A Kind, Gracious and Gentle People

I did not know what to expect when I walked into Mrs. Howard's kindergarten classroom in 1965.  School District 175, of which I was a new student, used meeting rooms at the Westview Baptist Church off of South 74th Street to hold its kindergarten.  Harmony, Emge and Ellis schools were all full and there was no room at any of the 3 school buildings for kindergarten.  So, the kindergarteners were bussed, driven, walked and taken to public school at the local Baptist Church.  At the time, I had no understanding of what Baptist was or that I attended public school in a Baptist Church.  This was way back when, before people thought attending public school in a church -- a place of God -- violated people's constitutional rights and established some sort of unacceptable establishment of an official religion.  Get over yourselves because, although I did not understand at the time, I was embarking on one of the best educational experiences that could have been had.  Anywhere.

Back then, we were just going to kindergarten in a room that was our classroom -- with cut-out silhouettes made by proud and smiling little 6 year olds, names scrawled in pink, for girls, and blue, for boys -- in a big building off of South 74th Street near the railroad tracks.  It was a magical time.

I was excited about kindergarten because my mom told me that going to kindergarten is how I would become "very smart -- smarter than all the other little boys and girls" and a good person.  I was ready.  I took my lessons seriously.  I wanted to beat everyone on the alphabet, on my numbers and mostly on penmanship.  Even back then, I knew my writing was good and people liked the way I wrote my letters.  Mrs. Howard always remarked how my letters were beautiful -- each letter like a little picture all by itself.

It made me proud.

There were little girls and boys in that classroom that I would forever become attached to and identified with because, back in the mid-1960's, nobody moved around and the children in your kindergarten class would be your classmates and friends -- or enemies in the case of Mike Pattinierre -- until senior year of high school.  Of course, along the way, we would be gathered into larger and larger schools -- first we would go to Harmony, then to Emge and finally, we would all end up at Belleville Township High School West.  By the time we were there, we would know each other very well.

We would know who the smart kids were, we would know who the rich kids were, we would know who the troublemakers were.  There would be no question about the Bauer twins -- they were the girls with the mahogany colored hair who ate glue at every opportunity.  Mike Pattinierre was the mean guy who was quick to anger and even beat up poor little Steven Hartland for no reason other than Steven's mom always greased back his hair and combed a part on the left side that looked like she had used a protractor.

There was Doug "Booger" Blaisdell, the smart little kid with the abnormally large cranium who picked his nose and ate the findings as often as he could, even in the classroom, even on the playground, even during gym.  No matter what was going on in the world, or in Belleville, or in class that day, I always found comfort -- and great laugh out loud delight -- in the knowledge that Booger Blaisdell had a snack with him at all times.  Everyone knew that Dwayne Waldovinter was stupid -- or if my parents were around -- slow.  He was a nice enough guy but would never get any better than a C on any homework or test or project.  My mom always said it was because his father never had a good job to make enough money to buy meat for dinner every night.  I do think that was part of the answer but, as usual, I think I only listened to the part of the explanation that was understandable to me at the time.  Still, I do wonder what grounds crew he is working on now. 

The most fun I remember in kindergarten was baby teeth falling out.  It seemed that every day at least half of the class lost a baby tooth or two.  For me, I would find one that was wiggly and I would push it back and forth with my tongue.  Then, when it got real loose, I would sneak 2 fingers into my mouth and REALLY push hard and, at the last minute, yank it out by the skinny little boy roots.  Then, I would hold it in my palm and stare at it for a while.  You see, I wanted to have more baby teeth on the Baptist window sill than anyone else.  It was a badge of honor, it was a proud moment and, to top it all off, Mrs. Howard would call my name at the end of the day to come up and get my dried up tooth from the Baptist window sill.  Then, I would slip it into a plastic bag Mrs. Howard gave as a gift -- I liked gifts back then even plastic bags -- and I would show the baby tooth off on the bus ride home.  I have never felt more important or more the center of attention than in 1965 when I was showing off my baby tooth, waving my baggie around in the bus in the faces of those around me.  It still makes me feel good just thinking about it.  For some reason, nobody ever tried to touch the bag, or steal it, or bat it out of their faces because, I think, they knew that tomorrow or the next day, the bag would be swung and proudly displayed by someone else, maybe even them.  It was a recognition that we all get our moment in the spotlight.  We were learning life lessons on the bus back then.

I also remember lying on the ground during nap time.  This was a big deal in some small part because I was never allowed to lie on the ground at home.  But here -- in Mrs. Howard's kindergarten class at the Baptist Church over off South 74th Street -- nap time was special, anticipated and always welcomed.  We all had to buy little rugs, braided out of "thrown away rags," my mom said, to lie on for nap time.  We rolled our rugs up and put them in our own little cubbies when we weren't napping.  It was exciting to me when Mrs. Howard announced it was time to go get our rugs because I knew that this was the time to whisper secretly to my friends something funny that would make them laugh -- out loud maybe -- and, if I was really lucky, I would time my pronouncement just right to make someone choke on their milk and -- oh God -- spit it through their noses.  When that happened, Mrs. Howard always got mad at them and NOT at me for making it happen.  It was perhaps the first example of quiet instigation that I knew about.  I was learning a power that would later become my favorite thing to do -- get someone else in trouble by making a joke.  Usually, of course, I would make fun of someone else in class who was not one of my friends and someone not nearby on their own little rolled up rag rugs, or, if I was particularly inspired, I would even get in a good jab at Mrs. Howard and her incredibly impressive towering inferno of a bouffant hairdo.  That almost always ensured some spitting of milk from the mouth and/or nose.  Those were delicious little moments in time for me as a 6 year old, dark Greek boy in kindergarten at the Baptist Church off of South 74th Street.

Kindergarten also was incredibly lucky for me because it introducted me to a boy would become my best friend from almost the moment I met him until we both graduated 8th grade some 8 years later.  Will Dombeck was a skinny little guy with bright anxious eyes -- his light brown hair, blond to a Greek boy, was always combed straight down toward his eyes and it actually stayed in place because his hair was absolutely positively straight, not curvy, curly, wavey and messy like mine.  He was always dressed just so -- his paisley print shirts always stayed tucked in, his pants were always the exact perfect length for his legs and his skin always looked freshly scrubbed and blemish free.  He almost always wore Chukka boots which I thought were so cool.

