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memories

Toy Soldiers

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Freddie, Jose, Rich and I would play “war” at least twice a week after school. We played war in two different ways and the question we asked before starting was, “Do you want to play little or big?”

If we played “little,” the rubber toy soldiers were gathered out of their bag or box and assembled in the battlefield of dirt, rocks and popsicle stick fences near the old apple tree in my back yard. Back then, we could buy assorted soldiers in various poses in a bag of 50 for around a dollar. You could buy them in green or grey and sometimes other colors so you could tell which soldiers belonged to whom. They were the same soldiers and the only difference were their color, and we had hundreds of them ready to engage in battle in a designated area along the fence line where there was more dirt than grass.

There were rules when playing “little.” As we tossed small clumps of dirt or pebbles at each others forces, they toppled over when hit. If the soldiers landed face up, they were only wounded and could engage in the next battle. If they landed face down, they were out of the action and laid there until one or the other army was still standing. There is a toy cemetery in the backyard near the tree which still contain the rubber bodies of scores of rubber soldiers who no longer could stand on their own and were given burial.

When we played “big,” the yard became “no man’s land.” We used our cap pistols or Mattel tommy-burp weapons to dispatch each other. Our parents preferred our playing “little” instead of “big” because of the running and shouting and noise we would make as we yelled, “I got you!” and “No ya didn’t!” and, of course, the verbal and guttural attempted sounds of the weapons we were firing.

Getting shot and having to fall down in Jose’s yard was difficult because he had an old dog named Sandy whose only outdoor activity was crapping anywhere in the yard she felt like. Many a time a truce was called while one or more of us went home to wash the dog poop off our arms and hands. We died in battle many times over and, in the end, when our mothers called us in for supper, we would resurrect ourselves from the battlefield, prepared to fight another day. After all, it was pretend.

Ten years later I was in Viet Nam. A real soldier in a real war.

We had uniforms, helmets, flak-jackets and weapons. I carried and fired a single barrel double-aught buck shotgun, an M-79 grenade launcher, an automatic M-14, several hand grenades and a boot knife. My playmates would have been impressed. I could cause some serious damage!

This was real war. Dog poop was replaced with feces covered punji sticks, soda pop cans we used as kids for grenades were replaced with cans filled with explosives for booby-traps. Tommy-burp guns were replaced with 7.62mm rounds of ammunition, AK-47s and M-16s. And when people got shot it hurt. When people died, they stayed dead. No one’s mother yelled out a window telling them to stop and come home for supper.

I wondered if any of my fellow soldiers, and even the enemy, played with toy guns and rubber soldiers when they were 10 years old. Were they the backyard heroes and platoon leaders who led their men to victory with water balloons, wooden swords and clumps of dirt?

Today, you don’t see kids playing war in the neighborhood. They can’t. People would be calling the police if they saw half a dozen kids chasing each other with (toy) weapons. And there is always the fear that someone would shoot back, only it would not be playing around.

Maybe it’s time we stopped playing war altogether.

Used Parrot

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My grandfather was, like my father, not very communicative. Family information was not readily revealed and many times we kids were given no information as to why things were so. This was also true of grandpa’s parrot which he may have talked to more than the rest of the family.

All I know is that grandpa was given the bird by a family that was moving. Like my father, grandpa was a warehouseman, a mover, and his house was a refuge for discarded and abandoned items left by folks he had moved over his 30 odd years in the business.

He had interesting lamps and vases and knick-knacks all over the house. One lamp I remember was on top of the television. It was cylindrical and when turned on, the painted celluloid exterior would revolve and it looked like a forest fire with flames licking at the trees produced from a 40 watt bulb within.

The parrot, whose name I do not recall (although it might have been Polly), resided in a side room, kind of a sun room/den in my grandfather’s house. The reason for this was the bird’s language.

Every time our family went to visit grandpa, as we walked into the house, we could hear the bird squawking, “Al, Al.” It was believed that Al was the former owner and the bird was mimicking Al’s wife who would constantly be calling him for something or another. Whenever the bird sensed someone was out there in another room, it gave out with the shrill, nagging, “Al? Al?”

The parrot did not have an extensive vocabulary but did have a wolf-whistle that indicated that Al might have been interested in other women. It also knew a few swear words (probably learned from Al responding to the nagging call of his wife!). Seeing an exotic bird like this was a treat for me. Its feathers were red, blue, yellow and green and it looked huge!

