Hello Central, Give Me Heaven

By Richard Bankowsky

HELLO CENTRAL begins back in the fall of 1946 in post World War II New Jersey on the Erie-Lackawanna train heading down to The Wilbour Eddy School for Boys where Roman Jake Jakowsky, a culturally and socially deprived graduate in the lower half of his high school class, will spend an additional two (not one) years prepping for admission into his hero Albert Einstein's Princeton University.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Bankowsky
• Release date: Nov 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452448732

Richard Bankowsky

California State University Emeritus Professor of literature and creative writing. Yale and Columbia degrees. National Institute of Arts and Letters and Rockefeller grants in literature.

Book preview

Of Richard Bankowsky's previous novels, the critics said:

A GLASS ROSE

A brilliantly constructed first novel . . . thoroughly convincing . . . great, raw impact. from a lead review in TIME.

Bankowsky is with one novel among our finest writers. L.A. MIRROR

AFTER PENTECOST

A grit of reality and an ecstasy of vision . . . as remarkable and intense a novel as the season is likely to produce. N. Y. TIMES

ON A DARK NIGHT

An ability to endow the most naturalistic of characters with mythical and heroic lineaments. N. Y. TIMES

THE PALE CRIMINALS

A high and strongly-marked talent right on the verge of full maturity. CHICAGO TRIBUNE

THE BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

Devastating . . . The novel is a work of revelation. KANSAS CITY STAR

A lesson for all mankind. NATIONAL REVIEW

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

1: PIGS FEET AND TETLEY TEA

2: THUMPER

3: THE BORED ROOM

4: THE BLACK DOCTOR

BOOK TWO

1: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

2: HEROES

3: HARD TIMES

4: ST. ROMAN?

BOOK THREE

1:MURDER INK

2: PANDORA'S PROGENY

3: ITCHY

4: CORPORAL INCORPOREAL

5: MR. OBNOXIOUS

6: DEW POND, PA

BOOK FOUR

1: SEXFIENDS

2: EINSTEIN ALSO IS A JEW

3:TEEN VENUS

4: ROME THE OBSCURE

BOOK FIVE

1: NEANDERTHALS

2: LOVE IS A TAPE WORM

3: BASHA IN SNOW

4: LANCELOT AND THE SEA TURTLE

5: BAA, BAA, BLACK SHEEP, HAVE YOU ANY WOOL?

EPILOGUE

Books by Richard Bankowsky

A GLASS ROSE

AFTER PENTECOST

ON A DARK NIGHT

THE PALE CRIMINALS

THE BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

REX NEMORENSIS

THE JUDAS TAPES

HELLO CENTRAL GIVE ME HEAVEN

GENIUS IN LOVE

HELLO CENTRAL

GIVE ME HEAVEN

A Memoir

(fictionalized to protect the innocent and skewer the guilty.)

by

Richard Bankowsky

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 Richard Bankowsky

For Vicky

(1908 - 1998)

Acknowledgements and Apologies

Acknowledging indebtedness to Joyce and Salinger, this solipsistic schoolboy memoir, like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man, is fictionalized. And since, as in The Catcher in the Rye, the story is told in the often sexually and ethnically disparaging language of callow schoolboys and unenlighted bigots which may offend the ethnicity or sexual preference of some readers; the author sincerely apologizes.

BOOK ONE

PROPHECY

Reeling and Writhing of course, to begin with ... and the different branches of Arithmetic, Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.

The Mock Turtle

1: PIGS FEET AND TETLEY TEA

There was no way you were ready to pluck out the heart of your mystery that beautiful September morning of '46, sitting there on the Erie-Lackawanna heading down the Garbage State in pursuit of a destiny you imagined spinning off fortune's spindle with every rotation of the train’s wheels.

Hell, you weren't really ashamed of your own family anymore than you were ashamed of yourself, were you? How could you be ashamed of the people you loved most in genius ol' Albert’s whole wide whirling universe whose mysterious workings, providing only that you worked hard enough, scrupulously enough, ruthlessly enough, you might someday come to understand at least as well as the genius old Jew himself did, no matter how much trouble you seemed to be having trying to understand the mysterious workings of your own shameful goddamned heart.

