The Almost-Fractured Fridge

As originally told to Bodhisattva Mickie by Aunt Martha

I’ve mentioned before that my dad was all of brilliant, cantankerous, eccentric, idealistic, and temperamental.  The Munch, as I called him (short for Munchkin – he was 5 feet 4), is no longer with us.  But some of his exploits remain worth recounting.

As young people, he, my Uncle Al, my Uncle Joe, and my Aunt Martha conspired to wreck Grandma Petrovsky’s efforts at corralling them.  When Grandma locked the kitchen door (the door through which everyone came and went), they managed still to have their evenings on the town.  Their tactic was simple.  Whoever was the last to leave the house would unlock the window next to the kitchen door.

One night, Al, Joe, and Martha were asleep in their beds.  But the Munch was nowhere to be found.  Until the next morning, that is.  When the rest of the family awoke and started into the kitchen, here’s what they saw.  Stretched out on the couch (don’t ask why there was a couch in the kitchen – I never understood that either) was the Munch, steadily sawing Zs, oblivious to the refrigerator he’d knocked over on his way in through the window.

Picture it.  Window open.  Munch sleeping, albeit thunderously.  Fridge leaning against the wall, dangerously near his head, at about a 30 degree angle.

Ya gotta love it.  And him … J

Thinking With One's Glands

My dad, a brilliant albeit somewhat eccentric, cantankerous man, had several bon mots.  My favorite is You women are all alike.  You think with your glands.  Not too long ago, Iowa Republican Senate candidate Mark Jacobs outdid that comment.

In an interview with Iowa's WHO-TV in Des Moines on Sunday, December 8^th, 2013, Mr. Jacobs stated that the best way to connect with women is on an emotional level.Jacobs' comments came shortly after it was reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee met with aides of incumbent lawmakers to coach them on messaging against women opponents, according to Politico.

My dad was highly educated, a lifelong Democrat, and, like every male on either side of our family, a union member.  Despite his wry reaction to having to live in a household otherwise populated entirely by females (my mom, sister, me, and two cats), he would have been aghast at Jacobs’ remark.  Dad regularly supported his female colleagues on the teaching staff of our school district.  He campaigned and voted for Shirley Chisholm.  He supported and campaigned for women in his and other local unions.  He once threatened a neighbor with, shall we say, serious bodily harm, because the dude was rude to my mom.

It’s a good thing for Mr. Jacobs that the Munch, as I called him (short for Munchkin – he was 5 feet 4), is no longer with us.  If he were, he’d be working, as we all should, to defeat not only such candidates but such attitudes.

Take a Listen

Unless you experience it, you can't appreciate the rich, sonorous, altered-state-of-consciousness-inducing services of the Byzantine Catholic Church.

I'm long since a long-lapsed Catholic cum Buddhist.  But I still consider the Byzantine Mass a gift to all faith traditions.  Take a listen.

Toad and Activism

Merriam-Webster defines nocturne as a dreamy,  pensive composition for piano.  This presentation of the Edgar Thompson Works is a visual and aural nocturne.

The Edgar Thompson plant was Andrew Carnegie’s first mill.  His first Free Library is within a long walk.  Both are effectively on the border between two Allegheny County boroughs – Braddock and North Braddock.

On the 1300 block of Bell Avenue in North Braddock a few decades ago, there were Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Ruthenian, Slovak, African-American, and Jewish families.  The father of the latter had a tattoo on his right arm …Every ethnic group had its own church.  African-American, Croatian, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Polish, Ruthenian, Scots, Serbian, and Slovak parishes flourished.  These were the most visible symbols of North Braddock’s demographic riches.  But an even more powerful one was membership in unions.

The USW, UMW, IBEW, and other unions reflected the diversity just described, and did more.  By wrapping their arms around second- and third-generation Americans, by showing them that, whatever their origins, they had far more in common than in opposition, unions created a powerful force for tolerance and non-violent activism.

Toad would have appreciated that activism …

The Ex Lax Paradigm

As a child of three, I regularly patrolled the 1300 block of Bell Avenue in North Braddock, pushing my toy shopping cart.  (Unlike today’s, my cart was shiny metal, rather than luridly colored plastic.)  The cart’s contents were also only three – a sunny-side-up faux fried egg, a tiny box of fake Tide, and an even smaller box of just-as-counterfeit Ex Lax.

