JimSoft Insanitarium -> Insane Stories -> A Story
Some Person May Tell You While You're Sitting In Front Of A Fire
By Fred
Mum had met Dad during the First World War. She was a munitions handler at a
factory and when a handsome NCO walked up to her and asked where he and his band
were doing Worker's Playtime she fell in love straight away. Dad took a little
more convincing. She was a big woman, three hundred pounds in the old
measurements. The only daughter of Russian immigrants who could not speak a word
of English they relied on her to put food on the table and keep Grandpa's mug
full of pernod. Mum's parents had escaped Russia during the revolution. Why? I
don't know. They were peasants. It was a confusing time. Fires and much yelling.
They left Minsk one morning and never returned. A kindly man with a boat took
them through the Urals. They almost froze to death. They took little with them.
Some food, Grandpa's ventriloquist dummy and Nanna's prized harp.
When they sailed into New York Harbour in those desperate days before the Great
War how could they have known the fate that awaited them on Ellis Island.
Corralled behind a rope and covered in lice they waited to have their family
name changed from Willahorski to the anglicised and apparently more acceptable
"Coconut". And then onto a small hovel on West 133rd St above a pawn shop and
Chinese laundry. Ah - those smells! For years Grandpa would regale us with tales
of how he and Nana reeled with nausea around their garret for weeks on end until
finally he would have to go downstairs and confront both Mr Saul and Mr Lim.
"Must you boil those old trumpets?", he would ask the pawnbroker. "Aren't those
trousers done yet?", he would screech at Mr Lim. It did no good. The police were
summoned. Then the Fire Brigade. The Department of Works. And finally the guy
with the sand that covers the sick in the streets. No-one could get those two
old men to stop preparing what must have been a thoroughly unpalatable meal of
antique wind instruments and wedding suits. Eventually the Mayor himself,
Fiorello LeGuardia appeared on my grandfather's door stoop. It was election time
and New York's favourite son upheld the promise to himself made the day before
to visit every home in New York and present a cigar to anyone who undertook to
vote for him. My Nanna, having agreed to vote twelve times for the Mayor, lay
unconscious on the landing, her hair still smouldering, belching out palls of
black smoke with each shallow and fading breath. Grandfather took the
opportunity to bend the ear of the father of the city and sat with the great man
himself in their cheaply furnished salon. Grandfather luxuriating on an orange
crate, LeGuardia preferring to lean on the vaulting horse near the chalk drawing
of the body.
"Mr Coconut", spoke the voice that millions would recognise as having a New York
accent, "This great city of ours has two things which our constitution says is
immutable in terms of rights. First of all and most importantly, second only to
the next thing I'm going to say - people in my town, be they black, Hispanic,
green, mulatto, red Indian, Italian, fags, Jews or whatever are free to offend
whoever they want, whenever they want, and whoever they want."
My grandfather puffed on his wet cheroot, blowing grey circles into the Priest's
Hole in the wall. The great man took a swig of the ancient coffee that filled to
brimming meniscus the gum boot he had been offered when dragged in from the
street.
"Further more", he continued, "I don't care what law they break - the smells of
this city are the smells of a mass o' humanity; a crush, if you will. A huge
pineapple goddamn crush!!!!".
With that several of New York's finest arrived and ushered the Mayor from the
building and into the rear of a quaint horse drawn police wagon. Within weeks he
was re-elected for a fourth term.
One of the few ways available for my grandparents to escape the suffocating
stench of the neighbours was to take a leisurely stroll a few miles up Broadway
to catch a show. Jolson was my Grandfather's favourite. He loved him in "Bomba",
and "Sinbad". He thought "Quick! My Legs Are Paralysed." was appalling but was
prepared to forgive such was his regard for the singer many called "The World's
Greatest Entertainer". Quite what the Jewish minstrel singer had that appealed
to a 75 year old Russian immigrant I did not understand. "Jolie", as my
Grandfather referred him, had a voice so rich and resonant that when he sang at
the Wintergarden you could feel the vibrations through the wall at the back of
the theatre. These were the days before microphones. Rudy Vallee sang through a
loudhailer but Jolie sang au naturale. Grandpa would rise from his seat two bars
into "April Showers" and run to the rear of the theatre and put his hands up on
the red velveteen wallpaper. The profoundly deaf could also enjoy Jolson in this
manner. Swaying away with their arms outstretched and their backs to the stage
they hummed tunelessly to Jolson's greatest hits. It was all the craze during
"Broadway Melanin of 1922". Aisle upon aisle of seats going begging but the back
wall completely booked out for months. You couldn't get a hand-space for love or
money.
"Jolie sings like a beautiful girl", my Grandpa would often say. And he did.
Shrill and demented, like a descending missile he captivated millions. In later
years, after he lost his lung in the war, his voice went down a few octaves.
Larry Parks was heard to comment 'Jeez that's low - how the hell am I suppose to
mime that?' Sound engineers at Warner worked for weeks to raise the pitch of the
voice so that it matched Parks' lip-syncing. It's what made "The Jolson Story"
and it's sequel "Mighty Joe Young" the staggering successes they were. A lot of
people forget about the technical wizardry of those early days. Spielberg and
his dinosaurs had nothing on the old masters.
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2003 JimSoft