Grandma's secret entertainment in the
early 1950's ... and it wasn't much of a secret in a household with five other
people ... was to watch wrestling on WKTV on Saturday nights. She was getting
pretty old by then, just into her fifties, but youthful looking. She let nothing interfere with viewing the half
naked men bounce and strut around the
canvas ring, clutching each other in aggressive embraces and hammer holds, and
thwacking each other with body blocks. Enrique
Torres, Don Eagle, and Whipper Watson were the idols of the time, but none was
so glamorous as the redoubtable Gorgeous George Wagner.
Mr. Wagner didn’t appear in the
ring until near midnight so the ad
agency men could show an extra hour of pitches containing mindless lyrics put
to bad music. A favorite among my
brothers and I featured Bucky Beaver (without his sidekick, Bullwinkle the
Moose) singing, “Brusha, Brusha, Brusha, with the new Ipana. It’s dandy for your tee-ee-th.”
As the night wore on and we boys
began to nod off in front of the tiny screen, Grandma kept her vigil, waiting
for the other wrestlers to finish as she rocked her chair faster and faster
until Gorgeous George appeared in the ring. At his entrance, Grandma's enthusiastic clapping would bring us back up
to the level of consciousness in time to see a walking refrigerator of a man with
blond flowing hair enter the ring, his flouncy gown trailing behind him.
Grandma swooned and we kids fell back to sleep.
Wrestling was about as risqué as anything Grandma allowed herself, if
you didn’t count her special "cough
medicine" bottle she kept in her closet high on a shelf.
When Gorgeous
George’s promoters scheduled a match in our city in the winter of 1952, Grandma
reacted as a teenager would several years later when Elvis came to town.
“Oh, we can’t
miss it. We just have to go,” she would blurt out a few times
each day.
“I’m taking Eddie to the Avon
Friday night,” Grandma announced to my parents on a snowy afternoon in
1952. It was the first I’d heard I’d be going
with her.
“He’s not ready for that,” said my
father.
“Oh Fred,” said my mother, “let
him go. He’s the only one of the boys interested and Grandma needs someone to
go with her.”
That was true. My two brothers thought wrestling a farce,
although they would have gone along for the ride if asked. I was almost sure it was fake, but Grandma
and I got along well and she always bought me heaps of candy. In her experience, teeth didn’t last beyond
childhood anyway.
My father did not reply, so I had
no idea why he thought I wasn’t ready for adult wrestling, sitting among men as
they chewed on their cigars, spit out the juices, slipped a flask of whiskey
from an inside pocket and swore like troopers.
I figured if Grandma could take it, so could I.
When Friday came, it was snowing once again. Gram announced she was taking me out for dinner to the Villa Restaurant a block
down the street. She often took any one
of us three boys with her for a fried fish dinner on Friday night, but only one
boy at a time. As it happened it was my
turn to go. When we stepped off our
front porch steps, she steered me up the street instead of down.
"We're going the wrong way, Gram."
"We're going up to the bus stop and then to the Avon."
"Dad said we couldn't ..."
"Your father did NOT forbid you from going. He only advised."
Now THAT was something for my little brain to think
about, although the probable outcome of my rumination would no doubt indicate disobedience. But there was a more pressing issue.
"When do we eat?" I asked.
The bus made it’s way over to Eagle
Street and then along the route to downtown Utica. I assumed we would stop at another of
Grandma’s favorite places, the Ten Pin Tavern. The TeePee, as we called it, was an upscale
neighborhood bar that served fried fish dinners on Friday night, just like the
Villa on Leah Street. But the Teepee had table cloths and a
waitress who called me “sir” rather than “sweetie pie” and referred to Grandma
as “Ma’m” instead of “Granny.”
“We have plenty of time before the
wrestling show,” Grandma told me as the bus approached the restaurant.
Frankly, I wasn’t very
excited. I had been thinking of my
father’s negative reaction to wrestling and I felt a little guilty. True, wrestling didn’t
appear to be sordid entertainment, but if Dad didn’t care for it, it must not
be the best way to spend an evening.
