DOWN THE ALLEY AND OVER THE FENCE

DOWN THE ALLEY AND OVER THE FENCE
An American Family, Chicago Style
1936 - 1951

by Walter Oleksy

Introduction

“Down the alley and over the fence.
I've got the can. Who’s got ten cents?”
(old beer-drinking song)

My sister Mary Jane, at the age of seven,
was a professional mourner. This was back in
1936 when we lived on the South Side of Chicago.

Rain, snow, or sunshine, Sis went to one of the
neighborhood funeral parlors and stood out front.
Lanky and with long dark hair, clutching a prayer
book and string of Rosary beads, she bowed her
head and sobbed. For this she was rewarded with
pennies from the bereaved who came to pay their
last respects to the deceased.

We were Catholic and Democrats, but Sis was the
first real liberal I knew. She never knew the
religion, occupation, or anything else about the
person lying in their casket inside the chapel.

Sis only got a hint as to who they were in life
because of the color ribbon on the crepe, the white
wicker basket of fresh-cut flowers that stood
outside the chapel door. A light purple ribbon was
for a man, white for a woman, pink for a baby or
child, and silver for an elderly man or woman.
Years later, purple became the standard color
ribbon for anyone deceased.

It didn't matter to Mary Jane who was in their
box inside the chapel. They got the best cry
she could send them off with for a penny.

During the school year, Sis had great hours.
She only worked after school on Fridays and also
on Saturday mornings. When school was out for
summer vacation, she made the rounds of the
chapels almost every day.

Fridays after school, she took up work outside the
Jewish funeral parlor in our neighborhood.
She found that, for some reason, the Jewish
bereaved gave her more pennies than Catholics or
Protestants.

Sis taught me resourcefulness and helped me learn
how to survive in hard times. Fifty years later,
after beating bladder cancer -- through sheer
determination not to let it lick her -- she’s still an
inspiration.

She drew upon her strong faith that the Lord
would help heal her. A mother with three kids,
she also looked up to heaven and told her late
husband John, “I’m not ready to play poker with
you up there. I want more time down here to
raise the kids.”

Our older brother Johnny Boy used to call her
“Saxophone Sis,” but I never knew why; she never
played the sax or any other musical instrument.
He also called her “Booth,” short for phone booth,
but I never knew why he gave her that moniker
either. She was always just "Sis" to me.

For younger readers who may not know what a
phone booth was, every drug store had one or
more little rooms like closets where you could
make a phone call in privacy. Like the British
police call booth in "Doctor Who."

We didn’t have a telephone in our apartment during
The Great Depression of the 1930s and until
World War II, so Mom used to give me some nickels
to go to the corner drug store phone booth and call
the gas and electric companies that we’d be late with
our payments. I also called the L. Fish furniture store
and said we’d be late paying for the furniture in our
apartment that we bought on time payments. It was
usually worn out before our folks made the final
payment.

We had a used car for a couple of months, until we fell
behind in payments and a man came from a finance
company and repossessed it.

A year and a half younger than my sister, my job was
to go around our block to aunts or neighbors and ask
for their empty soda or milk bottles. Johnny Boy and
Sis took them to the corner grocery store and redeemed
them for their deposits of one or two cents each.

When we pooled our pennies, we had enough for show
money. It only cost a dime to go to a neighborhood
movie palace and see two features straight from their
run in the downtown Chicago theaters. Maybe an
Errol Flynn adventure or a Sonja Heine ice-skating
musical. Or we went to a second-run theater and saw
three movies a few years old, for only a nickel.
There we saw a Tim McCoy or Buck Jones western,
maybe a Johnny Weissmuller "Tarzan," and a Boris
Karloff or Bela Lugosi "spooky." We seldom said
“Let’s go see ..." a movie by its title. It was always,
“Let’s go see the new Gary Cooper” or “Let’s go see
the new Bob Hope.”

Johnny Boy's job was to take all three of us to the
movies, stopping in the five-and-ten-cent store on
the way to buy a pound of licorice or butter kisses
for a dime. Then we entered the dark world of the
movie house and sat with our legs curled up under
us. We didn't take our eyes off the screen for four
or six hours while Johnny Boy divided up the candy
from a big bag. He sat between us and doled out
the goodies: One butter kiss for Mary Jane,
one for me.

There in the dark, was that when I began not to trust
my big brother? I was sure he took two for himself
every time.

