Wearing number 13 because no other kid would take the jersey, he occasionally eluded tacklers with bursts of speed, but more often got hammered by neighborhood pals trying to win starting positions on Father John Dempsey's makeshift team representing Saint Paul's School.
Kids provided their own helmets and pads. Father provided purple jerseys. His eager12 to 14 year-olds showed up faithfully for practice on a rough vacant lot near the church. When neighbors came out to watch, Father loudly praised his stumbling novices. With a broad grin, he told one amused onlooker his "Cardinals" averaged 110 pounds.
If a player broke his nose or collarbone, Father commiserated and took him home to make sure he received prompt medical treatment. No one ever heard of a parent suing the parish because their kid got hurt. Players learned teamwork and football fundamentals from the burly priest; to be gracious in defeat, even after taking a pounding, and modest in victory.
On a rainy afternoon in October, 1938, Father arranged a scrub game with kids from Nichols Academy, a private school near Buffalo's Delaware Park, which boasted an actual gridiron with goal posts and benches for players, a first for the rag-tag team from Saint Paul's in suburban Kenmore.
Near half-time, losing by two touchdowns, number 13 took a pitch out, slipping and sliding forward in the muck. He never knew if the linebacker couldn't stop or chose not to as he pushed him out of bounds and tackled him hard against a bench. Both knees puffed up even before he tried to stand.
A freshly-minted physician from the University of Buffalo Medical School was summoned. Aaron
Wagner had recently married the injured player's older cousin. In the Depression years, physicians and dentists were expected to provide gratis service to extended family. Wagner had joined the practice of a semi-retired black physician, Dr. Johnson, in an office over a grocery store at Lutheran Alley and William Street in Buffalo's Little Harlem, which had diathermy equipment to treat number 13's damaged knees.
One could see the towering Rand Building on Buffalo's Lafayette Square from the window, but the only residents of Lutheran Alley employed there were shoeshine boys, janitors and dishwashers. Number 13 was a curiosity in a black neighborhood, hobbling his way from the bus stop, passing rundown flats and an old church whre kids fired snow balls at his head, On his third visit, one of those snow balls had a stone in it, cutting his hand as he protected his face. That's when he met Willie Brown and his little brother, Bennie, who were playing in the church yard and escorted him to the doctors' office. Their parents managed the grocery store downstairs, and their cousin, Nancy, assisted the doctors and scheduled patients.
A large single room divided into screened cubicles served as the office, and even whispered consultations could easily be overheard. Diathermy machines could be rolled into any vacant cubicle. Number 13 would sit quietly, playing gin rummy with Willie, or reading a magazine, knees wrapped in thick towels, heating pads connected to the diathermy machine. Dr. Johnson, always dressed in a sharply pressed dark suit with starched white collar, would look in to offer encouragment. Number 13 thought him the most dignified person he had ever met, his deep melodious voice exuding confidence. The doctors' mutual admiration for each other was evident. As months passed, the boy's affection for his "Uncle Arnie" deepened into a lifelong friendship.
Whether his knees healed on their own, or the diathermy actually helped, number 13 was never sure. When towels got too hot, Nancy turned off the machine and unwrapped his beet-red knees. Yet, he looked forward to three afternoon visits and an extended Saturday morning treatment that extended into the Spring of 1939.
Once he and Willie became friends, no kid on the block ever again threw rocks or bothered him in any way. Willie's parents took great pride in their sons, and it was clear to number 13 that Willie and Bennie loved each other and their mother and father just as dearly as he loved his own parents and three brothers.
Only much later did he fully comprehend the powerful lesson he had learned on Lutheran Alley: when he served in a racially segregated Army during World War II; later, in the 1960s, trying to persuade editors, hospital administrators and school officials to support desegregation. Only then did he appreciate the extraordinary friendship between Drs. Wagner and Johnson in an era of strict segregation and blatant bigotry; or the color-blind trust of Willie's parents, and cruel penalties for being born black that stifled and humiliated the human spirit, and put black soldiers under the command of white officers. The only time number 13 saw white and black soldiers together during World War II was in a hospital ward where injury and illness temporarilty leveled the playing field.
Decades have passed. There has been great progress in race relations. Yet, the color of one's skin still makes too much difference in America. And there is a tendency to gloss over ugly history. That's why it's deeply gratifying that a statue of Talbot County, Maryland's famous son, Frederick Bailey Douglass, born a slave who became a famed abolitionist and counselor to Abraham Lincoln, will at long last be erected on the Courthouse Green in June.
I still favor the number 13, and thank the kid who tackled me against the bench that rainy afternoon for one of the most unexpected and cherished learning experiences of my life.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Exciting challenge of the blank page
A blank page has always been an exciting challenge since I was a small boy writing stories at a corner table in my grandparents' restaurant.
My mother bought me hard cover, 6-by-9-inch binders with blank pages at the Five and Dime Store. I would painstakingly line each page using a ruler, think of a title and begin to write. About what I only vaguely remember.
Stories ended when I ran out of pages. I always printed on the inside back cover: This book hand-written by Carlton E. Spitzer. Otherwise, how would anyone have guessed?
I know I wrote about Joey Bladdems and Billy Mumps, characters my brother Bob and I dreamed up in the back bedroom we shared. We'd concoct wild adventures for our heroes, much like the never-ending Saturday afternoon serials at movie theatres: Bladdems and Mumps lurching from one catastrophe to another until dad came to the door insisting we cease the chatter and go to sleep.
I have no idea how we dreamed up those names. Later, when Bob moved to the front bedroom to bunk with big brother Rich, and younger brother Alan took his place, Alan and I dreamed up adventures for Carbarnhamaslog, an airplane mechanic in a movie serial about flying.
Memories are indelible. Twenty years ago, Alan gave me a Carbarnhamaslog T-Shirt. I still wear it at family picnics.
Some of the stories I composed at grandma's corner table featured visitors to the restaurant. Mr. Simon, the wrestler, showed my dad various holds and maneuvers employed within the squared circle. A devoted fan of Ed Don George, Jim Londos, and other wrestling greats of the day, dad thoroughly enjoyed details of Simon's exploits. Mostly defeats, one surmised.
