Installment # 10

At age two, they tell me, an old family doctor was misdiagnosing me as having whooping cough, or mumps or something, when I actually had pneumonia.  Mom told me the story several times, and each time she would start to cry, and I would tear up, too.  Later in life, when I told the story on my own, I would get emotional remembering how Mom felt and what the experience meant to her.  She said that, as I was getting weaker and sicker, they finally decided on a second opinion.  That new doctor took one look at me and said, “This baby has pneumonia!”  He ran with me to an operating room, all the while holding me upside down, reaching his hand down my throat, pulling out mucous, trying to clear my breathing passage and save my life (which he did, by the way).  Well, he and Dr. Alexander Fleming, who had discovered penicillin a few years earlier. To further emphasize how lucky I am to be here, the use of penicillin did not begin until the 1940s when the active ingredient could be isolated and developed into a powdery form of the medicine.

I’ve been asked many times over the years whether I am allergic to penicillin.  I’ve learned to simply say “No,” but I always think of this story.  When I was two years old, in 1946, I don’t think the medical professionals were aware that some people might be allergic to penicillin.  Whether they were or not, they just went ahead and saved my life with it.  If I had been allergic, that would be another reason that I wouldn’t be here.  The story continues that Dad’s father, my grandfather, whom we called “Popu,” took a big knife from the kitchen and was walking to the office of the family doctor who had misdiagnosed me, saying he was going to kill him.

Popu was a gentle, passive man, so I have always understood from this story how much he loved me.  Of course the family intervened, and he never made it to the doctor’s office.  Popu never learned to drive a car, by the way, so had no choice but to walk.  I can just visualize him striding purposefully along the boulevard with a big knife in his hand.  If the family hadn’t caught up with him, surely the cops would have.  Aunt Dot was about a year and half older than Dad, but before she was born, Grandma and Popu had a baby boy who died – I think around age two.  I don’t recall from what.  I can only imagine how upset Popu was when he almost lost his first born grandson at nearly the same age as his own first born son.

We leap year babies only have a real, true birthday once every four years, of course.  I tell people to remember that my real birthday falls in the same year as the summer Olympics and the presidential elections.  This may be the product of what was told to me by my parents more than from direct memory, but evidently the local newspaper wanted to print pictures and stories of myself and another child both turning four (that is, having our first real birthdays) on February 29, 1948.  I fussed and cried and refused to have my picture in the newspaper, because I was convinced that those poor unfortunate people I saw in the newspaper had to stand completely still in those positions for the rest of their lives.  I don’t think they ever ran the article…at least it was never saved among the things that have been handed down.  Wouldn’t most 4 year olds know better than that, especially as everyone around them was giving reassurances?  When I talk elsewhere about my shortage of common sense, I think about this story as possible corroborating evidence. 

We moved from South Ozone Park to North Massapequa in 1950, when I would have been 6 years old.  North Massapequa is on Long Island, in Nassau County, roughly in the middle of the Island.  Per Wikipedia, “South Ozone Park is a lower middle class neighborhood in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Queens. It was originally developed as low-cost housing in the early 1900s.”   My memory of life prior to Massapequa is quite limited, and probably mixed with what I was told.  I remember a park, with a grassy hill leading down to a man-made lake, and a handball wall that to me was huge.  Dad had a friend named Steve, and in good weather they would take a chess set to the park and sit under a tree in the shade and play.  I remember before we moved there Mom had me look through the front window, trying to get me excited about the stairs we could see leading up to the second floor.  I must have been four years old.  Evidently, we were moving from a place that had only one story. Maybe Mom was trying to get herself excited about the move.

It must have been during this time or earlier in their relationship that Mom played on an all-girl softball team named S.O.S.  She told me later that the guys called them ass-oh-ass.  From the time that I was aware, I don’t think Dad would have said that out loud, even though he probably thought it was funny.  I have their wedding picture and must say that they were a very good-looking couple.  As an aside for now, I did inherit good looks from them, but feel I never had the personality or “swagger,” as we say these days, to do much with my good fortune, at least not where women were concerned.  I mean my looks gave me a starting advantage with girls, but I did not know how to capitalize on the advantage.

On the other hand, over the years I have lost a lot of teeth and been through a series of upper and lower partials.  Meanwhile my jaw structure has changed (absorption of the bones, the dentist calls it), and I now have no confidence in my smile.  In the mirror it looks to me like I am missing some teeth and my smile is more of a dash than a curve.  I have come to realize how much I relied on my handsome face and warm smile to overcome what I couldn’t do too well with words, or at least to make a good first impression.  It seems to me now that funny-looking people have to develop winning personalities or other intangibles in order to compensate.  Perhaps I was “cursed” with good looks; they were a crutch I shouldn’t have needed and no longer have.

