I have recollections of the funeral. I remember a lot of people at the visitation — some former prizefighters, many old friends, family, neighbors. The funeral home was over near 26th and Hale, in the West End, probably the closest one to 32nd Street. I remember one of my aunts suggesting I go outside and play on 26th Street, and I found some local neighborhood kids and we played a game of ball in the middle of 26th. I was happy to get the reprieve.
I didn't mourn early on. But there is one moment I can still walk back into — not as if it were yesterday, but as if it were an hour ago. I was on the living room floor of the house at 920 South 32nd Street. I can place the rug under me, the couch where the aunts were sitting, the front door over my shoulder. We were going through his belongings. I found his wallet — the old leather kind, well used — and inside it was the eight of hearts. I pulled it out and asked why it was there, and one of the aunts said it was his lucky card, and that he carried it everywhere.
A man who carried a lucky card. For some reason, that undid me, and I broke down. And I'll say it plainly: that is the only time in my life — before it or since — that I have truly cried. I was a whiny kid, but never a crier, and I am still not one. I'm not proud of that. But these are the facts. The moment has never left my mind.
After Dad died — and in fact I don't think I ever called him "Dad" — Mom was left with Celia, me, Mickey the black Cocker Spaniel, and the bar. She worked it every day, leaving Celia and me in the good care of Mrs. Eisner. Ollie was her first name. She lived up Kentucky Street near the railroad tracks. I have to presume she was a widow, because she would speak of a child who must have been grown and who lived in Okolona. It might as well have been Oklahoma; I didn't know the difference.
I was not an easy eight-year-old. I did mostly what I wanted and avoided the adults as best I could. And I was a bad big brother. I tortured Celia relentlessly. She would have been forgiven had she driven a stake through my heart in the middle of the night.
Life on 32nd Street was perfect, in my mind. I was free to roam, and I had plenty of friends — mostly two or three years older than me. In the summer we played sandlot ball; in the fall it was alley hoops; and in the winter it was touch football. Every day there were lots of kids playing all the sports, and I'm sure some pretty good athletes came out of that group. Billy Meadors, Eddie Barlein, the Gatoff kids, Thomas and Junior — black brothers from around the corner on Kentucky — and many more. We were always up to no good. But it was all good.
Mom had the good sense to enroll us in Catholic school — Holy Cross, at 32nd and Broadway. Eight wonderful years, and in the early ones we were taught mostly by the Sisters of Mercy. That must have been someone's idea of sick humor. But I learned. I learned my ABCs and I learned discipline. I learned to be on time, and not to sass back. We walked to school, three blocks toward Broadway, crossing Garland Street on the way.
Probably the best thing that ever happened in my life was when Mom remarried — Robert "Whitey" Parrish. It was only a year after my father's death, but I came to respect him quickly. He was ten years Mom's junior, only twenty-six, but he knew how to bring me into line. He was a construction worker, though not long after they married he gave it up to run the tavern full time. That's another story, and one well worth the telling soon.
I've thought, in the years since, about the odds of that street. Blue-collar, uneducated, hard-working families — factory men, cab drivers, mail carriers — and a yardful of kids who played ball until dark and ran the alleys after. Plenty of good came out of that neighborhood, and plenty didn't. Not many boys from those blocks ended up with letters after their name. I won't pretend otherwise, and I won't pretend I'm not proud of it. How a kid from the West End got from the living room floor of 920 South 32nd — the wallet, the eight of hearts, the doubt that he was worthy of any of it — to a white coat and a backyard full of telescopes is its own long story. It starts here.
This is written as I remember it. I was seven when my father died, eight by the end of that December, and much of what's here is what a boy that age carried out of the room. Names are real; the memories are mine. More chapters will follow — Whitey has his own, and so, someday, does a certain Brother Borgia. If you knew Cecil Payne, Mrs. Eisner, or the West End in these years, I would welcome hearing from you.