My Aunt Was Her Cat/Meet the Winsbergs

Chapter 1.  Today I Got the Call

Aunt Helen died today, at age 104, and managed to get through an entire century, only getting arrested once.  The oldest child of a family of 10, she survived her husband, my Uncle, Haskel by 24 years.  She missed him every day.  The matriarch of the family, she spent much of her life keeping her nine brothers and sisters and their billions of children and grandchildren together and in contact with each other.  Since I was the only child of her baby sister, I came into their lives when my other cousins were married grown-ups, and when Helen and Haskel were living comfortably, which may be why they took me on as their project.  They loved me enough to make sure I knew about ways of life other than what my parents could show me.  I had many good experiences with my Aunt and Uncle, probably moreso than had most of my cousins, so I felt both obligated and awkward as I began to prepare a few comments for presentation at the upcoming funeral.

Chapter 2.  6 Days Later - the Wrap-up

I'm 56 and was the youngest to walk through the Chapel door.  Of course, she had, many years ago, selected her funeral home - an establishment that had been in business in Philadelphia since 1878.  I came, I saw, I spoke, but personally was not impressed with my work.  I'd lost two people who taught me important things.  If these "things" were so important I should be able to define them.  The shaky, small crowd complemented me on my words¹, but everything I said, or decided not to say, was trite, unoriginal, and unimaginative. 

The funeral was largely unsatisfying - the overwhelming grief² so common to funerals was not there.  Helen had been in a nursing home for almost a decade, and had micro-died every day for years, losing her hearing, her sight, her memory, and just about everything that made her her.  I wished she had died 20 years earlier; mourners would have felt much more in the moment, not so detached from the grey-haired body with the superglued lips that laid in the this room with us.  I also wished she had died 20 years earlier because it was her wish as well.  

When the pastor, "the Episcopal pastor"³, asked if anyone would like to say a few words about Helen, I inexplicably was silent, with notes in my pocket, but since there was no line forming I eventually stepped forward.  I told them I was going to be selfish and talk about what Aunt Helen and Uncle Haskel had done for me - showing me a world that I never would have seen without them.

As a Philly kid, I got to go to Rockefeller Center at Christmas, with Aunt Helen.  She and I took the train to Queens, to the 1964 New York World's Fair.  I had my first slice of New York cheesecake⁴ in a restaurant⁵ with her. I was rubbing elbows with royalty, it seemed, when we climbed one of the elaborate, curved staircases to the balcony in the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia in September of 1963 to see My Fair Lady⁶. After the show, we ate at the Kite and Key Lounge in the Benjamin Franklin Hotel at 9th and Chestnut⁷.  She ordered for me a real steak, rare. She said, "trust me".  I liked it.  She explained that my mother wasn't the best cook, but that I should consider occasionally "buying a nice cut of meat and warming it myself".  While my parents took me to see Santa, somewhere, every Christmas season, Aunt Helen took me one year to see SANTA at Wanamakers in Philadelphia, and I got a picture taken too. At the end of the Thanksgiving Day parade, the last float carried SANTA, and he climbed a firetruck ladder up into a Wanamaker's window, so I knew he was the real deal.  He didn't have food in his beard or anything. 

I remember the day that my family got the keys to our first house - remember sitting on the steps of the empty place getting ready to house clean.  My Aunt was sitting there with us.  She was always there, for us, and for me.

Both my Aunt and Uncle were amazing people.  When Aunt Helen walked into a room, everything stopped.  When Uncle Haskel walked into a room, no one noticed, but they all knew him by the time he left.  They were honestly special, not just special to me - on an absolute scale.  I feel obligated to document the evidence justifying this overused label, special.  They earned the right to have their "work" summarized, so after the family moved to a nondescript restaurant for a nondescript post-burial meal (alcohol, soup, alcohol, salad, chicken/veal parm/crab cake, alcohol, desert, coffee/tea) and I was hugged one last time by my many aging cousins, promising to keep in better touch, I drove home to start my work on the challenge of extracting, from my memories, their message for me.

Chapter 3.  I write

Learned concept #1:  Life can go your way if you have the strength, fortitude and persistence to insist on it.

During the week, particularly in the summer, when I was little⁸, Aunt Helen would often visit my mother and I, when my Dad was at work.  To do this, she would walk about a mile to catch the #11 trolley, ride it to it's end, then walk⁹ another mile, uphill¹⁰, to get to our house.  She was young at the time, only around 60.  She'd always arrive at lunchtime, carrying two shopping bags.  Packmule.  One would have lunch in it, usually a casserole that she made, or a Cornish hen that she bought hot at the Reading Terminal from the Amish, and there would always be a dress or curtain or sheets - something she claimed she didn't want anymore, so my mother could have.  Usually, the price tags were in the bag, lovingly but hastily removed during the trolley ride, because they were new.¹¹  She knew that, if she had asked, we wouldn't let her bring lunch every time.  We weren't indigent.  But the food appeared so we had to eat it.  My mother didn't need Aunt Helen to buy her something new every visit, but they had money and it was all carefully planned.  She dragged that new dress for miles - we couldn't expect her to drag it all the way back, then return it to the store.  She knew how she wanted life to go and made it happen.

Her biggest project concerning persistence was the man she married, the man she loved, the man the family shunned.  I'd long been haunted by a photo taken at my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary; it was of the "men", sons and husbands, of the family.  Off to one side stood my Uncle Haskel, all 5'2" of him. How could an entire family decide to be so mean to someone so important to Aunt Helen?  If I were they, I would have told everyone to go to hell, but this was Helen's family and she would have her way. Many of Helen's brothers and sisters went through periods of hard times, since probably none of them had ever had the luxury of completing high school, so jobs could come and go¹². Haskel would always step up and loan them some money¹³ or help in some way.  He faced distain with grace.  He made the phrase "turn the other cheek", that I learned in Sunday School, real to me. I watched the family eventually warm up to him, and after too many years, he became a part of the family. Aunt Helen would not have rested until life relented, to go her way.

