Month: April 2016

Reginald Van Gleason, III and The Fireman’s Club

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

If you are of tender years, you probably never heard of the late, great Jackie Gleason, known in the bygone black and white television years of the 1950’s and 1960’s as “The Great One”. He first became a star in a weekly TV variety show called “The Cavalcade of Stars” which later became “The Jackie Gleason Show.” In the show, he created a sketch which quickly evolved into the weekly comedy series known as “The Honeymooners”, where he played the bus driver/husband Ralph Kramden, along with his wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows. They lived in a tiny, dingy apartment in New York, where you only saw their kitchen and sometimes the fire escape as the set. Their downstairs neighbors were the dimwitted loveable sewer worker Ed Norton, played by master comedian Art Carney, and his wife Trixie, played by Joyce Randolph. The plots were usually built around Ralph’s endless efforts to strike it rich and Alice’s efforts to keep his feet on the ground. Ralph would occasionally shake his fist at Alice and say, “To the Moon, Alice, to the Moon!” Alice wasn’t fazed.

Jackie, with his rotund frame and round Irish face also created other characters etched into the memories of my generation, among them Joe the Bartender, The Poor Soul, and Reginald Van Gleason, III. For the purposes of this story, you might want to catch a bit of the Reginald character at the link below: (He appears about two minutes into the skit.)

https://youtu.be/i4VUCZRasLs?list=RDi4VUCZRasLs

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My father was a Chicago Fireman from 1944 until his death in 1968. He and his fellow firemen on the west side saw a lot. While with Truck 66, my dad was at the LaSalle Hotel fire in 1946, which claimed 61 lives. We have newspaper pictures of him making rescues on a ladder. In 1958, he and the crews of Engine 95 and Truck 26 responded to the Our Lady of Angels fire, which took 92 children and three nuns. Those were big events, but most of their fires and accidents had no names and claimed victims in more modest numbers, yet they dealt with deaths and injuries on a regular basis. I don’t imagine that men go through those kinds of experiences without developing some sort of bond, and that is what happened at “95’s House” at Crawford (now Pulaski) and Wilcox. The fireman there enjoyed each other’s company and they developed a tight bond of friendship, so they formed a “club” for socializing with their wives. “Club” would rotate the meetings from home to home every few months, or so.  They went on meeting even after transfers, injuries, retirements and deaths, and, I believe, it ended in the early 1970’s. The memorable cast of characters I can see today as if they were standing next to me.

Rick and Darlene were an outgoing, fun loving couple, Rick with his slicked back hair and always with a ready laugh. I thought he was a hero because once a year, at the Fire Department Thrill Show, staged at the old Soldier Field in sweltering mid-August, Rick would dive from the top of a makeshift four story building, set afire for the crowd; he would land with a “wump” in a safety net held by the firemen on the ground and everyone cheered. Attendance at the Thrill Show was mandatory for the Wogan children.

Jim and Peg were my favorites, largely because of Jim’s wise guy voice and wisecracking ways. Jim was the Lion from Wizard of Oz, minus the fur and the tail. Jim and my Dad were especially close. Jim, whom my Dad called “Junior”, and my Dad, whom Jim called “Shorty” were at each other as only close friends can be. One famous story went that a passerby at the firehouse inquired why city workmen were knocking out bricks below the spaces where the firehouse windows had been. Apparently the new windows were lengthier than the old. Jim replied, “So Wogan can see out.” The story continued that my Dad chased him all over the firehouse.

Frank and Mary were a little older than the others, and had two children. Their daughter, Mary Eileen, had been born with a medical condition that took her life at about seventeen years. She was a friend of my sister Maureen, and I remember her being so upset when she passed. Frank had fallen from a fire truck some years before and had been pensioned off, but remained part of the Club. Nice people.

Eddie and Millie were the life of the party. Eddie was their Lieutenant in the firehouse, and even though he commanded their respect, he was one of the boys. Millie also did hairdressing for a number of the club ladies. They always brought a bottle of whiskey to the party of mostly beer drinkers.

Sam and Kitty rounded out the crew. Kitty had a smiling Irish face and Sam was a big, loveable Jewish guy. His faith mattered not at all to this mostly Catholic crowd; once inside a burning building your particular religious beliefs were less important than your tolerance for heat and smoke, your ability to open a roof, or your willingness to put it on the line for your fellow firefighters. Sam, I guess, was all those things.

