*************************************************
So, His Mother Was Well Educated ?
Had The Equivalent Of A College Education
In The 1930's ?
That Was Rare For A Woman
In Those Days !
Well, yes and no.
I mean "maybe".
I mean "sort of".
Well, THAT pretty much
clears everything up.
Let's move on, then, to the next topic !
oh How droll.
How very very droll.
Anyway, it's like this.
She believed in evolution,
so she was in synch
with modern science.,
Remember, the Scopes trial was in 1925,
when she was 10 years old.
Most Catholics weren't educated enough
to understand or believe in evolution.
But the jesuits weren't THAT backward.
I mean, intellectually,
jesuits were the best
that the Catholics had to offer.
They presented themselves to the world
as the scholars of the Catholic church.
They had a university in New York City,
for goodness sake, not far from
Columbia and NYU.
If the jesuits didn't accept evolution
they would have been laughed
out of the educational world.
I mean, NO reputable educational institution
would respect anything they said about anything.
So, she lived in that jesuit world,
dated a guy who became a jesuit priest, in fact.
And, her father went to Cooper Union !
So, her father had an even superior education
to the best the jesuits could provide.
But, she also went to a Palm Reader sometimes
and she got into Astrology too.
And, as a practicing Catholic,
she was into all the medieval trappings and rituals
of the Catholic religion.
So, then, she was at once
scientifi...yet superstitious
brilliant...yet foolish
sublime...yet ridicu
Oh shut up.
Sorry.
It's early.
Haven't had my coffee yet.
Or maybe you've had too much already.
Anyway,
she believed that "education" was important.
I mean, obviously, she could see
that doctors and lawyers
had to have good educations.
But, her idea of education
was kind of old-fashioned -
a lot of rote memorization
and regurgitation of fact.
In a Jesuit prep school,
you had to take 4 years of Latin,
and memorize the meanings
of lots of latin words,
and of names and dates in History.
But, culturally, she was Cosmopolitan.
She was very sophisticated
in that way.
She had always been a New Yorker.
I thought you said
she lived in Joyzee City.
Yeah, and I also said she lived
five minutes from Downtown Manhattan
and ten minutes from Midtown.
More than 95% of New York City residents
(I venture to guess)
can't get to Downtown or Midtown Manhattan
in 5 or 10 minutes.
In fact, these days they refer to
Jersey City as "The Sixth Borough".
And stop saying "Joyzee City"
and "The Joyzee Shaw uh"
an all dat dem dere stuff.
Regional and neighborhood dialects
are an interesting topic,
but we don't have time for that digression now.
Our graduate student and his parents
and their parents
spoke standard English,
like tv news anchors,
not like Archie and Edith Bunker.
It's funny though.
Our graduate student noticed,
when he attended St. Peter's Prep in Jersey City,
that NOBODY in Newark had that "Brooklyn" accent,
and LOTS of his classmates in Jersey City,
and their parents,
DID have that "Brooklyn" accent.
Over, the years his mother
would rant and rave and pontificate
about the wonderfulness of Jersey City
and the horribleness of Newark
and it inclined our graduate student to believe
that she was nutty or silly or stupid or something.
Yes, it does sound like
the Jersey City residents were more backward
compared to the Newark residents,
based on that backward, regional, "Brooklyln" accent.
Yes, and his mother
made this supposed superiority of Jersey City
the justification for sending her sons
to high school in Jersey City.
They each had to commute by bus and train
from the outskirts of Newark (near South Orange)
to downtown Jersey City
for four years.
It took about an hour each way.
What a waste of time.
Yes, they sort of "lived on the bus",
as they say.
In retrospect,
our graduate student thinks
that it had two main consequences.
One consequence is that
it made HIM more Cosmopolitan, in turn.
I mean, he was commuting like an adult, with adults.
He rode the bus through the heart of inner city Newark
and through downtown Newark
twice a day,
and he rode the train through the
industrial marshlands of Jersey,
that were stinking of chemicals,
twice a day.
Because of that daily commute, he was able to
enthusiastically join the environmental movement
that began just as the 1960's was ending.
On weekends and other days off,
he loved to go in the other direction,
through the Village of South Orange
and up into the hills or "mountain's"
of the "South Mountain Reservation",
a lovely nature reserve of over 2,000 acres.
It had deer for visitors to feed,
a small waterfall where teenagers climbed the rocks,
and there was even a place with vines
where teenage boys could swing like Tarzan.
There was a view area
with a view of The Empire State Building.
The contrast between
those polluted, smelly, industrial marshlands
and the serene beauty of the Reservation
and of the Jersey Shore
where they often visited in the summer,
was dramatic !
Sounds like a very good place
for a boy to go !
But, did you say you could
actually see The Empire State Building
from way out there !?
Yes ! It was a wonderful place
for a city boy to escape to,
for ANYBODY to go to !