My favorite story of Aunt Helen's strength and persistence is one I cannot document, but was told the story from my mother.  Aunt Helen had a police record.  For years, she would do volunteer work to help elderly voters get to polling places.  It was important work to her, and when an old woman didn't have the strength to pull down the lever¹⁴, Aunt Helen responded to a request for help, and was promptly admonished for stepping into the voting booth.  I'm sure she politely explained that she did what she had to do, end of story.  Such interventions were not permitted.  Still, voting was a sacred right¹⁵, so when she was again asked for help, again by a senior citizen frustrated because she didn't have the strength required, Helen provided assistance and was arrested.  The police were not amused.  I was very proud, and a bit surprised that my parents were as well.

Learned concept #2:  Every person on the planet is potentially tomorrow's friend, and you should always be ready to begin that relationship¹⁶.

I'm fading back into Tritesville. She was impressive in her people skills, and had friends in more circles than I ever could appreciate.  When I was a teenager, my friends and I would always go into town¹⁷ at Christmas to shop and see the sites/lights, which of course always included walking an extra 12 blocks each way to visit with Aunt Helen.  Usually teenagers shun adults, but my friends loved her, and she loved them.  She had radar¹⁸, so whenever we'd knock, the fire would be crackling, plates and lead glass dishes filled with cookies populated the room, and my friends would melt into the furniture.  Within seconds, lunch would appear.  She must have made sandwiches every day and kept them in the fridge, just in case.  Then, of course, they couldn't leave without presents.  Every Christmas, she'd buy and wrap dozens of small gifts, for nobody in particular - half with a small M on the bottom, half with a small F, kept in her closet, ready for anyone who showed up.

At their house, people always showed up.  Her house was a hangout for all the neighbors, who would bring her things, borrow things, check out when they went to work, and check in when they got home.  I met doctors, lawyers, ministers, and even homeless people there.  All were drawn to her door because they were addicted to watching her face light up when they walked in.  And walk in they did.  Even the mailman would just open the door and set the mail on the table.  Then there was the cat.  Matisse was her treasure, her companion, and her protector after Haskel died, but the cat always seemed one of the little impurrfections¹⁹ in the life of Aunt Helen.  Maybe she wanted a cat but didn't have the time to do the pet-thing right, I don't know.  But every morning she'd just let him loose in center city Philadelphia.  In a full sprint, he'd run out the back door into their tiny back yard, fly over the brick wall, then over the next brick wall, down through the yards, and off he'd go.  He'd visit the Church, visit his friends like the firemen, who always talked about him, seek out friends unknown to us, and he'd wander around Franklin's grave.  Sometimes when we went downtown to visit, we'd see him darting in and out of Philadelphia traffic.  Seemed crazy.  He was her second cat²⁰. I'd have expected her to keep him home.  Every day at dusk, he was required to return.  If he didn't, she'd go out looking for him, and while there was the occasional all-nighter, he'd usually be pawing and meowing at the front door as the sun was setting, or a neighbor would just open the door and in would walk the man of the house, home from work, Matisse.

Learned concept #3:  If you're going to do something, do something great - but balance it out by doing things small.

I don't know enough details, but from her obit I learned that she was an important participant/organizer in the early days of the Philadelphia Flower Show.  This was big, but no surprise, since while she never graduated high school, she took a number of college courses in horticulture. 

Going small, I have no doubt that she passed homeless people every day, and I'm sure she wouldn't pass without giving them some money, or perhaps a sandwich, or even a casserole!  It was something small, but she faced all things with her head raised high, no turning away²¹.  Then, she organized her friends and Haskel's friends and raised enough money to start a soup kitchen that is still in operation today, The Coffee Cup.  She had the capability of doing something small, (like making sure my favorite caramels were always in the house for whenever I visited), but could envision big things and take them on just as easily.

Correlate concept #3A:  Know that, if you try to do something good and fail, good will still result.

It's probably time to introduce my Uncle Haskel.  They were at a time in their lives when they liked an occasional kid around the house, and I fit the bill, so that worked out fine.  I think he saw a place for himself in my life and enjoyed serving in that role.  He taught me urban exploring - since one of his jobs was to appraise houses, often empty.  He'd occasionally invite me to join him on weekends, roaming through beautiful 3 and 4-story Philadelphia row homes, showing me the difference between a good and bad house²².  I believe that he wanted me to be well rounded, and tried to stimulate my interest in sports.  One weekend he took me to see Penn play football in the stadium that they still use, Franklin Field.  He was the only person I knew who went to college, and he graduated from Penn.  Then, on Sunday, he took me back to Franklin Field where we watched The Eagles play²³.  I was young, but old enough to know I had just done something very special! 

Aunt Helen and Uncle Haskel liked to golf, and were members of a country club, of course.  When I was eight they bought me my first and last set of golf clubs and I competed (i.e., was somehow registered) in a country club golf competition.  I shot a 64.  Fortunately, for my age group, we didn't have to play a second hole.  I guess they must have been a little disappointed that I didn't go on to become a golfer, but it was quite an experience for me.  I don't think anyone at my school had ever been to a country club.  I was learning that there were lifestyles other than those of my parents.  It was good, plus I got a trophy with my name on it and everything²⁴!

Learned Concept #4:  Be smart.  Maybe you aren't smart, but you should be.  It just takes work.  Be smart.