Mom and Dad both worked and rarely went to the
movies with us. In 1936, my Austrian-born mother
ironed shirts in a Chinese hand laundry. She always
got there an hour early on hot summer days, so she
could get an ironing board near an open window.
Dad, an out-of-work master auto mechanic, drove a
trolley for the old Chicago Surface Lines. They didn't
have much time for going to the movies.

Millions of people lost their jobs during The Great
Depression. People survived the hard times by
their resourcefulness and sheer determination not
to cave in under adversity. Today, in times of
recession and job loss, many people are faced with
the same challenges we had over half a century ago.
But we made it and, if people today keep at it and
never give up faith or trying to survive, they can too.

My sister's and brother's grandchildren have a much
easier life than we did. To them, the 1930s and l940s
are ancient history, somewhere after the Ice Age and
before the invention of computers, I-pods, and the cell
phone. Our trials and tribulations in those distant
years are foreign but somewhat curious to them,
and they've asked many times, "Tell what it was like,
when you were a kid?"

To answer them, and to tell a story of our survival,
I decided to write about my boyhood, my mother and
father, and sister and brother in the "good old days"
when we were young.

You might ask, who cares? My folks and nobody else
in the family ever became famous or even infamous
for anything.

They just got born, worked usually not at what they
did best but what they could earn a living at, got
married or stayed single (as I did), had kids or didn't
(I stuck with dogs), lived ordinary lives and
sometimes did stupid things before they died and
left almost no footprints in the sand but often
imprints in our hearts.

No, they weren't very important. The thing is, you'll
probably see yourself in them or us, and others you
knew or know as well.

My memoirs’ title refers to an old beer-drinking song
my father and his brothers and sisters used to sing
after poker parties that lasted from after work on Fridays
to late Sunday nights at Grandma's house on the South
Side of Chicago before the men went off to fight in
World War II.

In among “On The Banks of the Wabash,” “My Gal Sal,”
“In the Evening by the Moonlight,” “Show Me the Way
To Go Home” and other songs they harmonized to,
they always sang:

"Down the alley and over the fence. I've got the can.
Who’s got ten cents?"

In the 1930s, you could take a tin pail to the corner
tavern and get it filled with tap beer for a dime.
Or, for the children, a pail or pitcher of root beer
also for only ten cents.

Back then, people sat on their front porches or door
steps on hot summer nights and talked while they
drank their beer, and maybe listened to someone
up the block play their piano in the parlor.

They say we can learn a lot from history, so maybe
we don't make the same mistakes twice. I believe
that's true. I also tend to believe it's true about
a person's family history.

Children today hardly get to know their parents
before they divorce. It's too bad, because
everything else aside, it's important to know
who your folks are, or were. It helps a person when
they grow up, to get to know who they are.

Most of the people in the stories that will follow have
gone to that big poker game in the sky. You
probably know or miss people like them.

Anyway, these are the stories I tell when the new
generation in the family ask, "Tell what it was like,
when you were a kid?"

These reminiscences are kind of a confession,
and I'm going to do my best to be honest about myself
but, of course, I'm not going to tell you everything.
As Holden Caulfield said in Catcher in the Rye,
the rest of the family would have two hemorrhages
apiece if I told anything too personal about them.

Mainly, It’s my wish that these memoirs will give
courage and hope to those today who are in hard times
or are scared for one reason or another.

For instance, lots of people today are scared of terrorism.
Sure, that’s something to be scared about. But let’s not
cave in about it.

Terrorism is not new to America. We had terrorism here
while I was growing up during World War II. Enemy
agents of the Nazis and Japanese infiltrated America to
blow up our airports, naval bases, and train stations,
or factories making planes or tanks. They just weren’t
called terrorists, maybe because our country’s leaders
wisely thought that was too scary a name. They were
called “Fifth Columnists,” but they were just as scary.

Some politicians today play on our fears -- intentionally --
in order to gain high office, claiming they more than any
other candidate will protect us from terrorists.
But making us fearful is not only un-helpful and
un-healthy, it‘s downright Un-American.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
instead played on our courage when he said,
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

If we keep that in mind, we not only can lick terrorists,
we can lick anything.

I hope you’ll come along with me down the alley and
over the fence in future installments to read more about
how we licked joblessness, illness, divorce, war,
terrorism, scratched knees, bloody noses, deaths in
the family, and all the rest of what life throws at us.

We not only have to learn to duck, but to hit the ball back.
Hard and often. Or, most certainly, to bounce back.

Pollyanna? I don't think so.

