My Life, Connected: A Memoir

By Vera Chvany Hussey-Forbes

From an early age, author Vera Chvany Hussey-Forbes knew her mother didnt want her. When her parents divorced, Veras mother began a campaign to obliterate the child with a concentrated regimen of emotional abuse. Thus began Veras two-layered existence.

In My Life, Connected, she narrates the story of her life, beginning with the ways that the trauma affected her. Vera shares how her mother made her feel like she was ugly, untalented, and unlovable, and how Veras first husband later followed suit, never appreciating her for who she was. In her memoir, Vera describes how she overcame the negative treatment to become the best in everything she had to offeras a painter, singer, songwriter, actress, lover, and mother of three sons. She discusses the highs and lows as she experienced operas and orgies; dead pigeons and paralysis; ballet and bats; fleas, a fish run, and fire; and lovers and laughter.

Honest and unabashed, My Life, Connected tells how Veras friendly disposition and curious personality enabled her to conquer abuse, make connections, and form incredible friendships with people from all walks of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491701065

Vera Chvany Hussey-Forbes

Vera Chvany Hussey-Forbes was born in New Jersey and has lived in Europe, New England, California, and Hawaii. She established successful careers in both music and art. She is now retired and enjoys visiting family on both US coasts and in Hawaii.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0104-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0105-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0106-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913627

iUniverse rev. date: 9/11/2013

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Europe, 1926 To 1931

Balloons

St. Nicholas

Beach Time

Zeppelins

Back To America, 1931 To 1947

My Parents Divorce

Special Neighbors

Russian Background

The Orthodox Church

The Church Picnic

Back In Cambridge

Neighborhood Pals

Fabulous Playground

More At The Methodist Church

The Bicycle Brigade

Getting Pneumonia

Santa Radio Show

Four Eyes

Why I Like Diamonds

Uncle Connie

The Tennis Court

1938 Hurricane

My First Boyfriend

Babysitter

Fighting With My Brother

Larry’s Pals

Carte Blanche Show

Cambridge High And Latin School

War Pics

Growing Up

Acting Up

Working Girl

The International House

Long Walk In The Rain

Coconut Grove Fire, 1942

Horseback Rider

My Military Brush Cut

Playing Hooky

World War Ii

My Mother’s Job

Carl, My First Lover

The Boston Museum School

New Friends

Shell Concerts And Sailor Joe

Drinks In The Ward

Best Of The Best

Skeleton Test

Painting At Baba’s

Polonsky

Mirski’s Gallery

Jobs During Art School

Two Daves

Marriage And Family, 1947 To 1972

My Birthday Party

Dave’s Family And Friends

Wedding Day

Visit To New Jersey

My Harvard Portia

Reality

Baby Time

Chorus Pro Musica

Bennington, Vermont

Back In Boston

Polio

Watertown

Brave Momma

Othello

Otto And Mom Huss

Kids And Caroling

Microwave Beach Party

Getting Bad

Christmas Trees

Plum Island

Jazz

Good Sound

The Brookline House

Fleas And A Bat

Pete, Colin, And Dad In Billerica

College Days

Nerves

Thoughts Of Suicide Or Madness

Connie The Bitch Lawyer

Son David And The Va

New Try, Again

The Irish Pub

Magnolia Clambake

Brazilian Party

Butterscotch, Our Hero

The Fire

The Manchester House

Filming In Manchester

Almost Over The Edge

Showbiz Days, 1952 To 1972

Starting Out

First Job

Elvis/Terry

My Rodeo Cowboy

The Cave

Mp Steve

Three Robs

Drinks And Guns

Old Orchard Beach

New Year’s Eve And The Jackson Five

Other Nights

My $200 Cars

My Beautiful Station Wagon And The Rhode Island Cop

Steelworkers’ Convention

Norm Crosby, Old Shriners, And Hollywood Called

Political Parties

The Twist

My Voice

Hawai’i, 1972 To 1998

Aloha

Lonely Girl

Buzz’s Fish Run

Waikiki Jazz And Iva Kinimaka

Chris, Don Ho, And The Goons

Banned

The Moana And The Court Of Last Resort

Sky King And Party Times

Orgy

Green Lightning And Jack Daniels

Pat D.