With 20 aunts and uncles, I was a lucky kid - not so lucky as I grew older and had to watch all of them die - but, still, a lucky kid.  Many of the family would congregate on weekends at my grandparent's house.  If it was an evening congregation, the guys would play cards, often, and the girls would congregate in the kitchen.  Sometimes Uncle Haskel would sit in an overstuffed chair at the foot of the stairs in the living room and I'd sit on a step, and we'd talk.  I remember when he learned that I was taking algebra, probably in 7th grade.  He started drilling me.  I was pretty good at math, so I was doing OK.  He gave me a relatively simple problem, like 4x+3=43, what is x?  I told him x = 10.  He said I was wrong.  I did it again.  Nope.  I proved it to him.  Nope.  I proved it to him a second way.  Nope.  Every time he said "nope" he did smile, so I couldn't tell if he was playing with me or enjoying my frustration, but this was very important. I was drifting in junior high, and after that night, I became more exact, prepared better, and eventually graduated surprisingly high up in the class ranking.  It was an interesting little conversation, that no one else knew we were having, and that no one else there could have had with me.  You may not think of an algebra challenge as an intimate, life-changing moment, but it was for me.²⁵

Speaking of being smart, it was in the basement of my grandparents home where Uncle Haskel and I had a very intimate moment - one that changed my life.  This guy read three or four books a week for most of his adult life.  He had no place to keep them so many people had stashes of his books in their basements.  One time he took me downstairs, grabbed an Acme supermarket bag, and started to pick out books that he wanted me to have.  It wasn't the last time.  My father and I built bookcases in my bedroom just to hold all of the books I received.  He would have a few words to say about each one.  He read lots of books about traveling to exotic places, a popular topic in the 1940's and 50's.  He gave me books from his college days, some science books²⁶, and some books that he read for pleasure that were from a book club he had joined during college.  He was investing in me.  I opened one book because it had paper sticking out.  He'd get lots of books after reading reviews about them, and would always save the review and keep it with the book.  As I opened the front cover to see how old the newspaper clipping was, I saw something else.  A name was in the book that my Uncle Haskel, Haskel Winslow, was giving me.  It said Haskel Winsberg.  I literally froze.  Who did this book really belong to?  Why were their names so similar?  Surely he didn't have another name.  Fortunately, he saw what I had discovered, and calmly explained it to me.  He said, "That used to be me.  You see, I'm Jewish, and when I graduated from college people didn't want to work with businessmen who were Jews²⁷, so I changed my name from Winsberg to Winslow."  It was the saddest story I'd ever heard, but it somehow put everything into perspective.  Is that why the family disliked him?  It made me dislike them.  It made me dislike my country just a little bit more.  I never would have known that things like this ever could have happened here, but this is why it's important to spend time with older people, to learn about how different life used to be, not so long ago.  Some people hated you for your name.  Even "family".  Inconceivable.  I think I grew up a lot that day. I wished I just could have remained a young innocent, a virgin to the realities of a world such as this, but it was not to be, and this is something that I needed to recognize.  It should have been a great day, to be carrying home a bag of beautiful books, but I could not celebrate.  Some of them had a signature in them that would always remind me of the look of suppressed hurt on his face, and that for some reason, the family upstairs playing cards or making food for the men playing cards and laughing, should have instead been explaining themselves to me.  I wasn't happy with them, even though he tried to minimize the facts.

Learned Concept #5:  Relax and don't be afraid to laugh at yourself. 

They taught me how the other half lived, they spent time with me, they took me places and introduced me to people and things that helped me grow.  While Aunt Helen never would have taken on this task, Uncle Haskel, with a gusto that demonstrated the definition of glee, took on the job of making sure I appreciated a sense of humor, especially the need to be able to laugh at yourself.²⁸ This was from a guy who was 5'2" short and bald, so he must have been well-trained. 

For an old guy, he was very plugged into what might just strike a nerve for certain age groups. They would often visit on weekends.  One day when he was in the "little boy's room" at our house, all conversation in the living room stopped after we heard three loud bangs from upstairs.  When he came back down we asked if he was OK - said he hit his head on the doorjam³⁰.  Three times? "I was really in a hurry - had to go³⁰."  After they left, I found that he had hammered a nail into my bedroom door, and there was a small frame hanging on it.  He had taken a bad picture of himself in one of those booths where you get three photos on a strip.  He glued one onto the center of a piece of cardboard in the frame, one where he wasn't smiling, and wrote "With love from your loving Uncle Haskel, XXXOOO" with his fountain pen - just what a growing boy would want his friends to see.³¹

I still have in my files a letter that I, again still a kid³², had received one day in the mail.  It was a few days before my Aunt and Uncle were scheduled to come over for dinner and cake for my father's birthday.  A letter in an official envelope on office stationary is very cool for a kid.  Out fell a check, also very cool since I'd never seen one up close before, much less one issued to me.  The letter said:

"Dear Young Mr. Allison,

It has come to my attention that my wife and I will be reluctantly attending dinner at your parents' home in a few days.  I am writing to request that you ensure that you will not be present, just so the visit can be an enjoyable one for us.  Enclosed is payment that should cover your costs.  We appreciate your cooperation.

Best wishes,

Haskel E. Winslow"

Every joke was original, and had a theme - training me.

I can now finish the story of that great football weekend we had.  When we sat down on the cold bench in Franklin Field, he acknowledged the gentlemen who flanked us.  He introduced me as "my nephew, but just through marriage, no blood relationship at all," followed by his he-he-he laugh, clearly proud of himself.  I was a straight man in training. 

Years later, I married Cathie who came with a boy and girl child.  Often I would introduce Jason in the same way.  You should never lose track of good material.