Because as proud as you told yourself you were to be you, to come where you came from, to have Jake and Vicky for parents; instead of driving down to The Wilbour Eddy School for Boys in your Uncle Swifty's Studebaker, which would have been the most practical way to travel the less than three hours or so from Anderson with maybe a couple of suitcases in the trunk and some cardboard boxes full of stuff on Vicky's and your kid sister's lap in the back seat, you decided to train it down instead with one little overnight bag and Railway Express's solemn promise to deliver your brand new wardrobe trunk that very day.

No way in hell were you about to submit the people you loved most in the world to the imagined nose in the air maters and paters of your fancy pants classmates standing around their late model limousines looking down their noses at the rundown '39 Studebaker. Not to mention any more pretentious patronizing from any more hand-bowtied, seersuckered Baptist stuffed shirts than you already had that fateful summer Saturday of '46 when you opened the screen door of your ol' man's neighborhood saloon, and the noontime rummies lining the bar raised their shot and beer glasses to Jake and Vicky's College Boy.

They were all there: consumptive ol' alcoholic Lefty chasing his pickled pigs’ feet with the usual shot and beer, slapping you on the back as though you had just hit the numbers or something. And Little Georgie, at the bagatelle table, grinning like Christmas, stuttering away, Wwww-wayda go, kid!. Ww-wayda gg GO!

Even toothless ol' Donkey Pete took time out from his glass-gumming, snot-slurping, perpetual argument with his long-dead invisible Missus, to plaster one of those slobbering, boozy big ones smack on your kisser. Not to mention Jake, your usually tightfisted ol' man, immaculate as always in his starched white bar apron and black clip-on bow tie, sucking his inevitable toothpick and jamming a thumb toward the back room with that mile wide grin on his almost cherubic red face, saying, Somebody to see you inna back room, Big Shot.

Big Shot, indeed! Syracuse, Class of 1950! Or maybe Rutgers! Because who else could the bespectacled, gentleman in his three-piece seersucker suit and white bucks be but a Syracuse or Rutgers admissions officer changing his mind about admitting you for the fall term after all? There he was, your ticket to future fame and fortune, sitting right there at that Formica table in the back room of your ol' man's two-bits-a-shot-and-beer palace, squinting up over his specs, a straw boater plopped atop his briefcase beside the tea cup and pickled pigs feet soaking untouched through a soggy paper plate.

And naturally, sitting right there beside him, who else but Vicky, your proud-as-a-peacock, plump little Polish mamusha, resplendent in her faded print house dress and kitchen apron, her curlers hidden under a babushka knotted on her forehead, her little pinky extended primly over her tea cup, and her lips pursed in a totally unconscious impersonation of some aristocratic Grande dame serving High Tea and scones in a Park Avenue drawing room instead of Tetley tea bags and pickled pigs feet in the back room of Jake's Tavern.

There she sat, entertaining her only son's ticket to the future with a little tidbit as well as a few motherly anecdotes about what a good boy her sonny was, who never gave her or her Jake one bit a trouble since the day he was born and never even once in seventeen whole years ever got in trouble with the police and ought to be home for lunch any minute now . . . And oh my, speak a the devil . . .

Yes indeed, there you stood, Joe College personified in your rah rah Metropolitan Army Navy Store government issue khaki T-shirt and camouflaged fatigues ballooned into unlaced paratrooper boots, and your definitely in need of a haircut, still shower-wet pompadour slicked back into a magnificent duck's ass. There you stood with one hand poked out to shake, and the other holding your porkpie derby over your heart like saluting the flag or something.

Still, at the same time, being the tetchy little bastard you happened to be in those days, carrying around a chip off the old block on your shoulder big enough to choke a horse, you couldn't help feeling that as far as the sanctimonious stuffed shirt your naive little Polish mamusha was treating like royalty was concerned, your oversized fatigue-pockets might just as well be stuffed with a couple of links of Polish kielbasa as the smelly old jock and sweaty gym socks you brought home for Vicky to wash in the Maytag.

Naturally, naïve proud-as-all-get-out Vicky introduced you not only as our future college boy but our future college boy home from the YMCA, saying it with that proud heartbreaking little smile on her beautiful face as though the Prescott YMCA were some kind of exclusive country club or something to which the pompous sonofabitch, who didn't even have the decency to take at least one polite little nibble out of his pickled hogs hooves soaking the checkered tablecloth through the soggy paper plate, responded with a sticky smile and feeble handshake, introducing himself as, Dr. Donald Dick, assistant to the Assistant Headmaster of The Wilbour Eddy School For Boys.