Doug

My Surfer Dude

The Bishop Museum

Lana’i

Deegee’s Wedding

Doug’s Birthday And Painting Again

My Young Friend Willy Falk

Saigon Honeymoon

Gabby Pahinui And Charles K. L. Davis

Molokai Hoe Canoe Race

The Outdoor Circle

Mr. Mynah

Hilton Hawaiian Village

The Makaha House

Singing For Japanese Weddings

Doing Commercials

Off-Island Jobs With Doug

Puakea: Kea, Koa, And Sky

Hurricane Iwa

Makaha Christmas

Australia And Uncle Harry

The Hell Cruise To Tahiti

Alaska

The Ant And Vitamin E

Jack Cione And Mardi Gras Follies

The Babies Leave Hawai’i

Sans Souci And Country Dancing

Dancing With Two Murderers

Neighbors

The Gin Game

Lei (Violet) Collins

My Recordings

The Perry And Price Show

The Qe2 And Caviar

The Willows And Transpac

La Mariana

Brazil Cruise

Punahou’s 150Th Anniversary Show

Celebs Off And On The Beach

The Outrigger Canoe Club

My Just Me Show, And Doug’s Decline

Slowing Down In California

Queen’s Hospice

The Hot Tub

Leonard

Lake San Marcos

Karaoke

A Cougar … Not!

Dedication

For Susan, Doug, and Mark, – I miss you terribly; and with love and thanks to the rest of my wonderful family and those lovers and friends who helped to make my life rich beyond all expectations!

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Carol Hopkins and Lynda Arnett for keeping me on track; Traci Anderson and George Nedeff at iUniverse, for answering all my crazy questions; my dinner pals, Janet and Kay, who kept the burgundy ready; and lastly, Pete and Colin, for providing the Chvany family facts.

Introduction

I wish I’d never had you, you hateful, horrid thing!

As those words spewed from my mother’s mouth, I looked around to see who she was ranting to. When I realized that it was only me in the room with her, I wondered what I had done. I couldn’t understand the fierce glare in my mother’s eyes and her almost trembling rage—but at the tender age of six, I knew something bad was happening. From that day on, I became a victim of what is known as emotional, psychological, verbal, or mental abuse. Different words, same awful meaning.

As I was writing this memoir, there were times when I truly couldn’t recall something as simple as the act of moving from one city to another, or even the noisy construction of a four-story apartment building just a stone’s throw away from my own.

Research shows that emotional abuse shares symptoms with PTSD, in which painful memories get completely buried away but manifest themselves in physical ways. Many times, as I was attempting to describe something in a more specific way, I had to stop because I’d find myself sobbing uncontrollably, or, on several occasions, feeling like I was going to faint dead away.

These actual events were what I had to face, and I had no choice but to face them, because I had to. It took a real balancing act to pretend things were just fine during each day, and then give in to my misery and break down at night from the feelings of despair I couldn’t hold off any longer.

Miraculously, with every new day, I’d feel strong again. I know it was partly because of the amazing people who were crossing the paths I was taking to override the miserable ones I couldn’t avoid. These connections really were my lifesavers. Some, I have to say, caused me to stop and take a hard look at my life from a different angle.

They all helped me to survive and work to make something of my God-given talents. Otherwise, I could very possibly have ended up in some awful asylum somewhere, or in a Dumpster in some foul, rain-washed alley. When those two scenarios actually came very close to happening, I really, seriously, wanted them to.

But obviously, I made it through. My two-layered life spanned two continents and an island, starting in Passaic, New Jersey, on the morning of December 9, 1926. I moved six months later with my parents, nanny, and two-year-old brother, Larry, to Europe, and for six happy years, I enjoyed a singular life before the double one began.

Though the events in this memoir have been sorted into something like chronological order, my life has not followed a single straight line, so sometimes, neither do my stories. Often recounting one event has sparked memories of another, and the details might have grown a little fuzzy over time. So the stories may jump around a bit.

Part One

Europe, 1926 to 1931

1

Balloons

For some reason, people always want to know the very first thing we remember from the beginning of our lives. Believe it or not, for me it is most unglamorously sitting on a potty tied to a bedpost leg and falling over to the side.

It was in Berlin, and maybe I had been reaching for something, or I tried to get up and I couldn’t. Apparently I could already walk and needed to be restrained so as not to wander off. In any case, I was trapped and screeching for what seemed to me a very long time. I have no memory of being rescued but obviously was, since I have pictures in my mind of later times—including one that didn’t surface until I was around fifty years old. Hard to believe, but true.

We had moved to Europe because of my father’s job with General Motors. He was setting up their Acceptance Corporation offices to go with their car-sales campaigns, the idea being that the GMAC loan offices would help to sell the cars.

