Sliding Home Feet First

By Diann Russell

Sliding Home Feet First is the story of Patrick O’Donnell, a young man growing up in Chicago during the 1960s. Patrick finds himself struggling to reconcile his traditional upbringing with a culture that has rejected the past. But his experiences help him discover a balance between the chaotic world in which he lives and the home and family whom he loves.

Sliding Home Feet First is baseball, rock ‘n roll, political protest, free love, and a grandmother who has taken up boxing at the Y. It is a story of an American family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diann Russell
• Release date: May 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301643127

Diann Russell

Diann Russell holds an MFA in Playwriting from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. She is the owner of the conservative website PatriotRetort.com. Diann's agitprop Photoshop images have appeared not only at PatriotRetort.com, but also American Thinker and National Review Online. She is a social media content contributor to Red Nation Rising. She lives in Central New York with her pitbull Mary of Bethany, her cats (don't mock) Buffy and Willow, and her Mossberg 12g.

Book preview

Sliding Home Feet First

Diann Russell

Copyright 2013 Diann Russell

Smashwords Edition

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RANT: Politics & Snark in the Age of Obama (nonfiction)

Under the Cloud

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Table of Contents

1. The Strike-Out Kid

2. Goodbye Mr. Spaulding

3. Pinch-Hitting for Darla

4. Coaching From Third

5. Free Agency

6. Jackie Robinson Joins the Majors

7. The Boys of Summer

8. Standing at the Plate

9. Life Changes in Wrigleyville

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1. The Strike-Out Kid

I was sixteen the first time I contemplated murder. That probably happens to everyone else at a much earlier age. What took me so long? I imagine that when Jesus prayed at Gethsemane, when he begged God to take this cup from him, somewhere deep inside even him was the burning, overwhelming urge to friggin’ kill his old man. And he was thirty-three. So maybe sixteen wasn’t so bad. My father was my hero. Every boy who idolizes his father balances on that thin line between reverence and loathing. Why should I have been any different?

