Pops, Daddy, Father

My father was an enigma of sorts, a strange combination of dandy (clothes horse, flirted with the ladies, vain as hell making my Mom livid) and standard Tyrone Power-style dude (played soccer, liked to fish, built crap all the time, never backed down from a fight).

My father (Ernest) had a hat and tie store in downtown Providence, RI, so his closet was filled with belts, hats and shoes. He had the coolest shoes: alligator, snake skin, suede, you name it. I used to open his closet and just stare at the belts hanging from the stand in his closet next to the shoe trees, not forgetting the sharkskin suits of different shades with his hats resting up above in a shelf. It was the Sixties, when men didn’t dress in sweats or leisure suits just yet. He had a great sense of style. I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could wear cool clothes like him.

Since he had a heart condition his doctor advised him to forget about the East Coast and go out west. He got a job in the aerospace industry (courtesy of President Kennedy) designing rockets and satellites. He’d come home with huge blueprint rolls so he could finish his designs after dinner.
“What are they designs of?” I asked, staring at all the strange compass-created shapes.
“Um, well, Andy, you know it’s like company things”, he hemmed and hawed, “and-well, it’s Top Secret”.
There was a Cold War going on, James Bond movies were the rage, we were sweating over UFOs, LSD and Cuba so it was all very exciting.

He moonlighted at nights selling real estate, so he occasionally had to go to empty houses at night to show the properties to prospective customers. Nothing was more frightening to me than the idea of my father in a dark, empty house waiting for strangers to come by, so I would keep him company. He always liked it when I went with him. Some of the houses didn’t even have the power turned on. It was creepy!

The greatest lesson my father taught me was the lesson of survival. After the Nazis had killed most of his family in Auschwitz and Dachau he built his life up again, and later back home in Hungary the Communists came and took everything away from him again. At that point he decided Europe can go fuck itself and left for America by boat, my little 6-month-old tit-suck tot frame swaddled in a blanket like Moses floating down the Nile. The example he set for me through his stubborn diligence to survival saved me through many setbacks later in life.

After my mother passed away there were times when I would walk by the living room where he slept. He slept on an old sofa bed with a wafer-thin mattress.
“Andy”, he said quietly, “my back hurts. Stand on my back”.
As he lay on his stomach I would stand on the small of his back. “Move up, higher”.
“Move to the right”.
Finally we heard a loud crack and he’d go, “Good, I feel better. Now I can sleep”.
“Now I can sleep”. He had nights where he would be haunted by memories of the concentration camps that imprisoned him, murdered his parents, his brothers (except one), and countless cousins. I could hear him cry in his sleep, it was terrible. Imagine trying not to kill spoiled brat suburban punk rockers with their swastikas a few years later. Self-control’s a bitch.

My father was actually a very happy guy in spite of the shit in his past, but I can’t get the darkness of his life out of my mind. To this day I still get nightmares where I’m in a dark, empty house with the windows open. That’s Him speaking to me, and dreams like that never go away.

Moms, Mommy, Mother

My mother’s birthday was two weeks ago, I was going to write something about her but I ran dry and wrote something else instead. I don’t even remember what it was, maybe some essay on chimps and why little boys like to laugh at them. Something like that. Well, Mother’s Day is here so I’m going to give it another go.

My mother (Elizabeth) was a very striking brunette, tall, thin and very pretty, kind of a Sophia Loren look; my father (Ernest) was good looking, too, he reminded me of Desi Arnaz. Watching TV was fun because my parents looked like the characters on TV shows, only better looking.
My mother had very arched eyebrows and always looked at me with a look of amusement, as if her face said, “Okay, what’s this kid going to do now?” A lot of parents like to brag about how bright their kids are - my mother would just sit there and trip out on how nutty her new born son was. I made her smile and laugh a lot.

She had a great laugh and a great smile. I liked the way she listened to rock ‘n roll, not like most parents my classmates had, who wouldn’t allow them to listen to rock or read comic books. One of them didn’t even allow my friend to watch television! My parents were cool; they were pretty open-minded. Except for old people.
My mom HATED old people. It was funny to watch. Once an old lady got on the bus she moved towards the back, harrumphing and staring at me sitting in my seat. My mother held my hand tightly and muttered through gritted teeth, “Don’t you dare get up and give her your seat”. In Hungarian, of course, so the graybones couldn’t hear.

And when we moved to Hollywood from New England my mom carted us around all the Hebrew schools in the area, looking for a good one. I remember this school we visited that had the playground on the rooftop with a low fence. Upon seeing this mother’s pointy eyebrow shot up with withering disdain. I didn’t miss that for a second. Five minutes later in the principal’s office a boy raced in harried, screaming, “Rabbi, Rabbi, the toilet’s flooding in the Boy’s Room”. The pointy eyebrow raised disdainfully again. Once again, my mother hmmphed and growled, “We are NOT going to THIS SCHOOL. Come, children!”

But she wasn’t always a bitch. She babysitted kids on the side that would have tested the patience of a saint. She was always nice to them, no matter how irritating these tots were. Of course, once they left the house she would do hysterical imitations of them whining and pissing all over themselves.

My parents were the most exciting couple to me: My father would come home with blueprints of missiles and rockets he designed at Aerospace during the Kennedy/Johnson-era Space Program. My mother had sewing machines, tailor’s forms and tons of material, pattern paper and designing gear to work with. I knew more about seam rippers, bobbins, and pattern wheels than I did about baseball or dirt bikes. I developed a fetish for machinery and design at an early age.

I remember going to textile stores with her and she’d say, “Okay, Andy, if you see a shirt pattern you like, pick it out”. I’d go through all the pattern books and find a cool Nehru shirt design (psych era, don’t laugh!). Then we’d walk around and look at the different material and I’d pick the most psychedelic, colorful print, and say, “That’s it, Mommy”.
We’d go home and she’d sew the cool shirt for me, and my brothers would razz me about it. They were jealous.

We’d also go for long walks in Beverly Hills and go for miles up Olympic Boulevard until we reached the deepest excavation site with dozens of bulldozers roaring around. There was a big sign in front: “Coming soon – Century City, a new experience in city living and entertainment”. Hah!

The walks around Beverly Hills went from sunny to dark when my mother contracted cancer and I’d walk with her to the Doctor’s office on Wilshire and Roxbury. I’d sit in the waiting room with my comics until she came out from her treatments. She smoked quite a bit, so much so she sewed a cigarette case cover for her Kents.

I was thirteen when she died, it was in the peak of the summer. I remember her funeral was sunny and hot – the sun was blinding and everyone was dressed in black. The contrasts were very extreme. I was in shock and felt as if the floor was pulled out from under me. The shock was so intense I couldn’t even cry.

To this day I still visit the same grave, almost forty years later. I’m sure if she could see me now I still make her smile and laugh a lot.