Not to overdo the humor theme, but just to document what this man would do to a young boy . . . when we were young, every year all of our parents would pay for another set of school pictures.  We'd always send one to my Aunt and Uncle.  He would always lovingly frame it.  Then, whenever we'd visit he would gleefully display it on the toilet.  He'd drown me with kindness and lots of Pepsi, to ensure I'd have to pee soon, then when I'd return from the bathroom, he'd say, the same thing every time.  "Isn't this your birthday?  I wanted to give you a birthday potty!"  Not his best, probably stolen from one of Aunt Helen's Readers Digests, but it seemed to make him happy, and it made me learn to smile when picked on.  Later, in Senior High, I recall one of the jocks/jerks taking the time to verbally attack me.  There wasn't any reason, except showing off to his friends.  I'm sure most would have gotten very upset, but I just smiled.  I think he called me a bunch of stupid names ("Hey you little asshole, etc."), I smiled, and told him I was a little asshole because I thought he needed some company, so he wouldn't feel so alone.  He probably could have pounded me into the ground, but instead chose not to, even though his buddies were "ooooo"-ing my comments.  I guess I caught him off guard.  Or perhaps he detected my super-hero like powers, with the S on my chest (for Straight Man).

Learned Concept #6:  Live on Mars.

Their last home was #2 Loxley Court at 4th and Arch St. in Philadelphia, within a block of the Mint, a block of Betsy Ross' House, and only a few blocks from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.  They had a wonderful historic courtyard³³.  History reports that, when Ben Franklin was running with his kite to keep an appointment with a thunderstorm, he stopped by the home of his friend the carpenter, Loxley's house, and borrowed his key.  Loxley lived at #2, of course.  The place simmered in history.  You can still go there, and see a plaque and small monument in honor of Uncle Haskel, erected by those who lived in the court when we lost him.  He had that kind of impact on his neighbors.  But my favorite place, the place I still have dreams about, was an apartment building on 38th street, perhaps their first home.  They had a studio apartment with a trundle bed, and when I visited on an occasional weekend, I'd sleep under the kitchen table with their dog, my friend, Gus.  The three story stone apartment building was like some kind of enchanted urban island.  For a few years, my Great Aunt Florrie lived upstairs, put there by Aunt Helen so she could take care of Florrie.  I probably would never have met my great aunt if it weren't for this arrangement.  She was about 4'2" tall, bug-eyed, just some skin draped over a skeleton - a copy of her sister, my grandmother, only taller.  It was great to meet the oldest living member of the family.  Once, when I was asked to take a hot meal up to her, she was giddy with excitement as she read aloud a story from the Evening Bulletin to me.  She was fascinated - she no longer needed her glasses that she'd worn for 70 years.  Suddenly she could see again - I was witnessing a miracle.  A week later she died.  We decided that corrected vision is one of many possible little gifts you may get in the week before you're scheduled to go.

There were three apartments on their floor.  The largest one was inhabited by some number of Penn students, who Aunt Helen fed often.  This is where it gets . . . different.  She introduced me to one of the students and simply said, "show him".  He guided me into his "pad".  In their living area they had a record player and I remember the album cover on the floor, because it showed a naked woman discretely covered by an acoustic guitar. The place smelled and was a mess, which probably shouldn't have been unexpected.  They had filled their bathtub with dirt and they had tomatoes growing in there.  Looking back, all I can report is that they said they had tomatoes growing in there.³⁴  Leaving the pot(ty) room, he pointed to a closed door and said, "are you ready?"  "???," I replied.  He opened the door and we walked in; he dramatically paced himself in turning on the light switch.  The overhead light was a spotlight, which only illuminated the middle of the room, where, sitting on a perch, was a South American parrot.  Its head was bigger than mine, and, from beak to tailfeathers, was longer than I was tall.  Part of the beauty of this thing was that it was pure white.  It wasn't behind a screen or glass or in a cage, but the bird and I were standing there looking at each other.  I was on another planet.  It was like being in a movie³⁵ and it was their world - Helen and Haskel's world - where simply by existing, you were accepted.

Chapter 4.  Lets see where we are:

- Life can go your way if you have the strength and fortitude and persistence to insist on it.

- Every person on the planet is potentially tomorrow's friend, and you should always be ready to begin that relationship.

- If you're going to do something, do something great - but balance it out by doing things small.

             - Know that, if you try to do something good and fail, good will still result.

- Be smart.  Maybe you aren't smart, but you should be.  It just takes work.  Be smart.

- Relax and don't be afraid to laugh at yourself.

- Live on Mars.

It seemed like a decent list but it didn't do them justice. Such interesting lives deserved a more insightful summary.  What's the biggest big picture? 

My mind again drifted to Matisse - almost the single inconsistency in their lives.  How do I fold Matisse the cat into the big picture? Pets are just animals?  Is that the learned concept?  Seems pretty cold.  I remembered Uncle Haskel once telling me that, whenever you have a question about anything, the answer is always right there in front of you - if you don't get it, you just aren't listening. 

Chapter 5.  One Click After Midnight

I awoke shortly after midnight.  I had just had a dream, and actually remembered part of it.  It was about Aunt Helen, which should seem natural considering how much she'd been in my thoughts, but that kind of memory mapping into dreams never happens to me.  I remember, in the dream, Helen³⁵ in her little back yard, giving me a tour like I was seeing it for the first time.  For such a tiny space, it served many purposes.  It was home for the very un-historic air conditioner that could not have been exposed from anywhere on the front of this historic site.  She showed me the turtles who enjoyed living in the gardens.  I knew one well since, on a ride to the shore (a.k.a., New Jersey) one summer, I made my parents stop the car when we passed a turtle on the road.  I invited him into the car, and fed him lettuce until I could put him in the care of Aunt Helen.  In the dream she introduced me to her three small goldfish, who lived in the "pond", which was a modified marble bathroom sink top in the ground.  As she talked, I remembered her repeatedly looking up to the top of the garden wall.  What was the attraction there?  Then it hit me and I got up to write this, my best version of the big picture.  I had been trying to understand if Matisse fit into the big picture.  I now realized that, in this story, the two are one. 