Grandma’s opinion held some authority, but a father’s belief system weighed more than a grandmother’s.
Snow fell from the sky on this
late winter night. The alternating warm and cold days at this stage of winter
left behind partially melted street
surfaces with washboard stretches of bare pavement and bumpy patches of ice. Gaping
holes dotted the pavement, the work of previous freezings. A small kid could have hidden in one,
assuming he wanted to get killed. My
empty stomach began to churn each time the driver ran us over a bump in the
road. All the sliding windows on the
vehicle rattled like we were being strafed by enemy aircraft as we crashed our
way over railroad tracks and every single
manhole cover in our path along Eagle Street
to downtown. However, like any nine year old, my vigor improved miraculously as
I contemplated the next fun thing to do, but not too far beyond five or ten minutes
into the future.
The Ten Pin whizzed by outside the
bus window.
“Hey, Gram,” I said. “How come we didn’t get off for the TeePee?”
“It’s a special night,” she
replied. “We’re going to the Waldorf Cafeteria.”
This was terrific news! Adults claimed the Waldorf’s food to be
superior, but the attraction for me was cafeteria style serving by a happy and
heavy woman who really piled the food on a hungry boy’s plate.
A typically selfish kid, I gave no
thought to Gram having to pay more for us to dine at the Waldorf. I’m sure it took her beyond the weekly budget
she had set for herself. I remember my
grandmother as both generous and frugal.
She never had much money and she tried to hold on to any cash that came
her way. She’d known poverty as a child. As an eight year old girl, she found herself
underage and fired from her job when the Child Labor Laws were passed in the
1890’s. The new laws put her out of
work. Like many other younger children,
Grandma and two siblings no longer had earnings to bring home to help pay the
rent or to buy food and clothing. The
government seemingly had no consideration for how families would survive. Grandma’s parents and brothers and sisters lost
their apartment and were kicked out on the street. Their belongings were piled up on the curb by
their landlord. The family was forced to
split up and look for work and living quarters wherever they found them.
Grandma was Mom’s step
mother. She had married Grandpa and,
though a Presbyterian, agreed to bring up Mom Catholic. She seldom accompanied us to our church, but
each time she blessed us with her presence the morning was always
memorable. While we brought our missals
to Mass, Grandma brought her dream
book. Dad would sit amongst us in the
pew and do a slow burn while the old woman looked up her dreams. On the drive home she would ask if anyone checked on how Father McAdoo spent the
money collected each week. She hoped he wasn’t sending the money to Rome,
“over there with the Fascists.” She
wondered if McAdoo’s housekeeper was more than a housekeeper, whatever that
meant. Grandma considered Catholicism
dismal and joyless. “Who would name a
church after a casket?” she asked one Sunday morning, referring to Our Lady of
the Holy Sepulcher. (When the basketball
team scored, our cheerleaders yelled “Ho-lee Sepulcher, Ho-lee Sepulcher,” as
one might yell “HO-lee MO-lee”
or “ HO-HO-HO chi-minh. In fact, Holey
Moley was our nickname for the church.)
The bus windows calmed down as we
arrived in the downtown area of Utica, where the merchants paid a lot of taxes
and expected the roads to be re-paved on a regular basis. When we arrived at our stop in front of Grace
Episcopal Church, I stood to allow Gram
to walk down the aisle to the front of the bus to exit by the forward
door. She turned and gave me a look,
rolling her eyes in an advance token of disapproval. I hurried to the back door and poised myself
on the top step, hands gripping the
vertical shiny poles on either side in readiness for the jump.
As the bus stopped and the doors
opened, I threw my body back and then whipped forward, pulling on the poles to
fly straight out the back door into the snowy night. This was my version of an
Army Airborne parachute jump and I always did it from the back door where the
bus driver couldn’t reach out and stop me.