I wrote about men who knocked gently at the side entrance, hats in hand, heads bowed, seeking a meal in the midst of the depression. Grandpa would grumble, pulling on his handlebar mustache as he opened the door and ushered the guest to a table. Grandma would already be in the kitchen filling a plate with the same delicious meal our family had enjoyed in the large back room. Only later in life did I fully appreciate lessons my grandparents' taught about compassion and sharing what one has with those in need, without question.
I hadn't known my mother saved those story-filled binders, written before I was twelve, until the day my dear dad, cleaning out files from an old dresser drawer in the basement in preparation for converting the ancient coal furnace to oil heat, casually tossed them out.
Bob used to kid me that I never wrote better than at grandma's table and likely lost a best-seller to the garbage collector. But my mother's beautiful whistling of Cole Porter tunes was silenced for days after those binders disappeared. One knew when my mother was displeased.
My dad, a friendly, fun-loving man, came to America in January, 1905 from Austria-Hungary with his parents, older sister, Jenny, and younger brother, Albert. He met my mother, Margaret Carney, an Irish Catholic girl from Lewiston, New York, at Niagara Falls. Their marriage in 1914 produced four sons. Mother died in May, 1974, four months before their 60th wedding anniversary. Brother Bob died much too young in June, 1977. Dad died in October, 1982, on the eve of a big party in his honor. Rich is going strong, having celebrated his 95th birthday on Cape Cod in March. Kid brother Alan is just eighty-three.
One writes from their own experiences, about people and events that shaped their thinking, influenced their choices, brought joy or sadness, engendered admiration or disdain.
My life has taken many interesting turns, very few of my own design. Good fortune has shined where darkness might have prevailed. I have written on disability issues for a half-century, inspired by men and women of enormous courage and resolve who refused to let severe disabilities become handicaps. Knowing them has been a great joy and privilege.
Circumstance brought me to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the midst of school and hospital desegregation, Medicare's start-up and the inaugural of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1960s. In the 1980s I had the opportunity to work with Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
My columns over many years reflect concern for racial harmony and disability rights, and adequate funding to help disabled persons receive rehabilitation, obtain decent housing, enter the workplace and assimilate into the mainstream of society. Reducing stigma is an ongoing effort.
The blank page is still an exciting challenge, a pleasant one when ideas bubble up or one meets a fascinating person whose life story should be told. One can't wait to put words on paper - or a computer screen. In truth, I love the blank page now as much as I did as a boy. A blank page begs one to tell a story, report an event, or write to a friend. I am compelled to fill it with my opinions, throughts and dreams. And unlike the binders I used at grandma's corner table in the 1930s, I don't have to line pages.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
My mother bought me hard cover, 6-by-9-inch binders with blank pages at the Five and Dime Store. I would painstakingly line each page using a ruler, think of a title and begin to write. About what I only vaguely remember.
Stories ended when I ran out of pages. I always printed on the inside back cover: This book hand-written by Carlton E. Spitzer. Otherwise, how would anyone have guessed?
I know I wrote about Joey Bladdems and Billy Mumps, characters my brother Bob and I dreamed up in the back bedroom we shared. We'd concoct wild adventures for our heroes, much like the never-ending Saturday afternoon serials at movie theatres: Bladdems and Mumps lurching from one catastrophe to another until dad came to the door insisting we cease the chatter and go to sleep.
I have no idea how we dreamed up those names. Later, when Bob moved to the front bedroom to bunk with big brother Rich, and younger brother Alan took his place, Alan and I dreamed up adventures for Carbarnhamaslog, an airplane mechanic in a movie serial about flying.
Memories are indelible. Twenty years ago, Alan gave me a Carbarnhamaslog T-Shirt. I still wear it at family picnics.
Some of the stories I composed at grandma's corner table featured visitors to the restaurant. Mr. Simon, the wrestler, showed my dad various holds and maneuvers employed within the squared circle. A devoted fan of Ed Don George, Jim Londos, and other wrestling greats of the day, dad thoroughly enjoyed details of Simon's exploits. Mostly defeats, one surmised.
I wrote about men who knocked gently at the side entrance, hats in hand, heads bowed, seeking a meal in the midst of the depression. Grandpa would grumble, pulling on his handlebar mustache as he opened the door and ushered the guest to a table. Grandma would already be in the kitchen filling a plate with the same delicious meal our family had enjoyed in the large back room. Only later in life did I fully appreciate lessons my grandparents' taught about compassion and sharing what one has with those in need, without question.
I hadn't known my mother saved those story-filled binders, written before I was twelve, until the day my dear dad, cleaning out files from an old dresser drawer in the basement in preparation for converting the ancient coal furnace to oil heat, casually tossed them out.
Bob used to kid me that I never wrote better than at grandma's table and likely lost a best-seller to the garbage collector. But my mother's beautiful whistling of Cole Porter tunes was silenced for days after those binders disappeared. One knew when my mother was displeased.
My dad, a friendly, fun-loving man, came to America in January, 1905 from Austria-Hungary with his parents, older sister, Jenny, and younger brother, Albert. He met my mother, Margaret Carney, an Irish Catholic girl from Lewiston, New York, at Niagara Falls. Their marriage in 1914 produced four sons. Mother died in May, 1974, four months before their 60th wedding anniversary. Brother Bob died much too young in June, 1977. Dad died in October, 1982, on the eve of a big party in his honor. Rich is going strong, having celebrated his 95th birthday on Cape Cod in March. Kid brother Alan is just eighty-three.
One writes from their own experiences, about people and events that shaped their thinking, influenced their choices, brought joy or sadness, engendered admiration or disdain.
My life has taken many interesting turns, very few of my own design. Good fortune has shined where darkness might have prevailed. I have written on disability issues for a half-century, inspired by men and women of enormous courage and resolve who refused to let severe disabilities become handicaps. Knowing them has been a great joy and privilege.
Circumstance brought me to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the midst of school and hospital desegregation, Medicare's start-up and the inaugural of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1960s. In the 1980s I had the opportunity to work with Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
My columns over many years reflect concern for racial harmony and disability rights, and adequate funding to help disabled persons receive rehabilitation, obtain decent housing, enter the workplace and assimilate into the mainstream of society. Reducing stigma is an ongoing effort.
