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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.