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humor

Duck and Cover

If the Russians ever wanted to surprise attack us during the 1950’s, it would be at 10:30am on a Tuesday morning. That’s when the air raid sirens went off.

I grew up in an era of fear of nuclear annihilation. Those sirens went off like clockwork every week and they were loud and lasted several minutes. Folks knew if they heard them any other time, it would not be a practice test. One evening, in 1959, the sirens went off and had all of Chicago saying their prayers.

It was a different world in 1959, a distrusting world, a world of Joe McCarthy and communists living next door or under your bed. It was a time when the air raid sirens went off every Tuesday morning at 10:30. Short blasts meant you had time to take cover and prepare. A long steady blast meant hit the dirt. In school we would practice the duck-and-cover routines, hiding under a desk or crouched along a corridor wall covering our eyes with our hands. People built bomb shelters underground or in their basement, food and water were stored away as each day could be your last.

Even as kids, we kinda realized that hiding under a desk or in a hallway would not help too much, but that is what they told us to do on television, even on the kiddie shows. Duck and Cover was a popular song at the time and they even had a cartoon. And every Tuesday morning we were reminded of the cataclysmic possibilities.

Some will say it was the over enthusiastic fire commissioner, Robert Quinn, who ordered the sirens to howl, but many thought that “Da Boss,” Richard J Daley, had to have been at least aware, if not approving the order himself.

It was Tuesday night, September 22nd, as my family was getting ready for bed. Dad was not much of a sports fan when it came to the Chicago White Sox, so he would wait until tomorrow to find out who won the pennant. Instead, we watched Red Skelton and Garry Moore shows. Suddenly, without any warning, the night air was filled with the horrific long blasts of the air raid sirens screeching imminent doom.

As they wailed their message of attack, mom and my sisters began to throw mattresses down the basement stairs, grandma came down from the attic apartment with a few things wrapped in her arms while I followed my dad out the front door into the street (to watch the big blast, I guess).

I don’t remember anyone turning to the emergency station on the radio. Some neighbors were outside their homes and in the street looking southward toward the Loop trying to get a glimpse of the missiles that would blow us all to Kingdom-come. A few people were shouting and wailing along with the sirens. One neighbor lady was kneeling and praying, some were just silent. Suddenly Mr. M ran out of his house with beer in hand shouting, “Sox won! Sox won!”

Everyone looked at each other with collective realization.

It was all over in a matter of minutes, the sirens died down; people drifted back into their homes as prayers changed to curses. Dad was upset, calling for someone in City Hall to get fired but mom calmly said we should all be thankful that it wasn’t real and say a prayer before we go to sleep (and after we pull the mattresses from out of the basement!). Grandma went back upstairs vowing the next time, “I ain’t coming down!”

The population of Chicago would be talking about that evening for weeks to follow. In school we would relate our story of what happened in each house when the sirens blared. Eventually, as the stories were related, and the fear of the evening was long gone, it became somewhat humorous the night we all thought we were dead meat.

The sound of the sirens still send a tinge of fear through my body in an auto-response of the days of duck-and-cover. It’s a siren you hope you never hear and should never, ever, be used for celebration.

It is the sound of death and destruction, not a victory celebration in any sense of the word.

Green Turds and Zappa’s

Mr. Zappa was a stocky, bald man with a small mustache who was very kind to us rowdy neighborhood kids. I was eight years old and in third grade when we moved out of the neighborhood but I have, at times, returned and walked around the area remembering the now gone stores and places I frequented during my first decade of life.

Zappa’s was a confectionery, a combination of candy, ice cream and bottled soda pop but also housed toys, comic books, notions and other household items in a dimly lit, high ceiling storefront on the corner of Fransisco and Diversey in Chicago. In those days, stores were family owned and uniquely individual, most owners knowing their local patrons by name.

