Ernie: The Autobiography (5 page)

During that time, I often stayed with my Uncle Joe so that Mom would have one less person to look after. I remember my dad saying “Your Mom and I love you very much, but she’s sick and she’s got to have rest. She can’t take care of you the way that she wants to.”

I used to sleep in Uncle Joe’s attic, which I shared with a mouser that loved to cuddle alongside of me. Sometimes I’d find the cat asleep on top of my covers. One morning my Uncle Joe came to wake me and the place stunk to high heaven. You’d swear to God it was a skunk.

He said, “You peed the bed!”

Well, usually when you pee the bed it goes down. This was straight up. And my pajamas weren’t even wet. It didn’t make sense and I tried to explain that to him.

I said, “It must have been the cat!” But I couldn’t convince him and I got the reputation for being a thirteen-year-old bed wetter! I look back at it now and laugh, but it wasn’t a funny thing then because I had to go to the washtub and scrub everything till it was spotless and fresh-smelling.

One of the things that gave my mother a lot of pleasure during her waning years was her pet canary, Petie. She used to pull all the shades down and let the bird fly loose in the house. The canary would flit here and there and she just loved the sound of it. Unlike the cat, it always went back to the cage to do its business.

Anyway, one day the circus came to town and I was out bright and early. We used to earn some money in those days by helping to set up the grandstand seats under the seasoned eyes of the full-time roustabouts. I confess that more than once I thought about joining the circus and seeing the countryside. Does anyone do that anymore? I doubt it. Kids run away to the mall.

We carried all those heavy boards and, as in the old days on the farm, I was reminded about the importance of teamwork. When we were finished, we’d get two bits or so and free tickets to the afternoon show—never the sold-out evening performances.

I rushed home after doing all that hard work. I was tired, but I wanted to clean up real fast so I could get back and see the show. As I ran up the three steps leading to the porch, I could see my mother in the parlor, rocking back and forth on her chair. What I didn’t see was Petie hanging on the screen door looking out. As I hit the door and flung it in I heard a shrill, terrible
“re-e-e-t.”

My mother jumped from the chair and screamed, “Petie!”

Without realizing it, I had dislodged her poor little bird and then stepped on it. I did not go to the circus that day. Maybe I should have blamed that on the cat, too.

One of the other activities that helped me become a man and reinforced the notion of teamwork was joining the Boy Scouts. I almost missed the boat on that one because—I kid you not—they couldn’t find a shirt that fit me. I only had a shirt that
looked
like a Boy Scout shirt, something my mother found and dyed. So I put my insignias on that and they let me get by with it. Joey joined, too, reinforcing the bond we felt.

I had thick fingers and I had a hard time making knots. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it. Score one for determination, another valuable life lesson.

I did pretty well in scouting. I was just one merit badge short of becoming an Eagle Scout. More than anything in my formative years, scouting taught me how to be a man—self-sufficient and observant. I used to pay very close attention to what the scout leaders told us about the stars, about nature, about survival. I learned how to make a fire by rubbing sticks together, I learned how to cook food in the wild and how to make a crude lean-to as shelter. After a year or so I became the Assistant Scoutmaster of the troop at St. Anne’s Church. It was wonderful. I’d take the new kids on twenty-mile hikes and share everything I’d been taught.

Scouting also changed my life in one very significant way. It happened when the Boy Scout circus came to town, the year after I had accidentally flattened poor Petie. My troop then, Longhouse Troop No. 12, was asked to participate as circus clowns. I came up with a different idea. I put on my father’s long winter underwear with a smudge of mustard on the backside. I had a big bottle and a bib around my neck and I ran around like a little baby, wailing, “I want my Momma!”

Well, when I did that in the center ring, it brought down the house. The next year they insisted that we do it again. This time, though, I changed the act. I sat in the lap of John Murphy, the mayor of New Haven, something I would never have done as “myself.” But with that cap and all, I was a baby and could do just about anything or sit anywhere I wanted. When I did my act he was engulfed with laughter. It was a big thing for New Haven.

