Historical November 1993 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Everyone’s family, when you get to know them, is strange.
But my family is probably a bit odder than most. I’m not sure why this is the case, and I don’t think it’s just because I know my family better than I know other families. No, I’m sure that they’re — or I guess it’s we’re — just extra strange.
As a young tyke, one of my earliest memories is taking the used Christmas Tree out to the back yard every year on the first of January, and setting it on fire.
My dad used to say that it was a form of burial for the tree. Burning it was more honorable than putting it in the trash can behind the house, he maintained.
I remember jumping with glee as pieces of tinsel would ignite here and there and waft into the air. Occasionally we’d leave an ornament we didn’t like on the tree — generally one given to us by Aunt Millie – – and watch it heat up and explode. What a way to start the new year! Thanksgiving had its own set of traditions. You see, neither of my parents liked the taste of turkey. “Bland,” said my dad; “dull,” said my mom. Instead, we created our own family ritual: -WHITE CASTLES FOR THANKSGIVING!
It was great, and I was the envy of all my friends who also didn’t like turkey.
I remember my dad painstakingly, removing the two dozen little burgers from their white boxes and assembling them into the shape of a turkey on a platter. “Too bad the pilgrims couldn’t have had these!” he laughed. There’s nothing like sitting in front of the tube on Thanksgiving, watching the Redskins beat the Cowboys, over steaming hot White Castles and a Diet Coke. Eating White Castles at Thanksgiving had the added virtue of extending the holiday; for weeks afterwards the kitchen smelled a bit like a White Castle restaurant. And besides, leftover White Castles are much better for breakfasts the next week than leftover turkey. Weddings in my family were always, well, unique.
For example, after. every one of my cousin Melba’s three weddings, the first song played at the reception was Del Shannon’s “Hats Off To Larry.” It was a tradition.
The best part of this is that none of her three husbands were named Larry. THE Larry who prompted these musical salutes was her high school sweetheart. Larry and Melba were due to be married after graduation from high school, but he left her at the alter to join the Peace Corps. (Actually he called off the wedding three days before the date, but “left her at the alter” sounds better.) Being stood up for the Peace Corps was more than Melba could take.
My mom once said, “Why couldn’t it have been the Marines or at least another woman? Poor Melba.” Ever since then Melba has been very active in the anti-anti-war movement.
As a sort of protest, I’m sure, her first and third husbands, John and Rob, worked for McDonnell-Douglas, as wielders on fighter planes, and her second husband, Earl, was an editor for Soldier Of Pontine magazine.
But Melba’s weddings have nothing on Aunt Liz’s ceremony. Aunt Liz was only married once, but what a wedding! Liz is almost six foot, two inches tall, and went to college on a basketball scholarship.
She played at St. Mary’s College in Wheaton. Illinois, averaging 19.7 points per game.
While there, Liz — known locally in the sports pages as “Liz the Wiz” — became engaged to Ira Beummer, a local basketball referee. Ira was only about five foot, four, so they made an interesting looking couple. Mom always said that they looked like a mismatched salt and pepper set. Liz’s wedding attire was not a wedding dress, but a basketball uniform.
She wore her St. Mary’s Wildcats jersey, #22, and the red basketball shorts with the pictures of little wildcats on the sides. Ira wore his referee’s shirt, complete with a whistle hanging down from his neck. And as if that’s not enough, all of the bridesmaids also wore St. Mary’s Wildcat uniforms and all of the groomsmen wore striped referee shirts.
I have their wedding photo, the entire entourage posing by the church with a minister who looks rather bewildered, in my office.
It never fails to spark a conversation when a visitor happens to glance at it.
But there’s more! Instead of throwing rice as they left the church, the crowd threw tiny styrofoam basketballs which Ira and Liz had distributed earlier.
I still have a pocketful of them in my dresser drawer.
Each one has a little inscription on it: “Ira and Liz, An All-Star Team.” Uncle Fred didn’t go to Liz’s wedding.
In fact, we hardly ever saw him at any family birthdays or parole hearings.
He was a bachelor until his death, and, in retrospect, it’s easy to see why. Uncle Fred was a quiet sort who collected ironing boards.
Now I’m into collecting clocks, so I want to be careful here; far be it from me to criticize another person’s collection interests. BUT, ironing boards?
For whatever reason, Fred got turned on by ironing boards as a kid and never lost has fascination with them. And it’s not as if he was a natty dresser with creases here and there. Everything he owned was always wrinkled, including his forehead and the fenders of his car (he was a terrible driver).
I don’t think Fred even owned an iron.
While I suspect there are various kinds or grades of ironing boards, I’m not sure about this. Worse, I don’t think that Fred, the ironing board collector, knew either!
He wasn’t interested in quality, only quantity.
He was definitely in the “more is better” camp of collecting.
After Fred died, we had to have a trash removal company come and clean out his flat because there were so many ironing boards that we couldn’t get into his back bedroom. By actual count, three haulers carried 783 ironing boards from his four room flat on Sydney Street.
The worst part is that all these ironing boards had no value at all, none, not even for scrap. Cleaning them out of Fred’s apartment cost $200. How ironic. Growing up, Cousin Gino was always fun to be around, if a bit dangerous.
He was a few years older than me, and was the black sheep of the family.
When I was daring to think of wanting a black leather jacket; back in the pre-Fonzie 50’s, Gino already smoked cigarettes, drove a motorcycle, and readily displayed pictures that he’d made of him and “the babes,” as he called them, playing kissie-face in the “FOUR PHOTOS FOR 25 CENTS” photo booth at the Cherokee Walgreen’s. What appealed to me most of all, though, was that Gino loved to play practical jokes.
I remember once, I think it was Uncle Zeke’s end-of-parole party, when Gino gave Uncle Skippy an exploding cigar to smoke.
To this day I don’t know which was funnier, the cigar exploding in Skippy’s face, leaving powder burns on his nose and cheeks, or Zeke thinking the noise was a gunshot and diving to the floor, getting caught in the tablecloth and pulling the entire punchbowl and cake over on Aunt Glenna. Gino never knew where the line was. More accurately, he knew but he didn’t care. Once at a Christmas eve party at Janice’s, Gino showed up drunk and fell asleep at the dinner table. That wouldn’t have been too bad, but he later became sick and threw up over Aunt Melba’s presents. Melba’s husband, Rob the McDonnell- Douglas welder, was livid about this, and to get even, he stuffed two of the presents Gino had been given in the toilet. That made Janice very unhappy and she spit on Rob’s new sweater to punish him for jamming her toilet. There’s more, but I’ll just say that was three years ago and the family hasn’t gotten together on Christmas eve since then. Gino dropped out of college two or three times, and finally did a stint in the army, stationed in New Orleans.
He went into off-track betting and made a small fortune before he was 30 years old. Today he’s a minister of a small church outside Elkhorn, Nebraska.
Then there’s Anne, “Anne of nose-job fame,” my mom calls her. Anne has had her nose reshaped and redone four or five times.
I swear, it always looks the same to me, but each time she says, “Isn’t this the best, honey?” The noses look OK, but she has an acoustical problem. By this time her nasal cavity must be hollow. It’s empty; there’s simply nothing there.
As a result, whenever Anne talks, there’s always a bit of an echo.
My mother always says, “Serves her right! Who does she think she is, getting a better nose than the rest of us???” The nicest thing about my family, is that when I think about my relatives, I feel almost normal.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1993.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1993_11.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
