I’ll Always Have Paris — Chapter 5
I can only remember my mother and father having one fight, and I was very young, just a kid, and cannot remember what it was about. But voices were raised in the kitchen, and my mother ran down the narrow hall to the bathroom, crying. Never happened again in my hearing, until they were in their 70’s, and I was living in Los Angeles, and my father had finally retired. He’d come in from 50 + years of being both on the road and on his own in an office where he could leave and go on case visits, and suddenly, he was home — circumscribed by that space — with my mother who was so glad to have him around she would pad around behind him asking him if he’d like a cup of coffee or something about every twenty minutes until he was ready to scream or go back on the road selling anything that would fit in a sample case. Screaming won, and when they started doing it when I was on the phone, I had to threaten to come home and drag them to couples’ therapy if they refused to go on their own. To their credit, they said they’d make an appointment, made it and kept it themselves. The screaming stopped.
My father brought a certain Ralph Kramdenesque approach to his spousal role. He was the king of a very minor castle — a Feudal Lord over a GI Bill apartment, then later a modest, 1,500 square foot home my mother actually bought while he was somewhere in Wisconsin selling Grosset and Dunlap series books — “Hardy Boys” and the like. And he gives her credit. “I called up from Waukesha, (or wherever), and she told me, ‘I bought a house today,’” he’s told us all more than once.
I can only guess at the litany of things my father was angry about; other than missing the fighting in WWII — more disappointment than anger — he never said. Many years ago, I remember walking with my mom from a parking space to The 400, an indie movie theatre on Sheridan Road on the North Side of Chicago, on our way to see “Touch of Evil,” and asking her about Dad and certain of his more aggressively objectionable habits.
“There are things you just let go by, Mitch,” she told me. “No one’s perfect. When I took your father, I took everything that came with him.” And she was glad to have him.
My mom had grown up very poor on the West Side of Chicago. After World War I her father had deserted the family. She always said he wasn’t the same after the war, that he’d been gassed in the trenches. That might have been true, but she was so young, perhaps that’s what my grandmother told her to make their circumstances palatable. She was a tiny little thing, incredibly adorable — weighed, by her own recounting, 67 pounds when she graduated high school with the nickname, “Frozen Rosen.” As a toddler, she would sit on the front stoop of her building, shy and hesitant to join in games with others, and her mom, who died at 55 and I never knew, would come out and shoo her off the steps to go play and get dirty. Eventually my dad beat everybody else’s time, including that of a young lawyer (and later U.S. Senator) flying in from out of town Howard Metzenbaum. (What I lost in public stature and income I gained in last name.) They were married just a few days short of 71 years, and he took care of her for the last decade of her life, when she slipped ever deeper into dementia, doing a yeoman job even though he didn’t present as a caregiver personality.
As a couple, they defined civic involvement. She was a Den mother to all three of us boys, and he was my Scoutmaster of Troop 215. She was President of every PTA associated with our education, marched door to door in the rain for one charity after another, and he was President of the Men’s Club at the synagogue. The first synagogue in the suburb I grew up in, Skokie, was actually formed in our living room when I was 5 years old.
All around me were households of similar familial commitment. When I was a kid, and all the way through high school, I never knew or heard of anyone whose parents were divorced. I never heard of any parent with a drinking problem or who ran around or had debts or committed a crime. It was like “Pleasantville,” except for the occasional bully and Neanderthal gym teacher, and this was the model I ran from as soon as I got the chance and as far away as a college scholarship would take me. I’m reminded of that scene from a wonderful little Dustin Hoffman film, “Straight Time,” where he plays a small town crook on parole and reconnects with an old running mate, Harry Dean Stanton who has married and is living in a suburban tract. They’re barbecuing in Stanton’s back yard and Hoffman is commenting on the life his buddy’s now got for himself, and Stanton says, yeah, he’s got the wife, and the house, and then he pauses a moment before saying, in a desperate plea the way only Harry Dean Stanton could, “Get me outa here.” The straight life is killing him. So they rob a jewelry store.