THE LADIES' ROOM

First post: GONE TO THE DOGS...
AND LOVING IT

Second post: CLASSIC MOVIES

Third post: THE LADIES' ROOM


THE LADIES’ ROOM

Wit and Wisdom from
367 World-Famous Modern Women


Edited by Walter Oleksy

These are just a few of the hundreds of wise and witty
things famous modern women say in this compilation
of quotes about women, marriage, divorce, relationships,
sex and sexuality, fitness, fear and courage, beauty and
fashion, success and money, coping with age and aging,
beating housework, attaining happiness, combining
marriage with motherhood and career and, last but not
least, everything you ever wanted to know about men.


“The best smell in the world is that man that you love.”
-- Jennifer Aniston

“Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta
relax and concentrate.”
-- Susan Sarandon

“Big girls need big diamonds.”
-- Elizabeth Taylor

“The only time a woman really succeeds in changing
a man is when he is a baby.”
-- Natalie Wood

“I married a German. Every night I dress up as
Poland and he invades me.”
-- Phyllis Diller

“The main problem in marriage is that for a man,
sex is a hunger like eating. If the man is hungry
and can’t get to a fancy French restaurant,
he goes to a hot dog stand. For a woman,
what is important is love and romance.”
-- Joan Fontaine

“Marriage is not just spiritual communion.
It is also remembering to take out the trash.”
-- Dr. Joyce Brothers

“Sometimes I need to learn to bite my tongue.
And that’s the whole give-and-take about marriage
– you don’t always get your way. And let’s face it –
until you get married, you get your way. Once you
get married, you suddenly have to think of
somebody else before you make decisions, before
you speak. That’s about putting your ego in check,
about growing up and about putting someone else
in front of you.
-- Madonna

“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy
is the same.”
-- Gloria Swanson

“My husband and I didn’t sign a pre-nuptial agreement.
We signed a mutual suicide pact.
-- Roseanne Barr

“The trouble with some women is that they get all
excited about nothing – and then marry him.”
-- Cher

“When I attained a certain advanced intimacy with
a man, and I don’t just mean sex, I married him.”
-- Hedy Lamarr

“Husbands are like fires – they go out when
unattended.”
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor

“I am a committed wife. And I should be committed,
too for being married so many times.”
-- Elizabeth Taylor

“It is better for a woman to compete impersonally
in society, as men do, than to compete for
dominance in her own home with her husband,
compete with her neighbors for status, and so
smother her son that he cannot compete at all.”
-- Betty Friedan

“Men should keep their eyes wide open before
marriage, and half-shut afterwards.”
-- Madeleine de Scudery

“In a marriage, you’re promising to care about
everything. The good things, the bad things,
the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it,
all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your
life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.
Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will
be your witness.”
-- Susan Sarandon

“He’s the kind of man a woman would have to
marry to get rid of.”
-- Mae West

“Now, I think that I should have known that he
was magic all along. I did know it – but I should
have guessed that it would be too much to ask to
grow old with and see our children grow up
together. So now, he is a legend when he would
have preferred to be a man.”
-- Jackie Kennedy

“What has the women’s movement learned from
Geraldine Ferraro’s candidacy for vice president?
Never get married.”
-- Gloria Steinem

“Now, look, baby, ‘Union’ is spelled with five letters.
It is not a four-letter word.”
-- Dorothy Parker

“Marriage is too interesting an experiment to be
tried only once.”
-- Eva Gabor

“Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people
feel passionately about.”
-- Katharine Hepburn

“All married couples should learn the art of battle
as they should the art of making love. Good battle
is objective and honest – never vicious or cruel.
Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings
to a marriage the principle of equal partnership.”
-- Ann Landers

“Why does a woman work ten years to change a
man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the
man she married?”
-- Barbra Streisand

“'What’s for dinner?' is the only question many
husbands ask their wives, and the only one to
which they care about the answer.”
-- Mignon McLaughlin

“There are some who want to get married and others
who don’t. I have never had an impulse to go to the
altar. I am a difficult person to lead.”
-- Greta Garbo

“In Hollywood, all marriages are happy. It’s trying to
live together afterwards that causes the problems.”
-- Shelley Winters

“When two people marry, they become in the eyes of
the law one person, and that one person is the husband.”
-- Shana Alexander

“I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband
she can forget.”
-- Adela Rogers St. John

“I don’t want to be married to someone who feels
inferior to my success or because I make more money
than he does.”
-- Grace Kelly

“I try to remember, as I hear about friends getting
engaged, that it’s not about the ring. It’s a grave
thing, getting married.”
-- Gwyneth Paltrow

“I’d marry again, if I found a man who had fifteen
million dollars and would sign half of it to me before
the marriage, and guarantee he’d be dead within
the year.”
-- Bette Davis

