Sweet and Sour Pie: A Wisconsin Boyhood Page 7

  church only when close friends were being married or buried. But he shook hands firmly with Just Folks, and handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Put this in the plate for me on Sunday, will you, Jim?” he said.

  “Tonight was worth every penny.”

  “Merry Christmas!” said Just Folks.

  “Merry Christmas!” we said, and shuffled through the snow to

  the Packard.

  Christmas morning, we all got up early. Grandma and I were

  standing in the hall, waiting our turns to use the bathroom. There was a flush and Puppa came out.

  “My God, Chickee,” Puppa said. “I wonder what that woman

  put in those rolls. It was like passing razor blades!”

  “Dad!” Grandma said, and jerked her head toward me. “Little

  pitchers.”

  “Well, it was,” Puppa said. “The good news is, yesterday I

  thought I was coming down with something, but I’m OK now.”

  In the afternoon Grandma invited Mrs. Smith, a widow who

  lived next door, to come over for coffee and cookies. Mrs. Smith had seen the Zoks come and go and was consumed with curiosity.

  Grandma told her the story.

  “Well, Myra,” Mrs. Smith said, “all I can say is that it was pretty brave of you to take those people in like that. Heaven knows what they might have done!”

  “Oh, Edna, I didn’t worry,” Grandma said. “They came in off the

  street on Christmas Eve, the woman pregnant out to here. And they were going to Bethlehem.”

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  “Bethlehem?”

  “Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I tell you, Edna, it was like an omen.

  It was like a sign!”

  Green Brandy

  Back in the 1940s and ’50s Grandpa got a lot of booze for Christmas.

  In those days, businesses could deduct gifts to their customers as expenses. If a salesman found out that a customer liked Haig & Haig Pinch Bottle scotch, for instance, a couple of fifths of Pinch would be dispatched to his home just before Christmas.

  The same went for cigars. One of Grandpa’s friends, a buyer for a hardware chain, received salesmen in his paneled office in the Terminal Tower, Cleveland’s only skyscraper at the time.

  “Henry,” he said, “I’ve got it down to a science. I really like

  Montecristo cigars—you know, the Cuban ones that come in glass

  tubes and wrapped in cedar. I can’t afford them as a regular thing, but every year in November I get an empty Montecristo box from

  the cigar store and leave it on my desk where the salesmen can see it when they come around. Sure enough, every Christmas it rains

  Montecristos.”

  Grandpa was the fleet engineer for a line of Great Lakes ore

  boats. He had to sign off on the purchase of everything from giant bronze propellers to buckets of grease, and he was hounded by salesmen every day. He was too honest to hint at presents, so the salesmen sent him pens, pencils, and an assortment of liquor every year, figuring that an executive in the marine trade would be sure to do a lot of writing and a lot of drinking.

  But Grandpa didn’t drink, and over the years he accumulated one

  of the largest cellars in northern Ohio, along with enough gold-

  plated mechanical pencils and fountain pens to arm a regiment of insurance agents. He gave most of the pens and pencils away, but he 59

  The Christmas When a Lot Happened

  refused to hand out the unwanted liquor to his friends, fearing that it would enslave them. The day after Christmas every year, Grandpa made about a dozen trips to the fruit cellar in the basement, putting the new bottles on the shelves beside Grandma’s home-canned

  relishes, chili sauce, tomatoes, and peaches.

  I started to play with the liquor when I was five or six, before we moved to Manitowoc. It was always cool in the fruit cellar, and I spent many long summer afternoons there, arranging the bottles by brand and spelling out their fascinating names—Kummel, Gold-wasser, Wild Turkey, Grant’s Standfast, Vat 69, Jägermeister, Spey Royal, Glenfiddich. It was fun to hold the bottles up to the light and study their colors.