It started the night the Beatles played Sullivan. The Ed Sullivan Show had been as much a part of our Sunday routine as Mass at Saint Tom’s. A light supper, dessert, then Ma would pour coffee for her, Gran and Pop. I would grab Coca-Colas for me and my sisters. Then out to the living room we would go – Pop in his easy chair, Mom in her Queen Anne with her knitting, Gran sitting on the sofa beside Besse Anne while Darla and I flopped onto the floor in front of the TV. On this particular Sunday, our ritual was no different. But Ed’s musical guest was.

~~~

The screaming started before Ed had managed to get out their name. Darla, a sucker for a pretty face, clutched a throw pillow to her chest and swooned for Paul. Bess Anne sat staring at Darla’s moony expression and then glanced at my Grandmother as if to say, what’s with her? My father grunted his disgust. By 1964, Ed had featured a lot of rock and roll bands and my father grunted every time they played. My mother didn’t appreciate rock and roll either, but she tolerated it. Occasionally, in spite of herself, I would see Ma tapping her foot in rhythm to the music that crept from Darla’s bedroom. Now, watching the Beatles, Ma kept her face passive, only glancing up from her knitting long enough to frown at the screaming girls.

Once the music started, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the TV. I had heard of the Beatles, but didn’t care one way or the other about their music. That night on Sullivan, the music was the last thing I noticed. They could have been playing Mary Had a Little Lamb and I still would have been mesmerized. It was the screaming girls. The camera panned over the audience. Look at them, I thought. Look at how they’re yelling. Paul! Paul! I could see one girl’s lips form the word. Not that anyone on earth could have heard her over the din. Another girl looked on the verge of fainting right on the spot. I’d never seen anything like it. It made the girls who screamed over Elvis look half-hearted in their devotion. This was cool. Definitely cool.

Damned long hairs, Pop said from his place in the easy chair. This racket isn’t music. Give my Bing Crosby, Jerry Vale. Hell, I’d even take that wop Sinatra over this garbage. Darla sighed heavily, trying to tune our father out. Fly me to the moon, my father started singing. Now there’s a song! There’s real music!

Daddy! Darla wailed. I can’t hear!

Hear? How can you hear anything?

Oh, for crying in the tearoom, my Grandmother said with a sigh. Can’t those girls get control of themselves?

I could tell Darla wanted to say something – to defend the honor of Paul at the very least. Instead, she sat chewing on her bottom lip, cupping her hands to her ears to hear even better.

The boy in the middle is handsome, Mom pointed out. I mean, if he’d cut his silly hair.

That’s George, Darla pointed out, already a fount of knowledge when it came to the Beatles.

I can’t tell which one’s which. Gran added.

He’s the quiet one, Darla added as though that one piece of minutia would help our Grandmother distinguish one mop-haired guy from the other.

Quiet. Pop mumbled. Nothing quiet about that racket they’re making. Nat King Cole, now there’s a singer. ‘Unforgettable that’s what you are. Unforgettable…’

Daddy! Please! Darla scooted forward, closer to the television. Please stop singing those goofy songs!

I tried to shut my family out and concentrate on the television screen. George, the quiet one, looked at ease behind that guitar. I don’t know what Ma was talking about. He was kinda ugly if you asked me. Except for Paul, all of the Beatles looked kinda ugly. But those girls didn’t seem to care. Was it the hair? It definitely wasn’t their suits or those pointy shoes. But it all fell into place when George started to play a solo. The girls went wild. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I was going to get myself one of those things and learn to play. Then I’d watch the girls scream and cry over me. My idea of heaven in February, 1964.

You don’t like that crap, do ya, Patrick? Pop asked me. When there was a dispute of any kind in our house, I always sided with Pop. Occasionally, I actually agreed with him.

I tore my eyes from the television, shrugged and gave him an indifferent look.

It’s okay.

Okay. Sounds like a sack of drowning cats if you ask me. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah!’ Pop cackled, much to the dismay of my older sister.

Daddy, stop!

The Beatles finished their set. Who would have believed the screaming could have gotten any louder? But when they all bowed in unison – Ringo parting his cymbals in order to bow – the mob of girls pumped up the volume. The rest of Sullivan was a blur. I couldn’t get the image of myself, guitar strapped to me, standing on stage with a swarm of adoring girls fawning over me.

That’s Patrick, some starry-eyed girl would tell her mother. He’s the quiet one.

Yeah.

~~~

I had a part-time job after school. My Father was raised to believe that the only thing as sacred as the US Constitution or the King James Bible was the Protestant Work Ethic. It didn’t matter to him that he was as Catholic as Saint Patrick. Work, to my father, was as much a sacrament as Communion. So when Mr. O’Reilly offered me an after-school job in his hardware store, Pop gave me his blessings. Since the fall of 1963, I worked every weekday afternoon from three until six and Saturdays from ten until four. The most I allowed myself to spend of my meager income was five dollars a week. My best friend, Steve Lipinski, worked three days a week at the Green Grocer as a delivery boy, and spent every penny he made within hours of getting his check. He called me a square for putting the bulk of my money into the savings account my grandparents had opened for me the day I was born. But that’s part of the Irish Catholic version of the Protestant Work Ethic. You work like a horse till the day you die, and you never spend a penny unless you absolutely have to. I never thought to question that. Until the Beatles played Sullivan.

Would you look at that, would ya? Steve said to me as we stood gaping at the Gibson electric guitar in the window of the pawn shop. It was several days after the Beatles’ television debut. I first saw the guitar the following Monday and stopped every afternoon to stare at it, imagining myself once again, basking in a wash of female adoration. On that particular day, Steve and I were headed over to the Roller Rink on Clark Street. I decided to get his opinion.

Pretty neat, huh?

Lennon’s is better.