We traveled to and from Europe by ship—four times in all, the middle time when my mother got homesick for a while—and the experience that got buried so deeply triggered a situation that I don’t remember at all but was told happened on that middle trip when I was about three years old.

There was a party onboard for all the little kiddies, and the entire ceiling was covered with big, brightly colored balloons. When our nanny delivered my brother and me there, wild horses couldn’t have dragged me into that room. Apparently I was screaming Nein, nein (No, no), covering my head, and digging my heels in. The nanny and ship personnel tried to calm me and persuade me to join the festivities, but there was no way that was going to happen.

All my life, I have never wanted to get too near balloons, especially while they were being blown up, but I never knew why. The reason finally became clear when that memory, in full color no less, suddenly popped into my head, totally unbidden, fifty-some years later. The repressed incident happened while I was still sleeping in a crib. One day my brother, who was about three at the time, came into my room holding up a big, beautiful red balloon—which, when I reached for it, exploded right in my face! He’d pricked it with a pin but claimed not to remember the incident at all.

So now I know why I stay back when people are blowing up balloons.

2

St. Nicholas

Like most little kids, I believed in Santa Claus. But the year after the shipboard balloon incident, when I was four and back in Berlin, there came a particular Christmas Eve that convinced me, totally and for a long time, that Santa truly did exist! I insisted for many years to my unbelieving American friends that, at least in Germany, he definitely did.

We were having dinner with company that night, and through the dining room’s sliding-glass doors you could just faintly see, in the other room, a large lighted tree. The glass was bubbly, so you could only make out rough outlines and colors, but that made it more mysterious and exciting.

The room had been off-limits all day, so my brother and I were very impatient to see if we’d been visited by St. Nicholas yet. We couldn’t go in until we had finished our meal, and just as we were starting our dessert, there, suddenly, was the big fellow, dressed in red and white, carrying a big sack over his shoulder. He was very busy placing things here and there around the tree. We were all oohing and aahing, and when he was finished, he suddenly disappeared, and we were free to rush in.

(I learned much later that a friend of my parents had been pressed into service as Santa and had entered and left through a window that was out of sight, around a corner of the living room.)

Of course we all dashed in and began opening our presents. The most incredible thing I received I can still see clearly, as it has had such a powerful influence on my life. There, made of a gorgeous cadet-blue leather, was this beautiful exact replica of the most deluxe grown-up baby carriage I had ever seen! Inside—and this is where the life-influencing part comes in—were two adorable baby dolls, one white and the other one black. I had never seen a black person, ever, and this baby was so beautiful, with her big dark-brown eyes and tightly curled black hair, that I fell madly in love with her and have completely appreciated the wonderful variations in color in all my friends and acquaintances ever since. Truly, the thought of race has never entered the equation at all.

In fact, when I returned to the states—still speaking mostly German—I discovered a little black girl in my kindergarten class who I somehow persuaded to come home with me after school to show off to my mother, because she was my dolly, come to life! Her hair was done up in these tiny little braids, each one tied in a different colored little ribbon, and she was absolutely gorgeous.

My mother was at the sink in the kitchen, so she didn’t see us come in. Holding my little friend by the hand, I proclaimed, Mutty, ist schie nicht schoene? meaning, Isn’t she beautiful? My mother claimed she nearly fell over when she turned around and saw what she called this little pickaninny from out of the blue.

I don’t remember how our friendship developed, but we became good pals, and I do recall meeting her family, and how very kind they were to me.

3

Beach Time

First on my list of happy life connections was a chum from Le Zoute, Belgium, where my mother, brother, and I stayed for several summers in a lovely pension across the street from a very deep beach. Apparently, my dad was working from too far away to be able to join us. The place was absolutely fabulous. There were ponies for riding, soft sand, and gentle waves—and a traveling troubadour, of all things!

He visited every day with his guitar—singing, strumming, and jingling along to announce his arrival. The jingle was from these little bells that hung all around the brim of his wide straw hat, and I remember him as having a full dark beard and being quite a big guy, with a flashing white smile and a booming laugh. When my friend and I would hear him coming up the beach, we’d run to our nannies for coins to plunk into a little bag he’d place on the sand beside where he was standing to begin the entertainment.

First he would have us form a circle around him (and there was usually a pretty good crowd, maybe twenty or more), and we’d be anxious to learn the new songs he was going to teach, since they always had gestures to go with the lyrics. One was about a washerwoman and another about a young woodsman, and they were always great fun.