He was a quiet guy until you got to know him so it was almost a foregone conclusion that he and I would gravitate toward one another.  He -- quiet and perfectly groomed and coiffed -- and me -- loud talkative, always quick with slightly off-color, inappropriate jokes even at age 6.  Those jokes were usually about other unfortunate fellow students or, again if I was particularly inspired, about Mrs. Howard and her impressive bouffant hairdo, a mastery of technology, architecture and hairspray, I thought.

I was also lots different than Willy because my clothes never stayed neat and pressed all day.  You see, I was husky even way back then and my pants were always too long because they had to be to get the waist to fit.  And my mom would never let me have any Chukka boots because, even as a child, I had thick ankles and I think my mom knew that the Chukka boots that looked so cool on Willy Dombeck would only emphasize my unfortunate thick kindergarten ankles.  Bummer.

Anyway, in 1965, Willy and I were the yin and yang of Mrs. Howard's kindergarten classroom in the Westview Baptist Church over off of South 74th Street.

From kindergarten on, we were best friends.  Inseparable.  We sat next to each other in each class, we played together on the playground at recess.  Each birthday was spent at the other's house.  Saturdays he was at my house or I was at his house.  Sundays were, of course, reserved for church and family dinners -- both of us.  He was smart like me and we had a good educational rivalry going on each time a test or quiz was returned.  Lucky for me that the rivalry never got out of hand -- sometimes his grade would be higher, and sometimes my grade would be higher.  I am not even sure if he felt this tug of war over good grades but I sure know I felt it.  Other than grades, though, I never felt any rivalry with Willy, thank God.  All I felt was that I had a best friend and it made me feel good.

He was a nice guy with an easy laugh.  The best friend that little Lew Hages could ever hope for.  For the many blessings that have been bestowed upon me in life, I am very thankful for God sending me a best friend like Willy Dombeck.

His family was nice too.  His parents were way younger than my parents and I thought that was intriguing.  His father was a doctor and was skinny -- something of an anomaly in parents back then, at least to a Greek Orthodox boy who knew other adults in his world as good cooks -- men included -- and restaurant owners with bulging bellies.  Willy's beautiful mother reminded me of Jackie Kennedy with her short combed hair coming to points just on either side of her pastel painted lips.  Mrs. Dombeck -- just like her son -- had blemish free beautifully clear skin.  She was the matriarch of Belleville's own Camelot.  Most interesting of all is that she had a southern accent.  Back then, before I had been anywhere south of 74th Street, she was the most exotic creature I had ever met.  When she spoke, it was like sweet syrup slowly poured out of crystal pitcher.  I remember her as immensely cultured, kind, sweet and gentle -- when I was over at their house, she took care of me like I was her own child.  I never heard her raise her voice or speak harshly to anyone ever.  She was an affectionate and attentive parent.

Mrs. Dombeck would make Willy and me tuna salad sandwiches and wouldn't even put any sweet pickle relish in them.  She would make home-made lemonade and say that the whole pitcher was just for us.  She had me intoxicated with her southern charm and her natural beauty.  I felt so good when I was in her presence at their clean and modern house.  Also impressive was the fact that Mrs. Dombeck had a drivers license and her own car.  Back in the day when I was in elementary school and most of the adults around me were old Greek people at our church, very few of the women had drivers licenses.  Only the men drove.  The women stayed at home.  So, I loved Mrs. Dombeck because of her beauty, her charm, her southern accent and gentility but I idolized her because she had her own car.

Back then, I was a mama's boy and never wanted to be away from my mom for very long but it was okay when I was at Willy's house because Mrs. Dombeck was like a newer version of my own mom.  Rather than being afraid of being away from my own mom, I looked forward to being at Willy's house and putting together model airplanes from World War II or riding bikes and pretending that they were a Buick Riviera or a Pontiac GTO.  Mrs. Dombeck would drive over to my house -- all of 10 minutes away -- and whisk me back to the Dombeck house where I always felt welcomed and special.

Willy and I would spend hours and hours together, playing, reading, watching TV (only at night according to Mrs. Dombeck), messing around and, mostly, trying to sneak over to ShopLand to get a hamburger or french fries (we really only talked about this -- we would never have disobeyed our mothers).  We were the kind of best friends that Ron Howard makes "coming of age" movies about.  Two very different little boys who complimented each other and were intensely devoted to each other.  That was Willy Dombeck and Lew James Hages.

So, for 8 long years, he and I were fast friends and confidants.  It seemed like a lifetime together and I am quite sure, even now at age 52, that I developed much of my confidence, personal satisfaction and mental health because I was blessed with such a good friend.  There are lots of other reasons, of course, but having a best friend when you are -- well, let's just say, unique -- is a big advantage.

I did not realize it at the time, but I was heartbroken when his parents -- his beautiful Jackie O-like mother and his trim, well educated father -- decided to send Willy to Althoff Catholic High School in Belleville.  Why would they do that?  How could they break us up?  Why were they sending him to that new barren school on Main Street with the ugly red and blue shiny panels underneath the windows?  And, mostly, what was a Catholic?  I knew that they went to a Catholic church on Sundays but I really did not know that their church was different than mine -- I guess I thought that "Catholic" was just a different word for Greek Orthodox.  If only it was.

Of course, I had other great friends over the years after Willy; just like I am sure he did too.  But, I am immensely greatful for the friendship and comfort that he gave me -- that his mother and father gave me.  I have thought of Willy and his parents often with fondness, warmth and innocence.

He was a good person and his family was the best.  Even after all those years and the great distance of time, college and law school -- when my mother died in 1988 -- which was an unimaginable shock and the true end of my own innocence -- and my father died in 1993 -- another heartbreaking jolt to my world -- Willy and his parents were among the teary-eyed and loving faces at their funerals.  They had come to give their respects to my parents and to comfort me in my loss, not because we had just had dinner with them a few nights ago or had ever gone to the Ozarks with them on vacation, but in recognition of a time gone by, of a friendship that transcended the years apart and of a bond that remained strong and pure and wholesome.  It meant so much to me that they noticed the obituaries and respected our friendship by attending.  It was a testimony to these fine people and it further memorialized my affection and respect for Willy and the Dombecks.