“Marriage is like a phone call in the night: first the
ring, and then you wake up.”
-- Evelyn Hendrickson

“For marriage to be a success, every woman and
every man should have her and his own bathroom.
The end.”
-- Catherine Zeta-Jones

“Remember if you marry for beauty, thou bindest
thyself all thy life for that which perchance,
will neither last nor please thee one year:
and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no
price at all.”
-- Virginia Woolf

“A woman asking ‘Am I good? Am I satisfied?’
is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about
themselves, the less they talk to other women,
the more they try to please their husbands,
the happier the marriage is going to be.”
-- Barbara Cartland

“Single women have a dreadful propensity for
being poor, which is one very strong argument
in favor of matrimony.”
-- Jane Austen

“Forty for you, sixty for me. And equal partners
we will be.” -- Joan Rivers

“I was married for thirty years. Isn’t that enough?
I’ve had my share of dirty underwear on the floor.”
-- Martha Stewart

“Marrying a man is like buying something you’ve
been admiring for a long time in a shop window.
You may love it when you get it home, but it
doesn’t always go with everything else in the house.”
-- Jean Kerr

“I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell
this to my children, they just about throw up.”
-- Barbara Bush

“For years my wedding ring has done its job.
It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded
my husband numerous times at parties that it’s
time to go home. It has been a source of relief
to a dinner companion. It has been a status
symbol in the maternity ward.”
-- Erma Bombeck

“Frank is a better husband to me than I am
a wife to him.”
-- Kathie Lee Gifford

“Just because I have rice on my clothes doesn’t
mean I’ve been to a wedding. A Chinese man
threw up on me.”
-- Phyllis Diller

“I wish someone would have told me that just
because I’m a girl, I don’t have to get married.”
-- Marlo Thomas

“Marry Prince William? I’d love that. Who wouldn’t
want to be a princess?”
-- Britney Spears

“Being a princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
-- Princess Diana

(Want more of these? Comment or email me at
waltmax@comcast.net)

GONE TO THE DOGS -- And Loving It!

This is the beginning section of my new book about my nearly forty years with three dogs. The manuscript is finished and I’ll add chapters from it regularly to this blog. Please don’t steal it, but if you can help get an agent or publisher interested in it, I’d be eternally grateful.



GONE TO THE DOGS
-- And Loving It!

by Walter Oleksy


Introduction: That’s Love

Why is it when I kiss someone’s puppy, I feel like I'm cheating on my dog? It must be because I love my dog so much, and she loves me even more. A gooey answer? Yes, but true.

Some years ago I told my older brother, who was not a dog person, that my beloved dog Max, a big black Lab mix, loved me so much, he often licked my face. I took that as his way of kissing me.

“He’s not kissing you, he’s licking the salt off your face,” my skeptical brother replied.

So I asked my veterinarian about it, and he asked, “Does Max sniff you first, and then lick you?”

“No, he licks me without sniffing.”

Dr. Jim replied, “That’s love.”

And I believe it.

When Max died four years ago, my second dog to live to more than 16 years, I took care of a neighbor’s dog for six weeks while they were out of the state. It was another big black Lab mix, but with a longer coat than Max’s. Would you believe? Its name was Maxine.

I would wait until I finished caring for that dog before looking for another dog of my own. I would definitely get another dog, because my philosophy is, when your dog dies, you can’t do any more for them. But you can get another dog and pour all the love from the dog who died into a new dog. They get my love running, without proving themselves, without earning it. They get my love as unconditionally as dogs give us their love.

When the six weeks were up and I returned Maxine to her owner, friends asked if I would take care of their dog for a week while they were away. I said yes, and postponed a search for my own new dog for yet another week.

Meanwhile, I had asked local police where I could look for a stray or abandoned dog. They said they take those to an animal hospital near my home. I thought I’d go there in another week, after taking care of my friends’ dog, a tall black standard poodle. He was called Valentino because they got him on Valentine’s Day.

Driving home to my empty house after feeding and walking Val, I heard a message in my head. I’ve never had a more intense message come to me from out of nowhere in my whole life. More than a message, it was a command:

“Go to the animal hospital now. There’s a dog there that needs you, and you need that dog.”

Where was the intense message coming from? I had no idea then, but did later.

I passed up the block where my small ranch house is, and drove on to the animal hospital just a half mile away.

A sign on the hospital’s front window said: CLOSED FOR LUNCH. I was about to turn away and come back later, but some girls working at the front desk waved to me to come in,
so I did.

