Gene Roliff – Page 5

Old Codgers 2

These codgers had speech patterns that are best illustrated by using audio. To hear the audio, click on the arrow. I have included the text for each audio at the bottom of the page keyed to the number in parentheses.

Mr. Jim

Mr Jim was a nervous old fellow and talked very fast with a lisp. His speech pattern reminded me of the politician Barney Frank. Jim was the only person I remember who could drink a glass of beer without swallowing. He would hold the glass and put it partially in his mouth, tilt his head back quickly, and dump it in. There was no movement in the throat area that indicated any kind of swallowing. He just inhaled it – and did it often. I guess he didn’t want to take the time or effort to swallow, just needed to get it into his system in the least amount of time.

Mr. Jim worked with my dad at the Ravenna Arsenal and they often rode together. Dad said that when they passed a bar Mr. Jim would say:

(1)

With that he would pull over and have a “coupla beerth”.

He must have done this also when driving with his wife because many times when passing the local pub his car could be seen in the parking lot with his wife sitting in it. In those days bars were not proper places for respectable wives so it was not unusual to see women in cars waiting for husbands to calm their nerves with a couple of beers.

During WWII one of the functions of the Ravenna Arsenal was to assemble and store artillery shells. These shells were stored in concrete bunkers called igloos. On one occasion one of these igloos exploded causing large concrete chunks to fly into the air (See newspaper clipping at the bottom of this page).

Dad was standing beside Mr. Jim when a piece of concrete as big as an automobile landed right beside them. Mr. Jim took one look at that big chunk of cement and exclaimed:

(2)

And it was. Mr. Jim quit the next day.

Besides her other talents, my mother was a notary public and also ran the driver’s license bureau out of the post office, similar to what the Bureau of Motor Vehicles does today. It wasn’t unusual for someone to come to our house at night to ask for these services.

One cold and snowy evening Mr. Jim and his wife showed up at the door wanting to apply for a license renewal. Even though it was our supper time Mom wouldn’t refuse. During the process she asked for Jim’s old license. He started frantically fumbling through his pockets. