“Tell us a story about when you were little!” Johnny and I begged.
Standing at the doorway to our bedroom, Daddy smiled, and we knew that meant yes.
“All right,” Daddy said. “Now, let’s see. One time, when I was just three or four years old, my mother needed to go to the store to get something for supper, so she called to my Dad to watch me while she was out, and she told me to be good. The store was just across the street, so she wouldn’t be gone a long time. My Dad was tired and he went to take a nap, and while he was sleeping, I got some nails and a hammer from his tool box, and I decided to help out. I started to nail down our rug in the parlor.”
“Why?” Johnny asked. We had never nailed down our rugs.
“I wanted it to stay down,” Daddy said. “I made such a mess! Those nails were twisting all over the place, but I kept trying, and I finally got nails in all around the rug. And when my mother came back home, there I was sitting on the parlor floor, with a bunch of nails around me and a hammer in my hand.”
“Was she surprised?” I asked.
“She was more than surprised! She was mad!”
“She was mad at you?” I tried to imagine my Nana mad at Daddy!
“No, she was mad at my father! She went into the bedroom and got him up, and said, I ask you to watch Jackie for a few minutes so I can go to the store, and look what happens! You go to sleep, and he nails the rug to the floor!’
“My Dad said, I was just taking a nap! I thought he was with you!
“With me?’ my mother said. I told you I was leaving him with you!
“‘Well this is the first I heard of it,’ my Dad said.
“‘And didn’t you hear all that hammering?’ she asked.
“‘I didn’t notice,’ he told her. But his nap was over, and he had to spend the rest of the afternoon getting all those nails out of the parlor floor!”
We both laughed, and then, quickly, before he could get away, we begged, “Tell us another story!”
“My father used to take me down to the corner store with him, and he’d tell the people there, ‘Between me and my son Jackie, we know everything. You can ask us any question you want, and between us, we can give you the answer.’ Someone would ask a real tough question, and my father would smile and say, ‘That one’s Jackie’s department! You tell them the answer, Jackie.’”
We laughed again.
“It was the Depression,” Dad said, “and no one had money. When the rent was coming due, if we didn’t have enough money to pay it, we’d move someplace else where the rent was cheaper. So one time we moved into an apartment on the top floor of a three decker where everything seemed fine until one night when it rained. The roof leaked, and we had water dripping from the ceiling. My mother put pots and pans underneath to catch the drips, and the next day, my father told the landlord about it. Well, the landlord said he’d fix it, but he didn’t do anything. The next time it rained, we had water dripping all over the place again. So my mother got the pots and pans out again, and the next day my father told the landlord again. He promised again that he’d fix it, but he still didn’t do anything. Every time it rained, we’d have pots and pans all over the floor. My father got so mad! One night when it started raining, he looked up at the ceiling where it was dripping, and he went for his toolbox. He got out a drill, and he drilled holes in the floor underneath every place it was dripping, so the drips would go downstairs to the apartment below. ‘Maybe if there’s more of us complaining, the landlord will do something about it,’ he said.”
Daddy’s father was so funny! But so was the rest of his family. “Tell us another story from when you were a kid,” we asked.
“Well, one time when we were living with my grandfather,” Dad said, “I decided to stick my head through the rungs on the back of a dining room chair, just to see if it would fit. I got my head through all right. The problem was, I couldn’t get it back out again. So I began to holler for my mother. Your Nana came running, and she and her sister Agnes tried to pull me out. Well, the more they pulled, the more it hurt. I was really stuck, and every time they pulled me, it felt like they were tearing my ears off. I began yelling, ‘Saw the chair! Saw the chair!’ And Agnes said, ‘The damn little brat!’”
Johnny and I giggled in shock that Agnes had said a swear word about our Dad!
“My mother got some butter and rubbed it on my head and my ears, and she and Agnes kept pulling me and rubbing butter on me until my head finally slipped out. Agnes was so mad at me!” Dad laughed.
“Tell us more about Agnes!” we begged. We loved the stories about her.
“It used to drive Agnes crazy that I pulled my chair in close to the table when we ate. She’d say to my mother, ‘Look at him! His chair’s too close! Don’t let him push it in so far!’ My grandfather Daddy Jim would tell her to leave me alone, and she’d be real mad. So I’d pull my chair in so close to the table that I could hardly breathe, just to bother her.”
“Tell us about Willie,” we’d beg.
“Willie was your Nana’s littlest brother, and he was just a teenager when I was a kid. One time my mother said that she was going to take me to the doctor to get a check-up before I started school. Willie got me alone before I went to the doctor, and he said to me, ‘Jackie, I heard you’re going to the doctor. Now don’t be scared about it. Going to the doctor isn’t so bad. There’s only one thing you have to watch out for. Sometimes the doctor takes out a little flat stick and tells you to open your mouth. Whatever you do, Jackie, don’t open your mouth, or he’ll take that little stick and shove it down your throat and choke you to death. So you be careful!’”
