Big Mike: A Song For Daddy-o

Every time Benny Jay writes a post about his Old Man it gets me to thinking, and that can be a dangerous thing. I’d have loved it if someone like Old Man Jay were my father — he’s a Russian scholar and he can sing an operatic solo at the drop of a hat.

I had a dicey relationship with my father. He was one of those Great Depression/World War II kids whose emotions were so fouled up by the events spinning around them that it’s a wonder any of them kept their sanity.

Daddy-o dropped out of high school after only a couple of weeks. Fourteen-year-old Polish boys from the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side weren’t expected to grow up to become scholars. They were, in fact, considered already grown up.

So Daddy-o’s parents in the early fall of 1932 told him to go out, get a job and start paying for his own freight. Daddy-o asked his brother in law, my Uncle Louie, for a job at his small cartage outfit. He started out riding on the back of the truck, tossing boxes of produce and dry goods to grocers along the route. A few months later, he told Uncle Louie that he’d love to drive the truck. Uncle Louie asked him how old he was — even though he knew — and Daddy-o lied, saying he was 18. Fine, Louie said, starting tomorrow you drive.

Daddy-o grinded gears for a few weeks before he got the hang of it, then spent the next few years wheeling around the city. One night, according to family lore,  Aunt Vera busted Uncle Louie mercilessly for eating the last pear before they went to bed. Aunt Vera was a tough Polish chick. “You son of a bitch,” she snarled at my Sicilian uncle. “I’d piss on your grave if I had half the chance!” Sometime in the middle of the night, Aunt Vera woke up with a start, alarmed by what she wasn’t hearing. Uncle Louie had stopped breathing and was already cold. She wore black for the rest of her life.

Daddy-o had to take a job as a driver with Old Man Maxwell who manufactured boxes on the South Side. That’s what Daddy-o always called his boss — Old Man Maxwell. Sometimes I thought Daddy-o wished Old Man Maxwell had actually been his old man.

Daddy-o’s father, whom we called Dziadzia (Polish for gramps), was a real work of art. He spent his days fixing streetcars and his nights chasing neighborhood women while his wife (we called her Busia — grandma) stayed home and ground horseradish. One late afternoon, Daddy-o sneaked into the garage while his pop was working and took the car for a spin. Unfortunately, Dziadzia came home early and discovered his car missing. He promptly dashed over to the hardware store, bought a new lock and installed it in the garage door. When Daddy-o came back from his adventure, he couldn’t fit his key into the the lock. Starting to sweat, he glanced over toward the gangway entrance where Dziadzia stood, leaning against the wall, arms folded, a smirk on his face. “What’s wrong, Jozef? You no got key?”

One Saturday afternoon when he was 17, Daddy-o walked over to Hansen Park and watched a softball game between two girls’ teams. He spied a 14-year-old Sicilian girl with frizzy hair playing short center field. She caught popups in her belly, kicking her right leg up like a Rockette to help nestle the ball. Everybody laughed when she made a catch that way. Daddy-o thought to himself, “I’m gonna marry that little gal one day.”

Two years later, Daddy-o and my future mother eloped in Indiana.

By the time I came around, Daddy-o was fairly fed up with life. He’d never made much money — in fact, when he retired in 1980, his final year’s salary was $18,000. Ma had to work at a series of jobs to help pay the mortgage, first on an electric parts assembly line, then in a sandpaper factory, later for a dimestore and finally for Sears. Neither my mother’s sister nor her sisters-in-law had to work. Daddy-o was embarrassed by that.

He’d also had a scrape with the law when he was about 30. I may or may not write about it one day; I won’t today because it’s too embarrassing. My mother’s brothers had to bail him out and then pay off the judge to keep him out of state prison. The incident revealed to them something about him that no one would ever want anyone know.

Oddly, Daddy-o subsequently found it impossible to forgive others for transgressions, real or imagined. For instance, when my sister Frannie took up with a black man in 1970, Daddy-o almost cracked up. He called her every name on the book. They fought viciously for the next quarter of a century. Once, he even implied that she was street hooker. He and I nearly came to blows over that one.

Daddy-o spent the last 25 years of his life certain all the forces on the world were aligned against him. He couldn’t stand politicians, actors, singers, priests, car salesmen, college professors, newspaper reporters, rich people, poor people, anyone, in fact, who wasn’t part of his family. Not that we held an exalted place in his estimation.

One day he demanded we all convene at his house. He had an announcement to make. We gathered around the kitchen table. He sat down and began: “I have something to say.” He paused for effect, looking around the table. “The Glabs,” he continued, “are shit!”

By the 90s, Daddy-o had become homebound. His physical health had deteriorated in concert with his outlook, sort of a variation the Dorian Gray story. When he died in March, 1995, I cried deeply but I was also relieved. Not so much for myself but for him.

To this day I wish that just once Daddy-o’s heart had been light enough so he could sing, like Benny Jay’s Old Man. It wouldn’t have had to be an operatic solo. Maybe just an old ditty.