My jewelry store was going an extra 150 miles beyond the University of Illinois, all the way to St. Louis. Considering the U of I would have been all expenses paid, it was pushing it, as even with my scholarship, it meant an extra grand they didn’t have out of my parents’ pocket.
At college I was promptly introduced to not just the children of divorced parents, but fellow students who were in therapy five times a week and had been for years. You generally don’t realize your own naivete while you’re in the midst of it, and I certainly didn’t recognize mine. I thought myself pretty savvy, a Chicago boy, albeit from an awfully white suburb. I was hip to Lenny Bruce. But like others in my crowd, I took somewhat ridiculous pride at knowing the names of downtown street gangs — the Egyptian Cobras, the Taylor Street Dukes. Our relationship to toughness. At the time, in the mid-60’s we began to judge our cool, in many respects, by familiarity with black culture, beyond the soul and R&B music that was sharing top-40 prominence with The British Invasion. Those moments could come in odd ways, for a guy who had no fellow black students from kindergarten through twelfth grade.
My father was part of a group of guys called Club ’37 for the year they graduated high school. Jewish kids from Manley High School on the West Side, they grew up to live all over the Chicago area and got together once a year for a picnic in a local Forest Preserve. There was always a softball game — with the big ball, the Clincher (no glove), unknown to people outside Chicago and Cleveland — and one year a group of black dads walked over from their picnic and challenged our dads to a game. And I got to play. I think each side wanted to win — that’s the way men are in sports — but it was a mixture of serious competition and horseplay. Their pitcher had a few behind-the-back moves to bases. I have no idea who won, but everybody got along, and when it was over, there were handshakes and good wishes and everyone went back to his wife and kid and barbecue. You know, “Pleasantville,” in color. And a good thing.
Running track in high school was one of those places where you could mingle with athletes of other schools, track being the only sport where your team wasn’t relegated to a side of a field or room or separate benches. Our school was part of the eight-team Suburban League, composed of schools from suburbs ringing the city of Chicago from Evanston on the North, up against Lake Michigan, around to around and down to Cicero on the Southwest. We were not the only white school. To our North, in Wilmette, New Trier was whiter and wealthier, Bass Weejuns penny loafer/no socks country when our girls were still sporting Keds and bobby socks. Travel to all other schools meant encountering teams with substantial numbers of black kids. While waiting for or after our events, we’d hang out and chat, God knows about what, but it was casual and without any barriers, self-imposed or otherwise.
Years later, when I got fired from the summer job at Montgomery Ward, I wound up working for my friend Ira’s father in a hole-in-the-wall pool chemicals supply plant on the West Side, South of the Eisenhower at West 5th and Kostner. There I was working side by side with young black men, in a neighborhood I would not want to get lost in after dark. At work, Ira and I were low men on the totem pole, and I probably the lowest of the low, not being the boss’s son. But we all joked around and laughed, borrowed dimes off each other for the coke machine, and dished the bosses — in particular, Ira’s father’s partner, who had a habit of not flushing the one toilet in the place after taking a shit. Some things you don’t forget.
One of the guys we worked with was named Jimmy Walker. He was black, about 95 pounds, soaking wet, and the king of the labelling machine. That was his domain, and he was Master of it. He’d wear a strapper t-shirt and a leather, snap brim hat, and he may or may not have been gay (I would have no way of knowing and never even thought of it back then), but he was certainly not macho. He called everyone “girl” half the time. One of our regular customers was a middle-aged guy named Sacco. He’d been an amateur boxer, “Kid Sacco,” and had had a couple of pro fights back in the day, but now was middle-aged with a paunch, ran a pool cleaning business, and was more than a little racist. He’d come to pick up merchandize which we’d load in the trunk of his car. He’d drive right up the lip of the open roll-up door, pop out, and head straight for Jimmy Walker.
“Time for your boxing lesson, Jimmy Walker!” he’d announce, and he’d be all over the poor guy feinting lefts and rights but landing a few as well. Jimmy would try to laugh it off, but you could see his eyes go big the second Sacco drove up, knowing there was no place to run, no place to hide, and that he would be bruised somewhere when it was over. It was the first time I’d registered an adult bully.