Falling on the snow covered sidewalk, I’d roll off to one side,
sometimes colliding with the legs of an innocent bystander. To this day, I’ve never lost the urge to jump
when exiting a bus. But I gave it up as
a teenager when I twisted my ankle and my date left me on the sidewalk, so
embarrassed was she to be with a boy who might one day join the circus and be
shot out of a cannon. The police picked
me up off the sidewalk and gave me a ride home, but only because my Uncle Billy
was a cop. Mom was mortified when the
cruiser came up our street and deposited me at the end of the driveway. She was sitting on the front porch as I staggered to the bottom of the
stairs. Sergeant Maccachiatti leaned out
the window of the patrol car and shouted to my mother … and all the neighbors
sitting out on a fine summer evening … “He’ll be OK. Found him lying on the
sidewalk downtown.”
But here on this snowy night with
Grandma, I did a perfect touchdown and roll,
scaring only a few passersby who were waiting for the bus. Picking myself up and looking around at the
lights of downtown, I was as un-self conscious as any nine year old could
be. The snow had let up and Genesee
Street looked like a fairy land of white. The streetlights illuminated the facades of
the first and second floors of the retail and commercial buildings, some a
dozen stories high. I stared up at the
Grace Church steeple, which rose up through the glow of the lights and then
disappeared into the blackness of a universe I could only imagine.
Grandma dragged me across Genesee
Street. I
was embarrassed to have my hand held by an old lady, even if I was related to
her. We were sure to “look both ways
and then a second time for good measure,” even though with the snow, not very
many cars were on the streets. On a
weekday afternoon in good weather, this wide intersection of Genesee,
Columbia and Seneca Streets would
be a hazardous crossing. Especially for kids, because we were so short and
drivers couldn’t see us until we went flying up over their windshields. According to my older brother. Well, he was right about the cookies. Right or wrong, since he was the oldest in
our crowd, all the neighborhood kids believed him … about everything. When we had grown to be adults, I once
asked him if he took any responsibility
for the incarceration rate of the group of kids we grew up with and with whom
he had shared his opinions and advice at age 12. He looked at me a moment and then said “Yes,
I do.” I didn’t believe him so I dropped
it. Later he told me he'd misunderstood and thought the word
“incarceration” had meant something to do with sex.
A short distance over Columbia
Street we turned and pushed through the door into
the Waldorf Cafeteria as a blast of heated air met us and steamed up my
glasses. I spent a moment standing in
the middle of the entranceway, my hands dog-paddling like I’d just been struck
blind and was waiting for someone from Nazareth
to come and restore my sight. Smells of
cabbage and turkey and meat loaf and spiced ham quickly coaxed me into pulling
my glasses down my nose to stare over them and follow Grandma to an empty booth
where we left our coats, gloves and my hat.
We headed to the food line while I bounced up and down trying to see
what was on the menu.
A large man was ahead of us in
line and his threadbare coat spoke to his meager circumstances. The seaman’s watch cap pulled down over his
ears caused me to wonder if he’d come into town on the canal, even though he
looked to be a hobo who had arrived on a train. He could have been a workingman, but most of
the city’s factory workers and tradesmen would have left the downtown area by then
and be whooping it up in the neighborhood taverns like the one down the street
from our house. I decided he must have
just jumped off the train from New York City
after a free ride in a boxcar. He was no
doubt here to get his grub before he jumped on a westbound freight headed
outbound, balling the jack through Syracuse
toward Niagara Falls and on to the Great
Lakes. I’d always wanted to
go to Niagara Falls, but was
uncertain I’d find any excitement at the Great Lakes.
The fat lady waited patiently
while Grandma and I argued over whether I could have both the meatloaf dinner
as well as a second spiced ham entrée.
We heard the skinny lady at the cash register tell the hobo in front of
us he couldn’t have the food on his tray.
“I forgot my wallet,” he
said. “I’m working nearby. I’ll bring the money back in a bit.”
Not likely, I thought. After the westbound left town, he’d never be
heard from again. And not surprisingly,
the woman shook her head no.
Grandma muttered something to
herself and pushed her arm beyond the man toward the cash register.
“Here,” she said, proffering a
five dollar bill, “I’ll pay for the three of us.”
This was not surprising. My grandmother was a soft touch to anyone on
the street needing a handout. Some
people who were brought up poor are surprisingly not generous, but Grandma
always was.