And as though having already wasted more of his valuable time than he could really afford what with your inconsiderate failure to be home when he called (regardless of the fact that he called completely without warning), he summarily announced, As I've already explained to your parents, Mr. Jakowsky, given your unimpressive high school record we couldn't possibly under any circumstances admit you to the Wilbour Eddy class of '47 this fall.

Hell, the turndown was no biggie. Never in a million years would you ever even have dreamed of applying to a two bit Southern Baptist pantywaist boarding school somewhere out in the sticks of southern Jersey if gentle ol' owl eyed Parisi, your never say die Salerno High School senior counselor, hadn't suggested Wilbour Eddy as a possible last resort. Given that fickle fingered fate had already fixed it for Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the damned war three measly months before you turned old enough to enlist, GI Bills for the blind were naturally just as scarce as University admissions for losers in the bottom half of their high school class.

In fact, not only wouldn't Syracuse and Rutgers give you the time of day, neither would the gung ho gyrenes. Or the swabbies either. Not even the last resort peacetime Army; the recruiters laughing in your face when the most you could read on their stupid eye charts without your 20/400 coke-bottle wire-rims was the BIG freakin E.

The recruiting brochures of The Wilbour Eddy School for Boys on the other hand solicited applications irrespective not only of race, creed, or national origin but level of preparation too. And what with your I.Q. scores indicating you were college material despite your unremarkable grades, solicitous ol' owl eyed Parisi suggested, "a year of study at a private preparatory school might be just the ticket to get us accepted someplace, anyplace, next fall."

It was better than nothing you guessed. Better than breaking Vicky’s heart who had to put up with your self-centered, adolescent bullcrap ever since grammar school about someday graduating with top honors from genius ol' Albert’s Princeton U. someday, prelude to becoming the world famous Nobel prizewinning scientist you just knew you were destined to become ever since the day ol' Mrs. Fineberg rapturously announced to her fifth grade class, Albert Einstein is the smartest man in the world. Only twelve other geniuses understand his theory of relativity, and he's teaching right here in our very own Garden State not even a hundred miles away.

Actually, it might just as well have been a hundred light years away considering your stellar performance at soporific ol' Salerno High. In fact, Princeton was so damn far out of reach you never even considered applying. And as for Syracuse and Rutgers? Hell, it was worth a try if for no other reason than to satisfy your self made, self proclaimed big businessman, money can buy anything ol' man, who ever since the grand opening of Jake's Tavern exactly one week after the repeal of Prohibition never let a drunken Friday night go by without bragging his head off about how he'd rather see his kid dead-n-buried than breakin his back in a Prescott sweat shop like some goddamned donkey fresh off the boat. Not to mention stuck behind the goddamn bar eatin tobacco smoke with a bunch a donkey rummies bendin my ear seven days a week.

So naturally when the bad news came, first from Rutgers and then from Syracuse, you were disappointed no question. But what the hell? Most guys in your class never even applied to college, enlisting right after graduation for the GI Bill and a practically free ride to a diploma after discharge. Which rationalization you managed to sell not only yourself on but your ol' man too, even though according to Jake, GI Bills is for donkey's kids whose people ain't got a pot; (donkey meaning somebody who just got off the boat from the old country and worked like a mules in the Prescott factories across the river) whereas Jake who came over on the boat like any other donkey (except from Russia instead of Poland, which to him at least made all the difference in the world), Jake was "a businessman!"

And together with his born in Pennsylvania, first generation American wife, who even though she only finished seventh grade had a God-given talent for creative bookkeeping, We managed to scrape up enough to buy you and your kid sister four years at any goddamn college inna country, goddamnit! Jake insisted. Even a rich man's college, like the one here in Jersey you're always talkin about where the smartest Jew in the world teaches. Because, everybody knows you can't beat the goddamn Jews when it comes to brains.

