of things made something just a little better for someone they touched. It is the accumulation of such little influences that makes things "not as ill for you and me" the more perfect course. Enough of that and you don't need as many police.
She never said these things. But she gave us the opportunity to hone our intellectual curiosity by going way beyond the rote of textbook learning that was the opinion or observation by its own author dutifully adhered to as gospel. She didn't challenge that nor did she throw it away. She augmented it with experience. She was accessible and a few times I would walk up to her house, near mine, to chat with her in eveningtime.
That might be spoiled by psychologist number three who would suspect a sexual fixation.
