Wow ! It seems like Our Gradute Student's mother was a real rotten egg !

Yes, she was in some ways. But that's just one side of it. Our Graduate Student's Mother Was A Very Good Mother In Many Ways.

But you said she killed his father ! You said she had the personality of General Patton !

Yes, that's true. But she was better than many mothers in a lot of ways. She didn't sit around on the couch all day poppin' bon bons. Quite the contrary. And even Mussolini kept the trains running on time !

So now you're comparing our graduate student's mother to Mussolini !?

Well, they DID live in an Italian neighborhood.

Oh, God ! Just get on with it ! Apparently we've got a long way to go to get to his conversion from liberalism to being an Original Neocon

Well, it wouldn't be "fair and balanced" to just BASH our graduate student's mother the way the women's libbers just BASHED white men in the college classrooms for decades !

That's certainly true. Nothing fair and balanced about that ! You got me there. Continue please. What was so good about our graduate student's mother ?

Well, she was a bundle of energy and had an iron will. She was progressive and advanced in many ways. She was raised in the heart of New York City culture and she absorbed a lot of it. She got a lot of it from her father who was a dynamic and educated man. He went to Cooper Union and that was WAY back when, probably in the 1880's or 1890's something, I guess, when a college education was rare. He built his own business, Jersey City Metal Fabrication or something like that, made the organ pipes for the big organ on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, has several registered patents. He was on the Jersey City Board of Education and was part of Frank Hague's Democratic Political Machine as a New Jersey State Assemblyman. Had his own Social Club. Hague told him to open it. "My father went to Hague and told him he wanted to run for The Assembly and asked him what he should do and Hague told him to open up a Social Club." Our graduate student heard his mother tell that story a hundred times. Those were the days when men were Men and hung out at the taverns and social clubs and talked politics !

Wow! Her father certainly was dynamic ! Sounds like a bit of A Renaissance Man, advanced in every way !

Yes, he sounds like a remarkable man

Yeah, but what' all dis about her absorbin all dat New yawk City culture an stuff ? Didn't she live ovuh dayuh in Joizee City ?

Ha Ha. very funny. Actually, nowadays, with all its urban revitalization, they call downtown Jersey City "The Sixth Borough". I'm not an expert on the history of Jersey City. You'd have to check out Tom Fleming for that. I guess it was always a pretty tough industrial area with a lot of tough, uneducated Irish immigrants, and, later, other immigrants. But, certainly, the microneighborhood where she was raised wasn't backward. When she was born they lived directly across from City Hall on Mercer Street. When she was a child they moved a couple of blocks down on the same street to an elite block called Palmier Place. It was full of stately "Brownstones". The subway (called the PATH tubes) was always a few short blocks away, and they'd take you to Wall Street or Greenwich Village in 5 minutes, and to 33rd street (sometimes called toity toid lol), near Macy's and the Empire State Building in about 10 minutes. Manhattan was their playground as teenagers, as it would become for our graduate student. Of course, his commute was longer, (about 45 mnutes to an hour), but he shortened that by moving to Manhattan after high school. But one of the main positive points about her upbringing and development was her father's emphasis on education. The children had to do their homework every night in his house ! Since she had an older sister and a younger sister, and her parents being distinguished and reputable citizens, all their girlfriends came over all the time and often everyone did their homework together at the dining room table. She says she was always at the top of her class in elementary school, and that's believable. From her stories, one can picture her as a bit of a teacher's pet through elementary school and, since her father was most likely an active supporter of the church and school, that makes sense. Here's an amusing and illustrative anecdote that she must have told a hundred times. One day, when she was in the first grade, there was a snow blizzard and her parents were keeping her home from school. She sat by the window, all prepared to go to school, and kept repeating, "But Sister didn't say 'No School' But Sister didn't say 'No School'". Finally, she wore her father down and he said, "Oh for cryin' out loud, let her go !" So they let her go to school in the blizzard (of course, they probably followed close behind her to make sure she was safe). The next day the Sister paraded her in to the eighth grade class before the eight grade boys to shame them. Cute, amusing, don't you think ?

Yes, It Was.

Well, it certainly shows her positive attitude toward school, how much she loved it. It also implies a cooperative and friendly relationship between her parents and the school. It was a Catholic Parochial School. She often gushed about how wonderful it was, and how wonderful and special they treated her. She loved to talk about the school's cultural activities like how she was taught to make speeches with poise and appropriate gestures and about the drama training and the school plays that she sometimes starred in.