And, yes.
That
was where the idea of being an actor—for real—first occurred to me. It was my first time doing something in front of people. In fact, I enjoyed it so much it helped me pick up my school grades. See, my teachers told me that if I raised my marks and proved I could handle some extracurricular activities, they would let me act in the class play at the end of the school year. I studied hard, joined the debating club, and landed a role in the play.

I honestly don’t remember the name of the play. All I remember is that I was given the part of a Chinese kid. I went out on my own and found these little braids that looked like the ones worn by Chinese people I’d seen in a picture book, then I found a hat and everything else. I used a singsong voice onstage. It brought down the house. Afterward, a teacher came to me and said, “You are so good! You should become an actor.”

I remember thinking, “Are you crazy? That’s no way to make a living.”

I guess I wasn’t as smart as I thought.

Chapter 6

Borgnine’s Navy

W
hen I graduated from high school my mother, bless her, wanted me to be a barber. She felt it would provide me with steady work. I didn’t care for the idea myself, but that didn’t matter.

“You’re going to barber school,” she insisted.

It wasn’t a school, as such: it was just a barbershop and all I did for about four or five days was clean up hair around the barber’s chair. On the sixth day, I decided to hand in my broom. My mother wasn’t happy. My Dad came to my rescue. He knew someone—his name was Sal. I never got to know his last name. He owned a vegetable truck. He figured it would be steady since lots of people had farms in the area and lots of people in nearby communities needed produce.

I wasn’t too crazy about that idea, either, but my father made the deal.

Dad said, “He’ll give you $3.00 a week and all the bananas and apples you can eat.”

At 3:30 in the morning we’d make the rounds collecting produce, then go up and down streets for fourteen or fifteen hours, hawking radishes and bananas and everything else you could think of. Evidently, Sal knew quite a few housewives along the way because there were times he’d just spend hours in their homes. I’d be sitting there in the truck. People would come up and want to buy something.

The net result of these two jobs was that I didn’t want to become a barber or drive a truck. But the vegetable business did point me in my next direction. One day while I was working on the vegetable truck I noticed a sign that said JOIN THE NAVY, SEE THE WORLD. Remembering what my Dad had said about feeling he had missed something by not being in the service, I went to the navy recruiting office to investigate.

The recruiter said, “Did you pass high school?”

“Yes, sir.”

He said, “You look in good shape. We’ll give you a physical and be in touch.”

The next day I got a call.

“Okay, kid,” the caller said, “you passed.”

“I passed—what?” I asked.

He said, “You’re gonna be in the navy, son.”

I figured I’d better talk to my folks before I was sworn in. I don’t think they could have changed my mind, but I did want their blessings.

My heart was drumming like Mr. Farnham’s rock crusher. I said, “Mom, guess what? I’m going to start working tomorrow for the government.”

She said, “What government?”

I said, “Uncle Sam’s. I just became a sailor.”

Her face fell. She had such ambitions for this boy of hers, and now he was going to be a sailor, which meant that I was to go away and God alone knew what would happen to me. She had all the natural trepidations of a mother. My father’s reaction was very different.

He said, “Son, you’re not going to be tied to your mother’s apron strings anymore and you’re going to find out what this world is all about. I envy you this adventure you’re about to have.”

He talked to my mother and calmed her fears. The next morning he and I kissed each other and off he went to work. I kissed my Mom and off I went to the navy.

It was 1935 and I took a bus, along with other guys, to the Newport Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island. I was promptly given a haircut, uniforms, and a lesson: fall asleep hard and sleep deep when you can. Otherwise, your butt
will
drag.

We slept in hammocks in those days. They were tough to get used to, but even tougher was learning just to get into a hammock. You were up a good four feet and you had to learn how to dip it with your butt and kind of hurl yourself in sideways, up and over. And once in it, you had to learn how to balance yourself. Every now and then you could hear somebody fall out with a great thud. You could hurt yourself badly that way. Some guys ended up with broken arms. And there was nothing quite like being rocked to sleep in a pitching sea. You didn’t only go from side to side but back to front and sometimes in little circles.

My hammock skills were pretty solid from the get-go, and my hammock-tying skills were even better. A superior officer was watching one day as I tied the lines after the hammocks were washed. He said, “What are you, a Boy Scout or something?”

