Posts
As I told one of my friends recently, I've been suffering from a complete case of writer's block (and laziness too) for the past nine months or so. I suppose its having too many ideas and projects on my plate. Nonetheless, that is not an excuse. I'm working back at finishing this book.
So, with that being said, here is an excerpt from my December chapter tentatively titled Chemistry and Broken Windows. BTW, editing will be done as i see fit. And, of course, your comments are most welcome!
Chemistry and Broken Windows
Whoa! This bike wants to tip right over!
And I was thinking this was gonna be easy?
On the very day it was attached, I was trying out my new bike basket. No bag to carry and I can ride my bike faster than ever! I’ll be done with my paper route in no time!
Man O Manisheverts! It just wasn’t as easy as I thought. (little did I know that it was really “Man O Maniscewitz”, a wine commercial.
I had learned the “Man O Manisheverts” slogan from watching a television commercial. It was a new phrase to add to my repertoire of “safe” exclamations like “Holy Cow”, “Cripes” and “Holy Mackerel”. They all seemed “cool” to say and they weren’t swear words that I heard my dad, Uncle Paul and pretty much every other adult use. I was careful to only use swear words when out of earshot of all adults, siblings and traitorous kids who were known “tattlers”.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, the Chicago Daily News was bigger than usual. Loaded with advertisements for Christmas along with its usual weekend magazine and funnies, the newspaper was not only difficult to roll up, it was a challenge to load into the basket.
Finally I had settled on a precarious scheme of rolled up newspapers lying on their side that rose into a pyramid shape above the basket’s sides.
I threw on a light jacket; the day was unseasonably warm, almost like spring.
Holy cow, for cripe’s sake! It was like learning to ride a bike all over again. Balancing the top heavy basket laden thing, I coasted out of my yard and rode down to Peyton Street.
But, only a half block from my house, as I rode off the sidewalk onto the street, the curb’s bump triggered a ferocious newspaper avalanche.
Plop, plop, plop, I watched as my rolled up newspapers began to topple over the edge of the basket into the street.
‘Sonofabitch!” I almost shouted, but quietly, keeping in mind I was still within the practiced hearing of my Mom.
But, worse yet, all of this was happening in front of Earl and DJ’s house.
They were out in an instant along with half a dozen or so brothers and sisters it seemed.
“Ha-ha! John can’t ride a bike,” chortled DJ between bites of the greasy turkey wing he held in his left hand. His grease slickened jacket matched his face, I noticed. I wrinkled my nose, gosh he smells worse than ever, I thought.
The other kids giggled. With hair unbrushed, runny noses and dirty faces,
they were a site. They reminded me of the little kids in the Three Stooges movies.
“John fell down, John fell down,” the unkempt litter began to recite as if it were a nursery rhyme.
As my face began to redden, I silently stacked my newspapers back into my new basket as quickly as possible.
“Duh John, that’s not how you put newspapers in a bike basket,” said Earl.
I felt my face reddening further. “Shut up Earl, you pig!” I shouted. I was in no mood to be lectured.
“Earl’s a pig, John called Earl a pig, Earl’s a pig,” the onlooking brood recited.
Just as I put the last paper in to the basket, Earl and DJ’s mom came out. Pushing aside the barren lilac branches that overhung the front porch stoop, she glared at me in an imperious manner, “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Earl’s a pig, John called Earl a pig,” tattled Laura. She was the oldest of the girls in the family.
“John, did you call Earl a pig?” Earl and DJ’s mom snapped at me, her round belly jiggling as she talked.
“Yes ma’am,” I said meekly.
Gosh, I just want to go do my paper route, I thought.
“Young man, at your age, you should know better than to call people names,” she admonished. “I oughta go down and talk to your ma! You tell Earl he’s not a pig!”
Her brood snickered.
Earl’s face broke into a wide stupid grin.
“Earl, you’re not a pig,” I said not apologetically. “You’re a big fat pig,” I thought to myself.
But I didn’t think it to myself. I had muttered it under my breath!
Out loud!
DJ caught this slight utterance. “Ma,” DJ cried out, while pointing the turkey wing at me, “John said Earl’s a big fat pig!”
“John, did you,” she stopped in midsentence. DJ was busily chewing away on the turkey wing.
“Donald Joseph (that was DJ’s real name),” she hollered, “I told you to stay away from the turkey. That was supposed to be for dinner.”
