“Well, Miss Gordon, if that just don’t beat all. When I was a kid I was a gazoonie!”
“Berto, Berto, come on, the circus is in town!”
Sal, my one surviving neighborhood friend, flexed his muscle-bound body and shifted impatiently from one foot to the next, as he waited on the stoop outside my tenement.
I was almost seventeen and feeling oats I never knew I had. It was a beautiful Saturday in early May, and I had been going stir crazy after almost a week of dismal, rainy weather. I had finished my homework and there were no chores to do.
“Mama, I’m going out.”
Yes, I was past the age of asking permission, but the unspoken “please, may I?” was always there, and she knew it.
Si, Berto.”
Then she stuck her head out the front window and yelled down at Sal.
“You two stay away from the girls. Capisch, Salvatore Gatto?”
Sal looked up and flashed one of his famous smiles that could make girls of all ages swoon.
“Si, Signora Galen, but remember, I’m just a big alley cat.”
I stuck my head out the window.
“Don’t you mean Sally cat?”
Mama and I both laughed. I blew her a kiss and headed out the door.
Sal was just a few days older than I, and by then we were both studs on the prowl. What better place to see pretty girls than the circus that just put down its tent stakes on the outskirts of Newark.
No, it wasn’t Ringling Brothers or Barnum and Bailey (back then they were still separate enterprises). The big circuses always wound up at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. This was one of those traveling carnivals featuring either not-ready-for-primetime or well-ripened performers—a few scraggly, geriatric animals, overweight tightrope walkers, clumsy clowns—plus lots of grifters and games on the midway.
The carnivals followed well-established travel routes, starting out in Florida or the Gulf Coast and moving north as the weather warmed. This particular enterprise had set up on a vacant property near the swamps and pig farms that sat between Newark and New York.
We didn’t have bus fare, so we walked for forty-five minutes, the two of us exchanging raucous and lewd comments about what we would see and do once we got there.
Suddenly I stopped in realization.
“Sal, these things cost money. How’re we gonna get in?”
We were too big and cool to scrounge for soda-pop bottles. We left that to the little kids now, although sometimes, when I was alone and it was getting dark, I would still pick up a few.
Once more he flashed that Cheshire grin then poked my shoulder.
“Come on, Mr. Muscles, we’re gonna be roustabouts. They’ll let us in for free.”
I should have known. With Sal, fun always came with a catch. This time I’d be huffing and puffing while Mr. Hercules Gatto would breeze through whatever labors our adventure required.
We could hear it all from blocks away: the calliope music, accompanied by shouts of “try your luck.” the trumpets and drums of the band, the pop-pop-pop of the shooting galleries, and the din of the crowd. The air hung heavy with the aromas of spun sugar and popcorn, with vague hints of hotdogs and mustard, and a tinge of pig farm and swamp thrown in for good measure.
The guy at the gate looked us up and down, as if he knew instinctively that we weren’t cash customers.
Sal just grinned at him.
“Need any work done, mistah?”
He flexed his muscles and the guy’s eyes lit up. Then the one-headed, human Cerberus turned his gaze on me. I didn’t have anything to flex. But he let us in anyway. I guess he figured he’d get twice the work out of Sal.
“Yeah, kid, see that guy over there? That’s Fred. Tell him I sent the two of you over. He’ll give ya yer ducats.”
Then, as an afterthought, he yelled out, “Hey, Fred, we got us a coupla gazoonies!”
Neither one of us knew what the hell the guy was talking about. We just knew we were in.
A half-hour later, after mucking out the ammonia-tinged, urine-soaked saw dust from the areas where two moribund old lions hung out, I figured out a rough translation of gazoonies: young suckers.
Before old Fred handed us our ducats—actually free passes—he took a moment to look us over. Then he winked at Sal.
“You young bucks oughta go see the girlie show.”
