From Rings to Ringlets

By Marcel Haigy

This is the true tale of a cherubic angel, born of Scottish, Welsh, and Turkish decent. Early that morning in the middle of a blinding snow storm, with the temperature hovering near zero, the bedlam began. An antiquated oblong oak table in Grandma Lloyd's kitchen, was scrubbed and sanitized in preparation of my exalted arrival, plus being the first grandchild and a boy, held great momentous value! For better or worse, his story is a result of growing up on the rough side of a rough world.
After many fights, both amateur and professional, I met an old friend who was in the beauty business. Attracted by the lure of money, I changed my name, got a manicure and became an International Hairdressing Champion. This is a recounting of the adventures of both worlds and the activities and ventures in between, some legitimate and some...well...!
It is a true and fascinating story, as one New York writer once penned, "From Ring to Ringlets".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479726158

Marcel Haigy

Marcel Haigy, with the perennial desire “to be somebody,” began his quest in Clairton, Pennsylvania in the mid 1940’s. The shabby, dark, dingy boxing gyms on the knavish streets of Blair heights and Hunky Town, beckoned him. After fifty one professional fights, from Montreal to Havana, Madison Square Garden to Miami Beach, and New Orleans to Detroit, a new and vastly diverse transformation evolved. When will the time come, to “hang ’em up” ! Obviously not yet, predicated on his recent venture of parachuting from 12,000 feet, on his 80th birthday.

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Copyright © 2012 by Marcel Haigy.

Library of Congress Control Number:  2012918279

ISBN:

Hardcover   978-1-4797-2614-1

Softcover     978-1-4797-2613-4

Ebook         978-1-4797-2615-8

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CONTENTS

Introduction

The Formative Years

Bear City

The Real Joe Palooka

End of the Amateurs

Miami—New York

Uncle Sam

Home to Clairton or Somewhere Else Not as Nice!

Hair

Competition

Clairol

Fifth Avenue

The World’s Fair

Marcel Haigy SOB

Lonny Eagle and School Days

Zack and Mr. B

Referee

Clairol Reprise

Prison and the Olympics

Single and…

Marriage and Public School

Slapsy and the Joint

Mr. B’s Apocalyptic Ship of Fools

Endnotes

To

Ms. Lilly, De Nita Jo, Dan, Joey, Tina, and my favorite college professor, Vince Clemente

INTRODUCTION

This is the true tale of a cherubic angel, born of Scottish, Welsh, and Turkish descent. Early that morning in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, with the temperature hovering near zero, the bedlam began. An antiquated oblong oak tabletop in Grandma Lloyd’s kitchen was scrubbed and sanitized in preparation of my exalted arrival; plus being the first grandchild and a boy held great momentous value! For better or worse, my story is a result of growing up on the rough side of a rough world.

After many fights, both amateur and professional, I met an old friend who was in the beauty salon business. Attracted by the lure of fame and fortune, I changed my name, got a manicure, and became an International Hairdressing Champion. This is a recounting of the adventures of both worlds and the activities and ventures in between, some legitimate and some… well!

As my dear and affluent friend Frankie Bailey once said, You’re a man of many faces. I’ve emerged from the turbulent depths of the Great Depression to the blinding neon of Broadway. The language is as rough as the road I traveled and the people I traveled with. It is a true and fascinating story, as one New York writer once penned, From Rings to Ringlets.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

It was as cold as a witch’s ass, and the wind and snow were blowing. At 6:30 a.m. on March 9, 1932, Uncle Lloyd, a fourth grader, was awakened and sent to fetch Mrs. Hrbosky, a frail elderly Hungarian midwife, who lived way across town. Mom’s water broke, and I was about to be hatched. The snow was waist deep, and the temperature hovered in the mid-teens, but that mattered not. One of my two favorite uncles-to-be was on a mission. I was told that Momma, who was about to deliver her firstborn, was in great pain, while everybody else was scurrying around the kitchen. Heggie, the future father, stood there between the wall and the ice box with a dazed and enigmatic stare. Did he possess some sort of mystical ability to foresee the destined future of this darling child that was about to be born?

My entrance into this wonderful world occurred on the oblong oak tabletop of Grandma’s kitchen and was considerably less than earth-shattering. The first part of me to hit the hardwood table was my right cheek (no, not the one up there). They shoulda called me Splinters! I was already washed and bundled up when Mrs. Hrbosky, who made her living by delivering children of the less affluent, turned to Heggie. Ten bucks, she said.

