Prose Gallery Three
This gallery contains seven memories of youth relating to disability,
Sinatra, a shared bathroom, and my parents.
Sinatra, a shared bathroom, and my parents.
learning that I had Spina Bifida
and that this congenital mobility impairing disability involved a lack of
fusion at the base of the spinal column [Well, perhaps not in
those words]
and wondering why, out of all the kids born into this world, did I have to
be one of those born with this disease
and not coming up with a satisfying answer.
-I would later understand that we all have our burdens in life. Some
may be more inherently problematic than others, but it's likely that we
each expend just as much energy worrying regardless of our particular issue.
Perhaps a beauty queen worries as much about the blemish on her nose as
the police officer worries about the bullet that might penetrate his chest.
my mother telling me that as a baby I was slow to walk
and how she brought me to the doctor who had delivered me
and the doctor saying: "Madam, you should be happy that the army
will never take your son"
and my mother angrily replying: "Doctor, I wish that my son were
healthy so that the army would want to take him."
-Perhaps every cloud does have a silver lining.
my father telling me as a young boy that when I turned sixteen I would
have an operation that would cure my disability.
-We would talk about this from time to time as I grew up. By the
time I neared sixteen, however, my father was no longer mentioning it
and I was no longer asking him about it.
my father's "sayings," including: "Your sister" and "You remind me of
my Aunt"
and his teasing reply after being asked to go out somewhere: "Yea,
sure, I'll go. Save me a seat by the drummer" [The event not
necessarily being a musical one]
-I was never quite sure how this drummer "saying" came to be.
What was the nature of the drummer? I knew from playing gigs with my
band that most people don't want to sit by the drummer. Yet the drummer
is the backbone, the pulse, the heartbeat of a band. Maybe it was the
ambiguity of the "saying," or more still its absurdity, that caught my
attention. Nevertheless, I am using these and other "sayings" of my
father more often as I get older.
the "Sinatra stories"
and how my father heard Sinatra sing at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood
Cliffs [My father worked as a singing bartender, although I don't
believe he ever worked at the Rustic Cabin]
and how Sinatra bought "coffee and . . . " for the locals at Bickfords
Restaurant on Journal Square in Jersey City
and how my father and Barney Harvey, one of Sinatra's early piano
accompanists, went to see,"the voice" in his hotel room during
an engagement at New York's Paramount Theater
and how, upon leaving the hotel room, the three of them were mobbed
by "bobby-soxers"
and how Sinatra gave my father an autographed picture that day.
-Although I thought that my father may have had a hand in
personalizing that photograph, I never wanted to put him on the spot by
asking him. Due to my uncertainty, I rarely showed the picture. Just
recently, however, a friend of the family asked me: "Wasn't it your father
that was with Sinatra when they were mobbed by bobby-soxers?" He had
heard the story some twenty-five years earlier. I nodded and thought to
myself, perhaps I should carry one or two wallet sizes of that picture.
how Aunt Glady and Uncle Frank once lived near Sinatra in Hoboken
and my using their "shared" bathroom [No, they didn't share it with
the Sinatras but with the family in the apartment next door]
and the bathroom having two doors, one for each family
and how upon entering the chamber, you would fasten a chain across
the width of the room so that it hung taut between the two doors,
making it imposible for either door to be opened from the outside.
-Standing up in a hurry could have snapped your head off. Why this
procedure rather than a typical hook and eye or other locking device?
Because to exit the bathroom you had no choice but to unfasten the chain.
If a hook and eye were used, you might forget to unlock the other family's
door. Besides being an unneighborly thing to do, such an omission could
potentially cause much distress in a party in need of relief.
a multitude of things about my mother.
-She was truly a good and loving person. However, since she passed
away just a week before the writing of this recollection, nothing seems
important enough to act as tribute. Perhaps there is something too final
about a tribute. My father's last request of me was: "Take care of your
mother." Well, Dad, I did my best. Sometimes I can imagine my father
saying: "Don't worry, your mother and I have seats by the drummer."