Ah, yes, brains. They, and not money, were the root of the problem as far as the rich man's college was concerned. The lack of which, you explained, not only accounted for your never even applying to Princeton but for the Syracuse and Rutgers turndowns as well. Not to mention a last resort glorified high school in the sticks of southern Jersey, which to put it mildly was the final freakin straw. Might just as well face it, you were dead meat, doomed from the womb to become one more five day, 40 hour a week, Anderson donkey trudging over the Monroe and Market Street bridges every weekday morning some fifty or so weeks a year to some dollar an hour jackass job in the Gera Mills or Botany or Rubber Works or any of the other stinking sweat shops spewing industrial sewage into the polluted Prescott river.

The only thing you couldn't figure was why the hell everybody but you seemed to be so damned happy about it? Because damned if that big proud as a peacock smile wasn't glowing brighter than ever on Vicky's beautiful face. Not to mention ol' toothpick sucking Jake poking his head in through the back room passageway grinning that proud as hell, mile wide, heartbreaking grin of his.

Both of them, you told yourself. Goddamn it, they're not going to show how brokenhearted they really are, no matter what; promising yourself right there on the spot that you'd get yourself a job selling insurance if that's what it took. Or encyclopedias or vacuum cleaners or any goddamn thing you could come up with before the summer was out. And come fall you'd enroll in night school somewhere, anywhere, and make something out of your stupid, good for nothing, fluff off, lazyass self if it killed you.

Maybe not an Einstein or even a doctor or lawyer that anybody's folks could be proud as hell of. But at least a newspaper man. A sports reporter maybe, like you were on the Salerno High Gazette your senior year. Something at least they wouldn't have to be ashamed of. Because, it wasn't till the grinning Dr. Dickhead finally stuck out his limp-wristed hand that you suddenly realized what the presumptuous, pretentious, sanctimonious swindler was trying to pull. You couldn't believe it! Not only had the Wilbour Eddy School for Boys turned you down flat for the class of '47, since there's no possible way we can make an Eddy Boy of you in a single year, Mr. Jakowsky. However, your parents and I have agreed that an additional second year might just possibly . . .

AN ADDITIONAL SECOND YEAR? WAS THE DICKHEAD OUT OF HIS FREAKIN MIND?

"Naturally Wilbour Eddy can't guarantee Princeton acceptance even after two years, considering what you're giving us to work with young man. Nevertheless, we are prepared to offer you a place in the class of '48―assuming you survive the all important junior year, of course."

Junior Year? Class of forty freakin eight? Forget it! No way in hell were you about to shake that limp, presumptuous, sonofabitching hand. No way! Congratulations? Talk about insults! As though even having to repeat a single year of high school wasn't insulting enough, TWO was outright obscene! No way in hell were you about to ask Jake and Vicky, who never had a single day's vacation since Repeal, to spend even one single hard-earned penny on any additional fifth and sixth year of high school.

Even one was shameful enough considering how you fluffed off all through eight years of grammar and four of high school copying from girls, killing time playing sandlot ball and hanging out in the corner clubhouse as though the Anderson Orioles Social and Athletic Club was some kind of stepping stone to the minors or something, instead of just a miserable vacant storefront with the windows painted over and a couple of pissy, old, abandoned, Salvation Army reject sofas and parlor chairs to sit around on and nothing but a wash basin to piss in.

Nope, it wasn't only Dr. Dickhead you were cussing under your breath, feeling that funny little almost invisible chip off the old block nervous little twitch invading the side of your mouth just the way Jake's did regular as clockwork whenever he lost that terrible Russian temper of his. Except that Jake's twitch wasn't at all invisible, and whenever you saw the side of his mouth twitching away, you damn well knew you were in for it―his legendary explosive Mad Russian temper something to behold.

Not that yours was all that much better, standing there with your porkpie trembling in your hand, faking a smile, saying as politely as you could manage under the circumstances, Two Years? You gotta be kiddin. Even one's highway robbery!

Which was when you saw it. The real McCoy. Not just that little insistent almost invisible twitch of yours you were trying so hard to control, but THE TWITCH! Bigger than life and twice as scary. Gone was that heartbreaking, proud as hell, mile wide, wonderful grin on Jake's almost cherubic red face, as out of a clear blue sky, without any warning whatsoever, all the color drained away, and THE TWITCH was there, his mouth almost spasming as though any minute the immaculate white apron would be whipped off and the belt yanked out of his belt loops and you'd be that little kid all over again cowering behind Vicky's apron as the doubled up strap thwacked threateningly across Jake's threatening palm.