My father shrieked. You’ll be damn lucky if you even get the five bucks now! Everybody else in town pays five, and you try to rob me! Bullshit! Bullshit! he bellowed in Turkish. And with that, he paid her the five dollars. My grandfather ended up floating the other five bucks. Had it not been for Grandpa Lloyd, I probably would have gotten shoved back in. Mrs. Hrbosky was nobody to fornicate with!

Right about now, though, the whiskey began to take its toll on Grandpa, who was a good friend of Seagrams Seven. He picked me up and did a staggering Welsh jig around the red-hot potbelly stove located in the middle of Grandma’s kitchen. Meanwhile, Grandma, Aunt Olive, and Uncle Lloyd howled like a bunch of coyotes at a Beatles concert. At least the next-door neighbors didn’t have to use their alarm clocks that day. Before I took my first crap, I was given the name James after my momma’s brother, Uncle Jim, who was the patriarch of the Lloyd family. My middle name, Joseph, was from my father and grandfather. My last name, Haigy, turns out to be fictitious. Already I’m a friggin’ fraud!

My father, Joseph Haigy, a devout Muslim holy man, was born and raised on the side of a desolate mountain in a town called Palu in eastern Turkey. In 1898, around the age of sixteen, he managed to travel sixty miles west to the city of Harput, probably on a donkey. There he attended college and studied the Koran. Upon graduation, he then traveled more than a thousand miles south to Mecca for further studies. Upon graduation there, he was ordained the title of Hajji. Once completed, he ventured north by donkey, with two friends—another Turk and an Armenian, to a seaport town called Trabzon on the Black Sea.

In the early1900s, my father and his friends stowed away aboard a ship. The ship made it to France, where the stowaways were caught and booted off. My dad lingered on the docks until there was a New York—bound freighter. He bribed, or conned, a seaman to smuggle them aboard their boat, where they hid in a lifeboat. While at sea, they were discovered and put to work. When the ship finally reached New York, he and his buddies once again sneaked by authorities and managed to bypass Ellis Island. I question the suggestion that he jumped ship as he never did learn to swim. He’d heard there was work in the steel mills in Pittsburgh, so he and a gang of young Turks got on a Greyhound bus and headed west, thereby ending up in Clairton, Pennsylvania.

image%201%20Mom%20%26%20Dad.jpg

Mom and Dad

In Clairton, there were many Turks, and my father was a very respected man among them. Everyone addressed him as Hajji. When he met my mother and her parents, who were of Scottish and Welsh descent, we assumed they must have come up with the last name Haigy from Hajji. When my father was born, it was not common for Turks to have surnames.¹ The name Joseph though was given to my father by my grandfather. Many years later in Turkey, I met my father’s family and learned his real name was Youseff Bozdag.

My first conscious thoughts of growing up in Clairton took place a block up the street from my grandparents’ house. I was about two years old in the heart of the Great Depression. We lived on the second floor above an Italian family, the Imbrognos. Every Sunday, Mrs. Imbrogno would send up a big bowl of pasta, which tasted wonderful. My dad would never eat it though, because it had pork sausage in it. My mother’s rendition of sauce was a can of tomato paste. Eventually, the Imbrognos came into a lotta bread and moved to the rich area of Pleasant Hills, and the downstairs of the building became the famous Bluebird restaurant.

One fine afternoon, Grandpa stopped by our apartment and volunteered to take me for a walk. He and I headed up St. Clair Avenue to a gin mill opposite the post office. It was a shot and beer joint named Big Sixes. Grandpa sat me on a barstool and gave me a bowl of potato chips and a shot glass of beer. Each time the glass emptied Big Six, the bartender refilled it. Come about a quarter to four, my grandmother came looking for us. I had already fallen off the barstool shitfaced, and my grandfather had laid me across a typical round bar table and went back to some serious drinking. Grandma was furious and carried me home before my father got home from the steel mill. It must have been a sight: my mother crying hysterically, Grandpa snickering, and Grandma screaming. People who consumed liquor were not accepted as good Muslims. Don’t never ever set foot in our house, with the aroma of any fire water on your breath, lest you were ready and able to do battle with Clairton’s version of Genghis Khan—my father. Grandma managed to get me to bed, and my father never found out. I don’t think I was ever allowed to go out alone with the rough ridin’ Welshman again.