Yeah, but Lennon didn’t buy his in a pawn shop.

How do you know? I mean, he’s a poor kid from Liverpool and all. Maybe he had to. Or maybe he stole it.

Don’t you think if John Lennon stole his electric guitar, the real owner would have called the police by now? I mean, come on, the guy’s on TV all the time.

How much is it? Steve rubbed away the dirt on the window searching for a price tag.

Fifty-five dollars. The day I saw it, I casually strolled inside the store and managed to read the price tag before the owner chased me out.

Steve whistled through his teeth.

Jesus please us. That’s a lot of green.

Comes with an amp. I pointed to the beat-up black box beside it. Steve stamped his feet against the cold and readjusted his skates which hung by the laces over his shoulder, then he shrugged.

It’s a beauty, though, he said. C’mon. Linda Hardy is going to be there.

Linda Hard Body Hardy was the prettiest girl in the sophomore class. She had a look that only Mickey Spillane could describe. Gorgeous. I don’t know if it was the long, curly red hair or the piercing green eyes, or those fifteen-year-old’s perky breasts that did it for me. Whatever it was, I had it bad. As I laid in bed imagining myself standing on stage with my rock band, it was the face of Linda Hardy I saw gazing up at me longingly. I gave the guitar one last glance and followed after Steve.

My savings account was opened by my Pop’s parents on the day I was born. Gran was still the co-signer and could, if she ever was possessed by an evil force, withdraw every penny without consulting me. Since the first day I had a job of my own, however, I was the only one who ever deposited anything into that account. No one even knew where I kept my passbook. But, in theory, the account was as much my Grandmother’s to plunder as it was mine. Although, Gran would sooner sprout a second head and spit pea soup than ever dip into my savings account. I think by the time I started working, Gran had all but forgotten the account even existed.

In all the time I had it, I never once withdrew money. Deep down inside, I knew that if I were to do so, I was expected to inform my parents. The thought of that conversation gave me night sweats.