Matisse is Aunt Helen.

There were three responsible for my training, and they were all trying to show me, through their lives, the same thing.  The big picture³⁶:

In life, you need to understand the rules and try to live by them, but spend as much time as you can doing what you enjoy, living each day with intention.  Look forward to each sunrise - sprint out the door, jump over the fence, no matter how high it is, and feel alive!  Sometimes you need to run between the cars - it feels good, and if it's wrong, then let them try to catch you!  Be sure you make time for friends, and for the people who love you.  When they trust you enough to let you run free, make sure you guard over them as best you can, and bring them an occasional mouse to show that you appreciate their love.

_________________________________________

Post-ending ending:  (This is difficult to do because I am a storyteller, not an artist, so to end with anything from a serious writer can only create an unwanted contrast with what I have composed, but that's something I'll have to live with.)

If you have any questions about life, the answers are always in front of you, we just have to learn how to listen.  Since I was writing about my Uncle's books, I decided to go back and look through some of them again, to see when he was a Winsberg.  He gave me a 1917 copy of Poor People by Dostoyevsky (his first novel, written when he was 24) which was signed by Haskel and dated 1/21/26.  It's soft leather cover always made me envious of the past.  I was surprised to find written within, by Uncle Haskel, a quote that he found worthy and relevant to him; it could represent the personal, desperate dream of a frustrated optimist, so I will leave you with what he wrote:

"Civilization is refinement of spirit, respect of one's neighbor, tolerance of foreign opinion, courtesy of manner. 

Four Horsemen, Ibanez"

some (amazing) photos of a young Aunt Helen
at one of her birthday parties

A present from Uncle Haskel

Uncle Haskel in his tiny little back yard at #2 Loxley Court.
We drove the lawn mower down to Philadelphia for him to use.
(My father's bottom on the left)

Official Mail from Uncle Haskel
asking me not to show up to dinner
I was 12

Newspaper Article from the Bulletin on Loxley Court

A Young and Beautiful Helen

One of the family stories is that Helen was in a Beauty Pageant in
Atlantic City when she was young (before there was officially
a Miss America Pageant)

My girlfriend at her 100th birthday

____________________________________________________

Footnotes:

1.  probably instead more an indication of gratitude, so they wouldn't have to try and develop public speaking skills with tears in their eyes

2.  that she had earned

3.  as was explained to me by a cousin

4.  real, not the Jello recipe

5.  That stuff's expensive!

6.  No, I didn't get to see Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle, but Gaylea Byrne was just fine for me!

7.  a prediction of things to come

8.  One could say "when I was a kid", or "when I was a child", but the correct designation in my family is "when I was little".  Undoubtedly it was a carefully selected term to make clear that size and maturity are not necessarily coupled.

9.  honestly

10.  seriously

11.  There is no doubt that many happy people got off the number 11 that day, as the smell of that casserole triumphed over the more common smell of urine.

12.  Certainly this was the case with my family. While my father worked for years at Westinghouse, I can remember multiple strikes by the Union that lasted for many months.

13.  Haskel was a very good businessman, and when he died, everything was in place to allow Aunt Helen to continue to live, in the lifestyle she required, for decades.

14.  At the time, the term "hanging Chad" had other meanings, usually related to that pain-in-the-butt Chad.

15.  She was 16 when Congress passed the 19th Ammendment, so she had a unique perspective on the topic.

16.  No, I didn't copy this from a Hallmark card.

17.  New York was "the city"; Philadelphia was "town" or "downtown".

18.  probably my mother

19.  sorry

20.  Her first cat became a truck's splat.

21.  Pink Floyd, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Columbia Records, 1987

22.  Urban exploring may be what I enjoy doing most in life.

23.  before they had a stadium of their own

24.  Want to see it?

25.  Thanks, Uncle Haskel.

26.  including Mammalian Anatomy with special reference to The Cat, - ugh

27.  whatever Jew really meant, I didn't get it

28.  It all felt very Pink Panther, he as a verbal Cato²⁹ to my Inspector Clouseau.

29.  Fong - Cato's last name was Fong

30.  rimshot

31.  Don't underestimate what was involved in pulling this off.  He depended on my Mother putting all of the coats on my bed, as she always did for company, including his coat, which must have weighed 30 pounds, since it carried a frame, a nail, and a hammer.  Also, there is the time spent preparing this little gem.  That's love, my friends.

32.  little

33.  that place where my friends loved to go

34.  I've since rethought this, and Aunt Horticulture must have known what was really going on.

35.  in color

36.  If it's too Hallmark, I don't need to know.  But thanks for offering.

© 2012 John Allison

Under Two Flags

            My father served in the Army Air Force during World War II.  He began his military service in 1943.  He was 30 years old when he entered into active duty.  I can't imagine - 30.  He had less than a high school education.  They invested in him, training him to be an aircraft mechanic.  During his service, he traveled around the country, from New Jersey to Florida to Texas to California, and while Japan unconditionally surrendered on his birthday, August 14, 1945, before he could be sent overseas, he had been prepared to go to War.  He made real friends in the service.  He was respected in the Air Force, and was quickly promoted to the rank of Sargeant.  Of this he was proud.  They taught him discipline and responsibility.  Also, he was well cared for and entertained.  At USO shows, he saw all of his favorite movie stars - Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and his absolute favorite, Al Jolsen. (White singers who perform in black face probably wouldn't sell today, but you had to be there.  It was all about the music.)  This is not the life he would have lived on his own. 