We started out with a little dance, that involved our holding on to each other’s arms, and then we’d put one foot out and then the other one (very similar to the American kids’ Hokey Pokey), and then the next story-song would begin.

One time, my nanny didn’t happen to have the correct coin for the troubadour, so I had to go up to the pension to get one. To get there, you had to go between these little changing cabanas, and as luck would have it, I got the nastiest damn cut right next to my big toe. You wouldn’t believe the blood! And did it hurt! For some reason, maybe because I was so mad, I momentarily forgot the pain and looked for and found the culprit—a humongous curved piece of glass sticking straight up out of the sand.

I limped home, bleeding away, and shocked the bejesus out of my mother and her lunch group. My mother immediately called a doctor to take care of my wound, and that put the kibosh on a whole bunch of beach-going; but I did have a nice, big, fancy bandage to show off to my pals.

Once back on the beach, I was told by my girlfriend, a very wise five-year-old (I was still only four) that we could be in Belgium and Holland at the same time. I thought that sounded fantastic, so I followed her along the shore to where we could actually see a windmill in the distance. I had never noticed it before, since I was not supposed to go far from where all the nannies gathered to chat while their charges played in the sand. This time, mine wasn’t paying attention, so I was able to escape for this adventure.

We walked to the water’s edge—it was low tide—and my friend told me to stand still with my feet wide apart. Looking back to land, she said gravely, You are now standing partly in Holland and partly in Belgium. I found out later that was absolutely true, as the boundary was really there, give or take a few feet in either direction.

The last thing I recall from that summer was when I stepped on a jellyfish, and how it stung! I had never seen one before, and I loved the fact that you could actually see through it, so I wanted very much to touch it. My pal vetoed that idea and said that even though it seemed dead, it could still hurt me. I had to check that theory out, so very slowly, I delicately placed my foot gently on a corner … and yes, of course it stung me!

Fortunately, the sting wasn’t all that bad. In fact, my pal and I laughed quite hard as I was jumping around, pressing a play-sieve against the ball of my foot, which seemed to take away the pain. And I had learned another lesson from those happy, wonderful years in Europe.

4

Zeppelins

Back in Berlin, it seemed that zeppelins were always hanging in the sky. Sometimes they appeared close enough to touch, and our nanny would often serve our lunch out on the balcony just so we could watch them go by.

Usually it was just the nanny and me. My dad, with his work, was rarely at home; my mother was always off having lunch with her friends; and my brother, Larry, had finally started school and so was eating in the cafeteria there.

Nanny was always excitedly pointing out the zeppelins to me, saying (in German, of course), Look, look, little one—there’s another! Isn’t that a big one?

I never learned why they were there or why there were so many. Hitler was just two years away from becoming chancellor, and who knows what plans his Nazi party may have had for the crazy things—spy ships, maybe?—but I loved watching them.

Our building was on a sloping street and had only an empty field across the way, so it was usually pretty quiet around there until Saturdays, when a glorious oompah band would come marching down the hill. The best part of that was when the chubby (aren’t they always?) tuba player was blasting away. It was great, exuberant music, and I’d be marching around the balcony, waving and shouting oompah to the high heavens while my poor embarrassed brother tried to scoot me back inside.

Another clear memory from those days—one that probably influenced my liking for beer—was that there was no problem in taking little kids to the many biergartens around. (A biergarten is an outdoor garden area in which beer, other drinks, and local food are served.) One was actually a zoo where they had a baby elephant you could pat and even ride. There was also a wonderful petting enclosure, where the kids would be given special treats for the animals. The creatures would then tuck their noses up under our arms or into our pockets, trying to get at those treats.

The nannies would be sitting with their little glasses of beer or coffee at tables close by, keeping an eye out while chatting with each other until it was time to leave. Always, before going home, my nanny would share a tiny sip of the ever-present beer.

The last garten I remember was more just a café in a park, with a few rides and swings. But the important thing was that they had beer. I was, of course, again allowed to have that one, last, tiny little sip. And I have to admit, I liked it.

There’s a little episode that might be a clue to my developing personality in those early days, since my dad was still around enough to be an influence. Though I don’t have any recollection of this happening, he loved to tell the story, as he felt it showed early on what he called my feisty nature.

I was in my high chair and could already speak a bit. My dad, to get me to do this thing that he got a tremendous kick out of, would pretend to slap my hands, so that I would angrily slap his back yelling, Nicht hauwen! meaning Don’t you hit me!

Maybe it was this attitude that helped me to survive all the bad stuff I eventually suffered after we left Europe, when my dad and mother got divorced.