What the hell do you need fifty-five bucks for? I could hear my father asking. No, if I wanted to buy that guitar, no questions asked, I was going to have to do it with money I didn’t deposit in the first place. I’d just have to start saving up my spending money. The week after showing Steve the guitar, I took my paycheck from O’Reilly’s Hardware, withheld my allotted five dollars, took it home and hid it in my room. By the end of winter, I would have enough cash to buy my very own girl magnet. It was a sure thing. No doubt about it.

~~~

Like most Irishmen, my father had a fierce loyalty to all things Erin – from Shamrocks to St Patrick, from Blarney stones to Guinness Extra Stout. His parents were born and raised in Ireland. Grandpap came to America shortly before World War One. Within a year of arriving in Chicago with his parents, Grandpap entered the Police Academy. Up until the day he died in 1958, Grandpap walked the beat in his blue policeman’s uniform. He was known by every shopkeeper, citizen and ne’er-do-well juvenile delinquent in our neighborhood. My Grandmother came over to the US in 1920 for the sole purpose of marrying this dutiful cop. Before Grandpap died, she was just this mousy little old lady who baked bread, went to Mass and told me and my sisters stories about the Saints. But just weeks after the old man dropped dead on his way home from the local cop bar on Roscoe, a new Gran emerged. Gone were the stories of the Saints, the soft, warm loaves of bread. Gran enrolled at the local YMCA and began taking whatever classes they could possibly offer the old dame. She learned how to drive a car, how to lay brick sidewalks, how to swim laps in their Olympic-size pool. She even took a boxing class. The day she signed up for that, my father went ballistic.

Women don’t box! He announced. Let alone some old woman like you! My father lacked the typical Irishman’s devotion to his mother.

Gran let his rant roll right off her.

It’s my money. If I want to spend it taking welding classes, then, by Jesus, I will.

Personally, I thought it was a little weird too. Nobody ever heard of lady boxers back then. And certainly, it never would have occurred to anyone to teach a little gray-haired Irish matron how to be a pugilist. But Gran was a tough old bird. When Pop refused to drive her to the Y to sign up for the class, she put on her old Keds’ walking shoes and trucked on down there herself. My father stood at the door and shouted after her as she made her way down the street. They’re not gonna let you sign up, you know!

Either the Y was desperate for money, or the boxing instructor got one to many hits to the head, because she came home later that day, triumphant. Within a few weeks, she bought a new pair of sneakers and a blue sweat suit and began jogging to her class. My sister Darla and I would stare at her tiny frame trotting away from our house toward the Y as if she were some sideshow freak on the loose. I’ll never forget the sight of my old Grandmother in the backyard of our two-flat pounding the spit out of an old burlap sack that she and my mother filled with rice and hung from the sycamore tree. Every time Pop mowed the grass in the backyard, he would glare at that makeshift punching bag, giving it a cold stare that screamed, This is your fault!

My father figured she’d quit after a couple classes. But Gran fooled us all. She continued to box at the Y until 1967, when she passed away unexpectedly in her sleep.

After my Grandfather died, Gran insisted that she move into the first floor of our house. Pop was reluctant, claiming that the seventy dollars a month he received in rent put food on our table. Mr. Delaney, a forty-year-old single man who worked the rail yards had lived in the first floor apartment of our two-flat for as long as I could remember. He was the ideal tenant – clean, rarely seen and never heard. Nowadays that would probably be the warning signs of housing a potential serial killer, but at the time, Pop thought he was perfect in every way. Between the money and Mr. Delaney’s status as ideal tenant material, Pop flatly refused to ask him to move out in favor of his mother. But Gran didn’t have any qualms about asking Mr. Delaney. After my father made it crystal clear to her that Mr. Delaney was not going anywhere, she dropped in unexpectedly on our quiet tenant. Two days later, Mr. Delaney made his apologies to my father, packed his bags and left. To this day, I have no idea what Gran said to the guy. Maybe she showed up at his door wearing her leather Everlast boxing gloves and yellow silk trunks and matching top. Who knows? Regardless, as of late 1958, my Grandmother had taken up residence downstairs from my family.

Ma was delighted with Gran’s proximity. All those jokes about nosey mothers-in-law never made sense to me growing up. Ma and Gran were the best of girlfriends. They were inseparable. In the winters, they would bake bread in our kitchen. Actually, Ma did the baking while Gran sat smoking a Camel and entertaining her with stories of growing up in County Galway. Starting in the early spring, they worked outside. They had a vegetable garden in back where they grew potatoes, squash and tomatoes. They surrounded our whole house with flowers – mums, daffodils, tulips, crocuses, lilies. Side-by-side, dressed in filthy old slacks and tattered shirts that had once belonged to Grandpap, their heads covered in outrageously floppy straw hats, Mom and Gran would launch their never-ending battle against weeds, bugs and fungus. From my room overlooking the backyard, I could hear them tittering away like teenagers.

For some reason, my sister Darla found Mom and Gran’s camaraderie irritating. She avoided the kitchen whenever they were in there. On the nights when she had to help with dinner, she stood sullenly over the stove heaving exasperated sighs every time the two women would break into conspiratorial laughter, as if what they found so hilarious was Darla herself. She was mortified by them in ways I just didn’t get. Darla’s ascent into womanhood was met with such glee by the two women, you would have thought she had just won the Miss America contest. They presented her with a box of Kotex with as much pomp as Bert Parks presented the lucky winner with a bouquet and tiara.