Johnny and I laughed. Willie was telling a big fib! Doctors don’t try to choke you to death!
“So I went to the doctor’s,” Dad said, “and everything was all right until the doctor took out that little wooden stick. ‘You’re not going to kill me!’ I yelled. Well, the nurse started telling me everything was fine, and the doctor wouldn’t hurt me, and she and the doctor were both trying to hold me and telling me to open my mouth. I kicked the doctor as hard as I could and jumped off the table, and I started running. The two of them chased me all over the room trying to get me to open my mouth.”
That Willie! I thought.
“Another time,” Dad said, “it was a Saturday. I loved to go to the movie theater and Willie was all set to go with his friends. He said to me, ‘Aren’t you going to the pictures today, Jackie?’
‘I can’t go. I don’t have any money,’ I told him.
‘Don’t you know, today you don’t need money,’ he told me. ‘Today they have a special deal, and you can get in for a button.’”
“We always have to pay money,” I said.
“Well, I ran in the house and pulled a button off a shirt,” Dad said, “and then I ran down to the theater. There was a big line for the matinee, and I got in line and waited my turn. Finally I got up to the ticket window. I handed the lady my button and asked for a ticket.
‘This is a button, little boy,’ she said. ‘Where’s your nickel?’
‘You’re taking buttons instead of nickels today,’ I reminded her.
‘No, we don’t take buttons. You need a nickel to get a ticket,’ she said.
‘It’s a special button day! My uncle Willie told me it is!’ I said. ‘You’re giving tickets for buttons!’
‘Your uncle Willie lied to you,' she said. ‘Where’s your nickel?’
‘I don’t have a nickel,’ I said. ‘I just have a button.’
“If you don’t have a nickel, you can’t get a ticket. Now stop holding up the line!’
“I was so disappointed that I started crying. But you know what? A big kid was selling papers on the corner, and he saw what happened. He came over to me and said, ‘Don’t cry, kid.
Here’s a nickel. Go see the pictures.’ So I got to go to the show anyway.”
“Tell us another story, please!” we’d beg.
“I bet you never knew that one time I gave Nana a black eye,” Dad said.
“Why?” my brother Johnny asked.
“We went to Revere Beach one day, and Nana put out a blanket on the sand for us to sit on. I sat down to take off my shoes. I was so excited to be at the beach that I was rushing so I could go in the water. I got my shoe off, and threw it over my shoulder to get it out of my way. I didn’t know it, but my mother was right behind me. It hit her in the eye, and she got a black eye!”
“Was she mad at you?” I asked.
“She knew it was an accident, so she wasn’t mad,” Daddy said. “But even when I was naughty, Nana always hated to punish me. Sometimes if I was naughty, she’d say, ‘If you don’t stop that, Jackie, you’re going to get a spanking.’ And if I kept it up and kept it up and kept it up, she’d finally take me over her knee. She’d lift her hand way up in the air, and then just barely touch it down on my bottom, about as hard as when a fly lands on you. She’d give me two or three little pats like that, and all the time, she’d be crying because she hated to spank me.
“When I was supposed to begin first grade,” Daddy said, “my mother told me, ‘You’re not going to be able to spend all your time having fun and playing in the park. Those days are over. You have to start school.’ I didn’t want to go. I was used to playing with my friends and my cousins in the park all day, and I wanted to keep playing. My mother sent me off to school, but instead I just went to Glendale Park to play. So my mother told my father, ‘You’re going to have to take him to school.’ The next day my father walked me to school. He waited until he saw me go in the door to the school building, and then he left.
“Well, I waited just inside the door, and when I saw he was gone, I ran off to the park to play. That night my mother said to my father, ‘I asked you to take Jackie to school, but the school said he didn’t come today either.’
“’I took him,’ my father said. ‘I saw him go in the door.’
“So the next day my father walked me into school right to my classroom door to make sure I got in. But as soon as the teacher turned her back, I snuck out of the room and went to the park again. My father found me in the park, and brought me back to school. He told me I had to stay there. This time he came right into my classroom and sat in the back of the room to make sure I didn’t sneak out.
“But it turned out I had a nice teacher. She had us act out nursery rhymes. She brought a candlestick into class, and every day she’d put it on the floor in the front of the classroom. While the class would recite, ‘Jack, be nimble! Jack, be quick! Jack, jump over the candle stick!’, I’d jump back and forth over it. So I started to like school.”
“Tell us another story!” we begged.
“That’s enough for tonight,” Daddy said. “It’s time to get some sleep.”
“Can I have another glass of water?” Johnny asked.
“Me too,” I said.
“Just one,” Daddy said, “and this is the last one.”
After we drank our water, Daddy kissed us again and tucked us in. Then he disappeared down the hallway. Still giggling, Johnny and I talked for a few minutes about when Daddy was a little boy. No matter how many of his stories he told us, it was never enough.
~ Kate Lydon Varley