Grandpa’s bird was not as prolific in speech as Squawky of the Happy Pirates but that could be because the television bird’s voice was produced by an off screen stagehand. Grandpa’s parrot was for real and I liked to go back and see it, usually kept in its cage while we were there, but it would only be for a few minutes before I was rushed out of the room and back into family society.

I have no tales to relate about grandpa’s parrot dive bombing guests or plucking out eyes or even being social when we were there. It was in the back room, in a cage, and we only saw it for a few minutes but it is a memory of a time when, until I saw grandpa’s parrot, I thought these birds were black and white like on the television. When I went to grandpa’s, I saw it in living color and it looked like the NBC peacock when we finally got a color tv set.

Thanks, Al, wherever you are, for giving my grandpa the bird.

Two Ton Baker

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Dick “Two Ton” Baker was a Chicago staple when I was growing up; probably the most friendly happy-go-lucky guy on kid’s television. He and I had many lunch time meetings together and he had an influence in the development of my personality and taste in quirky music.

“Two Ton” was large, over 300 pounds, but we kids (and I’m certain many adults) used that name as a term of endearment due to his jovial, easy going style. His noontime show in the 1950’s, The Happy Pirates,” was just as regular to me as my mom’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

He welcomed us aboard his pirate ship, which many kids thought was docked along Lake Michigan someplace, and they wouldn’t be too far off since the show was shot in a television studio in Chicago.

He was joined by a porpoise named Bubbles and a parrot named Squawky who, as I remember, would walk across the top of his piano as he belted out humorous ditties for his audience,

They were happy, frivolous songs (with a deeper meaning we kids didn’t always get) such as “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Bear,” “I’m a Little Teapot,” and “I’m a Lonely Little Petunia.” Songs that were fun but let us know you could be different and still be okay.

I learned later on that Baker wrote and composed quite a few popular songs like “Civilization,” made famous by Danny Kaye or “Too Fat Polka” recorded by Arthur Godfrey. His discography is impressive and songs like “I’m a Little Weenie,” and “I Like Stinky Cheese,” are cult favorites.

The Happy Pirates was a fun show yet educational in its own way. We learned how to sing and act out songs (here is my handle, here is my spout), we learned nutrition (in a way) with daily lunch menus which were also introduced by song such as “Today is Friday, Friday: Fish. Is everybody happy?” I’m certain we had fish on Friday introduced for the benefit of any Catholic viewers (Mommy, how come Two Ton can have a hamburger and not me?).

Every summer, Two Ton would be the spokesperson for Riverview Amusement Park (another story) and I remember one commercial where he was sitting in one of the cars for the newly installed Wild Mouse ride. I was surprised he could even fit in the car much less ride the tracks. My guess is he never left the station and they filmed him giving the illusion he just finished the ride, otherwise it may have wound up, along with Two Ton, in the Chicago River.

Dick Two Ton Baker died in the mid 1970’s and, over the years, I read about the passing of many of my early childhood idols: Buffalo Bob Smith of Howdy Doody, ventriloquist Paul Winchell, the voice of Jerry Mahoney and also Tigger from Winnie the Pooh; Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans (also the voice of Little Orley), John Conrad of Elmer the Elephant, and Frazier Thomas from Garfield Goose and later, Bozo’s Circus.

My memories are enhanced nowadays, with use of the Internet and sites like You Tube where I can browse around and find my old TV friends still active, still alive, in a short kinescope of one of their early programs which somehow survived, telling me not to sit too close.

I guess I’m still “a little weenie.”

Sawdust

There is something about the smell of sawdust that always reminds me of the butcher shop in my old neighborhood during the early 1950’s.

It was just one of several stops on mom’s weekly shopping agenda. I stood off to the side, kicking the sawdust with my feet into little piles and then spreading them out again to occupy my time while mom placed her order.

Mom would point to the cut of raw meat in the refrigerated case and ask the butcher to slice a piece to a particular thickness for the dinner steak we would be eating. He would take the meat over to a band saw, cutting it to order and then walk over to the pounding table.

The huge square wooden block, around two feet across, was located in the center of the floor where Johnny (everyone knew the names of the shop owners and they knew their regular customers) the butcher would take the steak or chops you ordered and proceed to pound them out on both sides with a large wooden mallet, thus tenderizing the meat.