Naturally that’s where Sal dragged me, after we hosed the big-cat urine stink off each other. But we had to pass a number of concessions on the way, and I slowed him and his libido down by stopping, pointing, and looking at the different displays. We saw shooting galleries with both live-ammunition and photoelectric-cell mechanical bears, ducks, Hitlers, and Tojos that would jump and scream if the light from your gun triggered the cell. And there were cotton-candy stands surrounded by sticky-faced little urchins smearing the stuff on their clothes and then demanding more.
What really caught my eye was a guy with a little blowtorch who heated and twisted glass rods of all sizes into toy animals. But Sal just yawned and kept pulling at me—until he saw a guy holding a big, wooden hammer and standing in front of a tower, daring one and all to show their lady friends how strong they really were.
“Hit the peg and ring the bell and win a prize for your lady love!”
I spotted a dime on the sawdust-covered dirt, snatched it up before a little kid was about to lunge for it, and handed it to Sal.
“Here, Nature Boy, strut your stuff.”
“You ain’t my lady love, Berto.”
“You bet your sweet ass I’m not, muscle brain. Too scared to try it?”
He flipped the dime at the concessionaire—a Mercury head if I recall correctly—and grabbed the hammer from the man’s hand. After giving me the finger he raised the hammer high and slammed it as hard as he could on the fulcrum.
Damn if the sliding weight didn’t rise to the top of the tower and hit the bell—“bong!” The crowd clapped and whistled, and Sal turned to face them. He made his right bicep muscle pop up and strutted away.
“Hey, kid, don’cher want yer prize?”
Sal turned back and took the stuffed bear, held it up to more applause, and threw it at me. The crowd guffawed; I held it to my face and kissed it.
“Come on, gentlemen, ya gonna let that kid beat ya? Show him yer moxie. C’mon, take a turn, just ten cents, one thin dime!”
We moved on toward the girlie show. I saw a little girl standing next to her mother. I walked over and handed the kid the bear. I figure today I’d probably be arrested for such effrontery. But back then the mother just smiled and thanked me.
We passed more food and game stands, and then we saw the freak-show tents: the Bearded Lady, the Lizard Man, the Human Pretzel, the Indian Mystic.
Suddenly Sal jumped and pointed at the barker standing outside and hawking away.
“Girls, count ‘em fellas, girls who know the secret dances of the Orient! Step right up! Step right up!”
Sal flashed our ducats, and the barker waved us through. He smiled, which I now know implied “here’s two more Johns.” Back then I was clueless.
The tent was poorly lit and stunk of cigar smoke, cheap booze, unwashed bodies, and lust. The barker joined the party, after everyone had plopped down on hard, open-backed, wooden benches. The place was full of horny guys ranging in age from teens like us to white-haired lechers.
“Gentlemen, you are going to see the most amazing demonstration of Terpsichore since Cleopatra wooed Caesar, since Madame Bovary voulez-voused with the king of France. I give you The Fantastic Francine and her sisters Fiona and Fannie!”
At that, three, let’s call them Rubenesque ladies—who probably had celebrated their thirtieth birthdays well more than a decade before—came bouncing out, kicking up their legs in a feeble imitation of the Radio City Rockettes. That lasted for about two minutes. Then they turned around, bent over, and flipped their threadbare costumes above their backsides.
The barker stood up, climbed on stage,
and winked.
“Gentlemen, now our ladies will put on some special performances that will engage your … minds! For just two bits, gentlemen—twenty-five cents! And, gentlemen, let me tell you, Francine and her sisters are the finest G-bit dancers in the world!”
That was the pitch. The girls were dingers—they started with a chorus-line dance to hook the audience, and then the barker would do a bait and switch to prod more money out of the eager, pliable males. The unspoken promise, hinted at by the expression “G-bit,” was a full strip-tease.
Sal was all for it. He waved our ducats at the barker, but the pitchman shook his head.
“Not for this stuff, guys.”
Sal was not one to take no for an answer. He grabbed the front of the little man’s shirt.
It was almost as if Sal had inadvertently pushed a hidden button.
“Hey, Rube!”