The skinny lady at the cash
register gave Grandma her change. Boxcar
Bob, as I was now calling the man in my mind, smiled with a twinkle in his eye
and said, “Why, Thank You, Ma’m.” I
wondered if he would someday mail a dollar from
his cold water flat in Chicago, where I was sure he lived down by the
docks, between the stock yards I had read about and maybe a locomotive
roundhouse, which I’d read about and always wanted to visit. I wanted to see the turntable move the engines
around. Maybe I should introduce Grandma
to this man whose name I was now sure had to be Bob. Grandma was pretty old, but probably not too
old to get married again. If she and Bob
hit it off, I’d get the chance to see Chicago. Every
year I could go visit her in the stockyards.
Maybe Boxcar Bob was thinking the
same, because he followed us back to our booth and squeezed in next to me so he
could sit across the table from Grandma and get a better look at her. He was a large man and had I closed my eyes I
could have easily imagine I was sharing the bench with a Grizzly bear. His hands were quite large, but were
surprisingly free of the normal grime and nicks of a working man like my Dad
and my uncles.
“Really, sir!” pronounced my
grandmother, just as Bob opened his mouth to speak. “I’ve bought your sandwich, but not your
company, young man. Can’t you find
somewhere else to sit?”
I turned to look at the big man
and he was crestfallen, the corners of his wide mouth turned down in
disappointment.
“I’m very sorry, Ma’m,” said Bob,
“if you’ll give me your address, I’ll send …”
“Certainly not!” interrupted
Grandma.
I’ve known my grandmother almost
ten years and I can tell when she is really upset. My opinion: she was not. Mildly annoyed, maybe, and sounding terrifically insulted, but I
sensed she was enjoying the encounter.
Bob leaned back and sighed. He scooped the sandwich up from his plate and
wrapped it in a paper napkin. Lifting
the heavy ceramic coffee cup, he took a big slurp, dribbling some of it down
his chin. He wiped his face with the cuff of the old dirty coat and jammed the
sandwich into a pocket which had probably last held a monkey wrench or maybe a
pet mouse.
He rose from the booth, stood to
his full height and said, “Then I’ll thank you again, Mam, and say good bye to you and your
escort.” He looked at me and said, “Good
evening to you, sir.”
That sewed it up, he’d make a great grandfather, even if he was
a little young for Grandma. Bob turned and left the Waldorf Cafeteria, pushing
out through the door into the snowy night, headed down the wide swath of Broadway to the tracks and his next boxcar,
probably, and to the destiny that
awaited him at the foot of Lake Michigan. That’s where Chicago
is, and yes, I had all A’s in Geography
that year.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I
thought I saw a hint of disappointment in Grandma’s face. She didn’t say much as she chewed on her
fricasseed chicken and I ate my meat loaf dinner with half of a spiced ham
entrée on the side, followed by two pieces of apple pie, the second with ice
cream given to me by the fat lady in appreciation of my business.
We got up to leave and I spotted a
bobbie pin down on the seat where Boxcar Bob had sat next to me. I picked it up, but having no need for it, I
was about to ask Grandma if she wanted it when the light touched it, giving it
a beautiful golden glow. Wow! A golden
bobbie pin! I stuck it in my
pocket. I’d add it to the leather bag of
discarded jewelry I kept at home. Mom
was embarrassed when I asked neighborhood ladies for any old jewelry they might
have. I was convinced a career as a
jewel thief would be a terrific way to spend my approaching adulthood, only a
decade away. What I needed was practice
at this stage, so I’d have my little brother hide the jewels somewhere and then
I’d attempt to steal them without him catching me. I gave up my career plan when a priest told
me it was probably a mortal sin to steal a million dollars in jewelry. I’ve often wished I’d asked if only a half million
dollars was a mortal sin.
The Avon Theater was an old
burlesque house built in the previous century and later turned into a movie theater. Tonight it would be converted into a
wrestling palace by erecting the ring over the floor of the orchestra pit at
the foot of the stage. The best seats in
the house that night were uncomfortable folding chairs, set up on the stage
with their backs to the movie screen.