And it wasn't "WAY OUT THERE !"
Our graduate student's house in South Orange
was no farther from Midtown Manhattan
than were the outer parts of
Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx,
and it was definitely closer
than the outer parts of Staten Island.
So, That Long Daily Commute
Was A Good Thing !
It Made Our Graduate Student Aware
Of Urban, Social, Business,
And Environmental Realities.
Or, as you said,
more Cosmopolitan.
That's right.
He was starting to become
more sophisticated and aware
during his high school years.
I mean, he had already been to
The United Nations and to the
New York City World's Fair
in 1964 with his classmates
and to The Empire State Building
and The Statue of Liberty
with his mother and cousin,
and to a Yankee game with his father,
and to Manhattan several times with his parents,
but that daily commute
twice a day
by bus through inner city and downtown Newark
and by train through the industrial marshlands
into downtown Jersey City
impacted his awareness on a regular basis.
And, that prep school in downtown Jersey City
was practically on the waterfront.
He would regularly sneak off campus
with his best friend at lunch time
and go to down to the waterfront.
It was directly across the Hudson River from Wall Street.
One day they watched "The Queen Mary", I think,
as it sailed by them out into The Atlantic.
They started to build The Twin Towers
right there across from them
in 1968, the year he graduated.
On 9/11/2001,
the students at his high school
stood outside the school
and watched the 9/11 victims
jumping out of The Twin Towers.
Oh My.
Yes, indeed. "Oh My."
So, Our Graduate Student
Was Commuting
To A Very Cosmopolitan World
Each Day, Then.
Yes, that's right.
I mean, his high school
in downtown Jersey City
was in an inner city ghetto,
but that daily commute brought him to within
5 minutes of Manhattan.
Soon, it just became
a natural habit for him
to jump on the train and bus
and go to New York City
like a suburban kid today
goin' to the mall.
So, Then, The High School Commute
To Jersey City Was A Good Thing ?"
Yes and No.
He was completely cut off
from all of his elementary school
and neighborhood friends.
While they were
walking to and from school together
and doing after school activities together,
and socializing
and participating in school sports and activities,
and going to dances and dating,
he was pretty much an isolated loner,
living on the bus during the week,
and hiking into the mountains on weekends for solace.
He only had his dog for love and companionship.
And he has a dog today, too,
over 40 years later,
for love and companionship.
But he did learn to become a bit of a reader
and learn to enjoy and appreciate good writing.
Yes, Well It Probably Would Have Been Better
To Have A Happy Adolescence, Though
Yes
There Must Have Been SOME
Social Life In Their House.
The Only Visitors To Their House
Were HER Friends
his mother's friends.
Why ?
"She was selfish",
was the explanation of the middle brother.
"She had a Borderline Personality Disorder,"
was the explanation of the older sister.
"She was a spoiled brat,"
was the explanation of our graduate student.
It took many decades for our graduate student
to accept "selfish"
as a word describing his mother,
probably because she always tooted her own horn
about all she did for her children -
you know, the classic guilt trip -
and she WAS more attentive than many parents.
But when our graduate student became an adult
and started to see his mother as a person
and not just as his mother,
he was surprised at how very
immature and bratty she was.
That explains those endless plate-throwing
tantrums she threw
that lasted for hours.
She was just a spoiled brat.
But those tantrums
were terrifying and traumatic
for a little boy.
What Was The Explanation
Of The Oldest Brother ?
Oh, he was a mama's boy.
Spare Me, Please.
OK.
Well, anyway,
it's true that only HER friends came over.
When they lived on Hazelwood Ave in Newark
before our graduate student was born
and maybe when he was a toddler,
his father's brother(s) lived there
up on the top floor.
But she didn't like them
and she ran them out of the house
and out of her family's lives.
COMPLETELY.
Even though they lived in the same area
several blocks away,
our graduate student only met
his two cousins and paternal grandmother
ONCE.
And he never met any of the others,
until the day after his father's funeral
when he met "Buddy".
He had heard his mother curse Buddy
a thousand times in her plate-throwing tantrums
but he seemed to be a quiet and meek
and gentle man on that occasion at the wake,
just like his brother,
our graduate student's father.
Of course, our graduate student DID
get to meet one of those two cousins a second time.
But he was dead then,
lying in his coffin.
He'd been killed in Viet Nam.
Our graduate student's mother
made a big deal of gathering everyone together
to attend the funeral,
but no one had been allowed
to visit, or play with, or talk to him
while he was alive
and living a few blocks away.
SICK, MORBID.
It seemed they were often
getting dressed up to go to
the funeral of someone
in his mother's family, too,
but never to a wedding.
And they did that
ostentatious Irish funeral thing -
limousines and all.
It seemed like, in those years,
they were always dressin' up fancy
and goin' to
one of his mother's relative's funerals
in a limousine.