Despite being a devout Muslim himself, my father would lecture his five children about God: There is only one god, but each religion addresses him differently. The members of my mother’s family belonged to the Presbyterian Church. Each and every Sunday, Dad would give my brother Russ and me a nickel to put in the collection box. Rain, wind, or blinding snow weren’t a good-enough excuse for us not to attend each Sunday.

Things were rough during the Depression, and I remember an incident when the coal miners were on strike in West Virginia. My dad had several Turkish friends who worked in the mines. Busloads of these guys would come to town to picket the steel mills. One night, about ten o’clock, they came to our apartment to see my father. Unbeknownst to them, Heggie was staying in the steel mill, eating, sleeping, and working fourteen hours a day. He had to work, or we wouldn’t eat! Welfare had just been established, but the Hedge would never stoop to accept a handout! When these Turks found out where Pop was at, they went bananas, pounding on our door, swearing, and screaming. They kept yelling Scab, scab, scab! My mother was scared out of her mind and crying hysterically. We had no phone in those days to call Grandpa or the cops. I remember trying to help my mother push the couch over and up against the door, which was ready to pop off its hinges. Each time one of them hit the door with his shoulder, the wall shook, and pictures and knickknacks fell to the floor. I’ve never experienced an earthquake, but I’m sure it must be similar. It felt as though they were pounding the door for a couple of hours. Sometimes, when I see the movie Night of the Living Dead, which incidentally was filmed in Clairton, I think about that night.

One wacko chopped a good-size hole in our door with a sharp hatchet. After the strike ended, my dad came home and saw the door. The next day, he and some local badass Turks drove south to Morgantown, and those West Virginia Turks never came to town again. Heggie was a man of very few words, but you’d best listen to them. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn it either until much later in life. Bullshit, I used to say. I might only be six or eight or ten years old, but I’m a helluva lot smarter than the Hedge!

Things started to get crowded in our apartment when my brother Russ was born, and my dad went house hunting. When we moved from the apartment, I was about four, and my brother Russ was almost three years old. To show you how well-off we were, we moved to Crest Street, a little street halfway up Maple Avenue. The top of Maple was the borderline between the Blair coloreds and po’ whites and the more affluent whites.

One day, this richer kid from across the street who had a BB gun was shooting at a tin can. I asked him for a shot. He said, I’ll shoot these twenty BBs, and you go down to the tin can and pick them up—all twenty—and then I’ll give you a shot. He shot, and off I went, digging in the dirt to retrieve all twenty BBs. I got them all in my hand and brought them back. Gimme my shot, I said. Give me the BBs first.

No BBs, no shot, he replied. I figured he’s going to take the BBs and not give me a shot, so I took them and heaved them into the woods. With that, I took off for home at top speed. He cocked the gun and shot at me, hit me dead center on the left cheek of my butt. Stung like a bastard! I ran in the house and screamed, That fucking motherfucker shot me! I pulled my pants down and showed Momma a welt the size of a half dollar.

My mother grabbed the broom and took off after him. If she did catch him, you best know the back of his head got whipped by a broom handle. Then she came back into the house and grilled me, wanting to know who taught me those words. I too also ended up getting an ass kicking because I couldn’t tell her. I really don’t know where I’d heard them.

In the good ole’ days, if that kid or his momma had dared to call to complain to the cops, the little bastard would have been locked up. The cops would surely have busted up his BB gun and then yelled at his momma for bothering them! Furthermore, if his mother had dared to complain to my mother, she’d probably have gotten slapped around herself!

Things were different then. You didn’t have all the candy-ass nonsense that momma’s and dadda’s do now when getting involved in Baby Bluto’s growing up. That’s really the reason why lots of fifty-five-year-old little boys, their wives, and six children are still living at home with Momma and Dadda. Bullshit boy, if ya can’t make it on your own, then git a job!

Crest Street was also where I first got some education of teenage girls. When my mother went shopping, she would ask one of the two high school girls next door to come over and babysit me and Russ. They didn’t have a bathtub in their house, so every time one of them would come over, she would give Russ and me some toys to play with and go take a long bath. There was a big wooden door on the bathroom that had a keyhole the size of a quarter. Russ and I would take turns peeking through the keyhole. I would look, and he would count to ten; then we would switch. We soon realized that these girls didn’t own two important components! What could’a happened to their stickshift!