That is why I was heartbroken to hear that Willy's younger brother John had passed away last week.  He was only 2 years younger than Willy and me but, of course, when you are 6 or 9 or 12 it seems like a lifetime of difference.  He looked alot like Willy only his hair was slightly darker -- still almost blond to a Greek boy.  He always wore Chukka boots too.  I remember him following us around, trying to do the things we were doing, riding bikes or playing elk in the backyard with big sticks that had fallen from their big trees.  He could never keep up and, to be honest, we never paid him much attention.  But, in my heart of hearts, I am sure that he was as nice as Willy was.  As nice as his great parents were and are.  I know that Dr. Dombeck passed away in November of 2008 and I am sure that his loss is still felt deeply.  I too share the pain of losing family members so close together.

I am saddened to see any young life snuffed out before it runs its natural course.  But, I also hate to think that this wonderful, warm and devout family is suffering the heartbreak of such a loss.  To be sure, death is as as much a part of life as birth and illness and joy and sadness.  But, I ache to see it like this, so close to home, so close to such fine people. 

How I wish that Willy could be as happy and carefree as he was when we first met in kindergarten in Mrs. Howard's classroom at the Westview Baptist Church over off South 74th Street -- wearing Chukka boots and somehow keeping his paisley shirt always tucked in perfectly.  How I wish that every day could be as happy and proud as the day he held his first baby tooth in a baggy, swinging it around in the back of the yellow school bus in front of my face.  How I pray that he and his mother are comforted by the faith that was such a part of their lives and that teaches us that both Dr. Dombeck and John are in a better place, where there is no pain, no suffering and no evil.  And how I hope that their family, their friends, their loved ones -- those that they have undoubtedly touched over the years -- will help to ease the pain they must now be feeling.

This is my plea for a kind, gracious and gentle people who I knew in a place long ago and far away.

Jayden is my boyfriend

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

We have here the shells -- the nuts are gone

Tom Thanos was a gentleman.  In fact, he is the most gentlemanly gentleman I have ever met even up to today.  To me, as a kid, he was like an angel -- polite to a fault, always smiling, very clean, smelled good and all white.  His skin was white, his teeth were white, his eyebrows were white, his hair was white, his socks were white, his shirts were white plus he wore snow white undershirts so he almost glowed -- kind of like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer only Tom Thanos didn't drag Santa Claus around at Christmas because Tom Thanos was Greek and he owned a hat shop in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Everyone in my family always called Tom Thanos -- "Tom Thanos."  Never Thomas or Tom or Tommy or Thanassi (his Greek name) or even Mr. Thanos.  It was like "Tom Thanos was not at church today, is he sick?" or "did you ask Tom Thanos to come up for Easter?" or "has Tom Thanos said anything about the Apollo moon landing?"  I don't know why this was because he was the only Tom any of us knew.  But, that is that -- he was Tom Thanos.

His wife had been dead for years.  I never met her but whenever my father would mention Tom Thanos's wife, Tom Thanos's face would droop and his gaze would move far off, somewhere at the back of the room, not on my mom's excellent pastitsio on his plate or the baklava in his hand.  She must have been a wonderful woman because they were married for years, many years, at least twice as long as I had been alive at that point and anyone who would marry and be loved by Tom Thanos had to be an extraordinary woman.  Whenever anyone mentioned his wife, Tom Thanos always said the same thing -- "I wish God had taken me and left her here.  I don't want to be without her." 

And that is all I ever remember him saying.

Really, to be honest, I don't specifically remember him saying anything else.  Ever.  I don't remember him saying how nice my hair looked -- although it really did back then -- I don't remember him asking me how school was going -- although I would have been anxious to talk about that -- I don't remember him asking me how important I must have been to be Senior Class President -- very important -- or how talented I was to get all the leads in the plays at school -- extremely important.

If I focus on him seriously, I know he must have engaged me in some polite conversation like that -- he was, after all, always so polite about everything.  For example, although I have no specific memory of him thanking my mom for her delicious food -- packages neatly covered in plastic wrap for his ride home -- I am certain he did.  First, he was a nice guy and would never have ignored my mother's hospitality and good care of him.  Second, I cannot imagine that my parents would have continued to invite him to our house if he had been inconsiderate.  I am sure he would have thanked my father for always including him in holidays.  But, the only specific memory I have of Tom Thanos's voice is when he spoke about his wife.  And how badly he missed her.

I don't know how Tom Thanos ended up at our house every holiday -- Christmas, Greek Easter, Greek Independence Day, Dad's Name Day celebrations -- was he just a close family friend?  But how?  He was lots older than my parents.  Maybe he was a friend of my papou's or maybe my father wanted to be prepared in case hats ever came back into fashion.  Or maybe he was just a Greek man alone, living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment over his hat shop in East St. Louis, Illinois.  Knowing my father and mother as I do, I am certain that they would have never wanted him to spend holidays alone.  And, because of Jimmy and Stella, he never did.

Addressing Tom Thanos was always a dilemma for me.  I knew that I couldn't call him Tom Thanos to his face -- like all of us did when he was not around -- because that would be mean.  But I knew I couldn't call him Tom because he was so old, way my senior and I had always been taught to call old people Mr. or Mrs.  But I felt funny calling him Mr. Thanos because he was around so much and because he was such a close family friend.  But, mostly, because I was afraid calling him Mr. Thanos would remind him that once he had been married and that now his wife -- Mrs. Thanos -- was dead and gone.  It made me feel bad to think that calling him Mr. Thanos would remind him of all that so I just didn't.  Mostly, I did not call him anything.  I just passed him the keftethes (Greek meatballs) or the spanakopita (spinach pie) or the galaktobouroko (dessert based on semolina baked custard) or the baklava (no translation necessary for this Greek "food of the Gods").  While I don't remember this specifically, I am sure he always said something like "thank you, Louie" which irritated my mom -- this is the part that I actually remember -- because she specifically did NOT want anyone calling me that.  It reminded her of my papou and that was a no-no.  She liked my papou well enough but she just didn't want him and his old world ways tainting her only son, her bet on the future, that way.  Papou was her one foot in the old country; I was her progress into a successful and prestigious tomorrow.