But that whole funeral attendance thing
bothered him most
at his cousin's funeral.
I mean, when you think about it,
he spend more time with his dead cousin
than he did with his live cousin.
They went over and visited them ONCE
when our graduate student was about ten
and stayed for about an hour.
The funeral probably lasted
more than an hour.
And they only lived
a few blocks away.
And that was his father's
BROTHERS and SISTER and family
that they never got to see,
but they ALWAYS drove into Jersey City
to visit his mother's COUSIN.
Hmmm...Interesting...
Why?
Oh she was just controlling...
Iron Will, you know.
General Patton.
She just wanted things her way.
Like the tv programming.
Her family was Laurel and Hardy and
his family was Abbott and Costello.
Laurel and Hardy they could watch,
Abbott and Costello they couldn't.
Her family they visited a lot,
his family was cut off - completely.
Completely.
Our graduate student
never ever, even once,
saw ANY of his father's family
from that one hour visit when he was 10
until after his father's funeral
when he got to see his uncle Buddy
even though they lived a few blocks away.
Why Didn't Our Graduate Student
Visit Them On His Own ?
They were so completely cut off,
he didn't even KNOW he had those cousins.
Nobody ever mentioned them.
I mean, he knew that this was
his father's neighborhood,
and that his mother
was from Jersey City,
but he didn't know what house
his parents had lived in,
or where their relatives lived.
If, based on their
less backward speech,
Newark residents were more advanced
than Joizee City residents,
why didn't our graduate student's mother
prefer Newark people
over Jersey City people,
the way she preferred Laurel and Hardy
over Abbott and Costello ?
Well, it was the MICROCULTURE
that she knew in Jersey City.
I mean, her father REALLY WAS a big shot.
Our graduate student has recently
come to that conclusion.
She always used to carry on and on
about her father and his business,
and she mentioned Mayor Hague so often
that you woulda thought SHE was his
Right Hand Man, or Woman, or Person.
Our graduate student always
just blew it off
as her emotional ranting.
But a few years ago,
he went to that prep school
in downtown Jersey City
for a high school reunion.
It's not a dangerous ghetto anymore there.
It's all revitalized and gentrified and upscale now
so he went for a walk around City Hall
and recognized the name of the street
that his mother always mentioned,
Mercer Street.
Then he looked for Palmier Place,
the other street she always mentioned.
Palmier Place is actually
part of Mercer Street.
It's the same street,
but on one block they change the name
to Palmier Place because
that's a special, "uppity" block on Mercer Street.
Stately Brownstones.
So he calls up his mother
(it happened to be Mother's Day)
and tells her he's on Palmier Place
and asks her if she remembers
the number of the house she lived it.
Well, she'd been in a nursing home
for several years, and she's like,
"And who are you ?
Oh ! You're my son !
I have son ?
Isn't that wonderful !
What's your name ?"
But guess what.
She remembered the number of the house
on Palmier Place where she had lived,
without any hesitation !
AND, when he said,
"So that's where you were born then,"
she replied,
"Oh, no. I was born on Mercer Street
a few blocks down,"
and she gave him the number.
Well he walked down the street
and found that she had been born
directly across from City Hall.
DIRECTLY.
I mean, any kid worth his salt
coulda thrown a baseball
from her front step
and hit the side of City Hall.
And when he considered the Stately Brownstone
a couple of blocks up
on Palmier Place,
and Tom Fleming's descriptions
of Frank Hague's political rallies
that packed the streets for three blocks (find citation),
he began to realize that his grandfather
REALLY WAS a big shot in Jersey City.
So THAT was the Jersey City microculture
that she knew -
not deez n dems n doze n all dat dere stuff.
Her father was a State Assemblyman
and School Board Member
with a profitable metal fabricating business,
a graduate of Cooper Union.
He was tightly connected to Hague
and so was his brother, Harry.
Polticians and businessmen came visiting.
She had two sisters, one older and one younger,
and all their girlfriends always
gathered at their house to socialize
and do their homework.
Her older sister took her to parties
in the New York City hotels.
She thought she was a Vanderbilt or something.
She often wore a mink shawl when she was an adult -
conspicuous consumption (show offs)
Her school and church
were full of the highest, most educated society
the Catholics had to offer.
The jesuits lived and taught next door
at the prep school.
And the likes of Will Durant and Tom Fleming
passed through their doors.
She often carried on about
the doctors and lawyers who passed around
the collection plates at mass.
It was all a big, endless, exciting,
uppity social scene for her,
and she was right at the heart of it,
just like when The Sisters made her
the star of the school play in first grade.
She was daddy's little girl, a spoiled brat.
So, that was the microneighborhood
that she knew in Jersey City.
That's the way life was supposed to be,
as far as she knew,
and her husband and his family
and their neighborhood in Newark
just weren't good enough.
So, that neighborhood in Newark
was a bad neighborhood,
a low class neighborhood ?