Sounds Like She Loved School And Had A Happy Childhood

Yes, it does. She often said so outright, repeated it often how wonderful it was in Jersey City but that was usually in the same breath that Newark and her father and his family were so awful.

Was he, and were they ?

No, of course not ! She was just a spoiled brat ! That's the conclusion that our graduate student came to eventually. Her dad was kind of a Big Shot and so was his brother a little bit (maybe on the coattails of her father). That was her Uncle Harry. Uncle Harry was a policeman, a Jersey City cop, and his beat was City Hall. Eventually he became Frank Hague's "right hand man", "chief administrative aide", "chief assistant", or whatever. At least that's what she said. She was a drama queen. You know, all that drama training at St. Peter's Elementary School. Our graduate student had a brief phone conversation with the historian Tom Fleming a few years ago and tossed that up to him and he replied, "Frank Hague had a hundred Right Hand Men !" So, from that perspective, he probably was "Frank Hague's Right Hand Man." I mean, our graduate student often wondered how an uneducated cop could be the Mayor's Chief Advisor, but Frank Hague was an uneducated street tough, himself, who mangled the English language (deez n dems n doze n all dat). That's how Tom Fleming describes him in "Mysteries of My Father", and Fleming describes his own father that way, too, that is, as an uneducated street tough. And Fleming's father was one of Hague's "Right Hand Men", too. Hague appointed Fleming's father as Sheriff of Hudson County. So maybe her Uncle Harry became very trusted and relied upon by Mayor Hague to the point where he was, or appeared to be in the eyes of his adoring niece, (at least as the story may have grown in the telling over the years), Hague's Chief Advisor. It does make perfect sense that Hague would draw close to him, as a bodyguard and assistant, a cop who was the brother of one of his machine politicians. Trust, you know. It's all in the family.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Our Graduate Student learned the times table in third grade. That was Miss Schoener. He LOVED her ! He made her a bracelet for Christmas. When he saw her wearing it his heart leaped to his throat ! She was writing on the board with the arm that wore the bracelet, so it was flopping all over as she wrote. "Look ! Look !" he was telling all the kids around him, "I made her that bracelet ! I made her that bracelet !"

Sounds Sweet.

Yeah, third grade is a wonderful age ! He remembers reading their "Weekly Readers" and learning about Alaska and Hawaii becoming states and the American flag getting two new stars. He remembers Miss Schoener reading to the class this book that was about a young whale and his journeys through the oceans. They made her read THAT one several times. They LOVED it. It was in third grade that he learned that Santa Claus wasn't real. Some of the more savvy kids in the class were passing on their superior knowledge, "Santa Claus isn't real, ya know."

So, Did He Just Believe Them ? Wasn't He Traumatized !?

Oh ! PUH LEEEEEEEZ ! Give Me A Fuckin' Break, Will Ya ? No. He wasn't Trauma fuckin tized, ya shithead. I'll trauma fuckin tize YOU with this fuckin stick up your ass if you don't stop being so STOOOOOOOPID ! You're not a fuckin' LIBERAL, are ya ? I mean, when you start sayin' stupid shit like that, it makes me worry about you. It makes me worry about you A LOT.

No. No. Sorry. Sorry. It Just Slipped Out. I Wasn't Thinkin'. Of Course He Wasn't Traumatized. Of Course Not. It Just Slipped Out. Sometimes I Say Stupid Stuff. Please Continue. Please.

All Right. Anyway, our young graduate student went home that afternoon and checked it out with his parents. They told them that it was true that Santa Claus was just a made up story, something everyone said to little kids to make Christmas fun. Our graduate student was a big kid now. It was no more traumatizing than leaving a tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy. 

Italian Girls ?