Who Sacco would not pick on was Tommy, who was about six-foot two and over two hundred pounds. Lord of the forklift, and nicest guy in the world. He could barely read and write but kept all the product formulas in his head, and the place would’ve collapsed without him. And he could drive a forklift truck like riding a quarter horse. The whites of his eyes were disturbingly yellow, however, and I was always concerned that it was somehow connected to the number of Mountain Dews he consumed in a day, which often went into double figures. He was always coming up to you, and saying, “Hey, man, can I borrow a thin dime?” I always wanted to say I only had thick ones left, but squelched that impulse and gave him a dime. If he’s still alive today, I fear for his kidneys.
The business also had an older black driver, Moses Meriwether, and a small box truck for deliveries too big for a car trunk. One day we went out to make deliveries with Moses and stopped in a little café for lunch. Ira and I ordered hamburgers. Moses ordered eggs over easy, which we thought was strange for lunch. When our hamburgers came, it was clear after one bite that whatever was in them was no more than 10% meat, if that. The rest may have been crushed cornflakes or some less-than-exotic filler. We complained bitterly to each other. “That’s why I ordered eggs,” said Moses. “You can never go wrong with eggs.” He might have warned us, but I guess he figured that’s one of those lessons you have to eat to learn.
One afternoon I was alone out back with the forklift. Sacco was over, and I was putting his order together in the alley. I had to load the order on a pallet and bring it around front. After carefully getting the forks in the pallet, raising it a foot or so, I angled it back for stability, turned around in the alley, and headed for the outlet at the nearest street.
It was totally illegal for me to be driving the forklift in the street, but then, even pre-EPA, the plant was probably violating three dozen workplace safety and hazardous materials rules as it was, and I already had burns all over my arms from mixing algaecide full of toxic chemicals kept piled to the ceiling, which fortunately never combined in such a way to blow the place up. Making a left onto the street, motoring along at a steady 3 miles an hour against traffic, I made another left and headed back for the plant, mid-block, still against traffic but hugging the parked cars. I was so proud of myself that I failed to notice someone actually driving straight at me in a late model convertible. Why he didn’t see me and go around, we’ll never know, because he hit the street-side blade of the fork truck at like thirty, without slowing down.
Now a forklift is a lesson in physics — mass and density — somewhere between a down pillow and a black hole, but closer to the latter. It’s essentially a cube of iron and steel of a density far greater than even 50’s Detroit cruisers, and when the right front tire of the car hit the right fork of the forklift, his wheel buckled like a Lincoln Log while the only thing moving on the forklift were my lips screaming and eyelids widening. Everyone came running out, as the driver, a thin, young black man with hair piled straight up from his head, got out of the car, more in shock than anything else. I quickly got down and as far from the scene of the crime as possible, while Sacco aggressively massaged the guy, seemingly trying to understand what had happened, away from the accident, all the while impressing upon him the need not to call the police. I saw my life ending in a series of criminal proceedings leaving my family destitute and me behind bars.
Turned out, I worried for nothing. The guy just wandered away, leaving the car in the street. Later, we had to push it to the other side, where there was no parking. under railroad tracks elevated on a low berm. He never came back for it, and there it sat for a week before the city hauled it away. We never saw him again. I can only presume he was not in possession of any registration that remotely matched the vehicle.
In college, being a motorcycle-riding, long-haired pot-smoking and dealing “hippy” who immediately moved off campus sophomore year, I was essentially living in a city that was 40% black after a year on campus at another lily white university. St. Louis wasn’t the Deep South, but it was South enough. While I was there they were shooting up bookstores just for…being bookstores. The city also had this annual, completely racist, debutant event called the Veiled Prophet Ball, where the Veiled Prophet, some local white, establishment guy, would ride, literally veiled, up to the venue in an antique carriage, drawn by horses, his “Queen of Love and Beauty” by his side, while little black children ran alongside throwing flower petals, like something cut from “Gone With the Wind” for being too egregious. By my senior year, not only was it being heavily protested by a variety of Civil Rights groups, but we had formed our own alternative event, The Velvet Plastic Ball, a costumed extravaganza that pulled out all the stops. Bluesman Albert King headlined our inaugural VP Ball.