  In time I began to open the bottles, sniffing the contents and

  mixing them together to see what would happen. Aalborg Aquavit,

  for instance, when mixed half-and-half with Martini and Rossi sweet vermouth, produced a blend with a scent of herbs and anise and a tawny brown color. Yellow liqueurs like Galliano created pleasant golden shades when mixed with vodka or gin. Once I blended a

  red liqueur with a white one. Shaken up, the mixture was a bright bubble-gum pink. By the next day it had separated into red and

  white layers, teaching me a little about specific gravity. A failed experiment involved the dilution of Three-Star Hennessey brandy

  with a liqueur called Chartreuse. The result was a bilious green fluid that looked like algae.

  I broke off my experiments abruptly one summer morning when

  I read through a liquor ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I recognized the names of many of my old friends from the fruit cellar.

  Then I had a shock; some of those old friends were selling for as much as four dollars a bottle. I decided to quit while I was ahead and undetected. But my researches in the fruit cellar came back to haunt me with the visit of Captain Tomlin on Christmas Day.

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  The Christmas When a Lot Happened

  The captain and his wife showed up on the doorstep in the early

  evening, when Dad, Grandpa, Puppa, and I were in the living room, dozing off the aftereffects of too much turkey, too much dressing, and too much mincemeat pie and ice cream.

  I was lying on the floor in front of a fire in the fireplace, flipping through a leather-bound illustrated history of the Civil War in three volumes, given to me for Christmas by a friend of Mom’s named

  Cynthia. Cynthia was a nervous and distracted woman who was

  suffering through life as a high-school librarian. We found out later that she had put the wrong labels on some of the Christmas gifts she sent out that year; the three-volume history was intended for the principal of her school. We could only wonder what the principal thought when he opened his package and found a slender copy of

  Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

  I was looking at pictures of the siege of Vicksburg when the doorbell rang. Grandpa groaned and struggled to stand up. Tightening his tie and slipping his suspenders back on his shoulders, he peered out one of the front windows to see who it was.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said, “it’s Tomlin the ancient mariner and his

  tugboat. Myra,” he shouted, “front and center! The Tomlins are

  here!”

  Tomlin was a retired Great Lakes captain who had once been the

  skipper of an ore boat on which Grandpa was the chief engineer.

  Grandpa did not get along with captains as a class, and Carl Tomlin was no exception.

  “It’s all very well for Tomlin to sit around the pilothouse in a starched shirt, drinking coffee and watching the wheelsman do all the work,” Grandpa used to say. “But he’s not going to move a

  damned inch if I don’t get steam up!”

  The Tomlins were well known in Lorain as freeloaders and in-

  sufferable bores. But it was Christmas, so Grandpa sighed and let 61

  The Christmas When a Lot Happened

  them in. Tomlin was a chubby man with thinning gray hair, flabby cheeks, and a protruding lower lip that gave him the look of a pouting bulldog. His wife was gaunt and hatchet faced and wore enough

  makeup to frost a cake.

  “Henry, I hope you don’t mind us dropping in like this,” Tomlin

  said. “We were just driving by and saw your lights on.”

  “Not at all, Carl, not at all. Merry Christmas,” Grandpa said,

  forcing a smile. Grandma invited Mrs. T
omlin into the dining room for coffee. Mom joined them and the three women sat down and

  began to talk. Tomlin headed for Grandma’s chair by the fireplace, but Puppa cut him off.

  “Don’t sit there, Captain Tomlin,” Puppa said, gripping him by

  the arm. “It’s too hot. Here, take Henry’s chair. Would you like a drink?”

  “Thanks, Albert, I don’t mind if I do,” Tomlin said. “Some

  brandy would be good, if you have it.”

  “Oh, we have it,” Puppa said, smiling in a way that made me

  suspect that he, too, knew his way around the fruit cellar. “Would Three-Star Hennessey suit you?”

  An electric charge ran up my spine. There were at least five

  bottles of Hennessey in the cellar. As Puppa went down the basement stairs I prayed that he would bring up a fresh one and overlook the algae. But my prayer was not answered. In a few minutes Puppa came back into the living room, carrying a small glass filled to the brim with the cloudy green slop I had made in 1948.

  Puppa handed Tomlin the glass. Tomlin took a sip, made a face,

  and swallowed with an effort.