Grandma purchased terrific seats down in front among the regular
seating, but for someone my height we were a little too close to the ring. I could see most of the wrestling action,
except when one guy was pinning another at the far end of the ring. Then I’d jump up and stand on my seat, only
to be pushed down by a fat man behind me, who wore a fedora pulled down over
his forehead almost to his eyebrows, and had an unlit cigar clamped in his
teeth.
When the wrestling matches began,
I bounced up and down in my seat like any nine year old in anticipation of a great evening of men flexing their muscles
and abusing each other on the tightly drawn sheet of canvas. But although I expected lots of action, not
much happened up there in the ring during the first few matches. The half naked men were not throwing each
other into the ropes or squashing their opponents down to the mat and standing
on their chests or grinding a heel into the other fellow’s jugular vein. Or lashing out with a kick to the other guy’s
groin when the referee inexplicably looked the other way. Instead of such fun filled entertainment
played out before the main event of the evening with Gorgeous George and other
luminaries, these early matches appeared to be honest to goodness sporting
matches, just like the high school wrestling team. There’s nothing so boring as honest
wrestling, except maybe honest baseball.
Or any kind of baseball, come to think of it.
After the second match, I begged a
dime from Grandma for a candy bar and headed up the strip of worn carpeting
between the rows of seats on my way to the lobby and the candy counter.
“Hey, youngster,” said a booming
voice behind me just as I paid for my Baby Ruth. “Are you placing a bet or buying a beer,”
Danny Tollen laughed, as I peeled back the wrapper on the candy bar.
Danny was Dad’s friend from work,
the local newspaper’s photographer.
“How’s about I get a shot of you
and Gorgeous George, later,” he said.
“Terrific human interest, beauty and a junior sized beast!”
“That would be great!” I almost shouted. “We’re down in front near
the ring.”
You and your brothers? With your Dad?”
“No,” I answered, “he doesn’t like wrestling, I don’t
think. Grandma brought me”
“Now there’s a photograph!” Danny
said with even bigger smile on his face.
“Hey,” said Danny, “you wanna meet
him? Gorgeous George? You can tell him
to be sure to say Hello to your grandmother on his way to the ring. Then I’ll get the best shot of the
month!
“Well, sure,” I said.
“C’mon, youngster,” I know him well enough. Met him an hour ago.”
Danny led me up the stairs beyond
the mezzanine and then tapped three times on an unmarked door. It was opened by a short, bald headed man
with a cigarette hanging off his lower
lip. He let us in.
We were in the projection booth,
tonight the wrestlers’ dressing room. Up
against the side wall seated on a bar stool,
in gold lame boxing shorts, with
a golden head of hair, sat Boxcar Bob
smoking a cigarette. Dressed in his
regalia and with his hair poofed up, he did indeed look somewhat like the
George we’d seen on television. TV cameras
covering wrestling in the 1950s never got much closer than some distance above
the ring.
“Meet Gorgeous George,” said
Danny.
George looked at me and began to
laugh, a great open faced laugh that would wear well on a young grandfather.
Danny said, “This boy has a
grandmother here tonight! What a great
publicity shot if the two of you …
Still laughing, George
interrupted, “You could say I’ve already tried to meet her and was rejected.”
The two men were joined by
George’s manager and all three quizzed me about which aisle my seat was on and
whether Grandma was excitable and if she wouldn’t mind having her picture in
the paper with a wrestler.
“Oh, no, she wouldn’t mind at
all!” I crooned.
“But you can’t tell her,” said
Danny. “I want a real surprise on her
face.”
I never keep secrets, but I did
not want to disappoint Danny and Mr. Gorgeous, so I simply clammed up and said
very little when I got back to Grandma. She didn't notice, probably
because she was now having an argument with the Fedora man behind us.
Sitting down in her seat, Grandma
faced forward and then turned slightly to look at me. She pointed her thumb back over her shoulder.
“The nerve of that man!”
That Man leaned forward to address
me.