His service had an impact on my mother as well, who probably never would have left her family in Philadelphia were it not for an opportunity to spend a few months with her new husband in Florida.

 The Air Force changed their lives.  The experiences gave them perspectives they would not otherwise have had.  One thing their Air Force duty did for me was to document their love affair.  The cedar chest in the back bedroom had a collection of annotated photos they'd sent to each other, letters, post-cards, and my favorite - records that my father made and sent to my mother on which he sings her love songs and tells her how much he's thinking about her.  They're both gone now, but I can still hear a love-struck guy singing to his girl whenever I want - feelings burned into red vinyl.

            I didn't think that my father understood if he was actually a Veteran.  After all, he had not seen combat as many friends and family had.  Dad never went to a VFW hall, and never seemed to relate to Veterans.  He had done nothing special, just served two and a half years in the job of his life, and he was more indebted to the Army than he expected the Army to be to him.

            I was born into a good family who took good care of me.  I was 7 years old in 1958 and  WWII was still fresh in people's minds.  Many of my parents' friends served during the war, and had souvenirs tucked away in their underwear drawers - a hat, a medal, a German coin, a bullet shell.  I collected many of their memories - cherished items that I'll have until I die.  Their feelings were reflected in these proud mementos.

            As we grow, the problems that we stew over change.  When I was young, I played until I cried, not understanding why aching legs and feet wouldn't let me run all through those long summer days and warm summer nights with my little friends.  Fortunately, my parents took me to a doctor who determined that I had flat feet.  For the rest of my young life, I wore orthopedic shoes from Shapiro's in Philadelphia, the company that also made shoes for many of the Phillies and Eagles.  Thankfully they modified normal shoes, such as Hush Puppies, so only I knew that I had a specially made insert to deal with my malady.  Orthopedic - it sounded so . . . lame.  As I became a teenager, I found myself asking those seated around me in school what the assignment was on the board.  I borrowed someone's glasses and realized what I had been missing.  Another glaring defect!  When you first put glasses on, the world stares and laughs, of course.  The girls in 7^th grade used to steal my briefcase (yes, my briefcase) and extract my glasses to pass around.  It was a major point of embarrassment. 

            Then an awareness of issues larger than corrective lenses changed the vision of everyone.  The cold war.  Nuclear capability.  As I was dealing with the humiliation of spectacles in 1962, I was also reading booklets I'd requested by mail such as Handbook H-7, Family Shelter Designs from the Office of Civil Defense/Department of Defense.  I particularly liked design PSD F-61-1, a lean-to fallout shelter with a whopping 128 cubic feet of space, to house three people, and food.  Consider this - a room in which a 6 foot man could stand and sleep, a room 6' x 6' x 6', contains 216 cubic feet.  This structure was little more than half of that - and was supposed to be a shelter from a nuclear storm.  This was before the phrase 'nuclear winter' was even imagined.  Another Civil Defense pamphlet, Fallout Protection, calmly defined terms such as megaton and explained 2000 mph blast waves.  It is clear today that not even JFK's secretary of defense Robert McNamara had a clue, acting like, after a nuclear weapon is detonated, nuclear fallout would be over in a few days, when we would then sweep up and retaliate.  I, the little adult, worked with my parents to almost convert part of our basement to a fallout shelter.

            The Cold War was such a sweet war - a battle of good and evil - and we were good.  We were pure.  Then, Southeast Asia took over the too-small black-and-white cathode ray tubes of our TV sets.  The government invented a new vocabulary, and we were expected to call it a military action.  We did not.  It was The War.  Symbols like the Berlin Wall rapidly became replaced by Kent State and Jackson.  Civil unrest and civil disobedience percolated up into mainstream life, even in the city of Brotherly Love.  Our founding fathers would have expected nothing less. 

            I quickly grew, like my peers, to hate The War, hate the government that kept us in it, and it is unfortunate that we also came to hate those who fought.  They were sellouts.  It was not unusual to see a bunch of long-haired Vietnam vets smoking a joint in front of the VFW hall.  Older Veterans wanted nothing to do with them.  Veterans were no longer older, distinguished gentlemen, but late-blooming hippie losers.  Perhaps that's why we couldn't even call them Veterans.  They only deserved 'vet', lower case v.  There were no parades, no celebrations when they returned, only a bitter, traumatized country.

            Pat C. was a childhood friend, the son of an army lifer.  Pat was never anywhere for more than a year or two, constantly moving as his father was reassigned, but there were at least two periods that his family spent in the Philadelphia area, and these times were when we became friends.  The letter from Pat in California that I kept was typical, decorated on the outside with "Peace in Vietnam - through VICTORY!".  It's actually taken me decades to piece together its place in our history.  The letter was dated June 20, no year.  In it Pat goes on for two pages about a Dodgers game he attended where Don Drysdale set a record and (of course) beat the Phillies in the process.  Drysdale retired in 1969, so Pat must have been at the game on June 8, 1968 when Don pitched 4 scoreless innings against the Phillies to break the major league record of 56 scoreless innings, set by Walter Johnson in 1913.  The Dodgers beat the Phillies 5-3.  A few days before, June 4, Don pitched a shutout.  It was the day of the California Presidential Primary.  Robert Kennedy, who won that election, congratulated Don late that night as he spoke to those who had worked so hard for him.  Shortly after midnight RFK was shot by Sirhan Sirhan.  The world was going mad.  I had no idea how many wars were actually in progress.  Only two months had passed since news of Dr. Martin Luther King's death came out of Memphis.  Reverend King was only 39 years old.  Pat was discussing baseball.  RFK had just been taken from us, not far from my friend Pat, and I was reading a letter about a baseball game.  He had become my military-industrial complex.  I never wrote to him again.  What was happening?

