CHAPTER 16
Radio Sex
Mother came back from Fargo exhausted. “Nothing goes right for me,” she said. The treatments had failed and the failure discouraged her. She was discouraged by how discouraged she was. “Other people are braver than me, Francis. I’m not the only one who ever lost a husband. Other women keep going and I don’t know why I can’t. You’ve got yourself a rotten mother, that’s all. I’m so sorry.” She cried whenever she looked at him now. “You ought to have a happy home like other kids and look at you. You got an old hag of a mother who sits here bawling like a calf. A big baby. That’s all I am.” Her day was regulated by the radio. It was the only life she had. She woke early for the Shepherd Boys Quartet singing gospel songs on The Rise and Shine Show and she went to bed after The Calhoun Club Ballroom and the sweet music of Tommy Leonard and His Lake Serenaders and the dancers slipping quietly around the breezy terrace overlooking Excelsior Boulevard. And in between she followed all her shows faithfully, listening, writing in. She told Dad to beware those man-hunting women and she commended Tiny for always being cheerful (and got back a postcard: “Yo sho’ keeps a-makin’ me Happy!”). She wrote letters to Little Benny (“I have a boy not much older than you, and when I hear you sing, I like to imagine it’s him singing to me”) and she became a member of The WLT Tip Top Club—“Whenever you feel blue, think of something nice to do. Don’t let it get you down; wear a smile, not a frown. And you’ll be feeling tip-top too!” She wrote in regularly to Smilin’ Bud Swenson and once received $3 for her poem, “Trees,” which was read on the show.
When I see a tree, it inspires me
For a tree from a tiny seed grew.
If something so small can grow that tall,
Then there’s hope for me and you.
She subscribed to the Tip Top philosophy, to concentrate on the good things and forget the bad, to smile and look forward to tomorrow and do good for others, but, as she explained to Francis, it didn’t work for her because she was too weak. She couldn’t bear to face the neighbors because they all talked about her and how messy her house was. She couldn’t move to Minneapolis because it cost too much and what would she do there? She could only listen to the radio.
That Christmas, 1940, Little Buddy sang “Christmas in the Depot,” about a boy named Little Jim whose daddy had been a railroad engineer and died in a crash—Mother reached over and turned up the radio, and Francis got up off the floor where he was studying Art’s special
Geographic and sat by her on the couch and held her hand—and now Little Jim was lost in the crowded train station on Christmas Eve trying to get back to his dying mother on the Evening Mall—
“All board,” cried the voice on the platform,
As all of the people got on.
And Jim he looked in his jacket
And the precious ticket was gone.
He looked in the old cardboard satchel,
And his pockets, the left and the right.
He had lost his ticket to see her,
And Mother was dying tonight.
He whispered, “Please, Mister Conductor,
The Evening Mail I must ride,
For Mother is dying in Pittsburgh,
And I need to be there at her side.”
The conductor looked down at him gravely.
He said, “There is naught I can do.
There are rules by which railroads are managed,
And we make no exception for you.”
So Jim found a gentleman standing
Beside the first-class sleeping car,
And he wore a fine suit and a top hat
And smoked a three-dollar cigar.
And Jim said, “Please, sir, can you spare me
Two dollars to pay for my fare?
For I must tonight get to Pittsburgh.
My mother is perishing there.”
And the gentleman sneered at him cruelly,
“Be gone or I’ll call the police.
I’m tired of beggars and chisellers!
Be gone, you’re disturbing the peace!”
So Jim found a place in the station,
A corner behind the front door,
And he felt so cold and so sleepy
As he lay on the cold marble floor.
And he dreamed he saw angels in heaven.
How sweet were the anthems they sung,
And there in the middle was Mother,
So happy and lovely and young.
And she said to him, “Jim, you’re a good boy,
A child of sunshine and love,
And tonight you will join me in heaven
And live with your mother above.”
And Jim put his hand out to touch her
And the heavens resounded with joy
To know he would have no more suffering,
That ragged and poor little boy.
A janitor found him at daybreak,
And they covered him up with a sheet,
And they sent round a hearse in an hour,
And they carried him up the main street.
And O how the sidewalks were crowded,
’Twas Christmas for young and for old,
And nobody saw the black wagon
With its cargo so tiny and cold.
They were busily worshipping Jesus.
They sang halleluias to Him.
But Jesus looked down with a smile
And He said, “Welcome home, Little Jim.”
Mother was radiant. It was the loveliest song she had ever heard. So sad, but she couldn’t cry, it was too beautiful. “Things will turn out for us, I know it,” she said. “It’s just like the song says.”
“But why does he have to die to be happy?” Francis thought it was the worst song in the history of radio.
“Don’t you think Daddy is happy?” she asked. Her upper lip trembled. “I know he is. He says he is. He tells me every day that he is.” She turned off the radio. “Dying is the easy part,” she said softly. “It’s the waiting that’s unbearable.” Francis turned the radio back on. Little Buddy’s dad, Slim, was talking about corn flakes. It would be nice to have a dad, Francis thought, especially one who could play the guitar.
The next summer, Francis moved to Minneapolis to live with Art and Clare for awhile because Mother had to go back to the hospital. She had dreams, terrible ones, and now the dark figures from her dreams were coming to her during the day. “Do I seem crazy to you?” she asked him. He said no. “But I am,” she said.
She came to his room late at night and sat on the edge of his bed. “My life is gone, Francis. Gone up in smoke. We were happy once and then Daddy died. He burned up, Francis. He was a good man and God let him die in the flames. We were so happy. I don’t know why this happened to us. You’re my little boy and I love you more than anything else and my wish is that you could have had a happy life but there’s nothing to be done. I’m sending you away but it breaks my heart to do it. Just do one thing for me, Francis, because I don’t know if we’ll ever be together again. It’s all I ask. Remember your mother, Francis. Just remember me. That’s all I ask. Will you promise me that? Will you? Promise that no matter what happens, you’ll always remember your mother, who brought you into the world. I love you. Goodbye, darling boy. Remember your promise. Remember.”