“My dog died recently after sixteen and a half years,” I told them. “And my dog before that also had lived to sixteen and a half years. They were both black Lab mixes. I want to get another dog. Do you have a stray or abandoned dog for adoption?”

“Yes,” a clerk replied.

“Do you have a puppy for adoption?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a black Lab for adoption?”

“Yes. Would you like to see her?”

Her? A female black Lab puppy? My first two dogs had been females and they were wonderful. How could I get so lucky, my first time looking for a new dog?

I said yes eagerly.

As I waited and lunch break ended, a young couple came into the reception room with two healthy, active golden retrievers who were going to be boarded for a few days. Then the puppy who was up for adoption was brought into the
room.

It was a good-sized puppy; I thought maybe not quite a year old. Her short black coat was so shiny, she looked like a panther cub.

The puppy immediately began playing with the two golden retrievers and also with the girl clerks. With other dogs and women around, she didn’t know I was in the room.

“Wilmette police found her wandering the streets a few months ago, without any tags,” one of the girls told me. “No one has claimed her while we’ve cared for her here.”
Another girl said, “She’s healthy and has had all her shots. We’ve even had an IV chip put inside her, in case she gets lost.”

I could see the puppy was friendly with both people and other dogs. She finally came to me easily and without fear. And she was beautiful, with big expressive eyes.

“I’ll take her,” I said, making my mind up faster than I’ve bought a pair of penny loafers, and those shoes all look alike, so it’s a no-brainer to buy them. It was a no-brainer to take this new dog into my life.

Thus began new doggie adventures with my fourth darling. But what would I name her?

When I was caring for my neighbor’s dog for six weeks, while walking it I thought about what I would name my new dog. I decided if it was a male, I’d call him Charlie, after a friend’s golden retriever who loved to play with my first dog.

If my new dog would be a female, I’d call her Annie.

As it turned out, Annie was a most fitting name. Having been abandoned and adopted, she was a rescue dog. She was my Little Orphan Annie.

This book is not about one dog, it’s about the four dogs I’ve had for nearly forty years. And it’s about their dog and people friends, and even some cats. At times, you will probably see yourself in me. It is even more certain you will see your dogs in mine.

I write books, but am not a famous author. I also am not a veterinarian or dog trainer, nor do I hold a degree in human or animal psychology. I just happen to be a dog lover who has owned four dogs over nearly forty years, so I think I know some poop about dogs.

None of my dogs ever had a chance to be a hero, such as save a baby from a burning building, although I’m sure they would have been up to the job. They dug in the back yard, but never struck oil. They were just dogs, doing things dogs do, sharing their lives with me, and mine with them.

My dogs guarded me and our house, fetched tennis balls and sticks, wagged their tails for treats or play, barked at the postal carrier and all delivery persons, caught tennis balls and Frisbees on the fly, turned in circles before bedding down for a nap or the night, and their hind legs walked a little sideways.

Most important, they did what all dogs do best... give us their never-ending and unconditional love. Each of them, more than once, rescued me by being there for me with their love when things weren't going well.

Without question, I admit I love dogs. I go to garage sales every weekend and if a dog’s there, it’s the first thing I go to. I’ve never met a mean one, always a loving one.

Of course, I’m not alone in the world for loving dogs. About 52 million dogs live in 35 million homes in the United States alone, and I’m sure the owners love their dog or dogs to one degree or another.

I love some people, too, but you can wonder about people, even those you love most. You wonder if their love is going to be there for you, every day or tomorrow.

With your dog, you never wonder about that. You need only to look it looking at you to know that you have its love not only every day, but every moment of every day. And you’ll have it tomorrow and the day after that and all the years after that you will be together.

You can never lose your dog's love, because you never earned it in the first place. It is a gift to you, from your dog and whoever created them and us and this planet.

about me

I'm Walt Oleksy, a freelance writer in the Chicago area.
A bachelor, I live with my dog Annie in a suburb near
woods and a river where we walk together every day.
She's 5, a black English lab, and as good as she is
beautiful. She was abandoned at age one and I adopted
her from a shelter after my previous dog Max, a black
lab mix, died after 16 years.

My dog before him, Chelsea, also a black lab mix,
lived to 16 and a half years. My blog will be about me,
my books both published and unpublished, my thoughts
on current events, and other stuff.

I call my blog Walt's Wallow because I had a column by
that name in the student paper at Michigan State
University when I was going to Journalism School there
and was one of the editors. That's many moons ago.

I hope you will want to read chapters of some of my
books, both published and as-yet unpublished,
and I invite you to email me good or bad at
waltmax@comcast.net.