This was standard procedure back then before meats were pre-soaked in tenderizing agents. It was a time you could watch the proprietor ply his trade, slicing, trimming, grinding, pounding to order, all within plain view of the customer. If you wanted chicken or fish, you had to go down a few stores to the live poultry and fish market because Johnny only sold meat.

Johnny would have some prepared ground beef in the case, but like most customers, mom wanted to pick out her slice of round steak or sirloin. Johnny the butcher then took the steak, trimmed off the excess fat and shove it through the grinder located behind the counter but still in plain view. All this was included in the price per pound. The meat was then wrapped in white paper and tied with a string. The butcher would write in pencil what was inside the package if you had more than one.

Back in those days, a kid could be fascinated watching the butcher’s cleaver whack down and separate pork into butterfly chops, or wipe his hands on the blood soaked apron stained from a day’s work. Nowadays everything comes prepackaged and you can buy everything in one mega-stop store. You probably could pick out a steak and give it to the guy behind the meat counter to grind up for you, but it will be taken into the back room and you wont see what is going on which is part of the fun.

Even when our family moved ten miles away, until he retired, mom would order her weekly cuts of meat from Johnny and he would deliver. That’s how much people trusted their local shop owners and the kind of loyalty shop owners and customers had toward each other.

Gone, for the most part, are the local family owned butcher shops, bakeries, grocer and dairy stores. But more importantly, gone is the loyalty that once existed. Oh, and the smell of sawdust!

Goober and Grape

My mom made great peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Skippy smooth peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly on Wonder bread. Always. Her method of application was no doubt influenced by the Great Depression in this country that she lived through.

There were some carry-over traditions that mom utilized such as, instead of a candy bar, if we wanted something sweet, she took a single slice of white bread lightly spread with room temperature butter and sprinkled with sugar on top. This is what we got to satisfy a mid-day sweet tooth. But it was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that was her work of lunchtime art.

Three slices of bread were used. The first slice was evenly spread with Skippy, right up to the crusts. The second slice was then placed on top and it was spread with a thin coating of grape jelly, again, to the crusts. The third slice was placed on top and the sandwich was then cut crossways, corner to corner, into four triangular pieces.

When my cousin came over to play, we would always have these sandwiches for lunch with a glass of milk. Once, and only once, while at my cousin’s house, we asked his mom to make a PB&J sandwich.

Being less skimpy, as well as artistic, Aunt Bonnie glopped the peanut butter in the center of the slice of bread followed by another huge glop of grape jelly (I guess those foodstuffs were standard in a 1950’s cupboard) then she placed another slice on top and pressed down combining both ingredients into a purple and brown schmutz that oozed out between the crusts of bread onto the plate.

The sandwich was, in comparison to my mom’s, more generous. Peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth as portions of grape jelly gathered on my fingers and chin and dripped onto my tee shirt. This never happened with my mom’s thinly spread, bread-slice secured, separately layered, tiered creation.

Mom was a traditional homemaker of the 1950’s and a great cook. She made apple and cherry pies from scratch using the fruit from the trees that grew in our back yard. She made standing rib roasts, pot roast and other culinary delights around the holidays and special occasions. Sunday meals took hours of preparation beginning after our return from church. But it is her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that figure predominately in my mind.

I guess it was because they were made especially for me when I came hope from school for lunch or during the summer months when I played with friends in the yard. At least twice a week I had them and maybe that’s a reason it has a strong tie to my childhood. It was a constant, a stabilizing factor to be relied upon.

I tried making one of those sandwiches like mom made a few years ago being certain I used Skippy smooth peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly on Wonder bread. I prepared it according to her specifications and quantities and I even cut it corner to corner into four triangular shapes and although it brought back memories, it just didn’t taste the same. It was missing one important ingredient. Her love.

Harvey

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“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.  “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.  “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “but when you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” –from the Velveteen Rabbit

Harvey was a papier mache white rabbit about three feet tall and had a purple ribbon tied around his neck. He sat upright on his haunches with his forepaws extended as if to hold a basket of goodies. He was a bit older than I and appeared at my first Easter at about 10 months old, and was with me for the next nine years.