How the hell did they pee? Their thing was gone. Who cut it off, and why? Years later, I happened to see one of the sisters. She was long and tall and built like an ivory outhouse. Too bad, she didn’t have the foresight to take me on back then. I was a four-year-old baby bull stud.

When the time came to move, we went from Crest Street up the hill to the corner of Third Street and Waddell Avenue. The Hedge procured a moving van, a.k.a. a dirty coal-delivery truck. On the doors of the truck, painted in free hand with bright orange paint, read, Imma Putz, I can keep your harem heated.

When the truck arrived and my mother looked out of the window, she let out a screech that sounded like a bunch of hyenas at a rumble. Heggie, if you think for one second that you and your big-bargain moving van will even touch one piece of my furniture, you’re as crazy as your asshole friend Imma Putz, who owns and operates that piece of crap.

Pop went into the basement and unpacked our garden hose. He and Mr. Putz proceeded to scrub out the truck. Two hours later, with the truck now squeaky clean and loaded up like the Beverly Hillbillies, we were on our way. In the cab rode Momma, who was hiding her face, mortified that someone would recognize her. My sister and little brother sat with Momma in the cab. Russ, my dad, and I sat on the overhang over the cab of the truck. I don’t think anybody even noticed this traveling fiasco. As per our shit luck, as we turned left off Crest Street to go up Maple Avenue, it began to rain. No, I don’t mean rain—I’m talking a deluge. Needless to say, we—and all our furniture—got soaked! To add to this calamity, Momma was screaming out of the truck that she was gonna kill my father upon our arrival.

Our new home at the corner of Waddell and Third Street was a two-story building. We lived on the first floor behind an Italian deli that was a front for a numbers joint. Two Italian brothers, Samino and Pepeto, owned it. Russ’s and my bedroom was in the back part of the apartment. On the other side of our paper-thin bedroom wall was the deli, a dark room that held food and beverage supplies. Russ and I were far more interested in the couch that adorned the corner, nearest our bedroom. Said piece of usually-living-room furniture could now be legally advertised as dual-use. This once-magnificent black davenport probably provoked many divorces and illegitimate kids! They could conceivably have used the services of a doorman in a fancy uniform to direct the horny feminine traffic!

Said sofa was extensively used four or more nights and several afternoons per week as an entertainment center for the brothers. Periodically during the day and into the wee hours of the morning, Samino and Pepeto would bring ladies in ‘for a go at it’. Brother Russ and I were puzzled one night in particular, after hearing one of the Romeos, extol the virtues and benefits of participating in different sex acts. I promise you will get a more voluptuous chest and figure. Do it just once, and you’ll get a nice complexion with no more pimples or zits. I don’t know if the young novice ever bought it, but the sounds weren’t the same! Remembering the Crest Street girls in the buff and now seeing the boys in the buff, Russ and I, by peeking through a lousy little slit in the door behind the deli—went from baccalaureate degrees in sexual variations to almost doctoral degrees. And some of you yahoos had to go to Harvard to get smart! Momma always wanted to know why we no longer wanted her to read us bedtime stories. Bullshit man, we knew damn well why Jack and Jill were in a hurry to get up that friggin’ hill!

One afternoon, my mother went shopping while my dad slept. He had worked the midnight-to-eight shift the night before. It was a summer afternoon, and there had been one big-ass thunderstorm. When it quit raining, the water poured down the gutters. Russ and I decided to go outside. Up in front of the deli pulled this big black gangster car. One of the Italian brothers exited the car and went inside the deli. Russ and I, being nice guys, decided to wash their car. We got some old dirty rags from our basement, wet them in the gutter water, and proceeded to wash the car. When we were almost done, Pepeto came running out the door screaming like Tarzan with his nuts twisted. We ran in the house and hid under my father’s bed. Pepeto’s pounding on the door sounded like Attila the Hun about to be raped by King Kong! The thunderous pounding woke up my dad, and that sure as hell wasn’t gonna be good. My father ended up having to pay to have their car compounded and simonized. And once more, it was ass kickin’ time.

Our town went from one hill up to another. The town park was big and beautiful, but the swimming pool was closed. It was around 1937 that the black folks who comprised about half the town’s population were not allowed to buy memberships. When the coloreds started making a fuss about their rights, the Ku Klux Klan began to burn crosses on the ridge overlooking the pool.