Art was waiting at the Great Northern Depot and they drove up to Art’s cousin’s plumbing shop on Plymouth Avenue. “You hear that Ole and Lena moved away too?” said Art. “Yeah, they moved away because Ole read in the paper that most accidents occur at home.” Ed the cousin locked up the shop and took off with them and they all had hamburgers at a gleaming steel diner where the dishwasher had a dark green eyeball—“Zez Hoover. Usedta catch for the Millers long time ago, got hit by a pitch,” said Ed—and then they dropped in at the fire station for a hand of cribbage. Art had a silver flask and passed it around. “Gotta go check out a babe,” he told Francis. “You stick with Ed. I’ll be back in a shake.”
Francis and Ed shot pool with a couple firemen, then the two of them walked back to the shop. “That Art. Quite a guy,” said Ed. “Quite a guy. I sure envy him. Plumbing is nothing, you’re dealing with nobodies. I tell you, one thing about radio is that a man can get laid faster than anywhere else. They’re all doing it. Those firemen you just met? Lily Dale goes there once a week and does half the guys in the department, that’s why she has so much tremolo.”
Lily Dale? said Francis. Oh yes, she drove down to Engine Co. 1 after her show, pulled the big Caddy into the barn next to the pumper and the firemen lined up at the rear door. All those radio people were banging away as fast as they could. That Leo LaValley, they say he’s a real pussy hound. That minister who’s on Sunday mornings, him too, and that Shepherd Boys Quartet, that bass singer, they say his balls hang down to his knees.
Leo a what kind of hound?
“Oh, he’s hot for that woman who’s on in the morning. That LaWella.”
LaWella Wells? The homemaker?
“That’s the one. They say she does that whole damn show in her undies and sometimes she takes them off and sits there naked as a jaybird. Not a stitch. A real knockout, too.”
LaWella Wells? The peanut butter cookie recipes and how to get cranberry juice out of a wool sweater?
“Sits there in her little brassiere and panties, and whenever the recipe calls for milk, she unhopks the top and whenever the recipe calls for sugar, off comes the bottom. I heard that from a guy who worked there. He said the control room was so crowded during that homemaker show, you couldn’t take a deep breath.”
That sweet woman with the cheery “Good morning everybody! It’s a beautiful day and it’s so good to have you here in my kitchen!”—naked?
“She’s got breasts as firm as a McIntosh apple. Real nice little breasts with big pale-brown nipples. Nice long legs. Real nice. Soft red hair. Beautiful woman. Sits there at a table covered with soft green felt and she’s talking real smooth and sweet about making bread pudding, in those lace panties and that pretty little black brassiere, and she talks about breaking up them bread crumbs and adding a cup of milk, and she reaches back and unhooks and suddenly her two little breasts are there, covered with goosebumps, and the nipples sticking out a half an inch, and then she comes to the half cup of sugar and she gets up and lies down on the table, under the microphone, and she eases out of those panties, first one long leg, then the other, and she’s talking along just so cool and sweet about putting that pudding in the oven, and she’s moving her little hinder around and around and holding those little boobies, and she touches herself down there and when she says goodbye, she points at one guy in the control room and he gets to come down and bang her right there. Just one guy. She chooses a different one every day. That’s the truth. That’s what he told me.”
“Bang her?”
“Yeah, those radio guys got it made. Plumbing is nothin’. It’s like sled dogs. Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
On the way home, Art drove downtown and parked and took Francis into Dayton’s Department Store, and they rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor. Twelve floors of goods to buy, a palace of underwear, a cathedral of socks. Great high pillars and arches and below, aisles and aisles of sweet new pajamas and suits and, on the third floor, dozens of naked dummies in corsets and slips. Art bought a slip.
“For Aunt Clare?”
“It’s for her birthday. Don’t mention it to her, okay?”
“Does LaWella Wells really do her show in her underwear?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her show. Want me to check it out for you?”
Francis nodded. Yes. He would like to know this.
Mother was in the hospital for June and July, and got out, and went back in for most of August. Clare took Francis up to Fargo to see her and she didn’t recognize him. She called him Chester and thought he was pretty funny, or strange—she laughed and screwed up her face at him and gave him a friendly shove. Clare kept saying, Ruby, Ruby, it’s Franny. They stayed for only a few minutes and when Mother got too worked up they left. She kept pointing at the radio and laughing at him. Maybe she thought he was Leo, from the radio. Anyway, Mother certainly enjoyed seeing him. It was the happiest he had seen her in years.
Art was not as much fun to live with as he had been when he visited. He didn’t do card tricks or tell many jokes, he preferred to sit in his big easy chair in the dark and smoke and drink Manhattans. The ice clinked and the red coal got brighter and dimmer.
“Mind if I sit with you, Uncle Art?”
“No.”
“Care for a little light on the subject?” (One of Art’s lines.)
“No thanks.”
“Anything I can bring you?”
“Francis?”
“Yes?”
“If you’re going to fidget, go fidget somewhere else.” And he’d peel off a dollar bill and give it to him to go buy comic books. Francis soon had the largest collection of comics on Blaisdell Avenue, and even though he’d trade them three-for-one to other boys, trying to win friends, his pile grew and grew. He bought the Doctor Dolittle books, he bought Richard Halliburton and novels about men sailing away on tramp steamers to the Orient and detectives and Gene Autry’s adventures in the Golden West. Like the good doctor from Puddleby-on-Marsh, Francis learned to find company outside of the human race. Instead of animals, Francis collected books.