Father must have found him in an alley or near the warehouse where he worked, and brought him home one day. I think the rabbit’s name came from a Jimmy Stewart movie about an invisible rabbit by the same title. Throughout my early years, dad would be bringing stuff home with him that was either given him by people who were moving and didn’t have room, or he picked it out of the trash they threw out. I think Harvey was a store display that was discarded after the holiday.

Every Easter since I was born, dad would bring Harvey out of the basement and take a picture of me with the rabbit. This was to show how much I had grown because, eventually, I became taller than Harvey. There are photos of me hugging and kissing and laughing with Harvey and, towards the end, my younger sister was included in the annual photo session.

Most of the year Harvey was forgotten, alone in the basement wrapped in plastic but around Easter, for a few days, he sat in the apartment, outdoors and on the back porch and I loved Harvey and once a year would renew our relationship.

When we moved to our new home in 1954, Harvey made the trip with us but he never made the first Easter in the new place. Late in the summer, there were a series of overnight thunderstorms which flooded our unfinished basement with about two feet of water. Many items were still unpacked and in boxes. Harvey had been standing in the corner and as the sewer water rose, the papier mache became unstable and soggy. Harvey was doomed.

I remember dad carrying out box after box of ruined paper and fabric items from the basement and setting them in a pile in the alley behind the house. On top of the boxes lay Harvey. My friend of 9 years was being taken away and I was crying. I thought I noticed tears in Harvey’s eyes also, but it was probably just the rain water. I said good-bye and told him I would miss him. The next day he was gone.

A few years ago I was sitting out in the yard and a rabbit popped out from the bushes along the fence. This is Chicago and you don’t see many garden animals in the city, which surprised me. The rabbit hopped over closer to where I was sitting and sat up, just like Harvey used to do. I thought to myself, “Naw….” Then I remembered the Velveteen Rabbit and realized Harvey had found me and wanted to show me he was okay.

You see, just as the skin-horse said, becoming real doesn’t happen right away, it takes a long time.

Shock and Schlock

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I was going on 12 years of age when the commercials for a new night time show were being announced on TV called Shock Theater, declaring that the first movie shown would be Frankenstein. I had to see that film. The problem was that the new program was scheduled for 10pm, my bedtime.

The week prior to the event was spent trying to persuade my parents to let me stay up and view this classic horror movie. I knew every other kid in school would be up watching it and I didn’t want to be left out. It was the weekend, there was no school the next day and I promised I would get up the next morning when awakened. I had a chance.

There were two rules about sleeping and waking in my father’s house. You went to bed when told and you got up when told. No variation, no exception. Bedtime was at 10pm and Shock Theater was debuting the same hour. I needed to persuade my father that I was old enough to handle the additional hour and a half one night a week. I knew if I could swing it this once, the following weeks would be easy. I needed help.

I had already seen the movie “Them” about giant ants and “The Beginning of the End,” about giant grasshoppers (there were a few giant mutant creature film back then regarding the effects of atomic blasts) at the local Will Rogers movie theater and used that experience to support the fact I could handle horror films.

I gained my mother and grandmother’s support in allowing me to stay up and watch Frankenstein. They had seen it in the 1930’s and concluded it could not be as scary as back then, being on a small screen and dated. Finally, my father gave in and allowed me to stay up to watch.

The big night arrived. We had all washed and got in our pajamas as mom made a big bowl of stove top popped corn laden with butter and salt. We sat around the television, me on the floor with a bottle of Coca Cola, ready to be scared, but not to the degree I would be sent to bed, deemed not mature enough to handle Boris Karloff.

The Shock Theater sign came on and shattered like a pane of glass, revealing a talking skull who invited us to come in as the camera moved to a dingy, dank looking cellar with barred windows. There, standing to greet us, was a guy named Marvin who looked like a beatnik with black turtleneck sweater and suit with very thick lensed glasses with black frames.

It actually was kinda funny and not scary at all. He had an assistant, his wife, named “Dear.” Her face was always hidden. Marvin would grab her by the hand and her entire arm would come out of the socket (obviously a mannequin). And after the opening foolery, Frankenstein began.

In weeks to follow, I was allowed to watch Dracula, The Werewolf, Bride of Frankenstein and the Mummy. This was partially due to the fact I survived the first late night encounter and that my parents also wanted to see these classics again. At school, we played monster hunters and mad scientists instead of Cowboys and cops, for quite some time after.