DJ held the bird’s appendage to his chest. “Look at what you’ve done to Earl’s jacket!”
Meanwhile, Earl had quietly put his right hand behind his back. It was then that I saw the turkey’s leg.
But their mom’s eagle eye had noticed the movement.
“Earl, what’s in your hand?”
Earl hesitated, his grin instantly gone.
“Show me!” she demanded, her short stubby finger pointed directly at Earl’s arm.
Earl brought out the turkey leg.
With a look of regal displeasure, exhaling in one brief breath, she commanded, “Jesus, God almighty!! Get in the house all of you!”
The brood scurried into the house, shouting, “Earl is a pig, a big fat pig!” This they repeated over and over as if they were chorale group, each one reciting the insult slowly as they made their way past their furious mother.
During this commotion, Earl and DJ looked at each other and then took off, running behind their house.
But again, their mom was too quick. Breaking off a lilac branch in one swift movement; she took off after them, her belly jiggling as she ran.
As she ran past, I stared for a moment at this change in hostilities, my mouth agape in wonder.
A whirring sound issued out, it source, somewhere behind the house, immediately followed by a thwack, thwack and then cries, “Ouch, ow, c’mon Ma!”
Ha! The two pigs had been caught, I told myself, satisfied of their apparent punishment.
Carefully, I hopped on my bike, balancing the pyramid of rolled up newspapers. The heavy load of newspapers made the front of the bicycle act as if it had a mind of its own. I stood on the pedals, slowly riding up Peyton Street.
Nervously, I approached the train tracks that crossed Peyton and separated the old dingy Diversey Foundry from our homes on Sixth Street.
I was wary of the old foundry. It seemed to be a noisy, mysterious place, employing men who would emerge after a day’s work covered in a layer of soot. Often, it would fill the neighborhood with brown and black smoke that belched from its various chimneys.
Even the old wooden bins outside of the building were odd. The wood itself was a series of gnarled and weather-beaten thick planks coated in a smoke covered dust while the materials in the bins might be a fine sand or gray and orange clumps of strange rocks.
Sometimes, Scottie and I would pretend we were moon explorers. With army helmets on, we would break off long pieces of burdock and poke them into the rocks scaring out cats, mice and often a good sized rat.
Many of the foundry’s soot covered windows were cracked or broken, while the old brick building itself seemed to be covered in an eternal layer of soot deposited by the belching chimneys. Even the windows that remained were soot covered.
As I approached the tracks, I noticed even the train tracks were as dilapidated as the foundry. Pieces of railroad tie and the iron rail itself protruded from the track bed.
“Man O Manisheverts!” I exclaimed.
Just then, a short, squat man appeared on the old foundry’s railroad dock, next to its sand bins.
Startled and distracted, I crossed the misshapen tracks, catching the front wheel on a raised railroad tie.
Plop, plop, plop. Again, the newspaper pyramid in my basket seemed to evaporate, as they scattered across Peyton Street along the rusted rails of the tracks.
“Hey kid,” the man shouted, running toward me. “You okay?”
I was busily picking up the papers, stacking them back into the basket while keeping a wary eye out for Earl or DJ and, a train.
I wasn’t too worried about the trains. With an engine a few boxcars and a gondola or two, they were very infrequent visitors, usually arriving in the late evening or early morning, moving as slowly as snails. Besides, the old railroad-crossing bell would start swinging and clanging long before the appearance of the train
Heck, sometimes the old railroad-crossing bell would start and then stay on for hours, apparently stuck in the ‘on’ position, swinging and clanging for hours, long after the train had come and gone.
It irritated my dad so often that he would violently emit choice gotdammits and sonofabitches before finally deciding to call the police and complain.
As if they could do anything about the racket.
“Yessir, I’m okay,” gazing at the man in a bit of astonishment. Every inch of his clothes and body were covered in what appeared to be deep black dirt. As he came closer, I realized the dirt was really soot. He was as dirty as the foundry itself.
Gosh! Even his face was dirty, I thought. If I ever got that dirty, Mom would have a fit!
With a quick glance at my newspaper pyramid, and then me he spoke, “Ya know kid, that ain’t how youse pack yer newspapah basket.”
He talked differently, I noted. He sounded like what I imagined my dad would refer to as a hillbilly.
“Must be hillbillies,” Dad would sniff distastefully, upon observing someone’s messy yard or a rusted, broken down vehicle resting nearby.