            A year later, 1969, I graduated from high school and went to college with a 1-S student deferment from the draft board nestled in the corner of my wallet - my draft card.  I hated the war.  I protested, wrote letters, and grew hair.  Through it all my parents tolerated me, supported me, and, I believe trusted my judgment.  It taxed their trust in their country, but then the children dying on the TV every day were my age.  It was the most real War we had ever encountered, or so I'm told.  In December 1969, when I was in my first year of college, the draft as we knew it ended.  The Lottery was created.  On the same TV where I watched Philadelphia local Chief Halftown's Cartoon Hour, where we watched children die, we now watched birthdates selected, to determine the order in which we would die.  If your birthday was selected first, #1, then you would be the first to be drafted for that calendar year.  If your birthday was #365, they probably wouldn't get to you before the year was over and you would have dodged a bullet.  The 1-S deferment became good only for the academic year in which you were currently enrolled at college.  In that first draft, my lottery number was 127, although I still had that fragile deferment.  That year they drafted up to 196, so I would have been called.  In 1972, they drew the lottery for 1973.  My birthday was drawn as #11.  In 1973 I was graduating from college, losing all protection.  I was going to be drafted.  Eleven.  I spent that day decorating a t-shirt with a big red, white and blue 11 on it.  It hung on my chest like a bullseye, or it would have if I ever put it on.  I couldn't.  I couldn't let it become me.

            I sprang into action, much more so than my friends, and to this day I don't know why.  Yes I do.  They were all greater than 11.  I talked most with my parents about my feelings, although at that time no one talked about their feelings.  I returned on the #11 trolley (!) from my trip to the Philadelphia ACLU office with lots of pamphlets and books and ideas.  I decided that I was not willing to serve - not in any capacity.  I didn't want to be a vet or a Veteran and I didn't want to be a dead son.  I didn't want to shoot a human being.  I didn't want to participate in this war.

            I read books and studied deferments.  I considered pursuing a 1-O classification, declaring myself as a conscientious objector, which I in fact was, but thousands of young men became Quakers that year to express their objection to violence of any type.  The Army was unwilling to recognize such short-lived expressions of a life dedicated to peace as anything other than a move to avoid the draft - which it was.  Besides, a classification for documented conscientious objectors still required that you work at a job approved by the draft board for two years.  I needed something else.  We were supposed to be Free Birds  - Lynyrd Skynyrd said so.

            My deferment research, studies of a rapidly moving target, suggested that I had some chances, albeit small ones.  Shapiro's wrote a letter about my long problem of flat footedness, implying that they wouldn't hold up to marching and having to stay on my feet.  They'd treated me for years, so I had 

established the problem extensively.  Still, the odds were high that I'd be put into some non-combat position if I had foot problems.  I also got a letter from my sympathetic optometrist, Dr. Cohen, lamenting the problems that would arise should I lose my glasses.  Focusing as best I could for a nearsighted teenager, I looked to Canada.  Canada is where you went to disappear.  It was our understanding that, as deserters, we would be arrested if we ever tried to return from what was presumably a great wilderness where people lived in tents and cabins.  My parents knew I was giving it thought, but not seeing them again just wasn't an option.

            Orthopedic shoes and glasses - these are what I'd be gambling on to get a deferment?  More severe than the discomfort of flat feet was a real deformity.  I needed a deformity to avoid the draft, it appeared.  It seemed to be incredibly simple.  Chop off one toe and it was over.  Even if I messed it up and walked with a cane for the rest of my life, it seemed like an exceedingly small price to pay.  "Toe" moved to the top of my list.  "Chop off toe."  Not extract or remove - chop.  Drama queen.  Need:  hatchet, rags, Bactine (?), friend?  No.  No friend.  This was too messy, too personally and physically messy, to ask someone to participate. 

            The deferment due to psychological problems became a popular option but unfortunately disappeared too fast.   The good news was that unstable people were becoming a draft problem.  In the second half of 1968 at Fort Dix NJ and nearby McGuire AFB there were 96 attempted suicides among 37,000 trainees.  Presumably some were very late attempts at medical deferments.  Nine of the suicide attempts were successful - also nine successful attempts at securing deferments after being drafted.  All had been declared fit for duty in their physical examinations, so emotional stability became a real issue.  Suicides were bad press for the government.  In these times we would not hesitate to become Mash's Klinger if it meant staying alive. 

            The story goes: A guy calls his friends and says, "I won't go to Vietnam, I'd rather kill myself.  I'm going to throw myself off of the bridge."  Then he walks up the Walt Whitman Bridge, or gets dropped off, and patiently waits at the top while his concerned friends call the police who respond and talk him down.  A few visits to the psychologist and he's declared cured for now, but he has a record of psychoneuroses so he gets a medical deferment.  Within a few days, the story gets out and the Walt Whitman Bridge is lined with jumpers.  That's when the police decided that the long line of stinking hippy commies were free to jump away if they'd like.  Unfortunately, Walt Whitman, Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross were not going to be the roads out of this dilemma in Philadelphia.

            Still, as a teenager, I had come to hate what this country stood for and what it was doing to itself and the world.  If nothing else, we thought about the issues a lot.  I learned some things.  I decided that I wasn't going to feel bad about burning a flag because a flag was really just cloth and people shouldn't confuse cloth with freedom and what was good from our past.  The flag was one issue I never had any luck explaining to my father - it was a sacred thing to him, more than cloth.  My green and white ecology flag, a clear variation of the real thing, was never welcome in our home.