  “How is it, Captain Tomlin?” Puppa asked. “Oh, it’s fine,” Tom-

  lin said, “it’s just a little . . . sweeter than I expected.” He took another sip, put the glass on an end table, and began to tell a tiresome story set in the days when he and Grandpa had been, as he imagined it,

  “old shipmates.” Grandpa set his jaw and said nothing, determined 62

  The Christmas When a Lot Happened

  to tough it out. After a while the kaffeeklatsch in the dining room broke up and the women came into the living room.

  “Come, Carl, we must be going,” Mrs. Tomlin said.

  “Oh, don’t go yet, Mrs. Tomlin,” Puppa said. “It’s cold outside.

  Have a seat in Myra’s chair by the fire and warm up a bit.”

  Mrs. Tomlin lowered herself into the chair in a ladylike fashion, but as soon as her angular bottom compressed the seat there was

  a loud, flubbering report. Mrs. Tomlin shot up from the chair as though propelled by springs.

  Grandpa and Grandma stood motionless with their mouths half

  open. Mrs. Tomlin clenched her fists in fury and flushed so red you could see it through her makeup. Captain Tomlin gestured and

  sputtered. I tried to keep a straight face, with the memory of Elsie’s explosion still fresh in my mind. And Puppa stood in the corner by the Christmas tree, smiling inscrutably like an elderly Buddha with a mustache.

  He caught my eye and gave me a big wink. It dawned on me: the

  mysterious purchase at the drugstore had been a whoopee cushion, and Puppa had planted it in the chair. He had intended it to be a practical joke on Grandma, but when a target of opportunity like Mrs. Tomlin came along he couldn’t resist.

  “Carl! I said we are going!” Mrs. Tomlin shouted. Mom got the

  Tomlins’ coats out of the closet. The captain was still sputtering.

  “How dare you . . . old shipmates . . . insulted my wife . . . never speak to you again!”

  “Fine with me!” Grandpa said. And like the down of a thistle, the Tomlins flew out the front door, slamming it so hard the clock on the mantel struck six o’clock two minutes early.

  Grandma went to her chair, removed the whoopee cushion, and

  threw it into the fire. “Well, we’ll never see them again,” she said.

  “Dad, I suppose this was your doing.”

  “Guilty,” Puppa said. “Come on, Chickee, you know you hate

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  that old dragon. I saw your face when she walked in. You’re well shut of her.”

  “Your father’s right,” Grandpa said. “Getting rid of that pair is like a second Christmas, let’s face it.”

  I was taken aback by this sudden insight into adult life. I had

  been taught to be polite to everybody, even people I couldn’t stand.

  But if you were grown up, apparently it was OK to be honest from time to time, if you were prepared to take the consequences.

  Mom’s voice came from the kitchen. She knew how to calm

  the fierce rush of life at Grandpa’s. “Who wants a snack?” she asked.

  We sat down in the living room as she poured coffee and passed

  out cookies and turkey sandwiches. Then she opened the bench of

  Grandma’s Mason and Hamlin upright piano and took out a book

  of Christmas music. “Play for us, Mom,” she said.

  Grandma had been a theater organist in the days of silent movies.

  Not only could she play, she could also improvise. Fugues and

  variations flowed from her hands as the spirit moved her. With the coming of talkies she played only to relax, and that night it took her about an hour. We sat silently in the living room, listening and watching by the light of the Christmas tree.

  I was headed for bed when Puppa tapped me on the shoulder.

  “I poured that green stuff down the drain,” he said, “so it won’t trouble us anymore. Oh, and another thing—are you really going to read those Civil War books?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Next Christmas you can tell me how it all

  comes out.”

  Yellow Dog Blues

  On the morning of the twenty-eighth we got up at five thirty to pack the car for the trip back to Manitowoc. Grandma stirred up pancake 64

  The Christmas When a Lot Happened

  batter while Dad and I carried luggage and presents out to the

  Studie. Our suitcases filled most of the backseat, leaving only a cubbyhole for me. Mom’s job was to pack the trunk, and she pursed her lips in concentration as she moved the packages around to get a perfect fit.