That barker had one helluva voice.
Sal and I took off at a run, and the rest of the audience wasn’t far behind.
We made it to the corner of another tent and peered around the edge. About twenty carnies—carnival employees—converged on the girlie-show tent. We could hear loud voices and cries of “get those gazoonies!”
We managed to sneak away and ran most of the way home.
Sal needed to use the bathroom by the time we got to my place, so I waved him up the stairs behind me. We walked in and my mother’s nose immediately wrinkled in disgust. She looked at us and uttered one word: “Miao!”
Our hosing off didn’t quite remove the eau de lion scent.
Mama ordered us to wash up, “pronto.” I lent Sal a pair of pants and a shirt that barely fit him, and then he headed home.
As I recounted my one-day carny job to Maude Gordon, she kept clapping her hands in delight with each twist and turn. When I mentioned Francine, she exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness, young man, I knew those girls. They started up just about the time my sisters and I hung up our G strings.
“Poor Francine, I heard she had her neck snapped by a john in Alabama. Fannie and Fiona married other carnies. I think they’re living down near Carny Town now.”
She was referring to Gibsonton, Florida.
After that, Maude never returned to her regular doctor. She would always show up, unannounced, and I would see her and let her regale me with tales of the carny life.
When she learned of my interest in aviation she described her barnstorming years right after World War I, doing a wing-walker routine with her sisters in a fragile, cloth-and-balsa-wood, single-engine biplane that “was held together by spit and bailing wire.” It was flown by her boyfriend, an ex-pilot doughboy. They had planned to marry, but he crashed in a solo routine that required him to fly through open barn doors during a gig in Kansas.
The prairie wind had swung the back pair of doors closed just as he flew in.
During the roaring twenties, Maude and her sisters, Iowa farm girls all, switched to the carny life.
“In a way, we were lucky,” she told me. “When the Depression hit the country, at least we had a carny wagon to live in.”
I asked her why she and her sisters didn’t stay in Iowa.”
“Didn’t you ever want to run away from home, Doctor?”
I told her about how I once met an old ’bo—a hobo—in the Newark railroad yards, and how he talked me out of it.
She smiled.
“Ever been to Iowa? We were wild, Doctor. Iowa was the end of the world back then. When Mr. (President Woodrow) Wilson sent the boys ‘over there,’ my sisters and I volunteered to serve as nurses’ helpers. And, as the saying goes, how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”
I thought of the three Old Guys back in the tenements, and I understood.
Maude remained my patient over the next fifteen years, and some of her stories I cannot repeat in polite company.
She showed me how she had learned to lift wallets in a magic show act and how to yell “Hey, Rube!” at the top of her lungs, if any of the clientele became what the carnies called “rough trade.”
And then, the Halloween-night phone call from her sisters summoned me.
I pulled up to the Victorian-style, two-story house and had to use a pocket flashlight to find my way up the porch steps. I knocked, and the unlatched front door swung open.
The house was cold, and the hallway was empty. I called out a “hello,” and a tiny voice replied from the front parlor.
“In here, Doctor.”
Light from a 15-watt bulb barely illuminated an old sofa and the two, fragile-looking ladies sitting there.
I kept my coat on.
“Hello Miss Samantha, Miss Beatrice. Where’s Maude?”
“She’s upstairs, Dr. Galen.”
“Yes, she’s upstairs, Doctor.”
“Did she tell you what’s bothering her?”
“She said she’s feeling poorly.”
I climbed the stairs in the dark, holding tightly to the loose hand railing to avoid tripping over the warped steps. Another dim light shone from the first room at the top. I entered.
“Hello Maude.”
No answer.
I moved closer to the bed and touched the hand sticking out from under the bed sheet. It was cold—no more than room temperature. I took my stethoscope out of my bag and listened: no breath sounds or heart beats. I pulled up half-closed eyelids. Her pupils were fixed in center position and dilated. And I could smell the mixed scent of loosened bowel and bladder.