To me, back then as a teenager, I had other things on my mind.  Running for president of the Senior Class or trying out for the King and I or working on the next edition of Hy News -- I was one of the tri-editors -- or planning the next German Club meeting -- I was elected president my Junior year and, within 3 months, had more than doubled membership by instituting a dance -- the polka -- at the end of each meeting.  "Ausgezeichnet" said Frau Oehlrich, the German Club sponsor.  Who said German Club was only for losers!  Anyway, you see, I was a busy and modern American boy, not an old Greek white angel like polite Tom Thanos. All that high school stuff was infinitely more fascinating to me than a really nice, polite old Greek man with whom I had shared every Thanksgiving and other holidays since I could remember.

Did I mention that he owned a hat shop?  Really -- a hat shop? A men's hat shop?  In the 70's?  In dangerous, nasty, dirty, old East St. Louis where the only headwear should be military combat helmets?  To be honest, I had never even been inside a hat shop -- ANY hat shop, even Tom Thanos's hat shop. Who even wore hats anymore?  The only hats I ever met in person were lady's hats, hidden away in my mom's closet on the very tippy top shelf, each feathery and fur covered piece of femininity and elegance -- and history -- piled one on top of the other waiting for the next cotillion that would never come. Other than my mom's hats -- which I only wore when I was feeling sassy and nobody was home -- a rare event -- I had never really seen a real life hat in person.  I had only seen pictures of Papou and Uncle Andy, in the old days at church functions, wearing hats, cigarettes dangling from their thick old world lips, a glass of Ouzo or Metaxa on the table next to them. Hats were old fashioned, hats were uncool, hats were I Love Lucy sorts of things, to be looked at in pictures or in movies or on TV and to wonder what it was like before air conditioning, the Pointer Sisters and microwaves. Nobody I knew in 1976, except for Tom Thanos, ever wore a hat. Ever.

So, this hat thing, the hat shop and the really shiny black hat with 2 or 3 small feathers tucked into the side that Tom Thanos wore all the time -- along with his age -- really put him into the category of "irrelevant but a nice guy."  I knew Tom Thanos would be there for lamb at Greek Easter and ribs at the 4th of July and I would get to touch his hat when I put it away in the front closet when he first arrived.  The hat felt substantial, surprisingly, like it had a really strong, firm and important undercarriage, covered by fancy material and silk lining.  It was, in fact, an impressive piece of millinery.  But, beyond that, really, what did he matter to me?  After all, he could not cast a vote for me when I ran for Senior Class President and, try as I might, he would never dance the polka with me after a thrilling German Club meeting.

What a shame -- for me.  I walled Tom Thanos off because I never thought that he could do anything for me.  Where did I learn that from?  Not from my parents.  From today's vantage point -- never having made a good effort to get to know Tom Thanos -- all I know about him is that he loved his wife and missed her desperately, he owned a hat shop which was a losing proposition in East St. Louis or, really, anywhere.  If I dig deeper, I also knew that he was a nice, polite, friendly, elegant -- and lonely -- man.  His presence at our dinner table was, looking back, welcomed and positive.  Bravo to him for his kindness and bravo to my parents for their hospitality and their wisdom.

If Tom Thanos was a gentleman who was nice and elegant and lonely, one of the other members of my family's rag tag group of weirdos was Aunt Sophie.  She was old and, when I say old, I mean OLD.  Like dirt.  Think of an old joke and you will find her picture there, blank cataracted-up eyes staring off in 2 different directions, neither one of which is at the camera.  Neuralgia?  Had it.  Dementia?  Check.  Irritable bowels.  Oh  yes.  Hardening of the arteries?  That too.  COPD?  Ha, got ya, not invented yet!

Anyway, Aunt Sophie was -- well -- yes, old but she was not unpleasant or mean or smelly.  She was just what was called back then a "weird bird."  She kind of looked like one too -- a cross between an owl and a flamingo only she wasn't pink.  I might call her the un-Tom Thanos although this is not to say that she was impolite.

I don't know why this piece of flotsam and jetsam ended up at 229 Sunset Drive either but she was there for every holiday too -- every special dinner, birthday celebration and when the electricity went out at the East St. Louis National Stockyards Hotel where she lived and had lived for the better part of 50 years.  You see, this woman was OLD.  At the time, she was the oldest person I had ever known.  In fact, she was so old that she would not tell anyone -- even my mother with whom she spent most of her time when she was at our house -- how old she was.  You could tell she was old by the fact that she was covered by liver spots, walked with halting movements and hands outstretched to catch the walls in case she started to fall and talked about things she actually remembered like the St. Louis World Fair of 1904.  Seriously.  Can you believe it???  Tell me that doesn't catch your attention when you're only 17 years old!

She was tall, monotone gray in color and skinny, skinny, skinny in my world of short, thick, dark people with Pillsbury doughboy bodies.  Her hair -- the hair that she had left -- was gray and so thin it was plastered to her head in little ringlets and circles.  She usually left the bobby pins in her hair to make sure the ringlets and circles stayed in place.  After she left our house after each holiday, we would find random bobby pins on the floor, at the dining room table and in the leftovers.  "Just pick them out" my mom would say when I complained.  Bobby pins in my food?  I didn't like it one bit.

Her skin was translucent, almost see-through -- and looked fragile -- like parchment paper.  You could see all kinds of things through and on her skin.  Moles, veins, ligaments, her kidneys.  She was like a see-through human being plucked down in a house full of olive skinned weebles who never fell down.  She was a living, breathing "BODIES" exhibit before one ever toured and sold tickets.

Suffice it to say that when Aunt Sophie was at our house, she stood out like a sore thumb -- think Margaret Hamilton as Elvira Gulch and NOT as the Wicked Witch of the West --  in a household of hairy Greek Munchkins.  Her voice was soft and wispy, weak from too many years of breathing and Newport smokes.  In fact, I could always recognize her from the wheezing sound of her faint voice -- her conversations sounded like someone squeezing the air out of a paper bag.

