It was said that even Dick Daley at the height of his power was afraid to make him angry. Only my mother and my stepmother (who is only two years older than I am and was handpicked by Kate Collins as her successor) have dared to face him down.
But to the kids he is kindly old “Grandpa Ned” who tells stories and works magic tricks and provides candy and ice cream and beer and video movies and drives the boat when they water-ski. And to the three Helen has borne him—Chantal, Sean, and Trish—he is “Papa Ned,” whom they have kept permanently young. “Second childhood,” he says, grinning ruefully as Trish explains Springsteen lyrics to him.
How could we let them know about this terrible character flaw?
“He restrained himself this summer,” Blackie said hopefully. “And there was ample opportunity.”
“Was there? I’m afraid I didn’t notice. But the children were not so involved then.”
“We will have to see what happens. By the way, have you considered the possibility of further problems if New England should, through some miracle, survive to do battle with our stalwarts in the Super Bowl?”
“New England?”
“The quondam Boston Patriots.”
“Oh my God!”
Our poor family might be in for real trouble.
I settled the Patriot thing with my pirate that night in bed.
“What if the Patriots play the Bears in the Super Bowl?”
“You make the most interesting pillow talk, Dr. Murphy.”
Joe thinks he understands me completely. Through our quarter century and more together, I have insisted that I am five pounds overweight and will not look presentable until I lose those hated eighty ounces, a point which he refuses to concede, he says on the basis of expert knowledge of the subject matter. Then, when the new standards came out last year which put me smack dab in the middle of “normal,” the pirate freely predicted that I would promptly add five more to preserve my self-disrespect.
“Wanna bet?”
He did, and of course I won. Two decades and a half and he hasn’t figured me out.
“That’s irrelevant and possibly chauvinist,” I insisted, snuggling closer to him because it was a cold December night—though I don’t need excuses. “We’re going to have enough trouble as it is.”
“The Pats won’t make it out of the Meadowlands.”
“Yes, but…”
“And I’m a Chicagoan, by marriage and voter registration.”
“But that basketball team, whatever they’re called…”
“The Celtics!” He drew away from me as though I were in the grip of a dangerous infectious disease.
“Whatever…”
“That’s different. And they have deserted good old Boston for Foxboro anyway.”
“You’ll be suspect because of your accent.”
“You’re terrible, woman.” He reclaimed me with obviously prurient intent.
“This is all going to get out of hand,” I predicted.
“I think it has already.”
“No, I mean the Bears.”
I could not have been a better prophet.
On January 6 we assembled next door in Dad’s house: my brother Packie, who is a politician, and his Tracy, the only non-Irish Catholic in the clan, my sisters Eileen (a judge) and Nancy (who writes science fiction), and assorted spice and children and boyfriends and girlfriends of children and even my brand-new son-in-law Kevin, God help us all. The last one to arrive, looking like the permanent adolescent cherub he is, was Monsignor Punk, wearing a Chicago Bears jacket, scarf, ski hat, and sweatshirt, and twirling, rather ostentatiously, I felt, a Chicago Bears keychain. He favored us with an improvised stanza from the Super Bowl Shuffle which he claimed to have recited at Mass that morning in the Cathedral (much to the dismay, I daresay, of Cardinal Sean Cronin, who long ago gave up trying to reform his gray eminence: Blackie gets along so well with teenagers because, Ph.D. on Whitehead or not, he will always be one):
“I’m Father Blackie and I say the Mass
I preach and sing, without much class,
The cardinal will tell you I’m A-okay
So long as I do whatever he say;
I’ve cheered the Bears all my life,
If they don’t win for me, they’re not nice.
I promise God that She’ll get no trouble
’Long as the Bears take the Super Bowl Shuffle!”
A priest would never do that, you say? Certainly not a cathedral rector?
You don’t know the Punk. Apples don’t fall far from their trees. And the Punk is the apple closest to Ned Ryan’s tree.
Which is why all of us were worried about the character flaw.