It was my parents’ turn to host the party in October of that year and my mother, no doubt in conjunction with the other wives, decided on a costume party for Halloween. When she told my father of the plan, he flat out refused. He would do everything else: get the keg of beer, the booze, food, whatever, but he was not getting into some sissy costume, even for one night. His words, not mine.

And that was that. I don’t recall my mother and father fighting very much, and I think they retreated to the bedroom if they really had to have words in a house filled with eight children, but I do recall my mother being really ticked on this one. More than once she dropped 500 pound hints that she was disappointed, that he was being a party pooper, no fun, etc. He wouldn’t budge.

The night of the party, the kids were allowed to stick around long enough to see the guests, before being banished to my grandmother’s flat below ours in the two flat building we called home. The keg of beer was on the porch, carefully and lovingly tapped by my father, and the guests began to arrive. Rick and Darlene arrived as devils, bright red horns and pitchforks. Sam and Kitty came as convicts, black horizontal stripes and all. Frank and Mary came as hobos, the old Halloween standby choice. Jim and Peg were Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans, complete with lassos. Eddie and Millie came as a priest and nun, dating against the rules of the Vatican. My Mom was dressed as Shirley Temple, bow in her hair curled especially for the occasion. And my Dad was in a plain white shirt.

After a little bit of drinking and joking, the party moved, as parties do, into several smaller parties, the wives chatting away in the living room, and the men standing guard at the tabernacle of the keg on the porch. No one noticed my Dad’s absence when my mother announced that it was time to judge the Best Costume. The men reluctantly abandoned the keg and trooped into the living room. My siblings and I had stolen back to the alcove off the living room to catch this part. My mother looked a little annoyed as she looked around for my Dad; one of the guests offered that maybe they should wait for Tom to get back from wherever he was.

Just then, the bedroom door flung open and my father strode into the living room, wearing a preposterous tall black top hat, black cape, black bow tie, white gloves, a glued-on floppy black mustache and a cigarette dangling from his lips. In his hand was a black cane, which he twirled over his shoulder as he announced “”Goooood evening!” in his best Reginald Van Gleason III imitation. The illusion was perfect.

My Dad, having much the same physical frame as Jackie Gleason, brought down the house. My mother was at once totally surprised and caught somewhere between her lingering annoyance with my Dad and an awakening delight that he had played her as well as he had. She threw her arms around him and kissed him, while the Fireman’s Club cheered and awarded him the cheap plastic dime store trophy for Best Costume.

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I was amazed at what I saw. My Dad actually had a sense of humor! Hell, he was a prankster of the first order! He must have had this thing planned for days! And my Mom and my Dad had a relationship with each other!

It’s hard for kids to see past the veil of parenthood, but I was allowed this one little glimpse. My parents were real honest-to-god people, even though I, like most kids, usually saw them as providers, disciplinarians, and the enforcers who dictated the rules of the house. I never imagined them as two people in love with other, as capable of having a little fun with each other as my Dad did that night with his costumed surprise. It was a revelation to see my Mom acting not a lot like my Mom, but more like a girl.

I suppose it’s always this way for kids and their parents, but it’s nice when life peels back the curtain a little and lets you see that moms and dads have the same multiple dimensions in their lives as the rest of us. Good one, Dad.

Rags and Old Iron: A Story of Attitude Adjustment

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

Author’s note: You may not have read or even heard of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, but if you want a quick look at the plot go to http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/play-summary/merchant-venice/.

I was a freshman at Quigley South in 1963, sitting in my English class, where Fr. Cahill presided. Fr. Cahill was a very tall forties-something priest with crew-cut snow white hair, and huge hands, either one of which seemed to cover both the front and back covers of whatever book he was holding. Over his white collar and black shirt and trousers, he always wore the priest’s cassock, sort of a black full length covering that all ordained faculty wore back then.

The grapevine said that he had been a star high school basketball player before finding his vocation, and he looked every inch the part; those oversized hands must have been useful on the ball court. He was a good teacher, too. His method was largely lecturing, but peppered with lots of questions to keep you in the game. In this class, we were knee deep in our first Shakespearean play, The Merchant of Venice. We’d been at it for weeks and I was way past the point of caring what Portia, Bassanio’s new bride disguised as a male lawyer, had up her sleeve. I thought Shylock was a creepy old guy, and Bassanio and Antonio seemed especially dense. Antonio who made the “pound of flesh” deal with Shylock, and Bassanio who couldn’t recognize his new wife dressed as a man? C’mon.