A grocery store, fish market, butcher shop, bakery, tavern (where my father could get beer in washed out milk bottles to bring home), hardware, five and dime, dry cleaners and on the corner, Zappa’s. Saturdays usually consisted of mom taking me up and down Diversey as she did her shopping in various stores and we would end up at Zappa’s for a candy bar or Eskimo Pie on a stick.

Many of my toys were purchased at Zappa’s. When I had stitches in my knee (another story), I was confined at home for several days and received this neat plastic TV repair truck with tiny TV, tools, and other paraphernalia which fit in the back of the truck. When I had my tonsils out, I received a plastic Pirate ship with blue deck and red hull which had a gangplank, cannon, pirate figures, treasure chest, row boat, masts, crows nest and anchor. You could roll it along the floor or it would float in the bathtub.

If it wasn’t Christmas or your birthday, you had to be sick or injured to get a new toy in my house!

Asked by my parents what I would like to have for my 7th birthday, I requested a dollars worth of nickels in a bag. I never held that much in my hand at one time and, to me, a dollar was a fortune.

The big day came and I got my wish. Twenty nickels and they were all mine to do with whatever I wanted. I had already decided it would be a shopping frenzy at Zappa’s.

I took my best friend, Johnnie, over to Zappa’s and bought candy bars, popsicles (all of which cost five cents each) and a comic book. When Mr. Zappa, in his thick Greek accent asked me, “Hey keed, you find buried treasure?” I explained it was my birthday present and, as a gift, he allowed me to pick out a free comic book, for which I thanked him.

Johnnie and I sucked on root beer and banana flavored popsicles but in addition, a rare treat was that ten cent candy bar in the opaque wrapper called Mars bar. We split that, never having a dime candy bar before and it was a luxury. But I had my eye set on the biggest of the big. Something I had seen advertised on the television and longed to try. I wanted a box of Clorets chlorophyll gum.

Clorets looked liked Chiclets, small square candy coated pieces of gum in a box but they were three times the price, fifteen cents and they were green. The commercial said it made your breath smell good but I didnt care, I just wanted to taste the only green gum in existence. So I placed my three nickels on the counter and purchased the Clorets, an extravagance, but it was my birthday.

Mr Zappa informed me it was a gum for adults, “hey keed, you aint got no lady to need this!” However, I insisted. Anticipation mounted and my friend and I walked back across the street, sat down on the front stoop to our apartment building, and opened the box.

I gave Johnnie two squares and proceeded to add square after square into my mouth until I looked like a chipmunk storing food. I don’t remember the taste sensation that well, perhaps a little minty, but I do remember vividly the results of eating the entire box of gum.

By the time my father got home from work, I had but one nickel left from my morning hoard. Dad was disappointed that I didn’t save any of the loot, “You had enough to buy a candy bar every day for twenty days!” Too late, I was broke. But that was what I wanted to do, splurge, have a good time, treat my friend, and celebrate. It was a great day! Until that evening.

Because of all the candy, popsicles and other stuff I crammed into myself that day, the need arose to make a fast trip to the bathroom. The shock came when I got off the throne with a sigh of relief, gazed into the bowl and saw green colored turds floating in pea soup. I got scared, thinking I might turn green myself, and called my parents into the room.

I explained about the Clorets, and they began laughing as they looked into the toilet bowl. It was one of the rare occasions I saw and heard my father laugh. Needless to say, the story of my green turds was spread throughout the entire clan and neighborhood…including Zappa’s.

Yeah, my folks had to tell kindly Mr. Zappa, and from then on, each time I entered his establishment, he would chuckle and say, “Hey keed, you want some more green gum?” Then burst into laughter.

I never had Clorets again. Never.

MAD Memories

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I learned about satire and parody from MAD magazine; I learned fear and pain from my father. The two sometimes went hand in hand.

At age ten, I started reading MAD magazine, a comic book my friend Rich discovered. We thought it was neat because it had characters like Superdooperman, the Lone Stranger and Little Annie Fannie…ooops, wait a minute, Annie was in Playboy. Sorry.