“I was just sayin’ to your mother
she should keep a tighter rein on you, young man.”
“Mother?” said my grandmother. “My
dear sir, I am old enough to –“
“Here he comes,” I shouted.
Down the aisle with his retinue
trailing behind came Gorgeous George in a blazing white bedroom gown over gym
pants and a shirt with gold lame trim.
His full head of golden hair was luxurious and caught the light as though
he’d been sent from Olympus.
I began to yell. “Hi, Mr.
Gorgeous, Hi Mr. Gorgeous.”
Grandma shot up from her seat and
turned to face uphill in the theater.
“Oh, my gol …” she said when she
recognized the man all but sent fleeing from our table at the Waldorf Cafeteria.
“It’s Gorgeous George. It’s Gorgeous George,” I kept repeating as I
pushed her from behind out of the seating into the aisle.
Danny the photographer was now
leading Gram to a spot he’d picked for the best photo. He motioned for me to come over and take her hand.
He bent down and loudly whispered
to be sure I heard him.
“Don’t let go of her hand. Don’t let her move off this spot.”
Gorgeous George was now opposite
us holding up a one dollar bill. He
genuflected down to one knee while he held the proffered dollar bill up to
Grandma.
Danny’s press camera began popping
flash bulbs as fast as he could load them into the reflector.
“Thank you, Mrs. Stephenson, kind
lady, for loaning me the money for my fare earlier this evening. I now bring
you recompense.”
“Oh my gol, Mr. George,” she said.
“Please get up. Oh, this is so ….”
She probably wanted to say it was
embarrassing, but it would have been premature.
Embarrassing was what came next.
Gorgeous George, stood to his full
height, reached out and pulled my grandmother to his breast. She looked up, he bent his head and planted a
Rudy Valentino kiss solidly on her lips.
He let go, saluted her as if Grandma was his First Sergeant, and left us
for the ring.
Grandma was ready to faint. As I led her back to our seats I felt her
hand trembling.
“Congratulations, Granny,” said
the fat man in the fedora.
Through the weekend Grandma was
kind of quiet. On Sunday morning, I
heard my mother gasp when she brought in the paper from the front porch.
There on page one of the “Local”
section was a huge picture of Gorgeous
George with his arms wrapped around Grandma, giving her the kiss of any woman’s
lifetime. But the short caption was the
killer. “Area Maiden Captured by Meaty
Champion.” Meaty?
We all had a good laugh over the
photo and Gram’s spirits seemed to lift as we discussed her big adventure of
the night before. The article mentioned
something I didn’t remember from the event.
Mr. George handed out golden colored bobbie pins as a souvenir and
keepsake.
“I wish I’d got one,” said
Grandma, “rather than a sloppy kiss.”
“Guess what, Gram?” I shouted. “I’ve got one! He left it in the booth for you at the
Waldorf Cafeteria.”
When Grandma came home from her
Presbyterian Church around one o’clock
in the afternoon, she was subdued.
The following Saturday night as my
brothers and I gathered around the television set for the wrestling matches,
Gram’s chair was empty. I ran to the
back of the house and entered her room.
She sat reading a magazine.
“Aren’t you going to watch
wrestling?” I said.
“No, I guess I’m not as interested
as I used to be.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“’Cause it’s fake,” she said.
“Well, we always sorta knew that,”
I replied.
She was quiet for a moment, and I
knew she was mulling over what to tell me.
“I guess now that I’m a
grandmother,” she said, “I should have more dignity.”
“You’ve always been a
grandmother,” I said, “ever since I’ve known you.”
It was nowhere as much fun
watching wrestling on Friday night without Gram and her grunting and rocking
back and forth in her chair.
When I spoke to Mom about it the
next day, she said, “I think a few people at her church told Grandma she
shouldn’t have gone to a wrestling match.”
“What do they know? “ I said. “She shouldn’t listen to them.”
“It’s the way people are,” said
Mom. “When you talk to people, they give
you their opinion.”
“She should go to Holy Moley more
often,” I replied in all seriousness. “No one talks to anyone in a Catholic
church.”