For a while, I thought my family was of that hillbilly extraction.
The former family sedan, our long dead 1952 Packard sat in the grass and weeds between the lilac bushes and our house. It sure was rusty and our backyard sometimes resembled one of those “hillbilly” yards.
But then, he never said Earl and DJ’s family were hillbillies and their place was a wreck with kid’s toys and bikes, broken screen doors and windows and various sundry junk littered throughout their palatial grounds.
“No, they weren’t hillbillies,” said my sister Joyce. “Hillbillies talked like the characters on that television show, The Real McCoys.”
“Oh, like that.” I made a mental note for later correct usage.
The man pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes, deftly shaking the pack in a downward motion to reveal a single cigarette peeking out above its white companions. Quickly in an upward motion to his mouth, he grabbed the lone smoke with his lips, rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other, before allowing it to settle on a safe perch.
Breathing in as he lit it, he exhaled, “Look kid, when ah wuz a boy, ah hadda paper route. Ah stacked them end up.”
Huh? “How?” I asked with an odd interest; I noted the perfect rush of smoke flowing between his lips as he spoke.
“Like this,” he demonstrated. Through the haze of smoke, he grabbed a few rolled up newspapers, standing them on their end. “See howz ya kin git more in theya?”
The Lucky Strike was already half smoked, I noted. But, he was right, of course. Even though the man had gotten five or six papers smudged with his dirty hands, the teaching moment was immediately helpful. I started stacking the newspapers side by side, filling the basket with newspapers left over.
“See heeya, once yer basket is full, youse kin still fit in more.” The man squeezed another paper in, compressing it a little.
Achoo! The man sneezed loudly. Quickly, he rubbed his sooty nose and then held a finger to his nostril and blew out. A black gob of snot flew to the street. Then, he quickly wiped his nose with his collar, the seemingly only non-soot blackened part of his clothing.
Huh, what a cool way to blow your nose!
Heck, my dad always carried a white handkerchief and encouraged me to do so as well. Dad would blow his nose in a huge honk and then pull out the “old snotrag” as he like to term it and prodigiously wipe his nose back and forth. I never like carrying the “old snotrag” in my pocket, especially after blowing my nose.
I had been enlightened. I now understood the subtleties of basket stuffing and nose blowing sans handkerchief. All at the same time!
Just keep shoving more newspapers in, they would compress a bit, but they all would fit.
For the nose, press closed one side, aim and blow. Wipe remainder on collar.
What neat tricks!
“Gee, thanks mister!”
The man grinned, his white teeth shining like a beacon from his black sooty face. “Shore kid, youse be keerful with thet pack o’ papahs,” his accent made it hard to understand. “Ahs got ta git beck to mah job.” With a wave, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand and then disappeared back into the old foundry.
The remainder of my route seemed uneventful. The rolled up newspapers disappeared quickly as I rode my bicycle, reaching into the basket, then, tossing them to the porch or steps of the intended recipient.
As I made the tosses, I gazed back, admiring my accuracy. I knew I was a good thrower. Heck, throughout the summer we played baseball almost daily in the old vacant lot on the corner of Hamilton and Fifth Street. I even practiced pitching Sunday afternoons in the parking lot of the old Jewel Food Store on State Street.
With the Jewel was closed on Sunday, their parking lot was empty of customers. This allowed me to pretend to be White Sox knuckleball pitcher, Hoyt Wilhelm. With a piece of chalk, I would draw a circle on the brick wall of the building. This was the spot that I would aim my pitches.
Yes, those were darn accurate throws I agreed. As each one landed, I let out one of the signature cheers that White Sox announcer for WGN TV, Jack Brickhouse would yell when a White Sox player hit a homerun, “Hey, hey!”
Sometimes, the rolled up paper would fly windmill-like through the air. If it landed short of the steps, it would often seem to have a mind of its own, walking up the stairs end over end, making a bam! when it hit the door.
Snickering, I thought, that’ll wake ‘em up!
I was merrily on my way; the basket was becoming lighter as the papers were delivered, almost disappearing like magic from the basket. Weaving my way almost lyrically to and fro, I was full of confidence and good nature, waving to little kids, moms and dads, anyone who could see that here, was a paperboy who knew how to deliver a paper – a professional – and, judging by his accurate throws, maybe even a future baseball pitcher!
Crash!