To be honest, Aunt Sophie wasn't even really my aunt.  I knew that because she was skinny but she had been married to Uncle Nick -- himself not even my uncle but just my papou's best friend -- for years.  When Uncle Nick died, we got possession of Aunt Sophie like she was old cedar lined trunk.  She was not even Greek which seemed, back then, a little bit naughty in my world.  None of the married adults I knew were from different places -- Mom and Dad were both Greek, Thela and Uncle Andy were both Greek, Vi and Gus were both Greek, Kles and Mary were Greek hell, even George and Athene were both Greek although Athene was from St. .Louis which made her suspect in my book.

Nobody mentioned it much but I considered Aunt Sophie and Uncle Nick to be the first mixed marriage in America.  They were blazing a new trail, rebels.  They were kind of like the Wallis Simpson and Prince Edward, the Duke of Windsor, of Southern Illinois only they didn't have any money, fame, looks or sophistication.  I mean, really, would Wallis Simpson have lived in the East St. Louis National Stockyards Hotel?  To be honest, Aunt Sophie looked a little like Wallis Simpson too.  She had kept her skinny little shape well into her 90's and always dressed pretty good, old, but good.  Everything matched.  She wore those black old lady shoes that laced up the front and looked like orthopedic shoes but weren't.  Her dresses smelled like moth balls and all of them had little prints on them like bowties or bridesmaid bouquets.  She wore cat eye glasses with gemstones in them.  She was a walking, talking, wheezing page out of a sartorial history book.

I never understood how someone could live in a hotel, much less the East St. Louis National Stockyards Hotel.  As far as I knew, the stockyards had all closed down years before and the hotel had nobody living there except for Aunt Sophie.  I suppose it could be true that, looking back, she was some sort of sad but high class hooker for down-on-their-luck weirdos with skinny granny fetishes.  But, alas, I was too young to ask the right questions back then.  If only.

One Greek Easter, Aunt Sophie was over, sitting in the back room quietly watching TV -- she was blind as a bat so "watching TV" is mostly a misnomer -- she was listening to TV.  The rest of us were scurrying around the house, doing our things, preparing the food, nibbling the food, plating the food, tasting the food, setting the table and taking care of a million other arrangements like mixing drinks -- all the men drank high balls back then -- really?  High balls?  What closeted alchy came up with that drink name?  Anyway, all of us, even the girls, were doing things like hiding the blood red Easter eggs for the hunt later on, and making sure the old people -- basically Tom Thanos and Aunt Sophie -- didn't fall and break a hip or catch a hemorrhagic disease on our watch.  This was important stuff here.

One of my mother's millions of chores was to look in on Aunt Sophie from time to time to make sure her drink was full and that she was still breathing.  Hey, why set another place at the table if it wasn't needed?  Anyway, on the 14th or 15th check, my mom looked in on her and noticed that she was a bit rumpled and dissheveled.  In particular, Aunt Sophie's stockings must have come loose from those old fashioned garters she still wore for special occasions.  Her stockings had fallen and were all gathered around her ankles.  "Sophie," my mom yelled because Aunt Sophie was nearly deaf, " pull your stockings up, honey, they're drooping and all wrinkled around your ankles."

"Stella, I'm not wearing any stockings" came Aunt Sophie's immediate reply without surprise or embarrassment.

Well, okay then.

Let me tell you about Aunt Sophie's beloved right cheek -- the one on her face, you sickos.  Apparently, at some point in the early 70's, Aunt Sophie had had some sort of operation -- she had seen a doctor, gone to the hospital, had anesthesia and everything.  I remember it because Aunst Sophie asked my mother to take a brown paper bag full of her underwear to our house so nobody would look at it in the hospital.  Well, you know I looked at it and nearly went blind.  Anyway -- back to the operation.  Aunt Sophie had some sort of gland removed from the right side of her face, where her right cheek turned into her wrinkled blotchy neck.  I don't know if they were lymph nodes or salivary glands or whatever -- suffice it to say that they were sub-lingual or sub-mandibular glands of some sort -- total old lady sort of surgery.  You could see the scar along her jaw line if the lights were bright or when she was in the sunshine which wasn't very often.  Thank God.

Anyway, ever since she she had that operation to remove the unidentified sub-mandibular gland, she leaked a little when she ate.  Yes, you heard me -- Aunt Sophie leaked.  Saliva would be generated somewhere deep inside, make its journey through her little old lady body and end up oozing through her transparent skin just below her right ear.  Never, before or since, have I hever heard of such a malady.

I am certain this must have caused her some alarm or at least distress but, to me, it was incredibly fascinating to the point of obsession.  This was especially true because the only times I saw her were holidays when we were eating -- and not just a little bit either -- and eating made the gland-less cheek on her right side leak like a son of a bitch.  At my mom's house, if you -- or Aunt Sophie -- were there for a meal like Greek Easter or Thanksgiving, you were going to be eating lots and lots of food for many hours.  Think Greek Easter ceremony that starts at 10 pm on Saturday night and isn't over until 2 or 3 Sunday morning.

Our family feasts could often start at 2 in the afternoon and not end until late, say 10 in the evening. Not that we would be eating non-stop for 8 hours, that would be sick.  But we would have course after course, plate after plate, of food.  So much food that the tables couldn't handle it all -- plates and bowls of food were stacked up on the buffet, on the planter box, everywhere.  First there would be salads -- regular lettuce American salads, but also pasta salads and Greek salads of tomatoes, green peppers, onions, feta cheese and cucumbers.  Home made breads of all thicknesses and colors.  Then the soup usually avgolemono soup which is basically chicken rice soup flavored with thick egg sauce and lemon juice, a staple in Greek households.  Plain macaroni and cheese for Barry.  After that, the feeding crescendoed into a frenzy.  If it was Greek Easter, there was of course the lamb that had been -- if the weather was good -- roasted on a spit in the backyard for hours.  Along with the lamb, there would be manestra cooked for hours with tomato sauce and cheese and onions -- oh my God so good -- and roasted potatoes smelling of oregano and lemons.  Cauliflower with olive oil and lemon.  Pastitsio with cinnamon and allspice.  Spinach pie.  Potato Salad because, you see, my family was addicted to potato salad.  The desserts would come later and would sit on the table for hours being passed from person to person.  The rest of us would just sit and talk and laugh and enjoy the good times.