It was a ritual that always made going any further totally unnecessary, THE TWITCH itself being every bit as scary as the doubled up strap. And confronting it again that summer Saturday afternoon there in the back room of the family saloon, you knew there was no way in hell you weren't headed for the Wilbour Eddy School for Boys come September no matter how much of a rip off it was, no matter how ashamed you were to put your own parents in such a humiliating position, regardless of whether they saw it that way or not. Which of course they didn't.

To them the Donald Dick's humiliating offer was an opportunity of a lifetime. Hell, what was another ten or twelve thousand big ones when their sonnyboy's future was at stake, the difference between his working in a factory or gin mill all his life or making something of himself? A doctor, maybe. Or a lawyer. Or even another Einstein if that's what their sonnyboy really had his heart set on.

Actually, what their sonnyboy really had his heart set on at the moment was sneaking the congratulatory Dr. Dick out the back door as quietly as possible prior to putting up as well as you could manage with the congratulatory on the house toasts back in the barroom as Lefty and little Georgie pumped the hand of our college boy, practically backslapping you black and blue. Even toothless ol' Donkey Pete smacked another boozer big one on your kisser, gumming that great big tongue-tied grin at you as did, presumably, his invisible Missus. The accompanying venal shower of Psha crefs! and Holledas! not even seeming to faze Jake, whose no swearin when there's a lady inna bar rule was otherwise usually strictly enforced. Especially when Vicky was drawing chasers at the tap the way she was at the moment.

THE TWITCH, thank God, had skulked back into whatever dark subterranean depths of Jake's primitive Russian soul it had momentarily erupted out of. And that mile wide, heartbreakingly proud grin was back on his face again as he and Vicky raised a glass to their sonnyboy's going off to college come September, even though they knew as well as you that Eddy Prep was little more than a glorified private high school. Or rather a high school and grammar school combined. Forms Four through Twelve the brochure in ol' Parisi's office advertised. And college was at best two long years away. And no guarantee at that.

As for their customers? What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. None of them by any stretch of the imagination could possibly ever believe that anybody in his right mind, would ever in a million years shell out only God knew how many thousands of dollars for tuition and books and room and board and whatever to send their sonnyboy, who had already graduated public high school free of charge, off to a private prep school for even one more year, never mind two. Especially not a supposedly shrewd businessman with a tight as a Jew reputation like Jake, whose round after round on the house that summer Saturday afternoon did nothing whatsoever to meliorate his firmly established reputation for parsimony.

Superintendent of Anderson Schools, Hank Grabek, on the other hand, a teetotaling non-customer and as good a next-door neighbor as anybody could hope for, knew about such things of course and frankly thought the whole idea was as foolishly expensive as you did, knowing that even two years at Wilbour Eddy was no guarantee of future admission to Princeton which you told relatives and the guys at the clubhouse was the only reason you chose Wilbour Eddy over second-rate Rutgers or Syracuse in the first place.

Hell, it wasn't as though it was a total lie. According to the Wilbour Eddy catalogue, several students out of every graduating class are accepted at Ivy League and similarly prestigious institutions every spring. Who said you wouldn't be one of them?

One thing was certain though; no way was Jake's and Vicky's hard-earned cash going to go to waste no matter what it took. You were going to work your ass off. You were going to show that Baptist bastard who wouldn't even take a single nibble on those pickled pig's feet soaking the table cloth through that soggy paper plate, that despite your grades, despite your test scores, despite where you lived and what you came from, despite Jake's Tavern, despite Lefty and Little Georgie and Donkey Pete and his invisible Missus, you were going to show ol’Albert’s whole wide whirling goddamnedworld that you were one Anderson Dumb Polack that was going to make it come hell or high water.

Not only were you going to make it at The Wilbour Eddy School for Boys. You were going to win yourself an all expenses paid, academic and athletic scholarship to rich man's Princeton U where the goddamned theory of relativity, which only a handful of geniuses in the whole freaking world understood, would be explained to you personally by genius ol' Albert himself―just you and that sad eyed old Jew strolling those ivy covered halls together in your ragged, old, woolen sweaters with those mightier-than-any-sword fountain pens clipped to your necklines just like in the famous Einstein poster on your bedroom wall, as high overhead the no longer mysterious, perfectly understandable, demystified, miraculous universe whirled away in the autumnal New Jersey sky.