Dad was well behaved. He had replaced the large-screen TV with an even larger one (almost as big as the Mitsubishi they later put in the Daley Plaza—temporarily the Chicago Bears Plaza—on Super Sunday), produced an enormous amount of popcorn, potato chips, diet Coke, french fries, beer, chocolate-chip ice cream, and other health foods, and promised that he would show Streets of Fire, a rock film nearing cult status, after the game.
The kids sat on the floor around his chair like he was King Arthur and the big old house was Camelot. The wall was lined with framed Chicago Bears posters, drinks were served in Chicago Bears tumblers and cups, a Chicago Bears telephone was on the table next to his easy chair (“the same as Mike Ditka uses,” he told the worshipful Trish and Biddy), and Dad wore a blue sweater with a Chicago Bears helmet emblazoned on it. I heaved a sigh of relief and winked at the Punk. The old fella would behave.
“All you’d need to be Santa Claus is a beard.” Helen, who has mastered the art of giving him the needle, gave him his daily glass of Jameson’s—straight up. First glass anyway.
“Santa Claus, poor man, drinks scotch. Single malt, of course.”
He explained to his adoring descendants that blue and orange were the Illinois colors, chosen for the Bears by “George” because that’s where he went to college and won letters in track, baseball, basketball, and wrestling, as well as football. The C was the University of Chicago C because he didn’t want to use the same C as the Cubs did. The title “Mighty Monsters of the Midway” was applied to the University of Chicago back in the days of Pop Stag and Jay Barwanger and was transferred to the Bears when the university folded up its football program, “not a minute too soon.”
During commercial breaks and at halftime, he told stories about the Canton Bulldogs and the Decatur Staleys and the great Bear teams of the thirties and forties (leaving out, thank God, the game which was being played when he was blown off the Arizona by a Japanese bomb—that would have meant trouble) and about Red Grange, and Bronco Nagurski, and George “One Play” McAfee, and Marshal Goldberg (the Punk rolled his eyes at that name, but nothing came of it). The crowd of kids, even Kevin, listened in mute adoration.
Well, poor Ken O’Brien got pounded into the turf and Joe Morris was stopped cold—appropriate word for Soldier Field of a January Sunday, and the Bears roared on. The younger generation screamed like they were permanently institutionalized at each sack and each McMahon-to-Gault pass, the girls worse than the boys. Katie Kane and Cat O’Connor and Trish gave a fair imitation of the knitters in the Place de la Révolution. But our Brigid Elizabeth was the loudest of all.
“Bring on Eric Dickerson,” she screeched. “We’ll kill him!”
“Who’s he?” I whispered to my Joe.
“Running back for the Anaheim Rams.”
“Poor man.”
That night I thought I saw the social significance of it all. “The difference is the girls?”
“Huh?” my sleepy husband responded.
“If Blackie is right and there is a groundswell of celebration…”
“‘Liturgical celebration’ was his exact phrase.”
“Whatever … It’s the young women who are at the center of it. This play-off season may mean more to them than anyone else. Every girl child in that room was wearing some kind of Bears e
mblem.”
“There was a lady shrink,” he said as he took my hand in his, “who was talking about Shaun Gayle in the nickel-forty-six defense.”
“Regardless.”
The city warmed to its January as the temperature rose. It was disastrously warm when the Rams came to Soldier Field. John Robinson, Anaheim’s charming coach, admitted that he was a Chicago native; Biddy and Trish denounced him as a geek. Blackie appeared on the ten o’clock news to speak of “collective representations,” which demonstrate the power of a city’s liturgical spirit. He also observed that God had two choices, either permit the Bears to win (which “ought to be easy for Her”) or send a hundred thousand angels to protect the city from despair. Stores on Michigan Avenue blossomed with orange and blue displays, Fields played the Super Bowl Shuffle in their main lobby. Mayor Harold made periodic confident predictions with “Fridgerettes” bouncing around him, and Coach Ditka allowed as how the Rams were a Smith team and the Bears were a Grabowski team. Nick Curran, egged on by his wife, my cousin Cathy (who is CRAZY), redesigned the stationery of his staid, prestige-laden Loop law firm so that instead of being “Minor, Gray and Blat,” it became “Minor, Grabowski and Prat.” Some of his senior colleagues were not amused.