I said, “Yes, sir.” For me, it was just another reminder of lessons you learned one place being applied someplace else.

I was homesick at first, but that was soon taken out of me by the press of duties and things I had to learn. I don’t know why, but 5:30 was the time they woke us all up. You had to dress, scrub your teeth, make up your hammock, then get to the real work. You had to learn the arms manuals and the right way to present arms and parade. You also had to learn how to use a bucket of water very sparingly. In boot camp, you had all the water you needed. When you got aboard ship, it would be an altogether different matter.

I spent all my free time studying and learning my blue jackets’ manual. You learned a lot of things that I’d already picked up as a kid, like discipline. You had to have discipline in order to make things run right. It was wonderful to feel myself growing up.

After about two or three weeks of boot camp, they allowed the parents to visit. I was washing clothes and hanging them with these little ribbon-like ties when my Mom and Dad arrived.

A fellow recruit ran up. “Borgnine, your folks are here. Report front and center.”

My mother and father had brought my two aunts and my sister Evelyn to see me. God, it was good to see them all and their big smiles—the biggest I’d ever seen—told me they felt the same. We spent a couple of hours together. I showed them around and they were very impressed. My mother saw the change in me and said so. My dad just smiled proudly, especially after I showed him how I handled a rifle.

That evening, I was on guard in front of B Barracks. I was walking along thinking how nice it had been for everyone to visit. I guess I was a little distracted. Suddenly, I saw somebody coming down the hill from the War College. I said to myself, “I’ll say, halt, who goes there?” And as I was thinking that, I heard a voice say, “Come on, son. Say, ‘Halt, who goes there?’”

I said stupidly, “Come on son, say halt who goes there?”

The response shivered my timbers from toe to chin. He said, “The captain of the base.”

I didn’t know whether to present arms or salute, throw the rifle around ceremoniously or throw it away.

I did none of those things. I just stood there, attentive as a sentry should be. The captain eyed me up and down and, apparently satisfied that I was sober and alert, he strode away.

I was lucky, that time. I never let myself daydream again while I was on duty.

I tried to be a good sailor, and evidently I did all right. They put me on a squad that had a boxing team. I’d never fought in a ring. I’d fought with the kids in the street or in the yard, but never with gloves on. The first time I got up on the canvas to get the feel of things I was scared stiff. I didn’t know what to do.

This chief machinist mate was our instructor. He said, “Easy does it, kid. Just keep your arms up, try to block incoming punches when you can. Don’t think about it, just do it.”

I must have done something right because I knocked the guy out in four swings. He went down and started to turn white, with blood pouring from his nose and ears. It frightened the devil out of me and I never got back in the ring. Ironically, twenty years later, I’d make a movie called
From Here to Eternity
in which Monty Clift refused to box after killing a man in the ring. Let me tell you, I really felt for the character he was playing.

Chapter 7

Adventures at Sea

W
hen I finished boot camp, I shipped out on the
Chaumont
, a double-ended son of a gun that navigated through the Panama Canal and on to the Pacific Coast. They worked us hard the whole trip.

The first time that I got off the
Chaumont
was in Balboa in Panama. I found I was walking funny and I wondered aloud, “What the heck’s wrong with me?”

A shipmate said, “That’s because of the wave motion at sea.”

My legs still thought we were at sea and I was walking like I would onboard ship. It was the funniest sensation. The second thing someone said to me after reaching port was, “Hey, kid, you ever been with a woman?”

“Oh sure,” I lied. I had never been with any girl.

Back in Connecticut, I was always afraid to approach the fairer sex. For one thing, I didn’t know what the devil to talk to them about. I only knew the women in my family, and mostly what we talked about was family business. There was no get-to-know-you small talk. Being an average kid, there were times I felt like putting my arm around a girl and wondering what it would feel like. But, heck, that was just too terrifying to contemplate. What if she screamed? What if she didn’t like me? What if she
did
like me and wanted more? My mother and grandmother had taught me to respect all women. My very confused desires left me pretty much paralyzed.