Eventually, the pool reopened, but without the colored population’s enjoyment. I imagine the intimidation factor was part of the reason. And the exorbitant amount of money for a summer season pass—$1.35—might as well have been $535.00, even for most of the white kids! Not to be deterred by the money issue, my friends and I, Walter Rats Radocay (who was well on his way to becoming a big-league baseball player with the St. Louis Browns, until his untimely death in a car accident), Casper Casseraro (a saxophonist of major questionable talent), and my main man Harry went down into the woods and dammed up this creek. It was one-quarter spring water and three-quarters sewer water! While you swam, you had to dodge the white fish, which are now scarcely used in a tryst. There were several problems with beaching on the shores of Peter’s Creek. The one big one was when you came out of the water, you stunk to high heaven. Everyone within fifty yards of you knew where you had been. When I got home, I got another ass kickin’ from Momma.

Later on in life when I got into a new and more fulfilling venture, getting hit was a piece of cake.

One day Rats got an idea, leave the swimming hole and walk along the railroad tracks for about two hundred yards while you held your clothes up over your face. That prevented any girls from getting a free show by looking down from the hill over top of the tunnel. Pass on through the railroad tunnel to the other end where there was a water tower for the locomotives.

We would take turns climbing the ladder and pulling the rope allowing the ice-cold water to gush out. That way, all the guys got a shower. Our own method of getting disinfected. Rats even had the balls to go swimming inside the pitch-black tank one time. He said that there must have been a hundred snakes in there. I never did find out if he was kidding or not, but I sure as hell wasn’t going in to find out! Rats was one daring dude!

One afternoon, while heading home from swimming, we walked up this path through the thick woods and big trees. Suddenly we stopped dead in our tracks. About twenty yards further up the hill, gently swaying in a faint breeze and about twenty-five feet off the ground was an old man. His body was stiff, and it had a thick rope around his neck. The first thing I noticed about his face was its vast distortion. It looked like it was made out of bluish ice and the ice had begun to melt. His head was leaning off to one side; and it looked as though his eyes, nose, and mouth were all sliding off. It shocked and scared the hell out of us. We were so scared; we never did tell anyone.

Shortly after that, my grandfather floated me a $1.35 loan for a summer swimming pass provided I pulled weeds and cut his grass for 10¢ a day. One thing that pissed him off though was when I would break off some of the weeds and couldn’t get the stubs out. I tried to cover them with dirt, but it looked like little mountains. He would kick off the dirt and say to me, Don’t piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining! I really loved my grandfather. He always said he was going to send me to West Point. He was politically hooked, and I suppose, it just might’ve happened. At that point in my life, I studied and did well in school.

It was when we were living on Third Street that I began attending school. My uncle Lloyd Keller Lloyd was given the honor of taking me that first morning. For lunch, I had to walk straight through the heart of town to get home to eat. If, God forbid, I were to have gotten hit by a car and didn’t get killed, I’d surely have gotten whipped for not being careful enough! For the afternoon classes, my mother grabbed this kid that lived down the alley from us to take me back to school. His name was Phillip George, and he was in the second grade. When we got to school, he took me to his second-grade classroom. Sometime during the afternoon, the teacher walked back and wanted to know why the two of us were sitting at the same desk. After questioning us, she sorted things out and sent me back to my first-grade classroom. How many Gensa scholars have been promoted from first to second grade in half a day?

The night before Thanksgiving that year, around eight, my mother went down into the cellar where the live chickens were housed. My dad bought them live, probably because they were cheaper. Momma filled the big aluminum washtub with warm water for Russ, Bobby, and me to bathe. We undressed and piled our clothes neatly on the cement floor. When we were finished bathing, we got out of the tub, dried off, and began to dress. In that particular era, young boys wore trousers that were called knickers. They came down just below the knee and gathered together with an elastic band. We all wore high socks that tucked up under the trouser legs and were held up with rubber bands. When the rubber bands broke, you tied them together with a knot. After a while, you ended up with three or four knots, which dug into your legs. For whatever the reason, Bobby had the best rubber bands. Come time to put on the rubber bands to hold our socks up, lo and behold, they were all gone!