Richard Dent hinted that he might not play in the Super Bowl if his contract was not rewritten. Jim McMahon was fined five thousand dollars for wearing an Adidas headband. The Sun-Times appeared on Friday with a twenty-page “wrap-around” about the Bears and was snatched up as soon as it appeared on the newsstands.
I took counsel with my other siblings. They were all aware of the problem, and as Eileen put it, most uncharacteristically, “All we can do is pray.”
Sunday, January 12, was indeed L.A. weather—record warmth. Nonetheless Eric Dickerson was stopped cold as my youngest had confidently predicted, Jim McMahon wore a “Rozelle” headband, and he and Willie Gault (actually a very attractive young man) had another splendid day. McMahon, who did not learn his manners from his Mormon mother, poor woman, celebrated by sticking his tongue out on national TV.
New England, unaccountably, knocked off the hated Dolphins; my Joe took a permanent oath of loyalty to the Bears—at Biddy’s insistence—“unless the Sullivans move the team back to Fenway Park”; Trish allowed as how it would be “unlucky” to have to play the Pats after they had won three upsets; Katie worried about the Pats’ ability to cause fumbles; Cat frowned heavily and announced her fears that Jim McMahon had been hurt again.
My Biddy pounded a coffee table upsetting a mostly empty popcorn bowl. “No one can run against the Bears!”
“Too many teams moving around these days,” Dad muttered ominously.
“Remember,” Packy rushed in, “when Halas threatened to move to Arlington Heights and the mayor said that they would be the Arlington Heights Bears, not the Chicago Bears!”
“No one even argued.” Dad chuckled. “They thought that Dick owned the label!”
Enormous sigh of relief.
On TV Virginia McCaskey kissed Walter Payton, presented the Halas Trophy to her husband and son, and assured the national audience, in what the Punk praised as classic Catholic doctrine, that the Old Man was still with us.
John Madden—who Biddy insisted was “adorable”—had already suggested that the Old Man had turned on the snow which came at the end of the game.
The next two weeks the mania grew like a plague. Catholic grade and high schools had “Bear Days” and even “Bear Weeks.” GO BEAR! signs sprang up everywhere. Flowers appeared at the Halas graveside. (One said, “Somewhere he’s doing the shuffle.”) A Bears helmet, stolen and recovered, was displayed once again on an Art Institute lion. A headband was attached to the Picasso sculpture in the Daley Center Plaza, which had been renamed—in a touch of genius from someone in the Washington administration—the Chicago Bear Plaza. T-shirts and sweatshirts vanished from the racks of drugstores and dime stores and Marshall Field’s; I encountered two young matrons on Michigan Avenue with small punks in strollers, both of whom were wearing “Rozelle” headbands. They waved cheerfully at me, doubtless because of my long orange and blue scarf and vast Bear’s button, which, when stroked, appropriately played “Bear Down, Chicago Bears!”
Speaking of which, at the symphony on Thursday night, regular series C for the pirate (who is cultivated as well as sexy), Sir Georg Solti, wearing a Chicago Bears cap, directed the world’s greatest orchestra in “Bear Down, Chicago Bears!”
“I doubt that it has ever been played quite so elegantly.” Joe took my arm as we flowed with the crowd (most of whom were sporting Bears colors) into the Monroe Street parking lot.
“We’re entitled,” I sniffed.
The Punk was affronted because Margaret Hillis and the Symphony Chorus were not on hand to sing the sacred verses. He was also less than happy when he learned that the Lyric Opera, getting into the act, too, had dressed the three little messengers in the Zauberflöte in Bears jerseys. “None of them were black!” he protested. “Not fair to Samurai Mike!”
“Or Willie Gault,” Biddy protested. “Totally gross!”
“Punk,” I told him, “you’re worse than the teenagers.”
He smiled as though I had paid him a great compliment.
Jim McMahon suffered from his bruised rear end, an acupuncture specialist was brought to New Orleans, McMahon was accused of insulting New Orleans women, then exonerated. Brigid was nearly speechless with outrage, even when I explained to her that Jim was skillfully taking pressure off the rest of the team and building up the quasi-paranoia that the Grabowskis needed to stay angry.
