Last Days of Summer (15 page)

Dear Hazelnut,

This afternoon Charlie started singing “There's a Small Hotel” in the shower. We thought it was an air raid. Marry the guy already, would you?

Stuke

P.S. The streak is over. Guess I showed DiMaggio. He only had one of them. I had eight.

New York Giants

BATBOY: Margolis PARK: Wrigley Field, Chicago

—C
HECK
L
IST
—

ALL ITEMS MUST BE COMPLETED ONE HOUR PRIOR TO GAME TIME.

N
OTES:

Rabby Morris Lieberman

Temple Chizuk Amuno

1243 Parkside

Brooklyn NY

Dear Rabby,

The kiddish cup should be in the big size for such things as beer and etc. Pay up.

Charlie

P.S. Is Solomon one of your guys or one of ours?

Dear Toots,

We have a question that nobody knows how to answer, even Stuke. If Photoplay had to pick a picture of either Eleanor Roosevelt in a bathing suit or Betty Boop in one, who would it be? Betty Boop, right?

Tell him he's wrong. First of all Mrs. Roosevelt is married to the President so she's more famous. And second of all Betty Boop is a damned cartoon. She's not even real. And they don't put cartoons in Photoplay.

He keeps forgetting the most important part of it. Who in Hell wants to think about E. Roosevelt in a bathing suit leave alone see her in one?

Like Betty Boop is somebody you would want to kiss either. At least if you smooched Mrs. Roosevelt you wouldn't get ink all over your mouth. Hazel, guess what? We beat the Cubs today 5–2 and I got injured right in the middle—

He didn't get injured. It was the 8th inning at Wrigley with a tie score and the bases full of Cubbies. I had D. Marantz on mine who I use to room with in Springfield and for some reason he thinks this is suppose to make us buddies or something even though he must of forgotten that we hated each other. (He snoared and always pissed on the toilet seat.) Then B. Sturgeon came up for Chic. thinking he was going to play The Hero by parking a haymaker in the lake, though even the Cubs
know he cannot cross the street without getting lost first. So what happened was—

I called him a weenie-head and he tried to kill me. Then I had brain surgery. They sawed off the top of my skull and—

He got hit in the ass by a foul ball. And it served him right on account of showing off for some little 12 yr. old tootsie in the stands instead of doing his job. Afterwards they took our team picture and they wanted him to sit in the front row on the ground, though he will probably not be sitting
any
where until at least Tuesday due to B. Sturgeon picking a bouncing curve to glim him with.

I even got to hold Charlie's sax in the picture. And by the way—last night I learned how to play “Moonlight Serenade” on it and Charlie still can't finish “In the Mood”.

Two things. (1) Yes I can. And (2) If that was Moonlight Serenade how come the hotel called up and said they would throw us out if he ever played it again? You know what a fake he is. If you took even ¼ of anything he says serious—

Look who's talking. You know what
he
did? In Cincy he said that him and the team were going to eat spaghetti and see the Andrews Sisters but that I couldn't go—and just because I answered the Jor-El question wrong. But when I went downstairs and got a paper to see if
there was a Bogey movie I could sneak into, I found out from page 18 that the Andrews Sisters were in Detroit that night. He made it all up, even the spaghetti part. Him and Stuke were really in Mickey Witek's room listening to the radio and dropping things out the window on people, including guava jelly sandwiches. Smokes, what a phony.

But guess who knows his Tora inside and outside now? So ha ha. For a present, me and the team took him to see Glenn Miller tonight. Even Mister Terry went. They have a new song I like called “I've Got a Gal in” someplace I never heard of but—

“Kalama-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo.”

Stuke tried to buy a High Ball for Dorothy Walker who sang it, but by the time it got there he changed his mind and drank it himself by telling Mister Terry it was sasparilla. (D. Walker did not sing so hot anyway.) We would not let Joey have anything but ginger ail all night but somehow by 11:00 in the P.M. he was walking sideways and saying “excuse me” to such things as chairs and etc. So Stuke followed him around and found out that what he did was wait until people would get up from their table to dance and then snitch their glass before they even made it to the floor.

Old ladies were the best. They don't walk real fast, so you have more getaway time. And they all drink Slow Gin Fizzes.

So after he got good and soaked and danced the jitter bug with Dorothy Walker 3 times (which you should of seen, due to his head not even coming up to her you know whats), he had a long talk with Mister Terry saying that if Stuke gets drafted he should put Burge at 1st and move Witek to 2d and then bring Demaree in from Center. We were all waiting for Mister Terry to say “Who gave you permission to think?” like he always does, but instead he got some paper and wrote it all down. I don't get it. If I tried something like that, he would chop my head off.

Aunt Carrie called us three times today.

Yeah. One time to talk to Joey about such things as teeth and etc. and the other two times to tell me I should cut my tongue out due to God not waiting on line. How come she always says “You will not hear another word from me” 20 mins. before she stops talking?

Maybe if you listened to her instead of—

We can finish this when we come home. I just looked at the clock and saw what time it is. Say goodnight Joey.