Then there was this other girl named Lee Fano. Her full name was Leonora. At the end of fifth grade, Our Graduate Student's family moved about a half mile to a better neighborhood in the neighboring town of South Orange, but he was still able to walk or bike to the same school in Newark. Leanora moved into a house directly across the street. She came from a different school, so she was new at my school. She looked like an Italian Supermodel. I remember The Sister who was our teacher in sixth grade gave us six "long division" problems for homework. The next day, she displayed Lee's homework as a perfect model for us to emulate. While some of us had scribbled our problems all over the place, Lee neatly divided her homework paper into six sections and did one problem in each section. "Look at Leanora's homework," said the Sister, "It's Perfectly Proportioned !" Boy did that ever represent Leanora ! Perfectly Proportioned ! I chased her around on bikes a bit that first summer when we were both new in our new neighborhood, but soon she got a boyfriend who was a grade ahead of us, and that meant he was two years older than me. Lee was a year older than me and about six inches taller through sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Her best girlfriend always referred to me as a little boy, and I was, actually. I didn't do my growth spurt until second year of high school. I remember one day I was in Lee's house in my Boy Scout uniform, and she put "The Twist" on the record machine and I did the twist and she laughed. She laughed and I asked why and she said I looked silly doing the twist in a Boy Scout uniform. Once a bunch of us went to the library and she wanted me to accompany her home and she paid my bus fare. I could hardly believe I was sitting next to a girl so pretty. I figured everybody else must have noticed her and I wondered if all the men were jealous of me. I couldn't stop looking at her knees she was so stunning and beautiful! On the walk home from the bus stop I didn't say much. Just spoke when she spoke, probably. I guess I felt I was out of my league.

I felt she was unattainable.  I was a year young for my grade, 9 months younger than her, and that's a big deal when you're 10.  I just sighed when she got near me, blushed when she talked to me.  She had it all.  Besides beauty, she had smarts and personality.  She was sweet, kind and friendly.  Just A Dream, basically.  Boy What A Beauty !  Hands down the prettiest, sexiest, most beautiful girl in the school!

Well, our graduate student's mother made all three of her sons go to St. Peter's Prep in downtown Jersey City in the neighborhood where she was from. She attended the attached St. Peter's Elementary School. Our graduate student sort of "lived on the bus" for the next four years. Never really had any contact at all with his elementary school friends after that.

But Getting Back To The Irish/Italian Thing Did They Get Along ?

Sure. For example, Leonora hung out with 4 other girls and I referred to them as "The Fab Five."  Two Irish and Two Italian and One German girl hung out together. What they had in common was that they were equally attractive, and at similar levels of social development. They felt comfortable together. The same thing with boys. Mostly it had to do with athletic ability. Our graduate student hung out with boys who liked to play baseball and football, and ride bikes and swim and things like that. Mostly boys would play with boys who were of similar size and ability. If an Italian kid was picked to be a captain, he'd pick an Irish kid if he thought he was the best player, and, similarly, an Irish captain would pick an Italian kid if he was the best. Sometimes an Irish kid and an Italian kid would pair off as best friends. That happened a lot. It was very fluid. Those were happy years for our graduate student. Sometimes they'd run in packs of five or ten or more.

I See

Yes, and there was a lot of structured play with adult supervision like Little League, Scouting, CYO Day Camp in the summer (Catholic Youth Organization). So the older boys and adults who were supervising us were mixed, and we saw them working together, and we respected and obeyed all of them. Irish adults would act in loco parentis for Italian kids and Italian adults would act in loco parentis for Irish kids and so on.

OK

And the Sisters were mixed, as well. One Italian Sister always had our graduate student's class singing "Santa Lucia". And, of course, all the Sisters were familiar with Italian art because the Catholic Church was based in Rome and all that Italian art was religious themed, so they were being sung the praises of Michelangelo's sculptures and art as early as the sixth grade.

Sounds Pretty Integrated

Oh, it was total integration. I mean, they kept their cultural identities, but they worked and played and lived totally integrated. Our graduate student didn't even know there was any such thing as different ethnic groups until he was in the fourth or fifth grade. One day his friend came over, when he wasn't home, to see if he wanted to play baseball. His last name was Giaimo. So, when he gets home his brother tells him, "Your Italian friend, Giaimo, came over." Our graduate student says to his brother, "How do you know he's Italian ?" Brother says, "black hair, leather jacket, last name ends in a vowel. He's Italian." So he learned to figure out who was Italian that way. The Italians always dressed better too, had a better sense of style. Like I said, our graduate student and his family were part of New York City culture, and that meant cultural diversity. He was 50% Irish, 50% Italian, and 50% Jewish.

What !? 50% Jewish ? You haven't mentioned any Jewish people in his neighborhood !

