Woolworth's

Another Summer Rerun
Originally posted January, 2010
under the title "5 & Dime Beginnings"



One of my first jobs in high school was as a stock-boy in Woolworths. At $1.40 per hour, I knew that I had made the right choice quitting the $1.10/hour hamburger place. I'm still haunted by this delightful nostalgic dream-world - i can still hear the creaky floors, and smell the intoxicating combination of lunch counter, candy counter, and pet department.


4th and Main, Five and Dime in Watertown, Wisconsin, Fronted by the canonical curved red corner background with gold letters and diamonds. The front of the store had a red and white striped canvas awning, The manager cranked it down in the morning, and I cranked it back up in the evening. But that was just one of my duties....


The F.W. Woolworth 5 and 10 cent store had departments competing with every other store on Main Street. We had hardware, housewares, men's and women's clothing, fabrics, paint, pets, candy, and toys.  The Woolworth's Experience while Evie was cutting your window shades to custom lengths, Esther could tint you a gallon of paint to just the right shade, and Betty could notarize your documents, while you relax at Merla's lunch counter for an incomparable home-cooked meal. Then wander over to Angie's candy counter for a handful of those Brach's maple nut goodies that look like mushroom caps. Get the latest Simplicity patterns in Lorraine's department up in front, and then go to Gertie's department to get the fabric to implement the pattern. There were greeting cards, phonograph records, books, parakeets, cacti - simply everything you'll ever need was right there.


But I was a dweller in Woolworth's underside. The entire basement was a dark maze of rough wood shelving, arranged in the same layout as the upstairs, with many mysterious side passages. Items entered the Woolworths System through a door which opened up in the sidewalk. Cartons slid down a metal chute into the basement. If the cartons jammed up on the way down, Roger the Baptist was sure to mention it to me as soon as I arrived. Roger never wanted to get dirty. He would check the merchandise in, and stock it on the shelves in the basement. The ladies picked their restock orders off of these shelves, and laid them in the aisle in cardboard trays called "X-90 boxes" (i hope i don't get in trouble for revealing these infrastructure secrets). I brought the X-90 boxes up the creaky wooden stairs, each to its proper department, and the ladies would price and restock the items. Nearly everything upstairs had its counterpart downstairs in backup stock. One thing you never heard at Woolworth's : "If you don't see any there, we don't have any."



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Chinese Night Watch

Last night about 11 pm I was making the final rounds, all the locks, security cams, etc,,  It had been a busy day, even though I was on vacation from the day job.  We got a cash register counter for Joyce's store, ,and some assembly was required.  There were  59 packages of parts.  So after a day of assembly, one hopes that I could get to bed on time.  But, of course, something was definitely going on, just when ya need it.  A moving van was parked in the street, and the sidewalk was full of . . . .full of . . .  But before I could comprehend the entire picture, I heard Katie's voice "Gary come help with the freezer!" 

Oh, no. The entire sidewalk was full of restaurant booths, cushions, chairs, cardboard packing material, and for some reason, a new mattress set.  And, on the back of the truck was a huge, white commercial freezer.  There were about 8 people milling around measuring doorways and yelling to each other in Chinese.  The van driver was waiting impatiently with his clip board, for someone to sign for the delivery.

Katie is the boss of the Chinese restaurant in our shopping center, and one of the few people there who knows English.  But she has a certain authority in the way she uses English.  When she tells me to do something, I tend to do it without question.

The freezer on the end of the truck is 8 feet long, 39 inches deep, and 6 feet high.  It weighs about 400 lbs. So, I pitched in, since the people inside the truck were already pushing it off the edge.  It was frightening, to be supporting so much weight, and not knowing whether the Chinese guy was saying "put 'er down" or "she's gonna explode, everybody run!"  .  Well, we got it down on the sidewalk, and started walking in the door with it.  We put it down, because it wouldn't make the bend between the inner and outer door.   Although the freezer was inside the building at this point, it completely blocked the entrance, and Katie's husband was trapped behind the freezer in the foyer.  We decided to move it again, because Katie loves her husband, and didn't want to leave him there.  Besides, how would the customers get in?