In the midst of it all was Aunt Sophie.  Leaking up a storm on her pencil thin neck.  Leaking like a motherfucker (this one's for you, Lisa).  Aunt Sophie wouldn't say much at the table.  Her slow plodding methodic old person movements to cut the food and deliver it to her over lipsticked mouth were about all she could handle, multi-tasking with a napkin to stem the flow of her gland-less existence.

As she ate, her missing gland would leap into action, secreting saliva not just inside her mouth, but right through her god damn cheek to the outside of her fucking face.  Every so often, her skinny fencepost-long left arm with the veiny left hand would grab a napkin and proceed -- ever so slowly -- up to the right side of her gray sagging face to wipe up the accumulation of seeping lamb-flavored saliva.  I couldn't take my eye off it.  My other eye was on the one neat fork that my sister and I always fought over.  The neat fork was the one modern looking utensil my mom had in her collection of scrolly, old fashioned silverwear.  I would usually snag it early in the day and lick it, tine by tine, up to the handle so my sister Sharon couldn't lay claim to it.  Ha ha ha VICTORY was mine!!!  But, sometimes, Sharon would grab it from me when I wasn't paying attention, wash it quickly, tine by tine, up to the handle and then use it herself.  So I had to keep one eye on the neat fork.

Anyway, sometimes Aunt Sophie would be too involved in the food or the conversation to notice how quickly her right cheek was oozing and the saliva would accumulate and drip down her neck onto the collar of her blouse or -- oh God -- if I was lucky -- onto the bodice, yes, bodice, of her blouse or dress.  If that happened -- look out -- she would have to squirrel the veiny see-through left hand underneath her blouse -- yes, underneath -- in order to dry herself off.  In order to dry her girls off.  Right in the middle of my family's Easter meal and when that happened I could sometimes catch a glimpse or a sideways view of her old lady brassiere!  In spite of all the food, all the activity, all the love I remember at all these holiday dinners, Aunt Sophie and her leaking face was the highlight, the star of the show.  A holiday dinner, fun in and of itself because of all my family being there, became a wicked little medico-porno show when Aunt Sophie was around. 

By the end of Greek Easter or Thanksgiving, Aunt Sophie would have gone through an entire pile of napkins.  Mom always gave her paper napkins because it was easier for Aunt Sophie to sop up the oozing oregano-flavored saliva with them.  Sharon, Jeri and I always fought over who had to clean up the paper napkins on the floor, wet and heavy with the baklava-flavored saliva that had dripped through Aunt Sophie's right cheek, down her wrinkled neck and -- if I was lucky -- onto her old lady boobies.  Usually, my dad just got tired of our fighting and he picked up her napkins himself with his bare hands.  What a stud.  If I had to pick up the Aunt Sophie napkins, my mother always warned me to wash my hands thoroughly afterward.  I think she thought Aunt Sophie's saliva, if it got into my system, could make me lose a gland from my right cheek too and she did not want that to happen.

Because of her wrinkled see-through skin and her leaky chin, Aunt Sophie became more of a cartoon character to me than a real person and I certainly did not consider her my real aunt like Thela.  Again, I say to myself now, what a shame that I never got to know her, really know her, and hear the stories she must have had from living in the 1800's to having her house in the East St. Louis National Stockyards Hotel to actually having attended the St. Louis World Fair in 1904.  Damn those droopy, saggy ankles and her oozing, leaky, glandless right cheek.

Tom Thanos and Aunt Sophie were not the only people my parents gathered for our family dinners but they are among the most memorable.  All of them together created a collection of characters, history and yes love that I took advantage of but did not learn enough from.  My parents and immediate family were enough to make me what I am today.  But I can only imagine how different, richer, patient I would be today if I had allowed this menagerie of people to be included in my own personal lessons of living.

I know that Tom Thanos and Aunt Sophie went to heaven years ago.  At the pearly gates, when they were asked about their lives, I am certain that they mentioned dinners at Jimmy and Stella's house and how good they felt there -- how good my parents made them feel -- being included in the fun and the conversation and the noise and the hub-bub.  I am also certain that they do not mention me, Lew, because -- for whatever reason -- I was just not able at that time to invest in them, to pay attention to them.  Back then, I thought that my parents were crazy to invite these crazy old people into our home.  I thought that these old people were just nuts, crazies and cast-offs, abandoned by the world for some reason I did not know and did not care to know.  Maybe I was really worried that there wouldn't be enough food for me or Stephanie or Dad.  Yeh, like that could happen in my mom's Greek kitchen for the stars.  Maybe I feared that someone would listen to these nuts when they should be listening to me.  To be completely honest, I worried mostly that I would have to sit next to one of them and I would have nothing to say.  I thought they were boring, had nothing to add, their time in the world had passed by.  I couldn't have been further from the truth.

I hope that I have learned the lessons now that I did not learn then.  Old people, hat sellers and, yes, even oozing leaking skinny ancient widows with wrinkled ankles can be every bit as interesting as Senior Class Presidents, high school newspaper editors or the King of Siam.  Refreshing to know that, isn't it?

I vant to suck your blood -- and other strange shit

I love the color and the texture of blood.  I always have and, in spite of everything, I suspect I always will.  I am very lucky that my new gig as Jerry's "Gal Friday" let's me see lots and lots of it!

There is something so pure, so intense about the color of blood and something so smooth, mysterious and voluptuous about its texture.  As you might have heard, blood is thicker than water -- it is ribbony and smooth like Bailey's Irish Cream in a TV commercial.  It swirls and moves with deliberation and slowness.  It has a dense quality not unlike slurry.

Blood is almost like a veloute -- one of the mother sauces of French cuisine -- a word derived from the adjectival form of the French language word "velour" which means velvety.  Okay, so it's not from the Greek but that is exactly what blood looks like to me.  Velour.  Soft, warm, thick and French -- doesn't get much sexier than that, now does it?

Blood.

Velvety.

Voluptuous.

Sensuous.

Forbidden.

I suppose that this is one of the reasons why vampire movies always have undertones of passion and sex.  I mean, there is the obvious relationship between the vampire, traditionally a man -- sometimes known as the biter -- and the defenseless, frail, virtuous woman waiting to get sucked and bitten -- sometimes known as the bitee.