Well, if you call
living about 5 houses from
The Congressman and Mayor of Newark
a bad neighborhood, yes.
If you call living
a 20 minute walk from
the country club campus
of Seton Hall University
a bad neighborhood, yes.
If you consider living
3 short city blocks
from The Village of South Orange
with its wide streets and quaint street lights
and comparatively palatial
homes and lot sizes
a bad neighborhood, yes.
But if you call
OK, never mind, enough of the drama.
I get it.
It wasn't a bad neighborhood.
That's right,
but she didn't like it
because that Congressman wasn't Frank Hague.
and her husband wasn't her father, a big shot.
He was "just" an accountant for AT&T.
Politicians and businessmen
didn't come calling at his door.
His friends and family were low class.
Were They ?
Yes, comparatively.
Our graduate student's grandparents
were born in Ireland,
so our graduate student's father
was first generation or second generation
or whatever you call it
when your parents are immigrants.
He did well though.
His mother was a maid
to an AT&T executive
who got her son, our graduate student's father,
a job at AT&T.
He went to college
and had a 48 year career at AT&T as an accountant.
But he lived in his old neighborhood
and kept his old friends.
He was a member of The Knights of Columbus
and he socialized at an Irish bar,
Malloy's Tavern.
It was blue collar, working class,
and some men there probably didn't have jobs
or were just getting by.
He got that job at AT&T at the right moment,
in 1928, when he was 18,
just before the depression,
and she used to brag about her father,
"We didn't even know there WAS a depression !"
Our graduate student went to Malloy's Tavern
once, before he went into the Navy.
He was surprised how tough it seemed,
considering how meek and quiet and gentle
his father always was.
Didn't His Father Take Him
To The Tavern At 21
As A Right Of Passage ?
No. He didn't take any of his sons
there as a right of passage.
His mother excluded
not only his father's family
from their lives, completely,
but also his father
as much as she could.
She constantly berated his father and mocked him
and scorned him and denigrated him
for as long as our graduate student
can remember
and tried to turn all three sons against him.
Did She Succeed At That ?
Yes, Completely with the oldest son.
Yes, but not as completely
with the second son,
and only slightly with our graduate student.
He was torn. He always loved his father.
But she dominated the household relationships
like General Patton.
It was actually our graduate student's father
who withdrew from the family
just to keep peace
and reduce her tantrums.
In fact there's one particular event
that our graduate student remembers
as a turning point
when his father significantly withdrew.
What Was That ?
Well, our graduate student
was between fourth and fifth grades, probably,
and his dad took him to a Yankee's game.
It was a group trip from Malloy's Tavern.
They rented a bus.
Maybe it was two or three buses.
Anyway, it was a great outing.
Our graduate student remembers
how very green and neat the diamond was
and how smooth the outfield appeared.
It was a doubleheader with Boston.
He saw Mickey Mantle hit a homer or two.
All the big names were there.
Those were the days of Mantle,
Maris, Whitey Ford on the mound,
Richardson, Kubek, Yogi Berra
behind the plate.
Ted Williams was playing for Boston
and his father pointed him out.
The vendors callin' out
"Pretzels" and "Beer",
The Seventh Inning Stretch,
all those wonderful traditions.
He remembered that on the bus ride back
they had extra cases of beer on sale cheap
and his dad bought one,
and that one of the guys really had to go
but the bus wouldn't stop
so he had to go in a beer cup
or in a beer bottle or something
and our 9 year old graduate student
thought it was really funny
cause all the other men were yelling at that man
telling him that the bus couldn't stop
and so he'd have to pee in the bottle.
Well, when our young graduate student got home,
his mother asked about the trip
and he gushed with enthusiasm
about that wonderful trip
to that Yankees Game With His Dad
and he started telling about
the last thing that happened
that was the freshest in his mind
and that was everybody yelling at that guy
and how he had to pee in the bottle.
I Can Tell Where This Is Going.
You guessed it.
Soon after, he heard his mom scolding his dad,
"Now, is that the right kind of environment ?
And yakkity yak and nag nag nag..."
His dad just took a back seat after that.
She was in charge of the family.
He was just a quiet person in the background
who didn't have much to do with any of them.
Maybe He Was Happy That Way.
Maybe. He still had his good job.
He was a success,
a professional who put on a suit every day
and went to work at 95 Broadway,
a few blocks from Wall Street.
He had to share his office
with a couple of other workers,
but it had a view.
Quite the cosmopolitan environment
as I said before.
Our graduate student sometimes
felt sorry for his father,
but later he thought
that his father probably got
a lot of satisfaction from his job.
I mean, he started working for AT&T at age 18,
in 1928, so he worked all through The Depression.
And then, when our graduate student put
the pieces of history together, he thought,
"What an exciting time to be
a man in New York City !"
New York City was booming.