A contrivance made of plywood, wet towels, and a small-wheeled food cart appeared.  We balanced the freezer atop the improvised moving cart, and wheeled it around to the back of the building.  Luckily, the neighbors were still up, and I could speak English, so we took it up their stairs, through their garden gate, and up to the back entrance to the kitchen.  In the kitchen, the entourage was met by an elderly Chinese gentlemen - a very territorial cook, who started screaming orders to rearrange his kitchen so that the parade could be accommodated.

We brought the freezer into the preparation room, and got it finally up against its wall. The new booths would not fit through the front door, and would probably need to be disassembled.

By morning, all the booths, cardboard, and those mysterious mattresses had all disappeared.

Since Jacky didn't want me to take her picture unless I paid her, I told her there was no film in the camera anyway... Well, true enough....it's digital.

One O'Clock and All is Well!

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Year Book

Through an outrageous schedule conflict, I'm scheduled for a music performance engagement that begins at the exact same time that my 40-year high school class reunion starts. The reunion is being held at the old Riverside Park within an annual River Festival from 5-11 pm.  I'm going to the festival in the afternoon, in hopes of maybe running into some old classmates, but unfortunately, I have to leave before the announced time of the reunion.  I'm sorry.

I haven't been to a high school class reunion since Year Five, so missing the high school reunion is not unusual for me.  But lately, I've been thinking a lot about the ones I went to grade school with, so long ago.  It was a parochial Lutheran grade school in Watertown, Wisconsin and there were 35 or so of us who were together for 8 years before high school.  We were always a sort of separate "secret society" contained within the high school class, and I believe it kept us true to ourselves.  Lately, the miracle of social networking has brought many of us back into contact with one another.

Our grade school year books were usually issued after the school year ended, so we never got a chance to write in each other's books.  

Year Book - 1966
so many more, apologies for all the omissions

When I play back those grade school days in my head, the sounds I hear are those of the playground - all those rhythmic chants - jump rope verses, singing on the bus for class trips, to cheerleader cheers. And yours is the voice I hear, leading them.

Our class Socrates. You had a way of phrasing the most profound questions in the simplest of words which baffled all the teachers

When I think of you, I remember that soft-spoken unconditional kindness that you had for everyone.

You kept us laughing all the time.  An irrepressible sense of humor that no cheerless teacher could contain.

The master of schoolyard trades.  The first to own a BIC 19 cent pen.  I heard that you had become a successful Madison businessman.  Who deserves it more?

Always cheerful, an unsinkable personality. Thanks for the times you cheered me up without even realizing it

Our mothers were old classmates, so we were friends even before there was grade school. You came to our family funerals, and it meant a  lot to me.

And you!  Ach du lieber!  Soul-mates to this day!

Sincerely,

Max

summer rerun - originally posted in 2010
The Man in the Moon as He Sails the Sky

Max Wincell was kind of scary. I was in 3rd grade, and Max was now in his second year of 3rd grade. Previous encounters with Max had involved Max hitting me. Once we had met him in a park downtown, my sister and I, and he had hit us both. But now, I was almost home, safe on my block, when Max called me by name. How had he remembered?? I was paralyzed by fright when Max ran up to me.

"Hey, I just moved in over on Davis Street" (2 blocks away) "Aren't you that kid who plays piano?"

-- gulp --- Oh, no! my short life flashed in front of me, in a nightmare vision of a future filled with daily poundings. But this was different. He was new to the neighborhood, and now, things had changed. Now, I was now one of "his people". The incidents of the past had been forgotten, as if they had never happened. I certainly wasn't going to remind Max of those.

We played together, hung around together, and then he did a shocking thing. He politely introduced himself to my mother. Max wasn't the sort of person you mentioned to your parents. He was more of the sort you snuck out to hang around with when you were being rebellious. My mother was bowled over by the hospitality, and if Max were around on Saturday, she'd invite him to stay for lunch. He certainly knew how to play the "nice boy" when necessary.

Max, it turned out, didn't have much of a home life. He'd always had to seek his friends one by one, which was hard when his father kept moving from place to place. Max had no mother that he spoke of, and his father was not home much. His house was a cheap wooden pre-fab, and his father's current live-in girlfriend (Max called her "the housekeeper") didn't want us hanging around the house.

Max was smart, although he didn't have very good grades. He never did homework, because he wasn't welcome at home, but he remembered everything we learned in class. He was especially fond of a song Miss Schlueter had taught us in music class. We'd sing it as we roamed the streets after dark, looking for trouble.