The blank page is still an exciting challenge, a pleasant one when ideas bubble up or one meets a fascinating person whose life story should be told. One can't wait to put words on paper - or a computer screen. In truth, I love the blank page now as much as I did as a boy. A blank page begs one to tell a story, report an event, or write to a friend. I am compelled to fill it with my opinions, throughts and dreams. And unlike the binders I used at grandma's corner table in the 1930s, I don't have to line pages.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
Friday, April 22, 2011
A LEAP toward reforming drug abuse
The well-intentioned crusade to curb alcoholism and related domestic abuse 90 years ago spurred passage of Prohibition but created a huge underground industry whose ruthless bosses warred against each other and gunned down law enforcement officers and anyone else who happened to get in the way.
Drinking became even more the "in thing" to do because it was forbidden. Supply didn't diminish, it just went underground. Speakeasies flourished. Drinkers prided themselves on knowing the passwords to gain admission. Gangsters dominated commerce. And the nation reeled from Prohibition's unintended consequences. Its repeal in 1933 was greeted with relief througout the land, and the serving of very dry martinis in the White House, prepared with skill by the president himself.
"Prohibition's focus was on supply and it increased demand," says Roger Burt, a clinical psychologist in Talbot County, Maryland. Burt and his friend Francis X. Lawlor believe the lessons learned from prohibition of booze should have been applied a long while ago in addressing rampant use of illegal drugs. Most mental health clinics across the land report that 70 to 90 percent of admissions are drug related, identified as co-occurring illnesses, and admit it's difficult to know which triggered the other.
Burt and Lawlor strongly support LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (of unlawful drugs), formed in 2002 by five police officers. Today, LEAP's 30,000 advocates in 80 countries include FBI agents, judges, parole officers, prosecutors, juvenile justice officers and wardens. One of LEAP's leaders, Stanford "Neill" Franklin, a retired narcotics enforcement officer who directed the first domestic violence investigative unit for the Maryland State Police, will speak at the handsome Academy Art Musem hall in Easton, Maryland on May 11 at 7 p.m. Burt and Lawlor urge the public to attend the free presentation. "We need to raise public awareness and inform legislators," says Burt.
Although the word decriminalization isn't referenced in LEAP literature, the movement's major thrust is toward having the health industry regulate drug usage with the support of law enforcement and the courts. "We've got to stop incarcerating recreational users of marijuana," says Burt.
Franklin put the issue this way: "Prohibition is the true cause of much social and personal damage attributed to drug use. Prohibition makes marijuana worth more than gold, and heroin worth more than uranium, while giving criminals monopoly over their supply." Criminals take huge risks for huge profits, Franklin says.
The chaos and brutality loosed in Mexico, which has transformed parts of that nation into a war zone, has spread its violence into California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, affirming that the devastating consequences of an upside down approach to drug control has no physical boundaries.
LEAP has significant partners, including the Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and the International Drug Policy Consortium.
One of the reasons Burt and Lawlor support LEAP is their deep concern for the disporportionate number of black and Hispanic drug use offenders now incarcerated for longer sentences than Caucasians jailed for the same offenses. "Our prison population has quintupled in the past 30 years while European prison populations are down 60 percent," Lawlor points out. "Over 80 percent of U.S. inmates are black or Latino, which raises serious questions of fairness and justice, given that the incidence of drug usage among ethnic groups is basically the same."
Franklin agrees: "We incarcerate more of our citizens than any other developed nation in the world," he says. "More than 2.3 million people at last count, and a staggering percentage were put there for drug usage, not drug distribution." He agrees the system reflects racial prejudice and divides our country even more sharply between those who have much and sometimes seem to function above the law, and those who have little and struggle for survival.
By forbidding the use of drugs, LEAP's advocates contend that demand has been increased, prices have skyrocketed, and criminal trafficking has spawned violence thoughout society.
"We no longer have money for social needs, and mental health clinics are closing across the nation, adding to our homeless population," Burt laments, "but we have money to build new prisons to hold nonviolent drug users, many of them students and parents separated from their families. It makes no sense. We need a whole new approach to get the situation under control, and LEAP offers a pathway."
It's a complicated, multi-faceted problem of long standing. Burt and Lawlor believe Franklin will make it less complicated and more clearly focused on reform in his remarks May 11.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
Drinking became even more the "in thing" to do because it was forbidden. Supply didn't diminish, it just went underground. Speakeasies flourished. Drinkers prided themselves on knowing the passwords to gain admission. Gangsters dominated commerce. And the nation reeled from Prohibition's unintended consequences. Its repeal in 1933 was greeted with relief througout the land, and the serving of very dry martinis in the White House, prepared with skill by the president himself.
"Prohibition's focus was on supply and it increased demand," says Roger Burt, a clinical psychologist in Talbot County, Maryland. Burt and his friend Francis X. Lawlor believe the lessons learned from prohibition of booze should have been applied a long while ago in addressing rampant use of illegal drugs. Most mental health clinics across the land report that 70 to 90 percent of admissions are drug related, identified as co-occurring illnesses, and admit it's difficult to know which triggered the other.
Burt and Lawlor strongly support LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (of unlawful drugs), formed in 2002 by five police officers. Today, LEAP's 30,000 advocates in 80 countries include FBI agents, judges, parole officers, prosecutors, juvenile justice officers and wardens. One of LEAP's leaders, Stanford "Neill" Franklin, a retired narcotics enforcement officer who directed the first domestic violence investigative unit for the Maryland State Police, will speak at the handsome Academy Art Musem hall in Easton, Maryland on May 11 at 7 p.m. Burt and Lawlor urge the public to attend the free presentation. "We need to raise public awareness and inform legislators," says Burt.
Although the word decriminalization isn't referenced in LEAP literature, the movement's major thrust is toward having the health industry regulate drug usage with the support of law enforcement and the courts. "We've got to stop incarcerating recreational users of marijuana," says Burt.
Franklin put the issue this way: "Prohibition is the true cause of much social and personal damage attributed to drug use. Prohibition makes marijuana worth more than gold, and heroin worth more than uranium, while giving criminals monopoly over their supply." Criminals take huge risks for huge profits, Franklin says.