I didn’t steal the good ones, so it must have been Russ. Bobby didn’t give a damn who stole them; he just wanted them back. Hence we all got into a brawl. The yelling and screaming got my mother’s attention, and she came barreling down the stairs. OK! she shrieked. Who did it? I didn’t do it, and Russ refused to confess. By now, Momma was real pissed, and we all got an ass kicking and sent straight to bed. Next morning, we all set down for breakfast, and my mother came over to the table laughing. You’ll never guess what, she chuckled. When your father killed and cleaned the chickens last night, look what he found in their bellies. With that, she held up all the rubber bands. The chickens ate them thinking they were worms, she volunteered.

I used to get a quarter for each 90 on my report card from Grandpa, my Aunt Olive (who was a schoolteacher in the affluent section of Clairton), and my father. My second grade report card was so excellent that my Aunt Olive took me into Pittsburgh to have lunch in a fancy restaurant—J. C. Penny’s Five and Dime. When we finished eating, the waiter came by to get our dessert order. What would you like? he asked.

Very quietly and timidly, I said, Could I have some more smashed potatoes, please?

Well now, Aunt Olive’s (who thought her crap didn’t stink) face blew up like a blowfish. That will be all! she snapped at the waiter. All the way home, and way past Christmas, she reminded me of my stupid remark, about more smashed potatoes. I don’t think I ever went out to eat with her again. That was my first introduction to humiliation! Hang in there though, times will change, and good things will prevail!

When I was around six years old, my father took my mother and us kids to the movies one summer night, which later on became a yearly ritual. On the way home, we stopped at the St. Clair Restaurant. Once we were seated, my father ordered a dish of ice cream for each of us. We didn’t dare say what flavor we wanted. He made the choice; like it, or keep on walking! With the dish of ice cream, the waitress always brought each of us a glass of water. I always wondered why she did this. First of all, I reckoned that only rich people were able to afford to go into restaurants! The waitress bringing a glass of water with the ice cream must mean rich people drink water while eating their ice cream. I always wanted to be prepared if I ever got rich, so I always drank water with my dairy delight for several years after. Guess what, I sometimes still do!

image%202%20Me%20on%20right%20%26%20brother%20Russ.JPG

Me on right and brother Russ

Around 1939, I was seven or so years old. On that day only, Heggie’s MO did a 180° turn. During the course of running his numbers business, he had to go to McKeesport. At that particular time, despite being in the depths of the Great Depression, McKeesport was a haven for fashion.

Along Fifth Avenue, Hedge came upon a haberdashery. Keep in mind now that he was a fashion template and was never ever seen in public without a hat.

In the front window on a mannequin sat a dark brown Stetson Homburg. Below the mannequin was a sign that said Tour L’homme avec des boules. I still don’t know what the sign’s intention were, but I do know it caught Heggie’ attention. He bolted in and purchased one. In truth, it was really the 1930s version of the Armani of headwear.

On his way home, Heggie walked slowly through the center of town, for all to see him as a vogue of style! He arrived home at about ten minutes to four and as usual entered through the kitchen door. He removed the purchase of splendor and gently located it on the seat of the large brown club chair.

At promptly four o’clock, I entered the kitchen with seven innings of diamond dust covering me. I was sternly instructed by Momma to go sit down somewhere till supper is ready. I did like she said. I walked over to my favorite brown club chair, and with my dirty clothes on, I plopped down and relaxed.

On or about four twenty-five, the call came. Everybody to the table, suppers on, Momma bellowed.

Brother Russ happened to be sitting on the arm of the club chair. As I arose, Russ shrieked, Holy shit, look what ya done to Pop’s hat! There it was, covered in dust and flat as a pile of elephant dung. That was seventy-plus years ago, and as I remember it now, the hair on the nape of my neck still curls.

Heggie rose from the table and slowly walked toward the pile of dung. My first thought was that he looked like the guy who played the role of the Mummy in the movies. He slowly picked up the hat and held it to his chest. Nary a single word was ever mentioned about the incident. Pop had the hat steam cleaned and blocked, and I used up another of my nine lives.

Later, in 1939, we moved again. This time it was up on another hill across town—907, Toman Avenue. The house that Pop bought for us had six rooms and cost $2,500. It was a repo. The people who lived there couldn’t make the payments to the bank and got evicted. In those days, it was a horrible disgrace to be booted out of your home. The marshals came in and removed all of your furniture and