"Oh the Man in the MoonAs he sails the sky
is a very remarkable skip-per

But he made a mistake
by attempting to take
a drink of milk from the Dip-per!
a drink of milk from the Dipper.

He dipped it into the Milky Way
and slowly and carefully filled it 
but the Big Bear growled 
and the Little Bear howled 
and frightened him so that he spilled it
and frightened him so that he spilled it.

I think of these nights when summer's gone, and the air is crisp with fall, and a faint smell of leaves burning somewhere. I think of when Max showed me how to howl at the moon.


Thanks for listening and contributing. On Twitter, they call me @dimbulb52.

09-06-01

It was almost time to leave and catch the plane.  Joyce's brother was coming to drop us off at the airport. After I had gotten dressed, I went back down to the theater to work for a few more minutes while I waited.  The stage set was built from painted hollow-core doors, styro blocks, and whatever our "acquisition manager" Bob Kohl found "curbside".  The Renaissance Faire production had just ended, and from the ruins of the Renaissance would rise the Haunted House set.  As soon as we returned from this trip, we'd be holding auditions, and rehearsals would follow shortly thereafter, for opening in mid-October.
In our haunted house, the audience sat in the center of the room, and all around them, aside, behind, and in their face - our cast of 15 highly-trained professionals launched an intense 45-minute barrage of twenty to twenty-five tightly produced multi-media vignettes guaranteed to shock and horrify. This format was so different from other "haunted house" exhibitions in the area, that it was successful for many years.  The spectacles had sleazy names such as "Fortress of Fear" and "Temple of Terror" and we scared the bejeepers out of the audience.  There were vampire stories, burials gone awry, witch-burning, psychics, the undead, terrible accidents, psychotic evangels, each vision lasting less than a minute, followed by a nightmare even more horrible than the last.

Oh, and did I mention, the Haunted House script had not yet been written?  We were about to embark on the annual Voyage of Creation.  This formula had actually worked for us three years running.  A flight to Las Vegas could be purchased for nearly nothing in those days, on Midwest Express, and a five-night hotel stay would bring our total bill to almost five hundred dollars for the two of us.  And, we would usually win that amount back in the casinos, because we know when to fold 'em. . . .
Las Vegas is where we wrote.  With just a slight twist, the excesses and sins of Vegas furnish a virtual dungeon full of glittery nightmares and desperate nightmare people who practically jumped onto our pages.  For example, there's that guy standing in front of the Four Queens Casino trying to lure you in with a free spin on his glittering overly-large video poker machine.  Cast him as a carnival barker presiding over an unspeakable sideshow of horribly deformed freaks! We'd study him, his sleazy mannerisms, his way of speaking, and - - viola! One down and twenty-some vignettes to go...

Every morning we'd sleep as long as we wanted, and then starting over coffee in the room, we'd write in our notebooks until about 4 in the afternoon, have a luscious buffet meal, and then go out to play, and gather material for the next day's writing.  We'd always return to Milwaukee with a show all ready to type up on the old 486 (no laptop in those old days), and sometimes, we'd even have some cash to spare.  Sometimes, we'd even have a few leftover vignettes for the following year!

So - time to go!  I climbed down my ladder, and we loaded the suitcases into the car, and got on the plane, a late-afternoon flight.  After we'd been aloft for awhile, I noticed something jabbing at me from my pocket.  Horrified at what I found there, I whispered to Joyce my predicament.  Should I be up-front and tell them?   I'd already gotten through security with it, and would probably not be checked again.  We decided to say nothing.  In my front suitcoat pocket was one of my foremost stagecraft tools - one of those plastic disposable utility knives.  We returned to Milwaukee on September 6, 2001.  Five days later, this tool would be referred to forevermore as a box cutter.    And the following year, we had a box-cutter vignette in Merciless Mansion.

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Angel of Death

I went to a funeral this morning.  It was a joyous occasion.

I worked at Holy Name as an organist for over 10 years, in the 1990s.  At that time, the services were conducted in Polish and English, with traditional early-20th century Polish hymns and liturgy.  The Polish music is different from the traditional American church fare - a collection of music from the heart of the land that gave us Chopin.  But, when the Polish heritage of the neighborhood gave way to the Hispanic tradition, the church lost most of its membership, gained a new membership, and the music changed.  The regular services are now conducted in Spanish, with music provided by electric guitars, rhythm boxes, a keyboard, and such, and an organist is no longer required.   That was three years ago.