No, that's correct, not in his microneighborhood as a child. But the Greater New York Area, including South Orange and, of course, New York City, was heavily influenced by Jewish culture, especially by Jewish intellectuals, businessmen, and entertainers. When his family moved to South Orange, his exposure to Jewish culture was increased. Whenever he visited his best friend, Greg, in the Ivy Hill Apartment Projects at Christmastime, he saw Mehorahs. When he started taking odd jobs for YES (Youth Employment Service) of South Orange, he would sometimes help out in the homes of Jewish neighbors. After his dog was hit by a car, he became employed for a while by the veterinarian who doctored her. He was a Jewish man.

Tell Me About That.

Well, in the sixth grade, I think, he brought home a puppy. He had something to love, and, of course, the puppy loved him back. His mother never had a dog or cat in her life, and she didn't want one then, but he implored her, and she relented. So each day he'd hurry home at lunch time and sit with his puppy on his lap, watching tv. It was pretty good programming, too. Funny, witty, often satirical Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, Dudley DoRight Dr. Peabody (the dog) And His Boy Sherman. "Say 'Hello', Sherman" "Hello" "Good Boy !" "Every Dog Should Have A Boy !" So, you see, the beginnings of our graduate student's appreciation for good satirical humor began at an early age ! He always caught the satire, and assumed everyone did. I mean, after all, it was kid's programming. He was amazed to find out that some adults and college kids didn't get it. Like his sister, for example, and she was in college! One day he's watching these programs and his sister comes in and goes, "oh my god, that's so funny. That's satire! I never got that! That's so funny!" Our Graduate Student was in sixth grade and he was astonished that his sister in college was just getting it for the first time. Anyway, his mother let the puppy run out into a snowstorm to go and pee and the puppy ran off and got hit by a car. Long story short, driver takes puppy to vet, vet operates on puppy, our graduate student's family gets puppy back with a big vet bill. He listens to his mother and father argue over the vet bill and doesn't want to hear it any more. Takes his piggy bank to the vet and dumps it out on his desk. Vet cries and gives him a "job". Vet assigns him to the direction of his assistant, an African American man, a WWII veteran. Every Saturday our graduate student sits down at the lunch counter across the street with his African American co-worker and they eat lunch together. So, as a ten or eleven year old boy, our graduate student was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement, you might say.

Yes, You Might Say.

That would have been in 1962, probably, right around the time of the lunch counter sit-ins in (check dates and locations).

Well, he was just a young boy, though, and he wasn't really sitting in at the lunch counters in the South.

No, he wasn't. He didn't live in the South. He lived in South Orange, New Jersey. And that's where he had lunch every Saturday with his African American coworker, at a lunch counter in South Orange, New Jersey, where he was.

Well, That Makes Sense.

Yeah. That Makes Sense...

You Sound Pissed.

This topic always gets me pissed. It's infuriating that some shreiking white women's libber from Georgia, of all places, sticks her disgusting finger in his face and gives him a shrill lecture about what words he can and can't say and what he can and can't call African Americans and what he can and can't call worthless white women's libbers, when she doesn't know a DAMNED THING about his history of race relations.

Yeah, I See Your Point.

He had REAL work and social relationships with African Americans from his childhood on, all through high school and the five years after high school, and beyond that into adulthood. Brought up in the New York City area in those trouled racial times, he had real relationships with African Americans that were continuous and profound, not shallow and fleeting encounters with just with some token African Americans brought before the camera or into the environment for show to provide some fake "documentation" for their liberal racial "credentials" I'll show you some real racial credentials that just happened naturally in the life of a young man who was brought up by parents who taught him to try to be colorblind, and to treat ALL people with respect and courtesy.

All Right, Then. Go Ahead And List Those Real Racial Credentials. I Know Just What you Mean ! All Through The Sixties and Seventies Into The Eighties, Liberals Were Always Puttin' On An Ostentatious Show With Some African American To Bolster Their "Liberal Credentials" Their "Civil Rights Credentials" What A Bunch Of Phony Bastards ! Show Us What It's Like When A White Man Just Naturally Builds Work And Social Relationships With African Americans, Not For Show Like The Liberals Did, But Because African Americans Just Happened To Be The Humans He Was Living And Working With !

All Right, I Will. I'll do that tomorrow. I'll list his REAL racial credentials tomorrow. And I'll go more into his background, and the Good (and a little bad) about his mother, and about his father a bit, and then onto high school and the five years after that.