Goodnight Joey.

We love you.

Charlie

P.S. I finally got him to sleep. That only took 3 hours. Tomorrow there is no ball game so I am taking him to Racine, which I have not been back to since I left. I don't even know why I'm doing it.

P.S.2. Between you and me, when I saw that foul ball heading for him it was only the 2nd time in my life that I almost pissed in my pants.

P.S.3. Maybe we
should
listen to her. Aunt Carrie, I mean.

P.S.4. I love you. (This time it's just from me.)

Dear Hazel,

Right now I'm hiding out in the baggage car on the Empire Limited coming back home from Chicago, even though Charlie asked me to play poker with him and Stuke and Mickey in the smoker so they could have one more chance to win their money back. But instead I told him I was sleepy from the 12 innings at Wrigley which is a lie. And the only reason I'm in between suitcases and foot lockers is so he won't catch me writing to you.

Yesterday we went to Racine and saw all of the places Charlie grew up in, like his house on Candleberry Wood (where I wanted to ring the bell and go inside but Charlie said no) and the field where Harlan taught him how to play (which has two-foot weeds now but we still threw a ball around until we lost it) and the ammo factory that used to be his school. I could tell he wasn't having a good time because while we were eating tuna fish at a hash house in Monroe, FDR came on the radio and Charlie didn't even call him a lunkhead. So I tried to piss him off on purpose by drawing a picture of Eleanor naked, but all he said was “Wipe the mayo off your face,” Maybe he was practicing getting sad because after that he dropped me off at the library downtown so he could go visit Harlan at the cemetery. And that's when I started thinking. How come he sometimes says that Harlan was killed by a pitch and other times it's a foul ball? But the Bureau of Vital Statistics was downtown too, where Elsie McKeever still thinks my name is Joseph Margolis Banks.
And since she is a better stool pigeon than Ratsy and Mole and all the rest of those Cagney squeaks, I went there to see if I could get her to spill the beans again. This time it only took her a minute and a half to do it. When she came back upstairs from a secret room under a trap door, she was holding an envelope with two clippings in it from 1933 and all she kept saying was “You poor poor dear,” Which didn't scare me yet because she's the kind of old lady who would say the same thing just because it was raining. But then I read them. And when her telephone rang and she turned around to answer it, I put them in my pocket and left. I don't ever want anybody to see them again except you. That's why I'm sending them.

Something is screwy. His baseball card says that his father was a Vice President. And read the part about Harlan. No wonder he gets sore so easy. Smokes, the worst thing that ever happened to me was that Delvecchi held me on the ground while Bierman cut my face with a Coke bottle. Big deal. It healed, didn't it?

How come Charlie always takes care of me but nobody ever takes care of Charlie? Boy, what a sap I am.

Love,
Joey

Dear Joey,

Don't ever let me hear you call yourself a sap again. I never would have been brave enough to do what you did. The rabbi thinks you won't be a man until October, but he's wrong. You've already made the team.

Charlie once told me that his father was a salesman, but when I asked him what he sold, all he said was “Things.” I guess that should have tipped me off. And I always suspected there was more to the Harlan story than he was letting on. Now I know why. He probably thinks it was his fault.

Joey, this is something that stays between us. If he ever decides to tell us the truth, he will. But it's got to come from Charlie. By the way, who says he doesn't have anybody to take care of him? You and I aren't exactly chopped liver, you know. (I got that one from Aunt Carrie.) We just have to make sure that we stay on the job. And we will.

Love,
Hazel

Aug. 7, 1941

Dear Charlie,

In the package is the picture of you and me and Conlan from Cincy. Mom and Aunt Carrie bought the frame.

Happy Birthday!

I'm still working on your
real
present,
but it's going to take a little while.
Happy birthday from your buddy.

Joey

I
NTERVIEWER:
Donald M. Weston, Ph.D.

S
UBJECT:
Joseph Charles Margolis

A:
My Mom made him his favorite dinner—orange chicken and potato pancakes. He even remembered to call them latkes because Rabbi Lieberman was there.

Q:
Was your mother wearing her new dress?

A:
You bet. And Hazel got there early to do her hair. Now she looks like Greer Garson.

Q:
How did Charlie like the shindy?

A:
He got a big bang out of the cake. That was Aunt Carrie's idea. She made it with Hazel. There were 24 sparklers on it for his age, and the one for good luck was a Shabos candle. It was supposed to be a joke, but Rabbi Lieberman didn't know whether to laugh or have a hemorrhage.

Q:
I can imagine.

A:
Later on me and Charlie recited our Torah for him, but we did it the way Cab Calloway would, including the Hi-De-Ho's. Then Hazel put a record on the Victrola and sang “Embraceable You” right to Charlie. Smokes, even Aunt Carrie cried—and after that she took him into the kitchen so they could have a long talk.

Q:
Know something? You told me a year ago that all of this was going to happen and I didn't believe you. I guess that makes me a dope, huh?

A:
Yep. Only kidding.

Q:
So what's your
real
present going to be?

A:
I'm not telling.