They built the Empire State Building
when he was in his 20's or 30's.
He got to see that.
He lived through the victory of WWII,
countless tickertape parades on Wall Street,
the election of Kennedy,
the landing on the moon.
But Still, When He Came Home ?
Yeah, she was mean.
It wasn't a happy home.
That's probably why he went to Malloy's Tavern
all the time -
to get away from his wife.
I mean, it's classic
from a Country and Western song,
"hidin' from his wife down at the saloon",
or a stand up comedy routine,
"take my wife...please !"
Both of the older boys
got physically violent with him,
and both of those incidents
were intentionally incited by her.
Tell Me About That.
Well, the incident with the oldest boy
occured when they still lived in Newark
on Hazelwood Ave.
Our graduate student was
in fourth grade, maybe, about 8 or 9.
Well, his parents were religious
and they had statues of Mary and Joseph
in their bedroom.
They were small busts,
each about the size of a softball,
but much heavier,
made of plaster or something.
They had a fight
and that always meant
that she was fighting with him,
screaming and yelling and throwing things.
He never once raised his voice or hand to her.
Our graduate student saw
that those statues where chipped
because she had thrown them,
very likely AT him,
and that's dangerous !
Well, at some other point
they were standing outside their bedroom
at the dining room table,
and I guess they were disagreeing about something,
but their voices weren't raised.
Next thing you know,
our graduate student sees his mother
make a signal to the oldest boy,
who was a strong 18 or 19 year old athlete
in college who comes up behind his father
and squeezes him in a tight bear hug
and lifts him off the ground for a while.
It shocked and surprised
our young graduate student.
You weren't supposed to talk back to
or disobey your parents,
let alone fight with them !
But she was drawing the battle lines
and she definitely had the oldest boy on her side
against his father.
They used to watch "Dobie Gillis" on tv a lot,
you know, with Tuesday Weld and Maynard G. Krebs,
The Beatnik who later became Gilligan.
Well, there was another character on "Dobie Gillis"
called Chatsworth Osborne Junior III.
He was the rich kid who had trouble being liked.
His mother went on Safaris in Africa
and wrestled with lions.
Chatsworth was always playing tennis,
"Tennis, anyone ?"
Think "William F. Buckley III".
On one episode, Chatsworth
was in a Marine boot camp or something
and beat up the marine drill instructor
with his judo and karate skills.
"Oh, just a little something mummsy taught me,"
he said.
One one episode, Chatsworth's "mummsy"
remarked about her dead husband,
"What a satisfying venture it was
destroying that man !",
or something like that.
There was a lot of Chatsworth's mummsy
in our graduate student's mother.
Was There A Lot Of Chatsworth
In Our Graduate Student ?
No, not at all.
Not that his mother didn't try a little though.
All three of the boys
had that working class neighborhood
deep in their characters and personalities
and the two older ones
always played roughhouse
with our young graduate student
to make sure his mother and sister
didn't turn him into a sissy.
Did you ever see "Citizen Kane" ?
That part where Orson Wells
trashed the office,
throwing all the books off the shelves,
saying, "Rosebud" ?
Yes
Well, think of that
when you think of
our graduate student's mother
throwing a tantrum.
There was one particular tantrum she threw
when our graduate student
was in the fourth grade or so.
He never forgot it.
He doesn't know how or why it got started.
He just remembers standing by the wall
in the large living room/dining room,
watching her scream and yell
and throw plates about 30 feet
down the hall into the kitchen door.
She'd work herself up into a fury
yelling about something
and then throw a plate
as an exclamation point.
She turned to our young graduate student
and called him to her side
and handed him a plate,
"Here ! Here !
You throw one !
Come on !", or words to that effect.
Well, our young graduate student
held the plate, shaking, and stood there.
Then What Happened ?
His father took him upstairs
to the Italian lady
until it was over.
She fed him girl scout cookies.
His father just stood by
and watched her throw her tantrums, I guess.
What else could he do ?
Just make sure she didn't go too far
or hurt someone.
Our graduate student's sister
was closer to their father than anyone else was.
She tells our graduate student
that he was their father's favorite,
and maybe he was.
He had a portrait of our young graduate student
hanging in his room for over a decade.
It was one of those 5 minute chalk portraits
that street artists do.
His mother had it done one day
when she took him to The Village in New York.
So, he may have been his favorite back then,
but she was certainly closer to their father.
She was ten years older.
He had to protect her from their mother
and take care of her that way.
She'd visit him at work in Manhattan
and they'd go out to eat.
They had conversations.
She said that he had told her once,
"Yeah, we were thinking of
putting her in a mental institution,
but we decided not to."
Whoa ! That Says A Lot !
Yeah, I guess.
You never really know exactly HOW much
to make of comments like that
received from a second hand source.
Apparently the neighbors there
on Hazelwood Ave in Newark
were very sympathetic
to our graduate student's father, though.