The government got involved with the content of MAD, as well as other comics like Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt, as not being appropriate for small fertile minds. They instituted the Comics Code Authority which regulated and approved comic content for kids with impressionable minds. Thus, MAD went from a comic book format to magazine in 1956, escaping the regulators, and we kids continued to purchase it along with Donald Duck and Superman, explaining the magazine was “for my older brother.”

MAD was a magazine of wit, satire, parody and “humor in a jugular vein.” Its creative contributors, Ernie Kovaks, Andy Griffith, Bob and Ray, Sid Caesar and a host of others, along with the regulars like Harvey Kurtzman, filled the pages with a world of cutting edge writing and drawing and played a key role in my wanting to be a writer, honing my developing sense of humor.

My father did not understand MAD. I dont think he ever took the time to really read it, just as he automatically condemned my taste in music (Perez Prado, the Weavers, Dave Brubeck). He never strayed from the regimented path he created for himself; if it wasn’t on Hit Parade ( a weekly top ten TV show), it wasn’t music worth listening to. That fell apart when the show, not by choice, by 1956, had to play the top ten which included Elvis Presley. He watched as the popularity of songs flipped between Patti Page and Mario Lanza to the Rock and Roll genre almost overnight. Within a short time, because of this change, the show went off the air.

The world was changing and my father could not adapt. Things he liked were becoming passe, things he believed in were being challenged and things he hoped for, like a son who would mature into his image of what a son should be, were being attacked. The world was changing and, unlike a reed in the wind, he could not bend. MAD exposed this world of change, poking fun at it, ridiculing it and explaining it in a humorous way. It became my magazine of choice, hidden from my father, throughout the late 1950’s.

If my father caught me reading a MAD magazine after banning it from the house, he would rip it to shreds and then punish me for my disobedience. This was even after a visiting priest to our house was confronted by my father asking for comment of the content within its pages. He fully expected the priest to agree with him as to the magazine being subversive.

The priest was there because I had made inquiry as to attending the seminary after graduation from grade school. The middle aged priest surprised my father and mother (and me too!) when he responded by explaining that even though the magazine touched on sensitive topics at times, it did so with restraint and intelligence and reflected a changing society and was not considered contraband in the seminary where it was read by some to gain insight into American culture. Dad was speechless.

My parents were hoping I would become a priest, and that day in 1959 dashed their concepts of a Bing Crosby, Father O’Malley type character and instead gave them a vision of Father Groucho, the unorthodox vestment wearing smart-mouth, holding a crucifix in one hand and a seltzer bottle in the other.

I was growing up, becoming my own person, and my father didn’t understand. The changing world, for me, did not alter fundamental family values I had been taught, but questioned society and government roles in managing and defining them. My world was expanding. Dad’s world was no longer flat. The Times they were a-changing.

Shoes, Checkers and Gumdrops

I have many fond memories of childhood in 1950’s Chicago and a few of the more vivid ones revolve around a strange collection of politically and socially incorrect neighborhood men who would gather in my Uncle’s garage. I didn’t know their real names as they all had nicknames given to each other years before, since they must have known each other for a long time.

They were a motley crew who would gather together in the afternoon and I would see them on Saturday when I visited my cousin, who lived within biking distance. They may have gathered on other days, but it is only then that I saw them. They were Gramp’s friends.

When my cousin and I would finish our day of biking and playing, we returned to his house for something to eat and would head to the garage to see what the old men were up to. My aunt would not step foot in the garage and sometimes brought our sandwiches to the door and we would go get them.

Gramps, my cousin’s grandfather, lived with my Uncle’s family and had pinups of Betty Page and other women lining the garage walls, the most famous, of course, being Marilyn Monroe. It was the first time I ever saw women without all their clothes on. Being eleven years old, I wondered what the attraction was and by the following year, I found out.

More interesting to me than a collection of semi-nude women were the male sexagenarians assembled around a table playing pinochle or some other card game, and sometime during the afternoon, checkers.