One night, on the spur of the moment, a jammed carload of us drove to some roadhouse on the North Side where someone had heard Ike and Tina Turner were playing. We stood in line for hours at the top of the stairs to the second floor performance space, first in line, only to be told at showtime that we violated the dress code in blue jeans and sent away. As we were heading back down the stairs, we noticed no one else was wearing blue jeans. We could’ve gone home and changed if they’d told us two hours beforehand. Chuck Berry was coming up the stairs, a girl on each arm. I don’t remember if he was wearing blue jeans, though I doubt it mattered. I had the last laugh there, though. Saw Ike and Tina twice in the South of France just a few years later.
I had arrived in Nice, on the Mediterranean, in late November of 1970, having worked my way down through Europe, to the South of France from Malmo, Sweden over six weeks — Copenhagen, Trittau, Giesen, Katterbach, Strasbourg, Montélimar, etc. Staying with Kathy, a friend of a friend I’d made in Strasbourg, I met three kids — three brothers, 5, 8, and 11 — who were alone together on the famed pebble beach, which to me was just a lot of incredibly uncomfortable stones where there should be sand. The discomfort was softened, however, by a phenomenon I’d certainly never seen before, namely French women coming down to catch a little tanning on their two-hour lunches, disrobing and changing into bikinis right there in front of you. This was definitely not Morse Ave. beach in Chicago.
From the kids I learned their mother, Paula, was looking for a tutor, and bada-bing, next thing you know, I’m spending the night in Paula’s apartment, and then she decides to move into this five bedroom villa on the coast road in Mont Boron, on the Nice outskirts above Cap Ferrat, a spit of land then and now one of the priciest pieces of real estate in the world. Residents have included, but not been limited to, King Leopold II of Belgium, the Baroness de Rothchild, Charlie Chaplin, Liz and Dick, Winston Churchill, and Andrew Lloyd Weber. Like I said, we were across the street and up the hill. Different zip code. Telescope distance, though not too shabby.
Paula, an American, was living as good a life as she could muster, dragging her kids around France on the spousal support she got from her diplomat husband who worked in Brussels. On the one hand, this is very good for me; I have my own room, in a villa, on the French Riviera. (Paula and I had a hot Opening Night, but we closed the next day. Somehow I knew it would be best.) The boys — ages 11, 8, and 5 — all had emotional issues, and I did the best I could to hold a couple of hours of school each day in return for room and board. God knows what they thought real life was about. Did I mention that Paula was 27, having started early, and had yet to demonstrate significant maternal instincts. Never met the husband and no idea his age, how they met, etc., but I wasn’t surprised they were separated.
Come one night in January of ’71, the kids were with their father; Paula had picked up a sailor off the American fleet that was in harbor — I kid you not — and I had the key not just to the villa but to the car as well, a Volvo station wagon. Learning that there was some sort of music festival happening down the road in Cannes, I piled some of my American crew into the Volvo and off we went. Turned out to be something called MIDEM, Le Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale — a giant music festival and market, and the venue was this enormous concert hall, Le Palais des Festivals et des Congrès set back from the oceanside drive a few hundred yeards. The only doors I see are at the front, and the building is set way back from the street, so you have to cover this enormous expanse of concrete, exposing yourself to Security who can see you coming. While we’re trying to figure out what our plan of attack is going to be to get inside, one of our group, Hutch, a large, long-haired and bearded guy from Fresno, comes walking up and tells us he’s just been inside. We were wondering where he’d gotten to.
“I just pretended I was one of the musicians and walked in a side door, where they’re going in,” he says. “If they ask, tell ’em you’re Michael Bloomfield.”