When our graduate student's mother
threw her tantrums
she would often repeat
the same list of complaints each time
over and over and over again.
The oldest boy called it her "litany".
He got that name from a part
of the Catholic mass
that had a part called "The Litany"
and it went on and on and on and on.
Well in those days,
a big part of her litany
was to recite "Poor Bill ! Poor Bill !
All the neighbors are always saying,
'Poor Bill !'"
Of course, Bill was her husband, William.
And the neighbors were always saying,
"Poor Bill !" because of her,
and she knew it and it made her furious,
so she addressed it her tantrum litanies
as if to say,
"if only they knew WHY I was so angry !
If they knew how unhappy I was,
they'd be on MY side !".
So, what's implied there
is that her behavior was so extreme
that the neighbors couldn't help but
be aware of it,
and they were sympathetic
to our graduate student's father, Bill,
because he had to live with it.
Ever the drama queen,
she would often dramatically roll her eyes,
and make a face of pain and agony
and sing "Nobody knows..."
"Nobody knows the trouble I got".
It was a line from a Negro blues song.
She did that so often
that all she had to do was
sing the first two words, "Nobody knows"
and we all knew what she meant.
****
Then there was the physical attack on his father
by the middle son.
That happened several years later
when the oldest boy was home from West Point for the Christmas Holidays.
It was either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve
and the mother and three boys got home from midnight mass
or a visit to her relatives in Jersey City.
His father was celebrating at Malloy's Tavern with his childhood friends
and he came home later.
Of course he had a key to his own house,
but the mother had locked the winter "storm door"
and he was locked out.
So he's standing out there freezing
in the middle of the night
in the middle of a Jersey winter
(think George Washington crossing The Delaware).
He'd been wishing Merry Christmas or toasting Old Lang Syne
and had had a few beers,
so he's ringin' and ringin' the doorbell.
The noise of the fight (or the attack, rather)
woke up Our Young Graduate Student (10 or 11 y.o.)
and he runs down and sees his brother on top of his father
on the living room floor.
So he runs up and wakes up the oldest brother
who's home from West Point
and he goes down and grabs the middle brother
by the back of the shirt and pulls him off.
So they're all sittin' around in the living room.
The mother had walked up from the basement by now.
That's where she slept.
It was a "finished" basement, all nice and modern and warm
and she like it down there.
Our Graduate Student's all upset
and he yells at his father and tells him to get out of there
and go upstairs,
"Can't you see we don't want you here!?"
One of his saddest memories.
His father slunk off upstairs to his room
and Our Graduate Student's all upset and shaking.
But as the years went by
and the picture became clearer to him
he realized what had happened.
His mother did it on purpose.
She locked him out on purpose
to provoke an incident
because the oldest boy was home from West Point.
The middle boy did it to show off to the oldest boy.
He knew what the family politics was
and he was on mommy's side, like the oldest brother.
So here's this man who lifts himself up
from the immigrant status of his parents
and holds down a professional job at AT&T
as an accountant for 48 years,
goes to church, lots of boyhood friends at the tavern,
member of Knights of Columbus,
taking good care of his family,
out celebratin' on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve,
comes home to his house
and gets attacked by his middle son
and yelled at by his favorite son, the youngest,
and told that he's not wanted
all because that mean-spirited bitch of a mother
locked him out INTENTIONALLY, ON PURPOSE
IN ORDER TO PROVOKE AN INCIDENT!
merry fuckin' christmas. happy fuckin' new year.
mother's really short, about 4' 11",
so is the oldest boy, the one in west point.
mother works at the bank,
comes home with a funny joke
that she just HAS to tell the oldest boy from west point.
"Next time somebody asks you why you're so short,
just tell them 'Because I'm too MEAN to grow!'
HA HA HA
HA HA HA
That's a good one. That's good.
I'm too MEAN to grow.
HA HA HA
I'll use that!"
Yeah. They thought that was so funny.
Real good.
Too mean to grow.
The perfect joke for those two.
Locks a good man out of his own house
on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve
on a bitter cold jersey winter night
to provoke an incident
cause the oldest boy was home from west point.
Too mean to grow.
Well, you can't blame the oldest boy for THAT one.
He had to come down to break it up.
Yeah, it wasn't easy on him, either.
Probably explains why he never looked back
when he finally got out of that house.
Went to Chicago.
Didn't have anything to do with the family again.
Except the mother.
She was his rock,
just as much as he was her rock.
Had a key to his mother's apartment,
after she killed their father,
so he could use it whenever he wanted.
With her iron will,
she pushed him into and through west point
and was his rock of support through the decades
as he had marital and employment problems.
And with his iron will,
he helped her through the murder.
They were each other's rock.
Anyway, getting back, several years later
when Our Graduate Student was a senior in high school
he spent a week during the Christmas Holidays
at a classmate's house in Bayonne
(to get away from his own unhappy house).