There was “Gumdrops,” a lanky man with bad teeth always eating from a box of Mason’s Dots or Jujifruits and was prolific in stories about women. “Women are like Jell-o,” he would say, “it’s fun to watch them wiggle.” Another idiom I didn’t understand at the time.

There was “Checkers,” an average looking guy except for unruly hair and a a few missing teeth in front which would affect his speech as his tongue raspberried through the openings like Daffy Duck. Yes, he liked to play checkers and sometimes brought his box and board over with him.

Then there was “Shoes,” who received his nickname deservedly. Shoes was retired from the sanitation department. In those days, workers were simply known as garbagemen. He would always save the discarded shoes that fit him which were tossed out by others. Sometimes he would have the soles or heels replaced and then had, virtually, a new pair of shoes at little cost. He was known for never having to buy a pair of shoes since the day he started work. Shoes, having ulcers, would drink a half pint of cream (which he usually got from my uncle) before doing shots with the others.

Finally there was “Gramps,” the only guy there with grandkids (although all of them were divorced as I recall). Gramps was my Uncle’s father and regardless of whether we kids were around, could not complete a sentence without adding a few curse words for emphasis.

It was these men, on a Saturday afternoon, who let us sit and watch and listen, and learn. We learned about women, we learned new words and we learned a bit about life. Certainly not the best role models, but they were real, they were honest and straightforward and they answered questions we kids would be afraid to ask anyone else.

In a way, they inspired me and, to their credit, I still remember them fondly.

The Dork Side

Back then, they weren’t geeks or nerds, they were known as dorks, and I was one of them. I became a dork at age eight when my parents moved the family to a new part of the city from a two bedroom apartment at Fransisco and Diversey to our new home near Austin and Belmont on Chicago’s northwest side. It was a new neighborhood, new kids and, most traumatic of all, a new school. “You’ll make new friends.” my parents said. But what they didn’t know is that I would make new tormentors: the school bullies. So I prepared for my first day, of a mid-3rd grade transfer, at St. Ferdinand Catholic School.

On a bright and sunny morning I stood in front of thirty boys and girls my age in a white shirt, blue clip-on tie and neatly pressed ribbed brown corduroy pants, the kind that make funny noises between your legs when you walk, as Sister Mary Humiliation announced to the class who I was by mispronouncing my last name. I was doomed, and would suffer from that error my entire grade school experience.

If you ever transferred to a new school, you get the idea what my problems were. Kids can be mean. I was an outcast and, in order to survive the daily harassment and push and shove dares from the school bullies, I learned how to use humor. If I could make them laugh, perhaps they wouldn’t beat me up so often.

I became, basically, the class humorist or clown. Always a joke or funny story outdoors and responsive funny faces and gestures in the classroom. I made few friends in that school and the few close friends I had lived on my block and attended a nearby public school.

Eventually, by eighth grade, I had gained recognition as a story teller and funny guy and was told by several of my departing classmates at graduation that I would be missed while giving me a final punch in the arm approval. The ordeal was over. I was graduating. I was relieved. I had survived.

The experience did lead me down a path of writing. By sixth grade I was writing short stories and poems based on my experiences. I wrote fictional accounts where I dealt with the frustrations and anger I could not express any other way. It was a great outlet for my feelings and still is. I don’t remember all the stories, or what ever happened to them, but realize they were amateurish and perhaps better they did not survive, but they were a start.

Although I had been selected by lottery as one of the lucky ones to attend the new and prestigious St Patrick’s High School, I turned it down an went to Steinmetz. I did not want to deal with what I considered sadistic teachers (Brothers they were called) who could slap and punish you, in an all-boy environment of repressed individuals and former class bullies. How I accomplished this without my parents finding out was a bit of maneuvering and dodging.

High school was on the horizon and I wondered what would be in store. Would I run into new bullies to deal with for four more years; would I hopefully meet new friends, and would there be intimidating and condescending teachers? I would soon find out. But I knew, whatever lied ahead, I would be prepared with an arsenal of jokes, humorous anecdotes and a good pair of running shoes.