The chaos and brutality loosed in Mexico, which has transformed parts of that nation into a war zone, has spread its violence into California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, affirming that the devastating consequences of an upside down approach to drug control has no physical boundaries.
LEAP has significant partners, including the Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and the International Drug Policy Consortium.
One of the reasons Burt and Lawlor support LEAP is their deep concern for the disporportionate number of black and Hispanic drug use offenders now incarcerated for longer sentences than Caucasians jailed for the same offenses. "Our prison population has quintupled in the past 30 years while European prison populations are down 60 percent," Lawlor points out. "Over 80 percent of U.S. inmates are black or Latino, which raises serious questions of fairness and justice, given that the incidence of drug usage among ethnic groups is basically the same."
Franklin agrees: "We incarcerate more of our citizens than any other developed nation in the world," he says. "More than 2.3 million people at last count, and a staggering percentage were put there for drug usage, not drug distribution." He agrees the system reflects racial prejudice and divides our country even more sharply between those who have much and sometimes seem to function above the law, and those who have little and struggle for survival.
By forbidding the use of drugs, LEAP's advocates contend that demand has been increased, prices have skyrocketed, and criminal trafficking has spawned violence thoughout society.
"We no longer have money for social needs, and mental health clinics are closing across the nation, adding to our homeless population," Burt laments, "but we have money to build new prisons to hold nonviolent drug users, many of them students and parents separated from their families. It makes no sense. We need a whole new approach to get the situation under control, and LEAP offers a pathway."
It's a complicated, multi-faceted problem of long standing. Burt and Lawlor believe Franklin will make it less complicated and more clearly focused on reform in his remarks May 11.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
Monday, April 18, 2011
Mysteries of the personal computers we're born with
My personal computer works overtime, especially at night, bringing to life past incidents in full color and sound, even with distinct odors, such as soft coal's gaseous emissions in the center of a cold army barrack, or my friend Elton Steven's wheezing asthma attacks in first grade, and my sadness when he moved away.
I'm convinced everyone's personal computer, the one we're born with, records every conversation, wish, regret, disappointment, joy, passion, fear, embarrassment, chagrin, achievement and moment of sublime faith we've ever experienced. It's all there, but we don't know how to access the file.
Dreams seem to free old events with clarity and no inhibition. At least they do for me. I relive episodes of my life in striking detail, hear my father's voice, my mother whistling Cole Porter tunes, my brother Bob's laugh at family gatherings before he died too young, and feel anew the exhilaration of my first solo flight at age 17.
Oh, embarrassments surface as well, awakening me uncomfortably to confront things I wish I hadn't said or done; people I should have thanked, others I might have encouraged.
Day dreams are different, and have always been part of my life. Teachers reminded me of that quite often. Putting oneself in a diferent place mentally can relieve the burden of illness or loneliness. Recalling friends and colleagues who've helped one along the way can help one smile through a tough day.
But one has to consciously reach for those memories. On the other hand, our personal computer pops them up indiscriminately, good and bad, joyful and shameful, with no effort on our part, sometimes during the day, but more often after we've put our head on a pillow.
When my Dell computer argues with me I have only to call computer expert Rita Hill to set things right. I don't understand my Dell either. But I can operate it with reasonable efficiency. But I can't control the one that's always worked overtime in my cranium and shows no sign of slowing down in my 86th year. Perhaps that's just as well. If it were organized like a library, with neat categories from which I could pick and choose, and thus avoid negative events, it would be less fun and surely less informative.
Still, this always fascinating adventure with the past does not conform to good advice my father gave me: don't play, "what if?" He never wanted to discuss what he'd done the previous week, but was eager to tell me what he'd planned for the week ahead.
"Always have something important to do tomorrow morning," he would say, "and don't worry about yesterday; you can't change it."
Well, dad, I'm still trying, really. But my personal computer has a mind of its own.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
I'm convinced everyone's personal computer, the one we're born with, records every conversation, wish, regret, disappointment, joy, passion, fear, embarrassment, chagrin, achievement and moment of sublime faith we've ever experienced. It's all there, but we don't know how to access the file.
Dreams seem to free old events with clarity and no inhibition. At least they do for me. I relive episodes of my life in striking detail, hear my father's voice, my mother whistling Cole Porter tunes, my brother Bob's laugh at family gatherings before he died too young, and feel anew the exhilaration of my first solo flight at age 17.
Oh, embarrassments surface as well, awakening me uncomfortably to confront things I wish I hadn't said or done; people I should have thanked, others I might have encouraged.
Day dreams are different, and have always been part of my life. Teachers reminded me of that quite often. Putting oneself in a diferent place mentally can relieve the burden of illness or loneliness. Recalling friends and colleagues who've helped one along the way can help one smile through a tough day.
But one has to consciously reach for those memories. On the other hand, our personal computer pops them up indiscriminately, good and bad, joyful and shameful, with no effort on our part, sometimes during the day, but more often after we've put our head on a pillow.
When my Dell computer argues with me I have only to call computer expert Rita Hill to set things right. I don't understand my Dell either. But I can operate it with reasonable efficiency. But I can't control the one that's always worked overtime in my cranium and shows no sign of slowing down in my 86th year. Perhaps that's just as well. If it were organized like a library, with neat categories from which I could pick and choose, and thus avoid negative events, it would be less fun and surely less informative.
Still, this always fascinating adventure with the past does not conform to good advice my father gave me: don't play, "what if?" He never wanted to discuss what he'd done the previous week, but was eager to tell me what he'd planned for the week ahead.
"Always have something important to do tomorrow morning," he would say, "and don't worry about yesterday; you can't change it."
Well, dad, I'm still trying, really. But my personal computer has a mind of its own.
***
Carlton E. Spitzer
Friday, April 15, 2011
Eva McNally of Prospect Street
Eva McNally loved a good joke, an Irish story well told, and a hot game of canasta with ice cream on the side from Mrs. Mecca's corner grocery, just a few steps from her lower flat on Prospect Street.