I walked slowly back down the stairs and reentered the parlor.
“When was the last time you ladies spoke with Maude?”
“Just before you arrived, Doctor.”
“Yes, just before you arrived.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Oh, yes, Doctor. She asked us to call you.”
From what I had seen, Maude had been dead for at least six hours.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, ladies. Your sister has folded her tent.”
The two women turned to each other then smiled at me.
“Thank you for coming, Doctor.”
“Uh … would you like me to call the funeral home?”
“That would be nice, Doctor.”
“Yes, Doctor, that would be nice.”
They pointed to an old, candle-stick-style phone on an end table. I went to it and dialed the mortician’s number.
After fifteen years in practice I knew it by heart.
I stayed with Maude’s sisters until the mortuary car, a converted Chevy van, arrived. Soon two men walked in with a folded, go-to-Jesus cart. I pointed to the stairs, and the lead man nodded.
Several minutes later, I heard them coming down slowly, this time the cart wheels and table support fully extended. On it was the familiar, rubber body bag, now filled and zipped up.
Maude’s sisters rose and went into the hallway.
“Can we say goodbye?”
I nodded, and the mortuary men unzipped the top of the bag. Maude’s face was framed in the opening. The two women came forward and touched her forehead.
“Break a leg, Maude.”
“Yes, Maudie, break a leg.”
The lead man re-zipped the bag.
I made up the rear of the procession out the front door and down the steps.
The mortician turned to me, after his men lifted the cart into the van.
“We’ll bring the death certificate by your office, Doc.”
“Thanks, Henry.”
“Uh … Doc … ya want us to take the other two?”
“Henry, they’re still alive.”
“Are ya sure, Doc?”
I got back in my car and drove home. It was 1:30 a.m. on the first of November.
I slipped into pajamas and climbed in bed next to Cathy.
I didn’t wake her.
The Dork
Common sense is a most uncommon commodity.
—Ramesh Bhatia
“I look like a dork!”
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The kid was right.
Picture a fifteen-year-old male, pencil-thin, with a chicken-beak nose and an Adam’s apple that would choke a horse. Add one, pre-pubertal, hatchet-shaped face capped by cow-licked red hair then set the whole head on a scrawny neck. At five-feet-two inches, 80 pounds, and arms much too long for his torso, he looked like an emaciated orangutan.
And since you asked, he wore eyeglasses, dental braces, and his feet were disproportionately large.
Voilà! Dork.
Nate Criswell sat apart from his parents, Dell and Marlene Criswell, who had brought the boy in for a routine checkup. What evolved was a list of worries on their part and misery on his.
Why was he so thin?
Why hadn’t he hit puberty yet?
Why was he…?
I reviewed his health records: normal delivery; two older siblings, both very tall and no unusual childhood diseases or injuries. His parents’ health histories likewise were unremarkable.
“Nate, you aren’t by any chance from New Jersey, are you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“It’s been a long time since I heard anyone say “dork.”
I stared at the awkward kid and remembered someone from my old neighborhood: Paolo Cherubini. The last I had heard, that FLK (funny looking kid) had grown up to own a chain of boutique, watch-and-clock shops.
“Nothing really, it’s just a Jersey thing, right?”
There, a slight smile.
“Let’s take a look at you, Nate. Do you want your folks in here with you?”
“No way!”
I shooed them out of the room.
I took his vital signs and told him to remove his shirt. His chest fit the chicken motif—pectus carina—an outbowing of the rib cage like a bird’s breast. That didn’t necessarily mean anything bad. And his father appeared to have the same build.
“Doc, why do I look this way?”
“Nate, don’t sweat it. You should have seen what I looked like at your age.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I at least looked human. I sometimes lie to avoid hurting a patient’s sensitive feelings.
“Nate, first of all, it’s genetics. You resemble your dad at lot. He’s not a bad looking guy. I’ll bet if I saw a photo of him as a kid, I’d think it was you.”
Dr. Galen's Little Black Bag Page 17