  We knew we wouldn’t be together as a family until next Christ-

  mas, so it was hard to break away. But finally Dad looked at his watch and stood up. “Charlotte, Davy, let’s go,” he said. “We were supposed to be on the road by six thirty and it’s seven already. I’ll just take a walk around the house and make sure we haven’t forgotten

  anything.”

  “Don’t bother,” Mom said. “I’ve already checked.”

  After a final round of good-byes we got into the Studie and

  Dad backed down the driveway. Traffic was light at that time of the morning and we had to wait only a couple of minutes for an opening. We pulled out and headed west, waving until Grandpa’s house was out of sight.

  “Well, that was quite a Christmas, all in all,” Dad said. He and Mom talked about Puppa, the Zoks, and the Tomlins while I read

  the introduction to volume one of my Civil War books. The author spent a lot of time setting the scene. I plowed through the Missouri Compromise, the Wilmot Proviso, Bloody Kansas, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates before I fell asleep. When I woke up we had driven about a hundred miles. Dad was calling me.

  “Davy, look around back there and see if you can find my

  pipe satchel,” he said. Dad usually traveled with six pipes, which he carried in a kind of leather wallet with loops to hold them. That morning he had been smoking a Kaywoodie Canadian that Grandpa

  had given him for Christmas, but after the fourth smoke of the

  morning it was time to give it a rest and start a fresh pipe.

  I moved the suitcases around. “I don’t see it,” I said.

  “Charlotte, did you pack it in the trunk?” Dad asked.

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  “I don’t remember,” Mom replied. “The pipes are your failing.”

  “Yes, but you said you looked around the house before we left,”

  Dad said. “Didn’t you see the satchel? I think it was on the dresser.”

  “Well, then, it’s still there,” Mom said. “Anyway, you have your new pipe.”

  “But I can’t smoke it for two
days straight!” Dad said.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t smoke so much,” Mom said. “It will

  be nice to drive for a while without smoke in the car.”

  “Dammit, Charlotte, you know when I’m smoking I always roll

  my window down!”

  “And that’s another thing,” Mom said. “What’s the point of

  having a heater in a car if you drive with the window open all the time?” When Mom got stubborn she was an immovable object.

  “OK, when we stop for gas I’ll get a pack of cigarettes,” Dad said.

  “Some day I may quit smoking, but I’m not going to do it in Indiana!” His pipe had gone out and he laid it on the dashboard. He

  looked at the gas gauge, settled himself in his seat, and began to drive a little faster.

  Mom and Dad didn’t argue very much, but over the years I had

  learned to judge the severity of their disputes by the tone of their voices. I had been listening intently, and this sounded like a pretty bad one. No one said a word for about twenty-five miles.

  After a while I got tired of reading and began to play with my cap pistol. As we drove along I pointed it at cows, horses, and farmers we passed. I was sitting on Mom’s overnight case to get a better view from the backseat, and looking ahead, I saw a big yellow dog waiting for us in a driveway on the left side of the road. He was a classic farm dog, a hundred-pound blend of shepherd and collie with a mane like a lion.

  As I suspected, he was also a car chaser, and as we got closer he ran parallel to us in the opposite lane. Then he lunged at our front 66

  The Christmas When a Lot Happened

  tire and Dad swerved to miss him. The Studie’s right rear fender hit a snow bank and we spun lazily to the left. Dad sawed at the wheel to fight the skid. While all this was happening, his pipe slid off the dash and dumped black ashes on Mom’s major Christmas present, a

  heather-mixture tweed coat.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” she yelled as Dad got the car

  straightened out. She rolled her window down and wound up to

  throw the pipe out of the car. But at the last second she hesitated.

  Loathsome as it might be, the pipe was a gift from her father. She brushed the ashes from her coat and put the pipe into her purse, snapping the clasp firmly.

  Dad needed a smoke. “Charlotte, give me that pipe,” he said.