Mrs. Mecca was her landlord and upstairs neighbor and perhaps her dearest friend, other than extended family, some who'd lived with Eva for months or years before they married. Men in Eva's family died young, and Eva, who never married, beame a wise and loving "aunt" to many souls. A twitch in her left cheek added character to the twinkle in her eye as she aged. The heavy beaver coat she'd inherited kept her 90 pounds of mischief and determination on the ground when howling winds from Lake Erie covered her front steps in deep snow.
Goulashes buckled, scarf wound tightly around fur hat, Eva never missed a day as seamstress at Sister's Hospital, though she depended on public transportation to get her cross town through horrendous Buffalo winters. Eva forgave herself the white lie she told the good Sisters that enabled her to work many years beyond retirement age. They pretended not to know their faithful worker and dear friend with the jolly demeanor was a decade older than shown on hospital records.
Snow or sleet, she trudged to Sunday mass at Holy Angels Church two city blocks distant and never missed a Holy Day. Everyone loved the tiny Irish lady who lived joyfully in the midst of an Italian neighborhood. Mrs. Mecca looked in on her every day.
The old flats on Prospect Street had been built before the turn of the 20th century when Buffalo, Queen City of the Great Lakes, became more industrialized and workers migrated from the South, joining Canadians from the far side of the mighty Niagara River that flowed from Lake Erie to the "thundering falls" 20 miles north.
Buffalo natives like to joke they have two seasons: winter and two weeks in July. Actually, summers on Lake Ere and the Niagara River are delightful. Visitors gathered on Eva's front veranda to down a cool lager or shot of good Irish whiskey. People met there to play cards, laugh and have fun. Occasional yelling of kids on the gravel playground at the orphanage across the street reminded adults of life's inequities and perhaps, for a moment, made them a bit more grateful for their own families, especially if they had a job during the Great Depression.
Each summer, Eva eagerly awaited a visit from her beloved nephew, John Patrick Smith,, her sister Helen's only child whom she'd help raise when his father died young. John graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo, and after a year in the Army in New York City as World War I came to a close, graduated from Fordham Law School. His marriage to Honora McNamara of Selby, England, whom he'd met in New York, produced three sons and a daughter, Joan. Honora died when baby James was only a year old and Helen moved in to their apartment at North Tarrytown to take care of the children.
The Smiths' annual visit to Eva's continued religiously through World War II, which was a good thing for me. I was on hospital leave from the Army in 1945 when Joan visited relatives who'd moved next door to my parents in Kenmore. When we started to date a year later, Eva gave me a good Irish interrogation, complaining with a smirk and a twitch about our smoching on her veranda, but warmly blessed our marriage at Holy Angels Church in July, 1948. Joan lived with Eva for two months prior to our wedding.
For all the years that followed, Eva was our guest at Christmas, teaching our children card games and grousing when they won, telling Irish stories and keeping the little ones quiet when we entertained. One New Year's Day she came to the breakfast table sporting a huge black eye. One of the kids had thrown a toy as she walked into their bedroom to shush them on New Year's Eve and got hit in the face. She said not a word to anyone.
In those days I could walk out to the plane to meet her at Washington's National Airport as she came down narrow stairs in that trusty beaver coat, seemingly tiny and frail, but tough as iron inside with a sunny spirit that could not be dimmed. She would stay for a week or more and the kids would beg her not to go. She became part of our family. She'd had a head cold in December, 1970 and Joan's dad persuaded her to stay home and share the holiday with Mrs. Mecca's family. Perhaps she could visit Washington on my birthday in February.
Mrs. Mecca smelled something burning as she walked up the back stairs by Eva's kitchen to her own flat and stopped to chat. Eva's head rested on her forearm on the kitchen table, her tea untouched. Mrs. Mecca turned off the gas burner and put the burned pot in the sink. She knew before she touched Eva's cold hand that she was gone. A gentle sweet passing, like an Irish prayer.
Carlton E. Spitzer
Mrs. Mecca was her landlord and upstairs neighbor and perhaps her dearest friend, other than extended family, some who'd lived with Eva for months or years before they married. Men in Eva's family died young, and Eva, who never married, beame a wise and loving "aunt" to many souls. A twitch in her left cheek added character to the twinkle in her eye as she aged. The heavy beaver coat she'd inherited kept her 90 pounds of mischief and determination on the ground when howling winds from Lake Erie covered her front steps in deep snow.
Goulashes buckled, scarf wound tightly around fur hat, Eva never missed a day as seamstress at Sister's Hospital, though she depended on public transportation to get her cross town through horrendous Buffalo winters. Eva forgave herself the white lie she told the good Sisters that enabled her to work many years beyond retirement age. They pretended not to know their faithful worker and dear friend with the jolly demeanor was a decade older than shown on hospital records.
Snow or sleet, she trudged to Sunday mass at Holy Angels Church two city blocks distant and never missed a Holy Day. Everyone loved the tiny Irish lady who lived joyfully in the midst of an Italian neighborhood. Mrs. Mecca looked in on her every day.
The old flats on Prospect Street had been built before the turn of the 20th century when Buffalo, Queen City of the Great Lakes, became more industrialized and workers migrated from the South, joining Canadians from the far side of the mighty Niagara River that flowed from Lake Erie to the "thundering falls" 20 miles north.
Buffalo natives like to joke they have two seasons: winter and two weeks in July. Actually, summers on Lake Ere and the Niagara River are delightful. Visitors gathered on Eva's front veranda to down a cool lager or shot of good Irish whiskey. People met there to play cards, laugh and have fun. Occasional yelling of kids on the gravel playground at the orphanage across the street reminded adults of life's inequities and perhaps, for a moment, made them a bit more grateful for their own families, especially if they had a job during the Great Depression.
Each summer, Eva eagerly awaited a visit from her beloved nephew, John Patrick Smith,, her sister Helen's only child whom she'd help raise when his father died young. John graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo, and after a year in the Army in New York City as World War I came to a close, graduated from Fordham Law School. His marriage to Honora McNamara of Selby, England, whom he'd met in New York, produced three sons and a daughter, Joan. Honora died when baby James was only a year old and Helen moved in to their apartment at North Tarrytown to take care of the children.