As a student, I got pretty good at reading the different ways that teachers would unconsciously telegraph their decisions as to who to call on next. Fr. McLaughlin, who taught Latin, would look for someone who hadn’t made eye contact yet, and call on him. My counter-strategy when unprepared to answer, which was almost always, was to look directly at him, as if eager to translate. Worked every time. Mr. Lang, who taught math, worked a list of students in alpha order, so you only had to be prepared when he got in the general neighborhood of your name. Fr. Henckle, who taught history, called on the first eager beavers to shoot up their hands, and it was always the same four or five guys. Free ride.

Fr. Cahill was a lot trickier, because he had memorized our names and could call yours without warning from anywhere in the room. Caught unprepared, caught with your mind wandering, or just plain lost, you bought yourself an extra writing assignment that night, due the next day. And it was the same punishment time after time: write out all seven stanzas of Sir Walter Scott’s “Young Lochinvar.”

God, how I hated that knight. Here’s the first stanza of this seven stanza nightmare:

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

If you ask me, Sir Walter was having an off day when he wrote this one.

We had reached the point in the Merchant of Venice where Shylock’s gig was up. He can have his pound of flesh as part of his evil bargain, but not one drop of blood. Shylock is outraged that he has been outfoxed. At this point, Fr. Cahill asked the class, “How does Shylock react to this news?” Then, “Mr. Wogan?”

Now on the west side of my youth, every week an old man in a horse drawn wagon would come down our alley singing his mantra, “rags and old iron”. Even though we were long past the era of horse-drawn transportation, this old tradition somehow stayed alive. He was the junk man, and because he was Jewish, he was referred to as the “Rag Sheenie”. I had heard my father use the term a hundred times, and never in anger or in derision. He just used the expression “screaming like a rag sheenie” as one his stock phrases. Even my grandmother, as simple and unprejudiced a person as you could hope to meet, would use the term. I even heard a nun say it once. I never gave it any thought; the old guy with the horse was a part of my neighborhood scene and he was stuck with this sad title.

Years later I would find out that yes, indeed, these guys were almost always Jewish, and that they rented their horses from a nearby barn on a daily basis. Most of them were very poor and whatever they could scrape from selling scrap metal was how they lived.

So I gave him my answer, confident that Young Lochinvar would stay the hell in the West and would still be riding alone tonight. What I said was, “He’s screaming like a Rag Sheenie, Father.”

From out of the corner of my eye I saw it, but it was too late. One of those huge hands caught the side of my face, not like a slap, but more like a sweep. It picked me up out of my seat and deposited me, with a thud, on the floor. My classmates instantly showed a renewed interest in what they were reading, as if not wishing to be caught up somehow in my crime. I looked up with confused wide eyes at Fr. Cahill, now taller than ever from my new seat on the floor. “That’s an ethnic slur, young man,” he said evenly. “I never want to hear that from you again.”

I didn’t know what slur meant. I didn’t even know what ethnic meant. I just knew I wasn’t going to say Rag Sheenie anymore. Oh, and I had to write out Lochinvar again.

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Looking back on it, it strikes me that I might have accidently demonstrated the main point of Shakespeare’s play. Merchant of Venice has been interpreted by many, but at its heart it’s about prejudice and in particular prejudice against Jews. Some of those interpreters claim that this was Shakespeare’s way or illustrating the evils of racial and ethnic bias. Others claim that it was his way of pandering to the anti Semite tendencies of his audience. It’s not hard to imagine some of those sitting in those seats at Stratford-on-Avon smiling with satisfaction as Shylock’s fortune is confiscated and he is forced to convert to Christianity at the plays ending.

My ethnic slur was a result of my youth and ignorance of the world around me, and that’s a pretty good definition of a fourteen year old boy. Today, as I watch the current embarrassing national political circuses, I wonder what excuse they can use for some of the fear and prejudice being sold on a daily basis to the angry and the scared. And I wish we had a Fr. Cahill’s hand big enough to administer a correction.