            The passing time was now a ticking bomb.  Bitterness consumed those around me.  The government, the flag, the army, the draft - we have to tear it all down.  It's money, it's hate, it's death, it all became too real, too big - Godzilla looming over our national skyline.  Day after day, we sat through the televising of a war - people I knew, or should have known, were napalming the crap out of an entire country.  It was insane.  I had to do something.  Now it was personal.  I wasn't going to participate.  The doctor's letters were in a manila folder in my bedroom.  I had maps to Canada.  I had names of Canadian employment agencies.  I had rags to stop the flow of blood.  Too many questions.  What do you do when you hit bone and the joint doesn't come apart?  I had lists of things you could eat that would throw off urine analyses and suggest diseases - early excursions into applied chemistry.

            Early 1973 (two years after Nixon lied to us and announced "the end is in sight") - Nixon, Kissinger, Nguyen Van Thieu, Le Duc Tho - they talked, they stopped talking, they wrote letters, negotiations stopped, they restarted.  On January 23, 1973, President Nixon announced that an agreement had been reached to 'end the war with peace and honor'.  We didn't even pretend to be listening to the end of that sentence.  Four days later the Paris Peace Accords were signed.  On that same day, January 27, 1973, William Nolde died, cited by some as the last American soldier to die in combat in Vietnam.  Had I been a praying person I would have prayed for William's family, and I hope he is never forgotten.  Also on January 27, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the end of the draft.  The relief was incredible but the trauma of a nation did not subside overnight.  Forth of July parades continued to crackle and clang through the decade as Veterans continued to pass away and burnout vets began to show signs of aging.  In 1974, President Ford announced a clemency program for draft dodgers and deserters.  More than 22,000 took him up on his offer.  Another eligible 100,000 did not.

            The United States slowly found a new national optimism and, with it, a new national guilt over turning our backs on our own.  In November 1982, we formally welcomed Vietnam Vets home with a memorial - a bleak, black granite slab containing the names of over 58,000 women and men.  Never was the conversion, the correction of lower case to upper case, so emotional.

            The 60's had passed, the 70's and 80's slid by, and for the first time I saw my father confused about some thing that was very simple.  Too few years later he was in a nursing home with Alzheimer's disease or dementia or something not needing further definition.  Frequently he didn't know who I was, but he liked to sing.  Sometimes it would be a song he'd sung as a child, growing up with Italian neighbors in South Philadelphia, like O Solo Mia.  Sometimes it was Oh, Dem Golden Slippers, a minstrel song that dominates the Philadelphia's Mummer's Parade.  Sometimes it was a delayed replay of an event.  He'd remember seeing Al Jolsen live 50 years ago and he'd start to sing Mammy.  It was a recreation - Al Jolsen live at the Rose Bowl entertaining the troops.  Al was telling me how substantial the experience of military service was in my father's life.  With the consuming threat of going to war tucked into his hat, with a photo of my mother, there were many days of heaven for him in the Army.  He had had the proverbial time of his life.  In his last days, his memories served him well when I could not.

            It was a cool October day in 2000 when we buried him.  I was there to stand at my mother's side, there to serve, there to take care of it all.  Personally, I dislike the mindless and dated pageantry of funerals (perhaps as I've disliked many things in the past that were too big to change) but I went through this one for the family. Short service, carry the casket to the hearse, drive out to the cemetery, seated, ready for a few final words  -  and then I could pronounce it as over.

            I felt like I had been physically hit by something when I looked up and saw the casket.  I had no idea this was going to happen. The American flag draped over the coffin snapped in the cold fall wind.  It was not the flag that I had dismissed, not that flag that I had chosen to declare as irrelevant.  It was the flag of his country, and it had wrapped itself around him, protecting and repaying him, thanking him.  There were two Veterans there, two older gentlemen, volunteers, in uniform - a volunteer honor guard.  They had materialized into our drama from nowhere.  They had never met my father, but they stood at attention through the pastor's comments, then folded the flag, then presented it to my mother and thanked her on behalf of the country for my father's service.  I never got the chance to tell them what it meant.  I never got the chance to find out who they were.  Why were they doing this?  Did any of them wear orthopedic shoes?

            Clearly, in the war du jour, Americans are learning how to recite the mantra of hating the war but supporting the warriors, because we now appreciate, or have relearned, that service women and men face difficult situations and discipline demands their preparedness to follow orders.  I think I always knew that Veterans were all heroes who sacrificed for us.  Why else would I have worked so hard but to avoid the sacrifice?  Our arrogance made us too quick to anger in a time when it was easy to ask "how could you?" to a Vietnam vet, when you yourself had not been faced with that instant when you would have had to say - "I will not go, I will not serve, I will humiliate my family, that just doesn't understand, for myself."  Self-centeredness has certainly become the key characteristic of baby boomers, I'm told.                       

            In that cedar chest in the back room there is a long rolled up photograph that must show a hundred men in front of a hanger.  They're not in dress uniform, but dressed to work - dressed in Army coveralls.  Many of them are standing at attention, tall and proud.  When I look into their eyes, I see that many of them were not high school graduates, some had flat feet, many wore glasses, and many of them had spent a month's salary to sit in a recording booth for three minutes to sing to their girl.  I have a feeling that those hundred faces represented more than one night of tears at the thought of shipping out and lying wounded and dying in a rain-filled ditch with only a photo and perhaps a baseball card in their helmet to link them back to this life.  In the back row of the photo, there are two goofballs with smiles and their arms around each other.  They are not defiant smiles; they are not smiling even though they had been ordered to stand tall.  They are smiles of simple happiness.  One smile is on the face of my young father.  He made friends easily and took friendships seriously.  Service during the war was a very good thing for him.  Sometimes when I'd walk into his nursing home room he'd be far away, but he'd be sitting up straight with his head held high.  I've decided that, at these times, he was in his uniform, standing tall and proud, under a flag simpler than mine, understanding it all.

© 2006 John Allison

This was published in The College of New Jersey Review, April 2006