The Smiths' annual visit to Eva's continued religiously through World War II, which was a good thing for me. I was on hospital leave from the Army in 1945 when Joan visited relatives who'd moved next door to my parents in Kenmore. When we started to date a year later, Eva gave me a good Irish interrogation, complaining with a smirk and a twitch about our smoching on her veranda, but warmly blessed our marriage at Holy Angels Church in July, 1948. Joan lived with Eva for two months prior to our wedding.
For all the years that followed, Eva was our guest at Christmas, teaching our children card games and grousing when they won, telling Irish stories and keeping the little ones quiet when we entertained. One New Year's Day she came to the breakfast table sporting a huge black eye. One of the kids had thrown a toy as she walked into their bedroom to shush them on New Year's Eve and got hit in the face. She said not a word to anyone.
In those days I could walk out to the plane to meet her at Washington's National Airport as she came down narrow stairs in that trusty beaver coat, seemingly tiny and frail, but tough as iron inside with a sunny spirit that could not be dimmed. She would stay for a week or more and the kids would beg her not to go. She became part of our family. She'd had a head cold in December, 1970 and Joan's dad persuaded her to stay home and share the holiday with Mrs. Mecca's family. Perhaps she could visit Washington on my birthday in February.
Mrs. Mecca smelled something burning as she walked up the back stairs by Eva's kitchen to her own flat and stopped to chat. Eva's head rested on her forearm on the kitchen table, her tea untouched. Mrs. Mecca turned off the gas burner and put the burned pot in the sink. She knew before she touched Eva's cold hand that she was gone. A gentle sweet passing, like an Irish prayer.
Carlton E. Spitzer
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Aunt Minnie and the moving peas
We looked forward to visits from my mother's beloved older sister, Minnie Carney, during the Great Depression. My younger brother Alan and I would walk several blocks to the end of the Number 9 Streetcar line on Kenmore Avenue to meet her, chatting excitedly as we escorted her to our small home on Lincoln Boulevard. Having Minnie visit made that day very special.
She was a spinster of sweet disposition and infinite patience who smilingly put up with out antics and practical jokes. There was always a lot of laughter when Minnie was around. Even our very adult older brother, Rich, 9 years my senior, couldn't hide a grin behind his newspaper.
My dear mother, Margaret, slim and beautiful with an Irish wit, mimicked friends and neighbors, sometimes in ways they might not have appreciated, but always with a laugh, and never maliciously. She whistled like a songbird, although her hearing was fading fast, even then. Minnie could hear just fine, but had poor eyesight and wore thick glasses.
I confess we took advantage of her vision at Christmas dinner in 1937. Mother had roasted and stuffed two chickens, which pleased her sons who could enjoy more drumsticks. Alan sat across the table next to brother Bob, 3 years my senior, and I nestled next to Minnie's left elbow. Rich sat on her right and mother and dad at each end of the table, which was filled with creamed onions, extra bowls of mother's delicious bread stuffing, gravy, yams and peas. Ah, the peas.
Alan held a small hollow rubber ball in his lap, attached to a thin tube we'd placed beneath the festive table cloth to a pad under Minnie's dinner plate.
Dad carved the chickens and plates were filled amidst much chatter and laughing. We pretended not to notice as Minnie's plate tipped and peas rolled to the edge. She removed her glasses and wiped them with her napkin.
She picked up her fork and stared at her plate. It lifted to the right and peas rolled off on the table cloth. Alan hid behid his napkin to stifle a laugh. I did my best to keep a straight face. Embarrassed, poor Minnie retrieved the wandering peas and resumed eating.
My dad realized what was going on and smiled sheepishly. Mother was oblivious to the fun. Alan squeezed the bulb again, hard, and Minnie's plate titled dangerously to the left.
"My peas are moving," she whispered in amazement.
I burst out laughing, and Alan raised the bulb so all could see, and squeezed again. Mother was upset we'd played a trick on her sister, but just for a moment as Minnie laughed and shared in the fun.
Alan and I remember 1937 as the Christmas of the moving peas.
Abdominal cancer kept Minnie from her job at the Erie County Court House the following winter and spring. She recovered from surgery at our home, a woman in her early 40s already frail and frightfully gray.
Life changed. We never imagined Minnie wouldn't get well. And when she died part of us died too. She was the one who watched over us when our parents went out for an occasional movie or took a rare weekend holiday. She was part of our family and the first person so close to our hearts to die.
My mother had taken me to see her in the hospital, tubes running from her abdomen under a dim light in the center of an open ward, the sight and smell indelible even now. She could hardly speak, and neither could I. My mother held her tears, and I was expected to do the same.
Rich was a pall bearer at Minnie's funeral mass at Blessed Sacrament Church in Buffalo, and when he came down the center aisle carrying her coffin with the other men, he sequeezed my shoulder as I sat at the end of a pew. I began to sob. Minnie was really dead, gone from us.
Christmas of the moving peas was the last we celebrated with Minnie. Perhaps that's why the memory is so precious. In life, she taught us to have fun. In death, she taught us to be grateful for life.
Carlton E. Spitzer
She was a spinster of sweet disposition and infinite patience who smilingly put up with out antics and practical jokes. There was always a lot of laughter when Minnie was around. Even our very adult older brother, Rich, 9 years my senior, couldn't hide a grin behind his newspaper.
My dear mother, Margaret, slim and beautiful with an Irish wit, mimicked friends and neighbors, sometimes in ways they might not have appreciated, but always with a laugh, and never maliciously. She whistled like a songbird, although her hearing was fading fast, even then. Minnie could hear just fine, but had poor eyesight and wore thick glasses.
I confess we took advantage of her vision at Christmas dinner in 1937. Mother had roasted and stuffed two chickens, which pleased her sons who could enjoy more drumsticks. Alan sat across the table next to brother Bob, 3 years my senior, and I nestled next to Minnie's left elbow. Rich sat on her right and mother and dad at each end of the table, which was filled with creamed onions, extra bowls of mother's delicious bread stuffing, gravy, yams and peas. Ah, the peas.
Alan held a small hollow rubber ball in his lap, attached to a thin tube we'd placed beneath the festive table cloth to a pad under Minnie's dinner plate.
Dad carved the chickens and plates were filled amidst much chatter and laughing. We pretended not to notice as Minnie's plate tipped and peas rolled to the edge. She removed her glasses and wiped them with her napkin.