Celeste (not her name) had been one of the old members, and the old liturgy and traditional Polish instrumentation was needed.  So, the family called me (I took a morning off from the day-job) and they called Angelo, the tenor (he's between gigs this week).  I picked up Angelo on the way so he wouldn't have to stand waiting for the bus.  He'd just injured his leg in a shopping accident, and we wanted to sound our best.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a five-foot Christmas wreath hanging from the organ pipes in the loft, an eerie touch for the stifling 90-degree summer temperature up there.  My old church organ was buried under an army blanket amid the rock-band-like setup.   I rolled up the cover, and sat down and fired it up.  The tones sounded a little weak and squeaky at first, but by the second hymn, my faithful old instrument had found its old sweet sounds again.  The preset switches were just as I had left them four years ago.  The organ seemed happy to have me back again.

There is always some joy in music, even for a sad occasion such as a funeral.  The element of joy lends poignancy to the sorrow, and offers comfort.  It was so good to be working with Angelo again, and Father was just as unpredictable as ever in following the script of the liturgy.  So we had fun, Angelo and I trying to find out where our cues were.  The congregation sang some Polish standards - Serdecna Matko,  and In Thy Protection; Angelo sang The Holy City - a beautiful and uplifting piece from about 1900, and we did Schubert's Ave Maria, the Lord's Prayer and at the last minute, during the confession, we finally located the score for How Great Thou Art one of Father's on-the-fly requests from the altar.  And a beautifully comforting cradle song - Guardian Angels, written in the 1920s by Harpo Marx, of all people.

The family thanked us afterwards - the music had done its healing work.  So we all shook hands and went our ways, until the next time the Old Angel of Death flaps his wings over Milwaukee. . . 

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God's Wild Youth - Shoot the Piano Player!

more summer re-runs! 

originally posted in November 2009 under the title:

Bach No More - God's I-Pod Part 2

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Grade School - I was the little fat kid who played the hymn accompaniments on the piano for the class to sing. Most of the elementary teachers couldn't play piano worth a dam, one finger with lots of mistakes was typical - they were all too glad to have me in their class. I could sight-read those suckers. For morning devotions, and right after lunch, I'd have to pick out a hymn - there were 660 of them in the Lutheran Hymnal to choose from. I'd write it on the chalk board, and walk over to the piano to lead the hymn.

In a past post, I've told you about the "Bringing In the Sheaves" incident - how Pastor Kay took me in his office and told me that God didn't like that sort of thing - He preferred the hymns in the Lutheran book, and things written by Bach and Buxtehude. I kind of liked the strong march tempo for a recessional - getting everyone out of the church as fast and efficiently as possible. But Pastor Kay assured me that any organist who liked his position would play something that God liked.

But then as we got into High School in those '60s, God had a change of heart. For awhile, I continued to lead the hymns for the teenage Youth League gatherings, until one fateful day. Somehow, in a way I to this day do not understand, God descends to the level of a stoned hippie. The Synod required the pastors to attend retreats focusing on How To Reach Our Youth - as if The Youth were some foreign species. Prayers have to be crude, halting, self-indulgent. The Service, re-done for Youth, is stripped of all elements of tradition, the chants, responses, hymns -- all scrapped. Rows of chairs? Too straight for God. Let's arrange them in a circle - now we've got God surrounded! Or, let's just dispense with chairs altogether- what the hell, let's sit on the floor. And of course, of the 660 hymns we had all practiced all our lives - none of them is appropriate for Youth Worship.

And, the music! Oy, how God has changed his mind about His musical tastes. Now music must only have two chords, and one of them has to be E minor. Acceptable instrumentation is a badly-played guitar -- that open-string E minor is still whanging in the back of my head whenever I think of Youth Music. No more joy. No more praising God in a major key with an ever-changing palette of chords and intricate harmonies. It's all Kum Ba Ya from here on out. Now we're singing Negro Spirituals, calling on the Lord as we did back in the days when we worked in the cotton fields. (ironically, at the same time, blacks had moved on to Gospel music based on the more traditional hymn forms.)

Well, in the end, I was Kum Ba Ya'd out of a piano playing job. After many discussions with the minister, and failed attempts to indoctrinate me, I was left as an incurable curmudgeon at the age of 17, and I remain one to this day.