Why not? Turned out looking like an American rock musician opened side doors, and the next thing you know, the four of us, adopting a “we belong” attitude, are in, no questions asked. Once inside, we found another side door off the lobby leading to a long hallway. Halfway down the hall was a half-opened door to sort of a green room where a band is hanging out — the band turning out to be the legendary Kings of Rhythm, Ike and Tina Turner’s backup band — half a dozen black guys drinking and smoking and shooting the shit before going on. So we walk in, announce ourselves as American fans who’ve driven over from Nice just to see the show. They welcomed us with open arms, poured us all drinks, and just made us part of the group. They were ecstatic to find people who spoke English.
Sitting in with the group at the time was Leon Blue, just as legendary (I later learned) a blues piano player as any sideman has ever been. He took a liking to one my friend, Kathy, a nice Jewish girl from Shawnee Mission, Kansas, whose grandmother had actually owned a saloon in East St. Louis where Ike Turner played as a kid. This story goes over very well, but the whole thing with Leon threatened to get a little strange. As Kathy later told me, and somehow I missed this, “He just opened this envelope full of coke and stuck it up in my face. Before I knew it, half of it was up my nose.”
After a while, there was a knock at the door, and it was…. “Showtime!” Just “come with us,” they said, and we all filed down the long hallway, half drunk and stoned, through a door being held open for us by an usher, and into the enormous concert hall, filled to capacity with people in the music business, most of them it seemed, in tuxedoes and evening gowns. Not your Grateful Dead audience, but we had ’em one better; we were clearly with the band!
The band, unfortunately, took that moment to make a hard left, and go up a few stairs to the stage. We were with the band, but not in the band. So instead, I marched the four of us straight ahead into the hall, and sat down on the ground in front of the front row, at the foot of the stage, six feet away. Nobody said a word. Not the ushers, not the music execs in tuxedos or their bejeweled babes sitting right behind us. Rock n’ roll, baby.
We watched the entire show from right there. Looming above us for the next couple of hours in all her glory, The Hardest Workin’ Girl in Show Business, Tina Turner; Ike prowling the stage like a Vampire with the Kings of Rhythm, of which he was a charter member back in Mississippi; the Ikettes workin’ it off to the side. “I Idolize You”…“River Deep, Mountain High”…“Proud Mary”…
“Some people like to take it nice…and easy…”
“We like to take it nice…and rough.”
When the show was over, we went back to the side room with the band. We were in, and you were going to have to pry us out with a crowbar. At this point joints came out along with booze, and we were all getting small together. Kathy is trying to avoid Leon and his magic envelope and hold on to what few brain cells were still working. Where to? The Whiskey a Go Go, of course. But not Tina. Tina made a brief appearance, and then, wrapped in furs, quickly made an exit with a distinguished looking, silver-haired white guy. Who, where, why? No idea. I do know that drinks were on the house at the Whiskey.
There was also a piano in the middle of the room, and from time to time someone would sit down and play a little. At one point, a Swedish guy sat down and really pounded out some rhythm and blues, in a very unorthodox, heavy-handed style, but he was laying it down. When he got up, Ike sat down, feeling, I guess, challenged or something. Now Ike Turner began playing piano as a kid and was performing live as a teenager. He had hands like Michael Jordan, like a two-octave span. Anyway, he sits down and starts riffin’ it up, and then gives the Swedish guy the nod, and he sits down beside Ike. The next thing you know, it’s on, and they’re going at it, chord for chord, note for note in a Battle of the Hands — Ike looking like he’s got twenty fingers working, while the Swede is banging away, holding his own. It was just great to be there.
We got home at like five in the morning, Kathy having finessed her way out of spending the night with Blue (his bandmates kept shouting shit at him all night like, “Hey, Leon, your wife’s on the phone.”) The next day, they were playing at a club up in the hills behind Nice somewhere, and we jumped in the Volvo, drove up and found it, talked our way in, and did the whole thing all over again. Thirty-six consecutive hours of The Ike and Tina Turner Review. The whole thing in blue jeans. Purged forever was the two-hour wait at the top of the stairs back in St. Louis.
“Do I love you, my oh my….”
Yeah, river deep, mountain high….yeah, yeah, yeah….”
(To be Continued)