She picked up her fork and stared at her plate. It lifted to the right and peas rolled off on the table cloth. Alan hid behid his napkin to stifle a laugh. I did my best to keep a straight face. Embarrassed, poor Minnie retrieved the wandering peas and resumed eating.
My dad realized what was going on and smiled sheepishly. Mother was oblivious to the fun. Alan squeezed the bulb again, hard, and Minnie's plate titled dangerously to the left.
"My peas are moving," she whispered in amazement.
I burst out laughing, and Alan raised the bulb so all could see, and squeezed again. Mother was upset we'd played a trick on her sister, but just for a moment as Minnie laughed and shared in the fun.
Alan and I remember 1937 as the Christmas of the moving peas.
Abdominal cancer kept Minnie from her job at the Erie County Court House the following winter and spring. She recovered from surgery at our home, a woman in her early 40s already frail and frightfully gray.
Life changed. We never imagined Minnie wouldn't get well. And when she died part of us died too. She was the one who watched over us when our parents went out for an occasional movie or took a rare weekend holiday. She was part of our family and the first person so close to our hearts to die.
My mother had taken me to see her in the hospital, tubes running from her abdomen under a dim light in the center of an open ward, the sight and smell indelible even now. She could hardly speak, and neither could I. My mother held her tears, and I was expected to do the same.
Rich was a pall bearer at Minnie's funeral mass at Blessed Sacrament Church in Buffalo, and when he came down the center aisle carrying her coffin with the other men, he sequeezed my shoulder as I sat at the end of a pew. I began to sob. Minnie was really dead, gone from us.
Christmas of the moving peas was the last we celebrated with Minnie. Perhaps that's why the memory is so precious. In life, she taught us to have fun. In death, she taught us to be grateful for life.
Carlton E. Spitzer
Friday, April 8, 2011
Freddie Bailey is coming back to town
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave on Maryland’s Mid-Shore near Tuckahoe Creek in 1818, and taken to the Wye House Plantation as a small boy. He learned to read and write as a house slave at Fells Point in Baltimore, but was returned to Talbot County to suffer under the whip of slave-breaker Edward Covey, and spent four days in Easton’s jail for trying to escape by boat from the Miles River.
He’ll return to Talbot County in 2011 to talk about his youth, the people who loved him and shaped his character, and others whose cruelty and hypocrisy planted an unquenchable thirst for freedom deep in his soul.
In 2011, many others will talk about the man Freddie became, the renowned abolitionist, impassioned speaker and writer, Frederick Douglass. Freddie Bailey will speak only about the traumatic and indelibly formative first 20 years of his life: of mean-spirited Aunt Kate who boxed his ears and deprived him of food; of overseers rewarded by plantation-owners for keeping slaves subdued and subservient under the whip; of his loving mother who twice walked 12 miles from Tuckahoe to Wye to visit him after working a full day in the fields, and of the amazing day he was made servant and companion to the plantation owner’s young son.
He will recall mournful songs of slaves working in the fields, the old and weary praying for death to set them free. His voice will rise in anger when he tells today’s children that a slave owner in the 19th century counted among his possessions black human beings, along with his horses, cows, pigs and sheep.
The memory of his beautiful aunt Hester, brutally beaten by an enraged master, will be part of his story. And the day he fought slave-breaker Edward Covey for two hours until both were exhausted was a turning point in his life that he will recite in detail.
Throughout the four days he was held in Easton’s jail, he was told he would be sold to southern slave traders, a death sentence. He had seen slaves chained together in Baltimore and marched to ships that would take them to the deep South, never to be heard from again. He knew Solomon Lowe’s tavern in Talbot County was the site of an annual slave auction. And he will acknowledge the profound relief he felt when he was spared that fate and sent back to Baltimore.
That no stigma was attached to slave trading troubled him deeply. That greed overwhelmed human decency among supposedly God-fearing, Bible-reading men and women disgusted him, for slavery was indeed a lucrative business. Collusion of clergy, publishers, slave sellers and slave buyers reinforced the piously held belief that a fair and compassionate God had made white men masters and black men slaves. Even as a boy, Freddie knew it was an atrocious lie and that one day he would be free to speak the truth. As we know, he added the name, Douglass, to aid in his escape by train to the north, age 20, disguised as a sailor.
“Born To Be Free” is a 20-minute monologue I have written for performance in 2011 in conjunction with events commemorating the remarkable life of Frederick Douglass. It is a history lesson on slavery in the early 19th century. Washington-based actor Jabari Exum will premiere the play as part of a weekend commemoration of Frederick Douglass culminating in the unveiling of his statue on the Talbot County Courthouse Green June 18.
***
Loss of transparency threatens our democracy
It takes huge amounts of cash to run a political campaign, and corporate America has become the principal banker for anti-regulation candidates’ who shun public financing. Moreover, business does not have to disclose the sources of those funds. The Supreme Court has so ruled, thus dealing a major blow to transparency, so vital to conducting the public’s business.
Loss of transparency threatens the loss of democracy itself.
Transparency’s decline began at the end of World War II, with formation of the military-industrial complex, the beginning of the Cold War and liberal use of the confidential stamp.
Business fought against regulation. Government insisted regulation was essential because business failed to act on its own. But the tremulous 1960s promoted exchange programs that encouraged business executives to serve a year or two in government, and government officials to serve in business. The idea, said John Macy, then chairman of the Civil Service Commission, was to strengthen relationships between the public and private sectors. Companies loaned executives to the National Urban Coalition, the National Alliance of Business, and other groups in response to riots in urban centers, campus sit-ins and product boycotts railing against the war in Vietnam and championing civil rights at home.
Business and government worked together, in the open, sharing credit for helping to calm the nation. Legislation accelerated civil rights. Government desegregated schools and hospitals. Business adopted social marketing programs, hired minorities, purchased goods and services from minority-owned firms. Chief executive officers who had shunned Washington opened offices there, and testified before congressional committees, having learned to identify their own interests within the context of the nation’s welfare.