Part Two

Back to America, 1931 to 1947

5

My Parents Divorce

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Wow! What a stupid saying.

Let’s face it: bones can heal, while harmful words get buried in the deepest parts of our minds and souls and never go away. I still live with that terrible legacy to this day, and I won’t lie, it’s hard. Too many of those early words still manage, at times, to twist the truth and hurt like hell.

The divorce apparently happened about two months after we all landed back on US soil, which was at the end of summer of 1931. There we were—just my brother, my mother, and me—renting a small one-bedroom apartment with an enclosed sunporch in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The contrast from the lush life in Berlin to being suddenly dropped right into the middle of the US depression was, to put it mildly, a culture shock.

For a while, my dad’s work kept him in Boston, so my brother and I saw him occasionally when he’d bring us up to his office or take us out to a movie or something, but my mother really hated that. Very shortly afterward, she began taking out her anger and frustration about everything out on me. Suddenly, I couldn’t do anything right, and she never hugged or kissed me ever again, from those days on.

She also started her campaign to belittle me in every way she could, using truly cruel and hateful comments, to the point where I just wanted to disappear from the earth—she made me feel so utterly miserable. Hardly a day went by when she didn’t call me a hateful, horrid, ugly, or stupid child, and truly, when writing and reliving some of those times, the emotional flashbacks were so strong they sometimes made me come damn close to blacking out.

I think her problem was that after living that fairy-tale life in Europe for five and a half years, suddenly being dumped into a bleak round of hamburger meals with no help or daily child care like she had before, was almost too much for her to handle. Gradually, she became an alcoholic.

When school started that September, she hired a woman called Dori to babysit my brother and me. I liked Dori very much, as she was very sweet and kind. She provided me with the hugs and kisses that most children would get from their mothers, but I didn’t get from mine. Where Mother found the money to keep Dori on I’ll never know, as she constantly complained about how my father was not sending enough alimony, and she’d rail about it in our locked bathroom for hours on end.

The reason for Dori, I discovered, was that Mother had found two new friends living in our building, and one had a cabin on a lake close to Boston where the three of them would go for weeks at a time. So she needed Dori to come and stay with us while she was gone. Eventually those friends, Dot and Rozzie, decided to be sort of surrogate moms to me, and they were definitely a big part of that second layer of wonderful people I started to know who helped me survive those early years of practically orphan status.

When I reached first grade, the teachers must have noticed how unhappy I was, because they decided they would make me Queen of the May for that year’s May Day affair. The first four grades wove paper baskets for the big day and then helped set up a maypole, where later they would dance to celebrate the beginning of spring. I was thrilled with my role and wore one of my French handmade silk dresses and a crown that the teachers made of shiny, stiff cardboard, fitted to perfection so as not to fall off my head as I bowed graciously to my people, right and left.

My throne was quite high, draped and propped against a humongous black tree, with brightly colored cloths cascading down to the ground. I remember a big black ant starting down my shoulder as I was settling in before the show, and my teacher telling me, Now, Vera. Queens don’t pay any attention to little distractions like that! So I bore it stoically and prayed that there wasn’t going to be a parade of them before we were through. (I love that word stoic!)

Truly, those teachers knew what they were doing, as my self-esteem rose to the point where I realized I was not such an unwanted creature after all, but possibly someone people could actually … maybe even … like?

My mother didn’t want to have anything to do with the party, so of course, she didn’t come. As a matter of fact, she never attended any plays, concerts, or anything else I was in, unless under duress from outside influences. That’s just the way it was.

6

Special Neighbors

However, one of the few things my mother did that had a positive impact on my life was her decision to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just the fact of its being Cambridge—with all the universities, colleges, good-quality public schools, and highly educated people everywhere—made living there an intellectual haven.

Our apartment building housed a wonderful assortment of brilliant and fascinating people, and several of those were already, or were soon to become, quite famous in their various fields. One of them was my mother’s bridge and Russian bank card-playing partner, Jessie Whitehead. Her father was Alfred North Whitehead, the widely read philosophy professor of both Cambridge University in England and our Cambridge’s Harvard. Jessie proved to be quite a character—lovable and fun, with a very heavy stutter. She traveled everywhere on her bicycle, even to dinner parties in her evening gown, and always with one of her lovebirds perched on her shoulder.

At that time, she was one of only about sixteen people in the world who was comfortable and knowledgeable in Sanskrit, of all things. We never knew she was also apparently famous in New England mountain-climbing circles for having survived a bad fall that actually broke her neck. I remember she couldn’t move her head to the right or left, but she never told us why.