For Three Cents, Chocolate

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Back in the 1950’s when I attended parochial school we had a morning milk break. Every day, around eight am, the guy from Twin Oaks Dairy delivered a cargo of half-pint bottles of milk to the school. And, every day, those little bottles of milk rested in their cases until around ten am, before the nun would allow us to drink them. This was not a good idea in the winter when the cases stood alongside the radiator near the back of the room.

It never was a good idea for those kids who stayed at school for lunch because they had to wait until noon before they could drink the milk and it was always warm no matter what month it was, although during the winter you could claim hot chocolate as a benefit.

The cost was two cents for plain white milk and three cents for chocolate per day. Money was collected every Friday and if you forgot the money, you went without the next week. No one would spot you the cash, ten or fifteen cents, so you went thirsty.

The bottles had a foil type lid and I would puncture the top with a sharp pencil to make a small opening and then use the pencil to make a small hole in the straw, keeping it above the milk line, thus mixing the milk with air so it would last longer as I sipped it. Unfortunately, this action would shortly produce a follow-up series of burps which amuse my fellow classmates and netted me an occasional rap on the knuckles by Sister Mary Yardstick.

Since I lived a short distance, I went home for lunch every day and mom would have a sandwich ready according to her menu of the week which consisted basically of either baloney and cheese or peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread. Except for Friday when it was grilled cheese. In the winter months the sandwich was accompanied by a bowl of Campbell’s Chicken noodle or chicken rice soup. And there was always the tall glass of chocolate milk made with Bosco syrup. By eighth grade I was a choco-junkie.

We got an hour for lunch so I ran home, which took less than five minutes, so I could hurriedly eat and then go into the living room to watch the lunchtime frolics on TV. Mom would not allow eating in front of the set worried about crumbs on the carpet or, perhaps, that I might laugh at the cartoon and choke. There may have been a stronger chance of that happening as I wolfed down my pre-show food.

There were four channels available in those days and three of them had lunchtime kids shows. I would watch Lunchtime Little Theater, Two Ton Baker the Music Maker or Uncle Johnny Coons. So, after a morning of science, religion and arithmetic, I spent the noon hour watching Uncle Bucky, Uncle Ned (Ned Locke of Bozo’s Circus fame) and Aunt Dodie (later replaced by Aunt Jeannie) in their striped outfits and straw hats as they sung ditties on the piano and showed dancing bug cartoons.

Uncle Johnny Coons also would eat a sandwich with us kids, tell us not to sit to close to the TV and, dressed in his pith helmet and explorer garb, relate stories and, ultimately, show outdated film shorts and, occasionally, a dancing bug cartoon.

Two Ton Baker, a large man dressed in pirate clothes, sat at the piano playing ditties about life such as “I Like Stinky Cheese,” “Poor Little Petunia,” Fuzzy Wuzzie was a Bear,” and other educational songs. He was supported by a talking parrot and Bubbles, the porpoise and he had a side-kick pirate pal who brought out Two Ton’s lunch for him and ,while he ate, we watched more dancing bug cartoons.

Since I could only watch one show at a time, there was no remote control back then, I sat close to the TV so I could manually switch channels when the bug cartoons came on (which I had seen numerous times before) catching portions of each show’s live action performances.

When the show was just about over, I kissed my mom goodbye and raced back to school to continue the day’s studies in history, more religion and geography. This was a bit difficult at times to concentrate as images of a 300 pound pirate, dancing bugs or corny vaudevillian type acts were still fresh in my mind and conflicted with learning about the origins of the universe (which, of course, was created).

I dont know if any kids still come home for lunch any more and watch TV. With all the channels now open and with the computer and internet, things are certainly different. Some days, when I make myself lunch and sit down at the TV set, all I get are commercials and swear I finish eating before any show comes back on.

I miss the fat pirate and the folks in strange garb, playing a honky-tonk piano and showing dancing bug cartoons. I do, however, still eat baloney and cheese sandwiches but with a beer instead of chocolate milk, which is no longer available for three cents.