Hell, it had been prophesied from the womb, hadn't it?

Anyway that's what you told yourself the rest of that summer psyching yourself up for the big push to future fame and fortune. In fact, as some kind of insulation against the anticipated two instead of one year insulting sojourn, you actually cajoled Vicky into retelling her old midwife's tale for the thousandth time, which actually began to take on an aura of prophecy for you that summer, almost as though she were some sort of second-sighted gypsy fortuneteller sitting there across the kitchen table from you turning up the cards of your fantastic future rather than just babuskad ol' Vick dealing herself another winning hand of gin rummy.

The way the story went (with only minor changes down the years) you were born under the veil and with water on the brain, as Vicky put it her own special Vicky way of hers, saying, "Oh my goodness how Mother cried when you was born, Sweetheart. I just cried and cried and couldn't stop no matter how I tried. Because everybody knew what happened to babies born with water on the brain no matter what Pani Wrotzbita said. No matter how hard the good woman tried to cheer up your poor nervous father, telling him not to worry, that being born under the veil was a lucky sign and meant Jesus would watch over you all your life. And what with your big head swollen so full of brains the way it was, you was sure to grow up to be a very smart and important man some day, 'A Ruski pope, Pan Jakofsky,' she said. 'A Ruski pope, at the very least, and . . . Oh my goodness! Gin, Sweetheart! Mother wins again."

Mother always won, which in itself shot to hell the best part of the midwife's hocus pocus. Because born under the caul or not, you sure as hell weren't very lucky at much of anything as far as you could tell. Certainly not at cards. Not, at least, when Vicky was dealing. On the other hand, you were still here instead of six feet under like most other kids born with water on the brain in those days. Thanks to a twenty year old, naive little Polish gal, that is, who not only gave you life but apparently saved it too, sitting there at the kitchen table some seventeen years later dealing a new hand she knew damn well she'd end up winning, confessing once again what a silly little dope she was at the time and how ashamed she was to show your big head to the ladies in the neighborhood.

"So ashamed, I used to wrap it up in old ripped up towels and bed sheets, praying to Jesus every night to please make the swelling go down and let me keep my baby boy for a little while longer. Just one more week, please. And then just one more. And then a whole month. And then two. And before you knew it, by the time your first birthday pictures got took, nobody could hardly believe it, except for Pani Wrotzbita. Because there was my naked little angel playing with your big rubber ball on the studio blanket just like any other baby boy with a big head fulla brains just the way Pani Wrotzbita said."

Of course as far as the supposedly second sighted Pani Wrotzbita was concerned, the head-binding business had nothing at all to do with anything. It was not only unnecessary but shameful, a lack of faith not only in prayer but in her own infallible powers of prognostication. According to her, being born under the caul was what made all the difference just as she'd predicted from the start, neither she nor Vicky either ever for a minute imagining that out of embarrassment or pride or desperation or just plain motherly intuition, in defiance of husband, landlady and midwife, your twenty year old little Polish mamusha had naively and all-unknowingly discovered a decade or more before medical science would, the head binding cure for hydrocephalus.

For Vicky, the miracle was attributable purely to Jesus's answering of a mother's prayers. Which prayers, by the time high school graduation rolled around, you'd pretty much convinced yourself that generous ol' Jesus the Christ had decided to answer simply to prove the invalidity of prophetic midwifery. Because damned if it didn't look as though Pani Wrotzbita's big head equals big brain theory held just about as much water as her born under the caul brings good luck Old Wive's Tale did.

But that was before Dr. Dick and his two years instead of one insulting insinuations. Hell, maybe your 7 1\2 sized cranium didn't encompass any more brain matter than the next guy's, but neither was it any more deficient in the grey stuff no matter what some second rate admissions officers might think. Anybody who wasn't a goddamned moron himself knew damn well all that dumb-polack bull was just that, BULL

It wasn't just coincidence that so-called Anderson dumb-polacks were Salerno High School Valedictorians