Over the next two years I was introduced to classic horror films along with Marvin who added a musical group called the Deadbeats and another assistant wearing a rubber Frankenstein mask called “Shorty.” These breaks in the movie were sometimes more entertaining than the film.

Best of all was Marvin’s wife who was subjected to all types of misfortune throughout the evening. “Dear” never showed her face and her back was always toward the camera, or her features obscured by a placard or prop and she was always losing an arm or leg, subjected to accidental mayhem in helping Marvin with his experiments. Shock Theater ended after two years to be followed later on by another host, Svenghoulie and Screaming Yellow Theater in the 1960’s.

Because I had been allowed to watch these horror classics, I was drawn to the movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Not just horror, but others such as Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon. And I was allowed to stay up since I had recently become a teenager.

I owe my infatuation with obscure and classic movies to a strange little man with super thick glasses in a black turtleneck named Marvin and, of course, my father, who suspended one of his rules and allowed me to stay up late one night in 1957 to watch Frankenstein.

Little Orley

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One thing I hated as a kid was soggy cereal. The first two or three spoonfuls of cornflakes were okay but then they went limp in the milk and were like eating shreds of soggy paper. My father ate shredded wheat which looked like something you would clean pots and pans with, a Brillo or SOS pad, and I think that is what made him mean.

I stayed with Cheerios and Kix during the summer and Oatmeal or Malt-o-meal in the winter, with bananas. Always bananas. Breakfast was at the kitchen table and we listened to the radio perched on the top of the refrigerator.

I listened, while eating breakfast, to a show I no longer remember the name of, but do remember it broadcast a series of adventures segments titled Little Orley. The daily adventure started my day and then it was off to school.

Being on radio, the verbal adventures of Little Orley allowed my imagination to run on as I listened to the exploits, oft repeated as I believe there were only 12 adventures in all, and each time, even though I may have heard it before, new images were conjured up in my mind of what was transpiring over the air waves.

Little Orley was a five minute adventure relayed to us listeners by Uncle Lumpy. That’s right, Uncle Lumpy, who told us the stories of a backwoods farm boy while accompanied by music and sound effects. I later learned that Lumpy Brannam was a musician with Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, a well known orchestra in the 1940’s nd 50’s and the whole series of stories were concocted by Brannum as part of their musical presentations over the radio.

As I kid, I didn’t know that and just enjoyed the exploits of a little boy who found a magic bass fiddle, a strange musical haunted house and meeting up with a chicken who blew bubble gum so large it rolled down the farmland fields picking up animals and people and whatever got stuck in its mass until it finally exploded (the gum bubble, not the chicken).

After I had my tonsils out, my father bought me the entire 78rpm, 6 record collection of Little Orley Tales. I was so elated I took them to school to show everyone. Sister Mary Spoilsport made me put them in the rear coat room until after school. When I went back to retrieve them they were gone. I was devastated. I never learned who took my records but realized it had to be during lunch when I ran home to watch the Happy Pirates on TV.

I told my parents and there was a meager attempt, I think, on the part of the school to recover the records and catch the culprit. I sometimes wonder if it were the nuns themselves who took them back to the convent to listen to after evening vespers.

I never forgot Little Orley and, in the 1970’s and 80’s as I set up at the flea markets, I looked around hoping to find a set to replace the one lost. There were none to be found. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I searched around on eBay and found a two record set available and it had the bubble gum and haunted house episodes that I has enjoyed as a kid 50 years earlier. I won the auction for only five dollars and waited anxiously for the package to arrive. Once again I would hear the voice of Uncle Lumpy after half a century of waiting.

As I listened to the stories again, I asked myself what was so special about these dumb vignettes that made me remember them so much. The realization came that it was not the stories but the venue.

It was a time when, for me, life was simple, secure and adventurous. Mom making breakfast, Dad grimacing as he swallowed his shredded wheat, the tall glass of Ovaltine and soggy cereal for me, the smell of fresh baked bread on the kitchen counter and the chirping of birds outside the window as the scent of garden lilacs wafted through the screened kitchen window.

Yeah, it wasn’t about the stories, it was the stage they were presented on. That is the meaning of nostalgia, the part we miss the most. Little Orley just reminded me of those times we shared his adventures together when we were both nine years old.

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.