In the summer months, while Gran and Ma toiled away in the gardens, Darla would be plopped just feet away on our rickety old chaise lounge chair, radio earplug wedged firmly in her ear listening to Bobby Darren, Elvis, Ricky Nelson and, of course, the Fab Four, desperately sunning herself in some futile attempt at glamour by way of Coppertone and lemon juice.

Why not put on a garden hat and join us, tiny one, my Grandmother would say to Darla.

No thank you, she would say, her voice dripping with adolescent condescension.

You’re gonna fry like a slice of bacon, Mom would point out. This comment sent the two women into cackling laughter much to the annoyance of my sister.

Can’t you two just leave me alone?!

Listen to your mother little girl. We O’Donnells don’t tan like Italians, you know.

Darla would give up with an irritated grunt and stomp into the house. We could follow her progress by the succession of slamming doors that she left in her wake. I think what annoyed Darla the most was the fact that Ma and Gran were right about the whole tanning business. Year after year, summer after summer, sunny day after sunny day, my sister would make an attempt at a gorgeous tan. But the curse of our ancestry always won out. By the first week of summer vacation, Darla would have such an explosive sunburn, the poor girl shed whole slabs of skin – clearly more copperhead than Coppertone in her.

Next to my mother, nobody loved Gran as much as my little sister, and Gran’s namesake, Bess Anne. Bess Anne was three when Gran moved in with us in 1958.

Pop made such a stink about losing a paying tenant – God knew he would never ask Gran to pay rent – that Ma felt it her wifely responsibility to pitch in. Early one morning, while Pop was on duty, Ma went over to Hans Meyer’s, the Green Grocer, and asked him for a part-time job. Within a week of Gran’s grand arrival, Ma could be found every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the cash register of our neighborhood grocery store. Maybe my father wouldn’t have minded so much if she had the good sense to tell him her plans. Unfortunately, he found out the way the rest of our neighborhood did, by walking in and seeing her hard at work.

Like his father before him, Pop was the type of cop who took an interest in the neighborhood he patrolled. He often stopped in to say hello to the shop owners, reminding them of his constant presence in our neighborhood. Business owners appreciated this personal touch and often remembered it at the holidays with gifts for our family. Not that my father would ever have accepted any graft. That was for the dirty Italian cops on the South Side, he would point out. But a fruit basket from Meyer, or a freshly baked loaf of bread from Leo the Baker was another thing entirely.

On that particular day, Pop stopped in the grocery, his wide, straight-toothed smile in place ready to shoot the breeze with Mr. Meyer and buy an apple or a bottle of Coke to help him get through the day. When he saw my Ma, that smile slipped right off his face.

What in the name of heaven are you doin’ here?

Ma smiled back at him and rang up his order like she would any other customer.

Twenty-five cents please.

That night at home, he let free the full extent of his outrage.

No wife of mine is going to work for a living! He hollered at Ma while we three kids sat in the living room, out of sight, but not out of earshot. You think I want you goin’ off to work every day like some common piece of trash?!

You said yourself we needed that money from Mr. Delaney, Ma pointed out calmly, the epitome of practicality. Well, now I’m making more in a month than his seventy dollars in rent.

You’re working for that damn dirty Kraut!

I’ll make enough in one week for two weeks' worth of groceries. Plus I get a discount!

You’re my wife! Wives aren’t supposed to work!

My father’s shouting brought Gran upstairs. Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t bring our whole street into our kitchen. They must have heard Pop yelling all the way to Meyer’s Grocery.

Sean Patrick Michael O’Donnell! Gran said sternly. You been carrying on like a man who lost his shirt in the stock market ever since you lost Mr. Delaney.

Who’s the one who lost him, huh? Wasn’t me.

You should be glad that Margaret is willin’ to help out the way she is.

She’s got three kids to raise. One just a baby, for Jesus' sake. She shouldn’t be off working three days a week.

You got me now, haven’t ya? I’m watching Bess Anne while Margaret is away, and doin’ it free of charge.

Free of charge? Free of charge? Kinda like you’re living downstairs free of charge?

You can’t be arguing about not getting any rent and at the same time arguing about Margaret working.

I can argue all I want to about whatever I want to! Then he stomped out of the house in a fury.

That evening, we ate supper without him. When he did return home, belly full of Guinness, he walked into the living room and announced that he decided that until he gets a proper raise in pay, Ma could work three days a week at the Green Grocer.

But only until I’m making more myself, Peggy.

Whatever you say, Pat. Ma knew she won the battle.

Ma worked every Monday, Wednesday and Friday like clockwork, and Gran, true to her word, watched over Bess Anne free of charge. And she was no typical babysitter. Gran took Bess Anne to the zoo. She enrolled her in the pee-wee swim classes at the Y and splashed right alongside her as Bess Anne’s personal instructor. She taught Bess Anne to read when she was only four. There was something spectacularly unnerving about walking into the living room and hearing my little sister in her pipsqueak voice reading from Stories of the Saints. Gran became to Bess Anne a second Mom. Not that my sister forgot her first one. She adored Ma and greeted her return from work with such effusive delight, you would have thought Ma had been gone for years instead of hours. But Gran? Well, Bess Anne thought she was the greatest living woman in the world. She was only twelve when Gran passed away. For a day or so afterward, we worried that she too would die just from the pain of it all.

