PRIMERS

Growing up in Brooklyn took a lot of time. Not only was there school, and church, but also Mom and Dad each had lessons to teach, like any good set of parents.

Mom’s lessons were more of a practical nature. For instance: take an ordinary dish of beef stew. I hated beef stew, and Mom enjoyed making it so I would suffer.

“Oooh! Beef stew? Again? I hate beef stew.”

“You eat your dinner, there are millions of starving children in China!”

“Then give it to them.”

“Don’t get so smart.”

TLW (The Little Woman) had to deal with the starving Armenians, who together with the Chinese were more than half of the world’s starving. Perhaps had we given them the stew, they would have stopped complaining after they tasted it!

Dad would get into the act too. (Same bowl of stew.)

Me: “I don’t want stew, I want ice cream.”

“Oh, but you like stew!”

“Nah, I want ice cream.”

“But you said that stew tastes like ice cream. Don’t you remember, around Christmas, when you promised to eat it?”

“I did?”

“Yup, so why don’t you eat your ice cream?”

Mom had other lessons for the young mind, or the mindlessly young.

“Make sure you wear clean underwear. If you get hit by a bus, no one can say I sent you out with dirty underwear.”

Mom was specific about it. She said bus, not car, or even horse and wagon. She figured that a bus had a lot of people to witness her not caring about our underwear. A car, one or two people, who cares, but a busload of tongues wagging, well furgedderboutit!

Mom made sure our shoes were polished. Every Sunday night we had to surrender our good shoes for school to mom, who would polish them then put them on the cast iron stove that heated our apartment. We may have been poor, but we were shiny poor! Mom’s rules always included good grooming. Our hair was combed, our clothes clean, and my head whacked at least once in the morning, to remind me to behave. Every month she would take out this square comb, with fine teeth, and slowly and deliberately run it through our hair. This was torture, but I guess it was one of the parental perks. There would be a rumor about lice in some girl’s head in school, and my big mouth older sister would report it to mom, and the torture began. Slowly, and deeply went the comb, like the police dredging for a body at the bottom of a lake.

Dad’s advice was timely. “Go ask your mother.” Never wanting to upset the system of discipline, Dad knew Mom controlled things: after all, she did all the cooking!

Dad wore the pants in the house, only because he was modest. Mom told which pair to wear. (Dad passed on that modesty to me.)

Parenthood in our home meant employing certain catch phrases. One was “I’m coming in there if it doesn’t stop!” Another when exasperation set in was: “Wait ‘til your father comes home!” Other more frequently used particularly by mom was: “What are we related to the electric company? What am I made of money? You are using a whole pound of butter on that toast!”

Mom sent us to parochial school, which in turn taught us prayers. This was Mom’s grand plan, to save my ‘ungod’ like soul! Dad tried to help it along. Being poor, he would take me aside and ‘re-teach’ a prayer to allow for our economic status.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be they name. (Mr. Hoffman, my Dad’s boss) Give us a steak, and our daily bread” (Suddenly you would hear a scream: ANTHONY! Anthony was Dad’s name. The screaming was Mom.)

Well, I’ve bored you enough for today, come back tomorrow and I’ll bore you some more.

Please remember MMB (My Man Bill, my brother-in-law, John, and all those that need our prayers.