He's never seen anything like it.
They're all kissin' each other goodnight
and sayin' "love ya!" "love ya!"
"love you too!"
Didn't know people did that.
It seemed so strange.
They were exactly the opposite to his family.
****
I'm Starting To Feel Miserable
Just Listening To All This.
It Must Have Been Hell
Having Her As A Wife !
Well, I'm not holding back,
but I do want to be fair.
There was a lot of good about her.
You know, a gentler critique of her
would be that she was just
a very smart and energetic person
with a very strong will.
I mean, that charcoal portrait
of our young graduate student as a child
that was on his father's wall ?
It wouldn't have been there
if SHE didn't take him
on that trip to Manhattan.
And in our graduate student's room
on the walls were huge maps
of The US, The World, and The Solar System.
She put them there.
She was always up on the best practices
in educational advice
and those kinds of educational visuals
were highly recommended.
And darned if they didn't work !
To this day, he can tell you
how far the Earth is from the Sun
in miles and light minutes.
She made sure he got to be
in the Cub Scouts and The Boy Scouts
like his brothers
and they all went to scout camp.
They went to his Little League games
and they were so cool
he didn't even know they were there.
Not like a lot of nutty parents of today.
They go to these sports activities
and hit other kids and other parents
and even hit their own kids !
***
Put in here about her
making sure they got to go to the shore a lot
(of course she loved it herself)
****
No, it'd just be too easy and simplistic
to blame everything on her !
Sure she wanted to be in the workworld
because it was stimulating
and she enjoyed the social aspects !
But she also said she did it
to educate her children
and all her children WERE educated
at reputable private schools, Catholic ones.
You know, there's another sort of insight,
or hunch,
that our graduate student has about his mother
that he shared with me.
What's That ?
Well, just before our graduate student
went into the Navy,
he spent some time visiting his cousins
on his mother side,
the children of his mother's older sister, Ann,
and her husband.
Ann had recently died.
Well, Ann's former husband, Jerry,
he was kind of a roughneck -
nothin' college educated about him -
and he once made a comment
to our graduate student
about what a wild one his mother was
back in the day
the kind of girl who'd punch a guy
in the face when she felt like it.
And then our graduate student
tried to make all the pieces fit.
He's like that, you know.
He's always doing that !
So he starts processing
all her different remarks
about her relationship with her father.
She worked in her father's business
during her teen years, she bragged, or complained
(depending on which was needed at the time,
a brag or a complaint).
Double entry bookkeeping, she said.
Her dad taught her how to do it.
Well, she mentioned it a hundred
or a thousand times,
and each time, as with any story,
a different nuance could be gleaned.
"He'd bring the books over to me
and slam them down and show me
a mistake I made.
Then I'd go over my work
and find that I was correct
and I'd go back to him
and slam the book right in front of him
and show him I was right," she bragged.
Well, there were a lot of ways
to interpret their relationship
as different little snapshots like that
were uncovered.
She stole money from his cash box,
she bragged.
She, "had to," she said,
because he hardly ever paid her anything.
She often described it as,
"a cold, dirty, rat infested room"
and sometimes complained that she,
"never should have been made to work there
like that, as a teenage girl."
Of course, it made our graduate student
wonder why SHE was the one chosen
to work there in his shop as the bookkeeper.
Couldn't the other two girls do it sometimes ?
What about his son ?
He was to inherit the business anyway.
Shouldn't he be doing the books ?
Maybe it WAS just because she was the smartest.
But she hated it.
"It was horrible," she said.
Now our graduate student has a daughter,
and of course he loves her as all dads do.
So he thought of his grandfather
whom he never knew.
Would this man be so cruel to his daughter
to deprive her of her social life
in her teen years ?
So this is our graduate student's speculation,
also based partly on some of his sister's opinions
(admittedly very biased against the mother).
He speculates that his mother
was already a wild one in her childhood
and as a teenager,
so wild that her father had to keep her in sight
and under control and out of trouble.
There. That was it in one sentence.
If so, who knows why ?
She was born in 1915
and the Roaring 20's were in full swing
when she was a preteen.
She was the prettiest of three sisters,
and the smartest.
She says she was always at the top of her class.
Maybe she was so lively and energetic and smart
that only her dynamic and brilliant father
could understand her and handle her.
Who knows ?
Maybe she was just a spoiled brat.
That simple explanation
seemed to explain it pretty well
to our graduate student, as he got older
As much as she complained about that job,
it got her the job she professed to love so much.
Around the summer of
our young graduate student's fourth grade,
his mother went downtown Newark
to The Howard Savings Bank
and somehow landed an interview
that got her a position in the investment department.
That was another story she repeated and repeated.
"I told them that I handled the books
for my father's business,
Jersey City Metal Fabricating
(or whatever its name was).