I remember as a kid watching Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula bite Helen Chandler as Mina in the 1931 movie version of Dracula.  I was too young to know what sex was then but I sure knew she was liking it.  A lot.

"Doesn't that hurt her" I asked my mom.  No response.  "Why doesn't she hold up her cross to make him go away?" I asked, hoping that the cross around my neck held such secret power.  Again, no response -- I think my mom was getting into it as much as Helen, the bitee, was.  The look on Helen's face was not pain, or fear, or anguish at being turned into an un-dead which I thought should -- at the very least -- hurt a little bit.  That look was something else that I just couldn't quite put my finger on.

But the bite of Count Dracula and his drinking Helen's blood also made her one of them -- bad with a capital B-A-D, without a soul and with no hope of ever going to heaven.  That's pretty much as bad as it gets, right?

Wasn't the whole vampire thing -- the sucking of blood -- something that you were supposed to fight, resist, confront with science and religion and garlic and shun -- just like the passive -- even though, as you try, you know that it feels so good, is so seductive, bewitching and captivating, that you are helpless to its attraction?  I think I felt the same thing in the 8th grade when little Timmy Staley kept asking me to go down to his bedroom in the basement.  Believe me, no amount of garlic was stopping that either.

But enough about me.  During Bela's bite, the look on Helen Chandler's face was not pain, or fear, or agony.  It was ecstasy, passion, love.  I knew it then even though those words were as foreign to me as a young boy as the words diet, "no more wings, thank you" and tight abs are now.  That look between the 2 of them suggested -- as far as the MPPDA Hays Code would let them -- that they would need a cigarette, you know, afterward.

And, after the act -- the bite -- two little tracks of her blood trailing down that long yet firm beautiful white neck, the look on Bela Lugosi's face was the same -- but with just a touch of hunger and embarrassment.  He did, after all, miss a drop or two, didn't he?  Oh sure, you can say it was for the camera, the cinematography -- the shot -- but, in the final analysis, he failed.  He didn't get it all and now she was dirty.  He was not able to suck it all and keep that precious life-giving blood in his mouth.  He spilled some and, when he did, he knew that in a moment or 2, it would stain her lovely gown with the white fur collar.  Stained forever because you know you can't wash blood out of fur collars -- especially back then before Tide with Acti-Lift Liquid Detergent was available.  Dracula didn't want to be responsible for that shit -- he just wanted to suck her blood, stamp her V card and move on.  Maybe Bela himself knew little Timmy Staley.  He was fussy and overly concerned about his appearance -- plus he never went out until really really late.  I think that Count Dracula might be gay, what do you think?  With a name like Bela you never know.  Just a thought.

Anyway, back to blood.

In the Greek Orthodox tradition, all Easter eggs -- the very symbol of rebirth and renewal -- are dyed blood red to remind us that Jesus Christ shed his blood on the Cross to save us from our own sins.  Festive, huh?  In my happy-go-lucky church, the egg itself symbolizes the new life of the Resurrection and the enclosed, uncracked eggshell symbolizes Christ's tomb.  The fun just doesn't stop for little hairy Greek children, doesn't it?  But, wait, there's more.  The old Greeks believe that the 1st egg dyed was the "egg of the Virgin Mary" -- appetizing, right? -- and they saved that blood red egg in their ikonostasi -- basically a Greek Orthodox shrine in your parents' bedroom -- for a whole year to protect the household from the evil eye.  The egg of the Virgin Mary is only removed from the ikonostasi once the evil eye passes or when the egg smells so bad, so foul that it brings tears to your eyes and makes you gag when you're sneaking peaks in your mom's brassiere drawer (which of course I NEVER did -- if that's what you're thinking).

Suffice it to say that all of this was some heavy shit to a 10 year old with a salt shaker who just wanted to eat a hard boiled egg after 4 weeks of fasting.

Most of the religious symbolism was lost on me as a kid but I can remember staring at the big bowl full of Easter eggs -- all blood red --wet and glistening straight from being dyed in the kitchen sink.  Those eggs were beautiful just like a Christmas tree.  Because it was Easter and I was fasting, the eggs were forbidden fruit and I'm not talking Richard Simmons either.  I would stare at those shiny red shells, wishing I could eat one and squinting so that the deep red color would become richer and more intense, each individual egg turning into one huge impressive egg, ruby red, with small variations in its gem-like color.  In case you're wondering, the opening sequence to Family Affair was based on this same special effect.  I would do that for hours and hours until my mom said "for God's sake, get away from those eggs, will you!  You can't have one until after church."  I knew that.  I didn't want God to get all pissed off at me for eating an egg when I could just as easily have had some fasolakia -- Mom's meatless bean stew.

It was fascinating to me that something so associated with a happy time -- after all, Easter in the Greek church is only a bitch until midnight on Saturday night -- could be so inextricably linked to blood and tombs and sin.  Once Easter service is over -- long around 3 in the morning -- you are with your family and friends, there are parties and music and -- most importantly -- you can and do eat so much food that you nearly pass out and fall over from the thrill of eating meat and dairy again.  But, there, in the midst of all those complications, were those eggs -- blood red and reminding me of Jesus -- trying without success to buzz kill all the fun out of me.  Those eggs never lost their fascination for me but they were -- to me at least -- a constant reminder that someone had to die so that I could have another hard boiled egg at the end of another huge lamb dinner with manestra, spanakopita, youvetsi, pasticchio and various other meat casseroles.  Looking back, I suppose it was a little bit of a buzz kill but, hey, that's the Greek Orthodox Church for you.

Another thing to consider about blood is what the whole last 30 years has done to it. 

I can remember being a kid and getting a cut.  It wasn't a bad thing assuming it was a small one and it almost always was except for the time I ran to the back door to scare my cousin Charlie and pushed my left wrist right through the glass window.  When that happened, Mom wrapped a big towel around my arm to slow the bleeding and Dad drove me to the emergency room.  I can still remember the blood squirting all over the interior of that cool 1964 green Buick Skylark convertible they had bought to make Sharon happy.  It was scary for a minute but, after the drive to the hospital, I got to eat anything I wanted for the rest of the day.