Fortunately some of my awkward moments have helped prepare me for this latter phase of life.  For some reason I have always remembered the time - we were living next door to Aunt Dot - when Mom asked me to keep an eye out for Aunt Dot coming home from some errand and to give her a message.  The message had to do with a home permanent kit that Mom either wanted to borrow or was ready to lend or return or something.  The brand name was Richard Hudnut: Richard Hudnut Home Permanents.  I remember as Aunt Dot got out of the car I was standing there trying to give the message, and all she could gather was that I was trying to tell her about some man.  She became quite concerned that there was some problem involving some stranger and had to ask me to slow down and repeat myself.  I was probably around 11 years old.  It is interesting how that incident has stuck in my mind as the first time I became aware that good verbal communication doesn’t come naturally to me.

I recall an incident during our honeymoon (age 22) when we were still in Waikiki, before hopping over to Kauai, where I entered a store and asked the proprietor to cash a traveler’s check for me.  I must have done it in such a way that it irritated him enough that he felt compelled to tell me that I should buy something; that it was inappropriate to just walk in looking for a favor from a stranger, while he is trying to make a living.  I remember walking out feeling chastened and confused, but also embarrassed and angry.  A similar incident happened when Sandy and I were traveling through Switzerland in 1973. 

We were staying at an old hotel in Zurich, where the elevator was an ancient contraption that I had not seen before.  After a few attempts, the man behind the counter came over with a mocking smile and said loudly (for the amusement of others in the lobby) in broken English, “You must call him!”, meaning to pull the correct lever in order to get the car to come down to the lobby level.  People were amused at my expense, and his English wasn’t good enough for me to explain that I knew what needed to be done; I just didn’t know how to do it.  Meanwhile, I was red-faced and upset.  These are just a few of the awkward moments that have stuck with me, perhaps as lessons learned…the hard way.

I remember shortly after Michelle was born (so I would have been around 26 years old) that Harry Brown said I would find that by age 30 or so, with more maturity and enhanced self-assurance (he implied),  I would become really smooth in talking to people.  A few years later, when we were with Sandy’s parents at Camp Richardson’s, Poppa (her Dad) and I were walking past an elderly (to me) housekeeping staff person when Poppa gave her a big smile and said, “Hello, young lady!  How are you?”  This led to a brief but pleasant exchange and good feelings all around.  Afterwards, Poppa said to me, “See?  All you have to do is be friendly with people, and they will be friendly back.”  Harry and Poppa were both trying to tell me something, or were at least reacting to something they were seeing in me that could really use some improvement.

Meanwhile, back in South Ozone Park, I do remember being caught in the act of taking a poop outdoors in front of a friend’s house as Dad happened to be walking by on his way home from work.  I think I remember the incident mostly because of the trauma and fear I felt about being caught.  I don’t think anything dramatic happened in terms of punishment.  I also remember that Aunt Dot and Uncle Harold owned the first television set on the block.  They lived a few houses down the block from us, close enough for us to walk to. Of course it was a small black and white box with lousy reception (She tells me it was about 10 inches – the biggest one available) but it was a thrill for us kids to gather on Aunt Dot’s living room floor and watch television!  

Aunt Dot reminded me that the little screen was housed in a great big piece of furniture, because of all the tubes and bulbs that needed to be hidden and for the sake of safety and appearance.  I remember the old Farmer Gray cartoons, where the mice and gophers and rabbits would drive the farmer crazy, and he could never catch them and stop them from ruining his house or crops.  I also remember “Its Howdy Doody Time!” with Buffalo Bob and the kids in the peanut gallery.  I would get so caught up with the puppet characters and the stories that I would forget that Buffalo Bob was the only live performer there.  I still remember the names of some of the puppet characters, but that may be from later years in Massapequa.

As a quick diversion, I had the privilege of watching comedians and other TV personalities during the 1960s and 1970s who had succeeded in making the transition first from vaudeville to radio, and then from radio to television – no mean feat, as they say.  In vaudeville the performer does the same few acts over and over, and the audience keeps changing.  These were live audiences who came to shows while visiting or passing through the area.  In TV, the audience remains fairly constant, so the performer needs to keep changing.  That alone seems like an amazing transition to make. 

But also, most of them had to transition first to radio, where physical comedy and visual gags are useless.  They had to learn to rely on their voices - what they said and how they said it; their timing, etc.  I suppose television required them to combine the two, plus keep coming up with new material.  A few names off the top of my head include: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Stiller and Meara, Sid Caesar, Arthur Godfrey, Steve Allen, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton, maybe Jackie Gleason.  Of course there were many who did not make the transition, but that was before my time.  I might recognize some of their names, but I never saw them on TV.