And it's funny, but I now think I know the nature of that drummer.
and that this congenital mobility impairing disability involved a lack of
fusion at the base of the spinal column [Well, perhaps not in
those words]
and wondering why, out of all the kids born into this world, did I have to
be one of those born with this disease
and not coming up with a satisfying answer.
-I would later understand that we all have our burdens in life. Some
may be more inherently problematic than others, but it's likely that we
each expend just as much energy worrying regardless of our particular issue.
Perhaps a beauty queen worries as much about the blemish on her nose as
the police officer worries about the bullet that might penetrate his chest.
my mother telling me that as a baby I was slow to walk
and how she brought me to the doctor who had delivered me
and the doctor saying: "Madam, you should be happy that the army
will never take your son"
and my mother angrily replying: "Doctor, I wish that my son were
healthy so that the army would want to take him."
-Perhaps every cloud does have a silver lining.
my father telling me as a young boy that when I turned sixteen I would
have an operation that would cure my disability.
-We would talk about this from time to time as I grew up. By the
time I neared sixteen, however, my father was no longer mentioning it
and I was no longer asking him about it.
my father's "sayings," including: "Your sister" and "You remind me of
my Aunt"
and his teasing reply after being asked to go out somewhere: "Yea,
sure, I'll go. Save me a seat by the drummer" [The event not
necessarily being a musical one]
-I was never quite sure how this drummer "saying" came to be.
What was the nature of the drummer? I knew from playing gigs with my
band that most people don't want to sit by the drummer. Yet the drummer
is the backbone, the pulse, the heartbeat of a band. Maybe it was the
ambiguity of the "saying," or more still its absurdity, that caught my
attention. Nevertheless, I am using these and other "sayings" of my
father more often as I get older.
the "Sinatra stories"
and how my father heard Sinatra sing at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood
Cliffs [My father worked as a singing bartender, although I don't
believe he ever worked at the Rustic Cabin]
and how Sinatra bought "coffee and . . . " for the locals at Bickfords
Restaurant on Journal Square in Jersey City
and how my father and Barney Harvey, one of Sinatra's early piano
accompanists, went to see,"the voice" in his hotel room during
an engagement at New York's Paramount Theater
and how, upon leaving the hotel room, the three of them were mobbed
by "bobby-soxers"
and how Sinatra gave my father an autographed picture that day.
-Although I thought that my father may have had a hand in
personalizing that photograph, I never wanted to put him on the spot by
asking him. Due to my uncertainty, I rarely showed the picture. Just
recently, however, a friend of the family asked me: "Wasn't it your father
that was with Sinatra when they were mobbed by bobby-soxers?" He had
heard the story some twenty-five years earlier. I nodded and thought to
myself, perhaps I should carry one or two wallet sizes of that picture.
how Aunt Glady and Uncle Frank once lived near Sinatra in Hoboken
and my using their "shared" bathroom [No, they didn't share it with
the Sinatras but with the family in the apartment next door]
and the bathroom having two doors, one for each family
and how upon entering the chamber, you would fasten a chain across
the width of the room so that it hung taut between the two doors,
making it imposible for either door to be opened from the outside.
-Standing up in a hurry could have snapped your head off. Why this
procedure rather than a typical hook and eye or other locking device?
Because to exit the bathroom you had no choice but to unfasten the chain.
If a hook and eye were used, you might forget to unlock the other family's
door. Besides being an unneighborly thing to do, such an omission could
potentially cause much distress in a party in need of relief.
a multitude of things about my mother.
-She was truly a good and loving person. However, since she passed
away just a week before the writing of this recollection, nothing seems
important enough to act as tribute. Perhaps there is something too final
about a tribute. My father's last request of me was: "Take care of your
mother." Well, Dad, I did my best. Sometimes I can imagine my father
saying: "Don't worry, your mother and I have seats by the drummer."
And it's funny, but I now think I know the nature of that drummer.
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