As I walked the beat, I chatted with neighbors and relatives.  There were several of the latter on the block: Bubba (a.k.a. Grandma) Petrovsky, Aunt Martha, Aunt Dorothy, and even Cousin Betty, who’d run a speakeasy during Prohibition, but now had a legal imbibing establishment.

On this occasion, it was Aunt Dorothy who asked, “What did you get when you went shopping, Michele?”  Fancying myself urbane and knowledgeable, I replied, “This is an egg; it tastes real good.  That’s Tide; it gets your clothes clean.  And this is Ex Lax; it makes you poop.”

When my erudite explanation about the efficacy of Ex Lax evoked, not oohs and aahs but rather smiles, I was miffed.  I couldn’t understand that reaction.  After all, the information I’d conveyed was completely correct.  Why were it and I not taken seriously, and given the respect we deserved?

Dissonance of that sort has followed me throughout my life.  In adulthood, one example of the Ex Lax Paradigm stands out in my mind.  I was working as a technical writer, documenting the work of a number of engineers and programmers.  While I have a background in software, it’s not the kind of software those folks – almost exclusively male – dealt with every day.  But while I couldn’t have reproduced their work, I did document it, and well and clearly.  Several of my engineer co-workers were kind enough to compliment me on what I’d produced.  Except for one gentleman, who read me off over the phone for a mistake that turned out not to be on my part, but on his.  When I pointed that out to him, he simply persisted in his criticism, concluding with the observation that what he viewed as my shortcomings in technical understanding were because I am female.

The episode ended with my slamming down the phone and spitting out “Don’t you condescend to me, you smug son of a bitch!”  Or nearly ended.  Several of my engineer and programmer buddies who happened to be around my cubicle reacted in faux horror and fear at my outburst, and took the sting out of the moment as a result.

It’s okay for folks to smile at you.

The 1300 Block

I lived the first 12 years of my life on the 1300 block of Bell Avenue in North Braddock, PA.

On that block, I regularly heard five languages other than English.

On that block, I interacted daily with members of at least eight different ethnic groups.

From the corner of that block, I could look down past the Pennsy tracks to Braddock, and see the spires of that many ethnic parishes.

Is it any wonder that Toad's mantra of "Excitement!  Adventure!  Change!"  rang true with me?

Diamonds Everywhere

As a child, I thought diamonds were everywhere.  The graphite on the sidewalks in North Braddock, the byproduct of the Edgar Thompson steel mill, shone like tiny jewels when the sun was on them.  But the most precious-seeming stones were those in the track bed of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Those tracks ran parallel to but a few blocks below our home.  We regularly went to the tracks, to watch the trains, wave to the engineers, and shout to them to "toot your horn" (which almost invariably they did).  But we did more.  We gathered up what we thought might be real diamonds-in-the-making.  Then we took those to a local jeweler.

That gentleman was kind enough to indulge our imaginations.  Each time we brought him our trove, he got out his jeweler's loup and used it to study our finds.  Only after careful examination of same did he, gently, break the news to us that what we'd found weren't diamonds, nor on the way to becoming same.

I don't remember the jeweler's name, or that of his shop.  I do remember, fondly, those trips to the lower part of Braddock Avenue, and our consulting with our own personal gemologist.

Small things, small things ...

Early Memories

I don't recall it.  But my sister tells me that, as an infant, I regularly climbed to the top of the railing of my crib, and then tumbled over and to the floor, getting a huge kick out of the experience.  One could say, then, that even at that very young age, and before I ever encountered J. Thaddeus Toad, I had a thirst for what Toad called, "Excitement!  Adventure!  Change!"

It wasn't only Toad who instilled that sense in me; there were environmental factors that contributed to it.  I was reading almost before I was talking - both at about the age of three.  On the one block on which I spent the first thirteen years of my life, one regularly heard five languages other than English (Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and German).  And my fondest memory of early life was of my mom bathing me in the kitchen sink, with the sun shining through the window above me, and Mom sending me into paroxysms of giggles by doing "This Little Piggy" on my feet.