Many believed that the trauma of the 1960s had let the sunshine in and united business and government in a new and enduring partnership. That proved to be wishful thinking. When smoke cleared from city streets and students returned to classrooms, business backed away from the term, “social responsibility.” And pulled down the blinds. Yes, executives agreed, where business locates manufacturing plants and sales offices determines where new homes, schools and roads will be built. Companies will be good citizens. But, they complained, government is too zealous in its efforts to curb pollution, too intrusive in the private marketplace. They argued that the crisis had passed and business needed to get back to bottom line concerns. And, oh yes, to keep its plans to itself.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan did his best to dismantle Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, suggesting that private enterprise might pick up the slack. Business rejected the notion that any amount of private sector support could replace government funded initiatives. And took a quite different approach, beefing up its trade associations, hiring more lobbyists, and filling political campaign coffers. Executives found it was much easier to buy loyalty on Capitol Hill than to plead for regulatory relief. And they could do all it in the dark, too.
Government was complicit in the loss of transparency, restricting The Freedom of Information Act and making it more difficult for press and public to gain access to government records. The White House placed strict controls on communication, often muzzling executive departments and regulatory agencies, even White House conferences which are supposed to provide new ideas free of political pressure. The confidential stamp was used cavalierly to shield embarrassments and secret meetings, such as one attended by industry executives at the White House that set the nation’s energy policy.
Transparency is democracy’s requisite attribute. And its demise is inextricably linked to a dramatic change in business-government relations. Transparency might have saved us from near financial collapse. Even prevented war. Today it could reveal the true costs of military misadventures that savage domestic budgets. And restore common sense and common purpose on Capitol Hill.
Business is now senior partner in forming government policies
In the tremulous 1960s, even futurist John Naisbitt of Megatrends fame could not have envisioned industry’s overwhelming influence on government policies in the second decade of the 21st century, or the private sector’s general abandonment of the little guy to vagaries of the marketplace.
What old timers view as radical change, baby boomers accept as the new normal. They cannot imagine a time business simply pleaded for less regulation rather than filling campaign coffers to get its way.
In the 1960s, government initiated exchange programs that encouraged industry executives to serve in government for a year or two, and for government officials to serve in business. The goal, said John Macy, then director of the Civil Service Commission, was to develop mutual appreciation and strengthen business-government relations.
John W. Gardner, author of Excellence and other inspiration books, and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Johnson administration, created the White House Fellows program to encourage the best and brightest young people in every field to acquire high-level government experience.
Dan H. Fenn, Jr. and I organized 35 informal, off-the-record business-government dinner discussions between 1964 and 1970, hosted by CEOs of major companies, to reduce tensions and improve communication. Hosts and their business guests did not learn the names of government guests until the night of the dinner.
That industry has played an inextricable role in social issues by its very existence was fully acknowledged, and that business leaders should have a stronger voice in writing rules and regulations governing the private sector was fully accepted.
CEOs loaned executives to the National Alliance of Business, the National Urban Coalition, and the National Minority Supplier Development Council. Several developed extensive corporate social responsibility programs that greatly increased employment of minorities and the purchases of goods and services from minority-owned firms.
Several CEOs who’d shunned Washington opened offices in the nation’s capital, and abandoning strident narrow interest appeals, presented their legitimate concerns within a broad framework of national and international interests. Many of us believed the trauma of the 1960s had united business and government in a new and enduring partnership. That proved to be wishful thinking. When smoke cleared from city streets and students returned to classrooms, business leaders backed away from social responsibility.
They acknowledged that where they located manufacturing plants also determined where new homes, roads and schools would be built, but their zeal for social marketing quickly waned.
With Ronald Reagan’s overt blessing in the 1980s, industry decided it should be the senior partner in any alliance with government. The strategy, unannounced but critical, was to curb government regulations by filling political campaign coffers, beefing up trade associations, and hiring more lobbyists. Incumbent office holders felt the pressure. And that pressure intensified as business increased its contributions. Aspiring political candidates were either beholden or ignored from the start.
It takes huge amounts of cash to run a political campaign. And industry became principal banker for favored candidates’ who supported deregulating the marketplace. Political Action Committees flourished. And the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could hide sources of campaign funding. Public financing is anathema to industry. And the transparency so vital to conducting the public’s business in a democracy has almost vanished.
Defense contractors have had a double advantage. Military build-up over several decades has given them enormous power, and defense plants are located in almost every congressional district. Voting against a military gismo, whether needed or not, is a vote against jobs. Much too late, Dwight Eisenhower’s warning that an ever-growing military-industrial complex would control both the nation’s economy and its policies became painfully clear.
Today, elected officials vote for military products the secretary of defense insists are unneeded, unwanted and a waste of taxpayers’ money in the midst of a rough economic downturn. But jobs trump national interest and debt reduction. Military incursions, invasions, no-fly zones and arms shipments have militarized international relations and consumed many billions of dollars borrowed from China, while mental health and social service budgets are slashed and our nation’s infrastructure deteriorates. No one has a handle on military spending. Not even the auditors. The United States is the world’s number one arms merchant, and the military-industrial complex has set national priorities. Upside down.
Industry could not have managed its takeover of public policy without government’s complicity. First, by allowing business to dominate Congress. Second, by lack of transparency that obscured a changing balance of power between the public and private sectors. Third, by failing to learn from Vietnam, El Salvador, Iran-Contra and other misadventures, and promoting needless and seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fourth, by failing to regulate unbridled greed on Wall Street, and letting average citizens shoulder horrendous burdens the fat cats created.
Government failed to keep citizens informed; to partner with, but never be dominated by industry, and to use the confidential stamp judiciously rather than to cover secret deals and embarrassments. For example, no report has ever been published of a closed meeting of industry executives at the White House that determined the nation’s energy policy.
That’s why the 1966 Freedom of Information Act needs strengthening, not more restrictions, as currently proposed, that would hide information the people should have and make access still more difficult for press and public.
Transparency is democracy’s requisite attribute. Sunlight focuses leaders’ on the national interest and away from special interests, and discourages acts of war until all other options have been exhausted. Transparency might well have saved us from near financial collapse. Even war. And transparency – real transparency - would reveal the true costs of military misadventures that savage domestic budgets. Transparency could even restore an appropriate balance of power between the public and private sectors.
***
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