“Really,” was my youngest’s only comment.
On the ten o’clock news, the Punk was interviewed by a wide-eyed young woman who did not know an end zone from a third-base line.
“It’s a grass-roots revolt against neo-puritanism.” The Punk was his most professorial. “Chicagoans are fed up with the national image of a second city, distinguished only by the 1968 convention, the Council Wars, and teams that don’t win. We know, despite the self-hatred of some of our journalistic elites, that we are a great city. Somehow we receive no credit for our art museum, our orchestra, our writers, our universities, our splendid architecture. So now we are going to get even.”
“You don’t think it’s all hype, Monsignor? Or Bear mania?”
Blackie sighed, his west-of-Ireland, asthma-attack sigh. “The only hype that can produce this phenomenon is a twenty-yard run by the ineffable Walter Payton or a touchdown pass from Jim McMahon to Willie Gault or—”
“You don’t think there’s a touch of commercialism?”
“—a two-yard plunge by William Perry.”
“Are you going to New Orleans, Monsignor?”
“Oh, no. The cardinal will represent the Church at the Superdome. He’s much older than I am, you see”—blinking eyes—“and hence has been a Bear fan much longer.”
“Uncle Punk is right!” Brigid trumpeted. “We’re number one!”
“Really!” Trish bellowed.
“We’re number one! We’re number one! We’re number one!”
A battle cry we would hear many times in the next couple of days.
In the relative quiet of our connubial privacy, while I brushed my hair and noted that the silver was becoming ever more common than the gold, we returned to the Problem.
“Did you talk to Helen?” Joe asked.
“I did. Of course. She is convinced, as I am, that the best thing to do is to say nothing. You know how stubborn Dad can be.…”
“Only one in the family.”
“That remark is uncalled for. And stop looking at me that way. I don’t feel like being ogled tonight.”
“And the pope is no longer Polish. And if you don’t want to be ogled, put your dress back on.… What did Helen say about the exhibition game?”
“It was just as you and the Punk predicted. It was only the two of them, of course, and they were in the house up at the lake, but he cheered for the Big R
ed from beginning to end.”
“Oh my God!”
“Can you imagine what it will do to Brigid—and poor dear Trish—if they find out that he was and still is a Chicago Cardinal Fan!”
“Disaster!”
I’m not sure that Joe took the crisis as seriously as he might. In his heart of hearts he was probably pulling for the Pats. A terrible sin, but not enough to order him from the marriage bed!
Since the subject was undiscussable, we had never learned the reason for this strange aberration in Dad’s personality. Cardinal fans were few and far between to begin with. And when the Bidwells moved them to St. Louis, only a few did not abandon them for the Bears.
The diehards, however, persisted in their folly. The Big Red were still their team. And, worse luck for all of us, they were proud of their folly.
But, dear God in heaven, don’t let him tell the kids on Super Bowl XX Sunday.
On Super Bowl XX Friday, Joe and I joined the O’Connors at supper over in Hyde Park. Typical University of Chicago dinner party. Narcissism rampant. Nancy and Steve learned long ago to bring in some of us so that they would preserve their sanity. The other guests usually seemed to think that Joe was a surgeon and I was a nurse.
They were disgusted with the “Bear hype.”
“I’ll be glad when it’s over,” someone said.
“Typical mass-media hype.”
“Commercial exploitation.”
“Most people are losers. They like to identify with winners.”
“Terrible waste of money on all those gimmicks.”
“Someone is getting rich.”
I was a little offended because I was wearing a blue dress with orange trim.
“It’s a University of Chicago C,” I said tentatively.
The pirate swung into action. “Jung would have described the phenomenon as an affirmation of our community links with the forces of nature. Consider how many of the teams are named after totemic animals. Bears, of course; Lions, Rams, Dolphins, Cardinals, Eagles, Colts, Falcons. He would have seen it as the anima’s effort to remind us of our ecological relationships. There are primal urges at work here which my clinical experience would lead me to believe are more healthy than not.”
All About Women Page 23