~~~

I’d like to say that I adored my Grandmother. Looking back, I see her as a caring, loving, completely unpredictable woman who deserved all the love I could possibly give her. But as a kid, I was embarrassed by her. The whole boxing thing, for instance. I agreed with my father on that one. She was a lady, and ladies weren’t supposed to be lacing on boxing gloves and sparring in the ring. And she was an old lady at that. Pop had a point. I was horrified when, with me and my friends right there in our backyard, Gran would emerge from the house in her boxing gear.

Morning, fellas! She’d say waving her gloved hand at us. Then she would start in on the lumpy, filthy burlap bag

My friends would watch her in stunned silence, the slightest hint of a smirk on their faces. No matter what I tried to get them out of the backyard – ice cream or White Castle – they wouldn’t budge. The novelty of the boxing Granny was far more appealing than a snow cone. I could have killed the old dame when she did that. It wasn’t until after she died that I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that I loved her fiercely.

I was the one who found her. It was Easter weekend, 1967. Ma asked me to run downstairs and let Gran know we were ready for church.

We never knocked on Gran’s door, nor did she knock on ours. We were one great big family. I let myself in and stood in the living room calling for her. When she didn’t answer, I went into the kitchen. It never occurred to me that she would be dead. I would have sooner believed she had been kidnapped by aliens. I glanced out the kitchen window into the backyard to see if she was taking in an early morning workout. By then, I had accepted her odd affinity for the sport of Ali. But she wasn’t out there. I walked down the hall, straining to hear a sound – water running, a dresser drawer opening or closing, anything. It was quiet as a tomb. I knocked tentatively on her bedroom door. The thought of catching her naked kept me from opening the door. Yeah, I was eighteen and a man of the world by then. But a naked eighteen-year-old college coed was one thing, a naked Grandmother was something entirely different. Finally, after several minutes of knocking and calling to her, I took a breath and opened her door. It only took me a moment to ascertain that she was dead.

When I went upstairs to tell Ma, I sounded so calm and cool. But Ma went into hysterics. She made Pop go down and check. When we all were in agreement that Gran was indeed dead, Pop took charge and made all the necessary calls. Darla, a wadded Kleenex clutched tightly in her fist sat beside me on the front stoop watching as the ambulance, then Father Mike, then our neighbors began to arrive. The whole while, as they took Gran away, as our neighbors came with dishes of food and their condolences, as Father Mike sat comforting the inconsolable Bess Anne, Darla and I remained stoically on the front stoop, the Sentries for Death.

Two weeks after her funeral, my head full of facts and figures as finals season closed in, it hit me. Halfway to my Intro to Statistics exam, I crumpled like that Kleenex in Darla’s fist. I sat on the snow-thawed wetness of the quads and began shaking. I