Zig Zag

By Yvonne Sherwell

A well-known Village personality, maybe even notorious, Yvonne Sherwell has been an actress, Spanish dancer, cabaret artist and now a writer. Read all about her varied career, and discover why she never achieved the heights. This is a guide on How Not To Louse Everything Up. 

Memories. Bits and pieces. Fun, sad, playful and glorious. Also, foolish. And now, to you, get a grip people! What not to do if you don't want to end up an abject failure. Ruined careers. And YOU, with all those talents—I KNOW! I knew what not to do, but I did it anyway! Read on...if you dare!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yvonne Sherwell
• Release date: Apr 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386194057

Yvonne Sherwell

Yvonne Sherwell, a performer who has been setting New York City's stages alight for decades, has been capitivated by various art forms: the theatre, TV, dance and cabaret. Having written cabaret shows for others as well as herself, Yvonne turned to the world of fiction with her debut novel, Paranoid Pip. Paranoid Pussy Cats is her first collection of short stories.

Book preview

Really Early Times, BC

Iremember, I remember the really early times. Big manufacturing town. Waterbury, CT. Scovill, Chase, so many nationalities. First, the Anglos, New England after all.

But the draw of industry. Irish, Italian, Polish, French-Canadians, Jewish, blacks, even a number of families from the Middle East. Lebanon, Morocco. At that time, not many Latins. Later, Waterbury now has a big Latin population.

It's amazing. But arriving at 'a certain age,' most women lie about their age, having been it the theater, 'show biz,' as it was known, feel that they must lie about their age.

But now, the heck with all that. Now I can tell of my memories of, for some, the distant past. The Depression.

But first, remembering. Growing up in the big Queen Anne house with my sister, our mom and our fascinating, funny Irish-American grandparents. Our mother having been divorced, in the USA, then Mexico, and then to be absolutely sure, Daddy getting another divorce via the Catholic church in Rome. Actually, granted an 'annulment,' meaning that our father had never given his 'spiritual' consent to the marriage! Really? Mom and Dad now had two children, Yvonne and Carlotta. Did that make us bastards?!

Did my father exert any influence on the Catholic church, having donated stained-glass windows to the church at St. Georgetown University? Then, as part of the procession at Holy Week in Madrid, donating the gilded platform that the beautiful, eerie bejeweled Virgin Mary, La Macarana, was carried by barefooted men in conical hats, and our dad being one of them.

Remembering, remembering. Back to the Depression. As a tiny kid, remembering Mammy saying to Grandfather, What shall we do, Gus? We can't feed them all. Looking out the window on the back porch, seeing a line of mostly men, thin and gray, lining up. Agustus Jackson's family was always known to have fed the poor. There had been established in the middle of the Depression Soup Kitchens, which often ran out of food. Remembering Grandfather saying, Damn it, we damn well will feed them. And somehow, did. Blessed Grandfather. Multiplying the loaves like the fishes of Christ.

I recall our cousin, Catherine-Mary, coming to visit, often with loaves of bread, on her way to the marathons. Couples would compete dancing, complete exhaustion, tiny break to munch on a sandwich, not ever to be able to sit. Keep dancing! One by one, couples dropping out. The last couple on their feet would win, usually about $50, big deal then. A few years ago, there was a film called They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I never wanted to see it. 

But our family did not suffer, as so many did in that era. We did lose our little cottage on the CT shore, though.

Our grandfather Jackson having been the foremost importer of Carrera marble into the US. Much of this lovely pale marble at that time was used to fashion exquisite art, aside from the busts, the statues on pedestals, the marble at that time could be seen adorning mostly tombstones. Mostly weeping angels, women of sorrows, the Virgin, and many favorite saints. Most of the young people working for Grandfather were from Southern Italy and Sicily.

The young people were artisans workers. Not so, said Grandfather, they are artists, sculptors, creators.

In our house we had some of the lovely examples of their work. But you'd never know the effect on some people.

Sometimes, coming down a dark corridor, or in the library, the parlor, well, the kids in the neighborhood referred to that room as 'the morgue.' But to relieve this possible haunted house atmosphere, the walls were covered with copies of painting such as Madonna of the chair, paintings of the Saints, Christ, the apostles.

Of course, on the street corners of Paris were original Matisses and VanGoghs, but the grandparents were lovers of art, but traditional art.

But what did lighten up the old house were the myriad of Dutch tiles all in bright colors, with the traditional blue and white tiles predominating.

The grandparents would occasionally take off to Europe, always to Italy first, to do Carrara marble business of course. Then it would be Paris, Ireland but almost always...a visit to the Netherlands. They would bring back costumes from the different regions, the white peaked caps, the  bright striped skirts, and the little golden pins near the ears, and the wooden shoes. We never developed the technique to walk, or to even take a few steps, before kicking them off.

Oh, the friends and relatives that colored our kid, er childhood. Mom's closest friends were mostly Irish Catholic ladies devoted to the church, more or less. They were all college graduates, all  successful career women. Interesting, in those days, careers for women were certainly possible, but almost impossible if domesticity, marriage, and kids we're not in the picture. Those ladies, to us kids, were fascinating. Traveling, vacations, regaling my mom of their adventures. For us, foreign dolls and books. We would hang over the banisters listening to the group.

Mom's friends, knowing all the details of mother's divorce, always referring to the marriage as 'the lousy arrangement.' Fun and colorful indeed, especially the three Grady sisters, who were our cousins.

Our mother was actually very fond of them, but every few months she would pick up the ringing phone and would announce, her voice full of a combination of joy and dread, They are coming over for tea tomorrow.

Grandfather would say, No, some free drinks. That's for sure!

Mammy would say, Oh my gosh, you enjoy their humor, their imaginations, their energy!

Grandfather, Yeh, yeh!

But we two kids were thrilled.

Anyway, Catherine Mary, Patricia and Joan. All college ladies. Librarian, telephone executive and writer. Amusing and eccentric. Joan was the only one of the three who did not have the problem. I.e., the intake of too much alcohol. Catherine Mary would be very funny, every laugh line at the top of her voice.

But it was Pat, of course, who was the most fascinating. When thoroughly in the bag sh she would get very red in the face, start to aim at various objects around the room with empty beer cans. This was usually in the huge kitchen, and since the cans were now empty, not weighing very much, did little damage. All the while, she would start singing popular songs of the day, and often a plaintiff old Irish melody. Beautifully rendered, we all had to admit, as the beer cans went flying around the room. Naturally we kids were always thrilled when they visited.

The support money that our divorced mother received from our father—she felt that it was not adequate for our care. She always wanted to compensate for our absent father. One way was to try to give us the very best of everything. Piano lessons, ballet lessons, riding lessons for Carlotta especially.

Mom did fear that we kids were getting to be too much of a handful for our now fragile grandparents. So now, a nanny.

Grandparents had always had many older employees from the Ireland, who later always wanted to go back  to the old country in their declining years.

And so, Mom interviewed a number of young ladies mostly from Italy,  and chose a girl by the name of Marguerita Nero, coming to the US with her large family.

Speaking little English, she