Silver Threads

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I was born in June, 1945, a few months after Harry Truman became president and just before the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Yep, I came into this world at the tail end of World War Two and the dawn of the Nuclear Age. A house cost $10,000; a good car, $1,200 and gas was 16 cents a gallon. Annual income was a whopping $2,500.

Getting old encompasses the knowledge that the things you remember are obsolete, demolished or in a museum. Memories of childhood appear on historical documentaries and the comic books and toys you bought for a dime are now worth hundreds of dollars at auction. And, young ladies call you sir.

Candy bars were a nickel, soda pop was a dime and a quarter a week allowance purchased penny candies at the variety store – always located near the school. You could purchase two malted milk balls, a licorice whip, little colored sugar dots on paper or two Mary Janes (peanut butter candy; not whacky tobacky) for only a penny.

Television was black and white and, before my family purchased one in 1950, I remember my dad taking me down the street to the appliance store where he would watch wrestling, along with other neighbors, on the TV displayed in the window. Some folks even brought chairs! Keep in mind there were only about 7000 sets in the U.S. In 1945 and, by 1950, were becoming an entertainment necessity.

When we got our own TV in the early 1950’s, I watched Ding-Dong School with Miss Francis who taught me how to finger paint. I still remember the old test pattern that had a Native American at the center with a Maltese style cross extending to the end of the screen. This pattern preceded the daily broadcast which usually began around 4pm with Howdy Doody. At night, we would gather and watch Mr Peepers, Our Miss Brooks, I Love Lucy and Jackie Gleason over a big heavily salted and buttered bowl of popcorn, made on the stove, not in a microwave (which would not be invented for decades).

There were individual stores along Diversey Parkway: grocery, meat, bakery, fish, a tavern and Zappa’s variety store on the corner (more on these later). When you purchased items at the grocery store, they were pulled along the counter by a manually operated wooden rack rather than conveyor belt. There were no bar codes and the Drug Store had a soda fountain.

Weapons in school meant pea-shooters, rubber bands and paper clips, and discipline at home was more severe than a trip to the principal’s office. I went to a Catholic school and the nuns could whack you with a ruler or their bare hands if you got out of line. Students wore uniforms and “under God” was not yet added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Milk was delivered to your home in glass bottles, which, when emptied, mom washed out and placed on the back porch. Knives were sharpened by a guy who walked down the alley with a pushcart ringing a bell; there was the Rag Man, who would shout out, “rags-old iron” as an aged horse pulled the wagon over the cindered alleyway. Alleys were not paved until much later. There were door-to-door vendors such as the Fuller Brush Man, The Watkins extract salesmen, Electrolux vacuum cleaners, the neighborhood Avon lady, Encyclopedia Britannica, and doctors made house calls.

My mom would wash clothes in a wringer washer located in the basement, the kind that had the two wooden rollers attached to the top rear of the machine. After washing you would pull the clothes through the wringers to get rid of the excess water, then she would hang everything outside along the rear porch of the apartment building for the entire neighborhood to view my underwear, unfurling in the breeze like small white flags.

Speaking of flags, every Fourth of July my dad would buy fireworks – skyrockets, spinners and major explosive devices from the vendor who set up shop in the vacant lot near our building. We all gathered there later in the evening as he would set off the remainder of his display for the neighborhood kids.

Being 70 years old, there are a lot of memories and some of the more precious are those of childhood when things were a bit different. But not that different for there were still fears and crime and injustice and things that plague us today. The biggest difference is that we had no instantaneous communication, no internet, no cell phones. Basically, we were kinda uninformed. We didnt know all that was going on except what was read in the newspapers, heard on the radio or, later, seen on TV.

Growing up in the 1950’s, for me, was a time of blissful ignorance and occasional discoveries and incidents which would eventually play a role in my becoming an adult. I never had the opportunity to share many of these stories with my son. I hope to now share them with you. Peace.