Another neighbor was Paul Gebhard, an anthropologist who was one of the people hired to do the interviews for Dr. Kinsey’s research on human sexuality at the University of Indiana in 1949, and who later became Kinsey’s first successor at the Institute. When I was in high school, he hired me to do the drawings for his thesis on American Indian arrowheads.

I tell you, these were heady people.

7

Russian Background

Both of my parents were from so-called White Russian families who’d come to America to escape the revolution. To be near others like themselves, they first settled in Passaic, New Jersey. At the Orthodox Church there, my mother and father sang in the choir, eventually met, and fell in love.

Everyone was upset about the divorce, and of course they all took sides. It was kind of hard to know how to behave when visiting the two separate babas (our term for grandma). On top of that, there was some jealousy between the two families because of Mother’s brother Peter Wilhousky’s involvement with the Metropolitan Opera and its conductor, Arturo Toscanini. Uncle Peter got the old Russian Christmas song Carol of the Bells (the only new holiday carol since Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) not only identified and published, but with his own arrangements, interpretation, and lyrics. He also became the New York City public-school system’s director of music. In that capacity, each year he formed a fabulous chorale of kids from the various boroughs that in time became very well known. But despite all the whys and wherefores, some members of both families did wind up having quite an impact on my life.

Mother’s family moved from Passaic to the town of Manville, New Jersey—so named because of the Manville asbestos plant nearby. As there were no business buildings there yet, my grandfather built the very first one. It had office space to rent out and an ice-cream parlor/drugstore on the ground floor that served lunch and the then-famous Dolly Madison ice cream. Though at first it was basically mostly country, Manville (now also called Weston) eventually became a pretty good-sized town.

My dad’s family stayed mostly near Passaic and the church there. As the baby cousin, I was usually left out of much of my cousins’ goings-on. Consequently, I don’t have much to tell about them, except for the times I had later with Dad’s sister, my aunt Mary, and her husband, Uncle Connie.

8

The Orthodox Church

The little church my mother’s family attended each Sunday always had one of my uncles in charge of the choir. Emil, the sixth sibling of eight, at those times I was there, did the credo, which in the Russian service, instead of being spoken, was always sung. He’d start from the deepest basso and rise with each phrase, finishing on a note in pure falsetto. It was stunning to hear.

At that time, men and women were separated into the two sides of the church, with men on the right and women on the left as you faced the altar. There were no pews, so you had to stand throughout the service, which lasted at least an hour. To pray, you had to kneel, without any prie-dieux, right on that hard floor. I remember Baba bringing out a handkerchief from her purse, gently placing it down, and then kneeling through prayer after prayer.

The choir guys were lucky, as they had chairs up in the loft. After my one time kneeling with Baba on that floor, I always opted to go upstairs with Aunt Vera and pretend to sing. I don’t know how Baba could take it, but she was one tough lady.

Every Sunday, as you were filing out, the altar boys would be holding up these large trays of the most delicious little bread cubes, a few of which you would take in exchange for the few pennies you’d deposit on the plate beside them. It’s a wonder the whole congregation wasn’t constantly spreading a zillion germs around, because besides everyone sticking their fingers into those trays every time, another custom was the kissing of pictures of Jesus and various saints that were on pedestals that edged the aisle that led out of the church. But all in all, the incense, the gorgeous banners, and the beautiful music made going to church at Baba’s an exhilarating experience.

I don’t remember how or when, after the divorce, arrangements were made for my brother and me to be sent off to one of the baba’s for part of every summer, but it went on for quite a few years. It turned out to be really great for me, because my uncles Vlad and Emil and my aunt Vera gave me a great musical grounding for my later showbiz career.

I learned about vodka that first summer, getting a little thimbleful taste of it during a Sunday dinner. The family always served it on special occasions, so I’m never without a bottle of the 100-proof stuff in the freezer for times that require a special toast—or when a bad throat threatens to close up and I might need to sing or give a talk or something. It works better than any cough syrup, believe me.

9

The Church Picnic

The year I was eight, the church put on a big picnic to celebrate some apparently special holy day, and it was the best time I ever had during the summers I was there. They held it way out in the countryside, in the middle of some huge grassy fields. There was a lovely pavilion for a band and dancing, and a gravel parking lot for the cars right off the road. Way in the back was a big barnlike structure where beer (and I guess hard liquor) plus the picnic food was served up.

My sixteen-year-old cousin Eugene was in charge of the baked-potato pit, and