Double Entry Bookkeeping !
My father taught me how !"
Wow !
We've Come A Long Way Baby
From Talking About
our Graduate Student's Long Commute !
Somehow We Went From That
To Analyzing His Mother Again.
Yeah.
Well, we were talking about
how the commute made him isolated and lonely,
and how nobody ever visited their house
except HER friends
because she was selfish.
Here's one final vignette or snapshot
on that before we move on.
Yes, I Do Think We Need To Move On.
Well, when our young graduate student
finished fifth grade
they moved a half mile or a mile or so
across the city line
into a big house in South Orange.
He used to live about 4 houses away from the school,
but now he had a 20-minute walk or a bike ride home
and he met some new friends that way.
One was a boy a grade ahead of him,
and that made that boy
two years older than him,
but the boy was small for his age,
so they were good sports companions.
They wrestled a lot.
The older boy always won
but never easily
so they were good matches.
And, they climbed a lot.
The older boy was really good at that.
He lived across the street
from Lincoln School,
the local public elementary school.
Lincoln School's playground
was to be a very big part
of our young graduate student's life
those next four summers.
In fact, our young graduate student
had attended Kindergarten at Lincoln School
with his best friend Greg.
The Catholic Schools didn't have kindergarten.
Anyway, the boy's name was Bobby O'Connor
and he had a little sister
a year or two behind our young graduate student.
Often the three of them would play together.
So This Is Really About
One Of Our Young Graduate Student's
Early Loves ?
No. And don't be like that.
I'll let you know about his loves
if and when they come up.
She was nice,
and the three got along well,
and maybe she had a crush
on our young graduate student,
but she was just his friend's little sister.
But, now that you bring it up,
there WERE quite a few super hotties
on that particular block,
more than usual,
and a lot of babes
came to The Lincoln School Playground
all the time.
Anyway, Lincoln School
seemed to have been built
with boys' climbing needs in mind.
It had a chain link fence stacked three high
and the school itself was made of brick,
with all kinds of indentations
for handholds and footholds.
Also, it had an exterior fire escape,
and the school was at least four stories high.
When Bobby O'Connor was climbing
underneath that fire escape,
three of four stories high,
hanging upside down holdin' on with his legs,
or swinging from one support to another,
it'd send your heart to your throat.
Anyway, they were good friends for a while.
At least once the three of them went to the movies.
"El Cid" they saw, I think.
After the movie they played in Lincoln Playground.
The little sister played the heroine,
and the two boys played the heroes.
Well, our young graduate student
invited Bobby O'Connor home for dinner one evening.
It was sort of an ordinary thing to do.
Best friends and good friends
would often do stuff like that,
and even do sleepovers.
And then another evening
he invited him again.
They were in Bobby O'Connor's driveway
and it was near dinnertime
and time to go home
so our young graduate student
asked him if he wanted
to come to his house to eat.
Bobby O'Connor asked his mother
and came back and said his mother
wants to know "Is this an invitation ?"
Well, thinks our young graduate student,
yeah, of course, I guess
it's an invitation.
I'm asking him if he wants
to eat at my house.
"Yes, it's an invitation," he says.
So they go to our young graduate student's house
and they go downstairs where they eat dinner
and he tells his mother
that he brought his friend over for dinner,
and his mother says, "No,'
and sends Bobby O'Connor home.
Why ?
Who Knows ?
But we were saying that she was selfish
and that only HER friends got to come over,
and this was an example of that
that our graduate student remembers.
It ended that friendship.
At the time, our young graduate student
felt bad that his friend
had to go back home.
It felt like a mean and unfriendly thing to do.
In retrospect, he thinks it was
EXTREMELY rude of his mother to do that.
Bobby O'Connor's family appeared to be poor.
Perhaps his mom was a single mother.
The kids' clothes always appeared old
or secondhand, never new.
He wasn't the kind of kid
his mother wanted him to have as a friend.
Remember, she thought she was
a Vanderbilt or a Rockefeller or something.
But, if she didn't want him to
come over for dinner again,
she should have told that to our graduate student.
It was kind of odd that Bobby O'Connor's mother
asked if it was an invitation.
I mean, it sounded so formal.
Probably our graduate student's mother
had called her up after the first time
and complained or something,
and THAT's probably why Bobby O'Connor's mother
asked that.
Our graduate student's mother
was ALWAYS doing stuff behind his back like that.
It was a consistent pattern of her's
all through their lives.
She did it to everybody.
It's the way she operated.
So, It's Settled.
She Was Awful, Then !
Well, his parents
DID adopt his dog, Samanatha,
when he grew up and moved away
and took care of her until old age.
So, They Were Wonderful ?
No, they were neither
wonderful nor awful.
Yes, they were both
wonderful and awful.
Oh
It's the human condition.
They were human.
OK
Very Easily.
OK
Very Easily.