Other than that one cut -- the scar still visible on my wrist today -- most cuts were tiny and not scary at all.  A cut on the swingset might sting for a bit but it never stopped me from swinging high enough to touch the leaves on the tree.  And a gash from Dad's secret special shovel -- the one with the paint splash on the handle -- might leave a splinter of wood inside my hand but I didn't stop digging up Barnabas in the back yard.  I would just put the cut or gash up to my mouth and suck the blood a little.  It tasted so sweet, so salty and . . . well, really, so good.  It wasn't bad -- it was blood.  My blood.  I savored the taste of it and then moved on, trying to grab a leaf or dig up my old bird named, coincidentally, after another vampire, Barnabas Collins.  Maybe life does just repeat itself for me year after year.  Maybe life does just repeat itself for me year after year.  Maybe it's just me repeating myself.  I don't know.

Now, fast forward to June 5, 1981.  The US Center for Disease Control issued the first official notice of the disease that would become known as AIDS.  Putting aside the countless tragedies visited upon the world as a result of this disease and the countless lives -- both young and old -- that have been prematurely lost to its horrors, AIDS completely changed how we look at blood and there is no turning back.

Today, blood is bad. Blood is evil -- something to be feared and reviled and isolated and cleaned up with an over-abundance of bleach-like products.  There is no fudging on that rule of thumb nowadays.  It is a judgment, a curse, a danger worse than yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater.  You don't want to touch blood, you don't want to be around blood, you don't want to touch anything that ever in the last 5000 years had blood on it -- hell, you don't even want to see blood anymore, do you?  I almost feel like my own blood is a bad thing.  It's a shame really.  Just like nickel gum balls, telephone booths and clothes manufactured inside the US -- things are so different in 2011 than they were back in the day.

Just look at how different a trip to the dentist is now.

When I was a kid, going to Dr. Cahnovsky's office was fun.  I got candy -- how frigging sick is that, a dentist giving candy to his patients -- the women at the front desk always played with me and let me color in the special coloring book with the teeth and the red lips -- all with freaky smiles on them bigger than the surface of their cartoon faces and long eyelashes for some strage reason -- and then there was the cavity -- with a sad upside-down frown that I always colored black.  My mom always made sure I got a treat afterward, usually a hamburger from McDonald's which, back then, was in fact a treat.  So, a dental appointment was a fun experience putting aside the fact that Dr. Cahnovsky's belly was so big and round and heavy that he had to set it on my arm to rest it during my appointment.  I always knew that my cleaning was almost over when my right arm was completely asleep and tingling from the constant weight of his big bo-belly up against me.  Do that today and your mother calls the cops but, again, this was a different time.  Dr. Cahnovsky was a very nice guy, but he was also a big hairy Polack with a huge buffalo butt and he must have had a cholesterol count that was through the fucking roof, you know what I mean?

Compare the dental fun and games of my youth to a dental appointment today.

Everyone is gloved up, latex covers every square inch of skin, face, arm and skin.  Most dentists now -- even the female dentists -- wear condoms at all appointments, you know, just in case.  Gauzy see-through gowns -- seemingly made of marshmallow but somehow impenetrable to the evils of blood -- cover their dental clothing and their nasty nether regions.  Big goofy looking safety goggles are strapped to their heads lest your blood spontaneously squirt out of your mouth, nose and/or eyes and into their mouth, nose and/or eyes.  And on top of the goggles are the big plastic safety shield -- full face masks really -- kind of like the one Jennifer Beals wore in Flashdance when she was welding at her day job, sparks flying for another perfect example of dangerous cinematography.

But no longer is a trip to your family dentist a fun afternoon affair where you can declare "what a feeling!"  Instead of looking forward to a bright smile, smooth teeth enamel and a free toothbrush -- a dental appointment is now an exercise in the avoidance of infectious organic material communication.  Every surface is wiped down -- yours as well as the operatory's -- to make sure that your dirty stuff doesn't rub off on the poor schmuck who has to lie his ass in the reclining chaise of death next.  And don't even make me go into the Sisyphusian arrangements for separate water, waste and disposal systems.  It's like building the pyramids except without 50,000 Hebrews to do all the work.  Do I have a 9 o'clock cleaning or am I in a bad Clockwork Orange wet dream?  You tell me!

So, bottom line, blood is now bad but, for the life of me, I still can't get the image of beautiful, velvety -- like veloute -- warm and seductive blood out of my system -- as a GOOD thing.  I am that modern day Helen Chandler, waiting, wanting and all tingly for a bloody nibble or two.  My blood means life.  My blood means eggs and the Virgin Mary and Jesus.  My blood means Bela Lugosi will sidle up to me after dinner and drinks and give me a two pronged adult hickey that will leave me breathless and sated and, if I'm lucky, maybe a cigarette after it's all over.  All that PLUS I get a castle in Europe and live forever!  Wow, I could even get to see what the new Audis will look like in the year 3000!  The year 3000?  Hell, before my vampire bite, I would have been happy just living long enough to see the next season of Glee.

Okay, I obviously do not want to be one of the un-dead but I do wish that I could come out of the closet about my love of, and my fascination and obsession with, blood.  And, to be honest, I do kinda wish I could see what the new Audis will look like in the year 3000.

But, more realistically, I would just like to be able to safely stand at the counter in Jerry's operatory while he's extracting a particularly difficult tooth from Tumba Melnik's spread eagle mouth, writing up the diagnostic procedure in her thick and well documented chart, without having to hold my breath in a vain attempt to avoid the inevitable spray of dear Tumba's dirty, perhaps diseased, Hungarian blood.  No longer do I want to neurotically wash my hands until my skin chaps, chafes, cracks and peels after I clean up from sup-epithelial connective tissue graft surgery.  And, to be brutally honest, I would like to have sex just one more time before I die and NOT have to worry about somebody's tainted bad-ass nuclear blood interfering with me trying to get my groove on.  Is that too much to ask???  Believe me, at age 52, it's just too hard to do that while -- simultaneously -- pulling my jiggling muffin top tight, sucking my stomach in and making sure my Johnson is in the required state of necessary happiness.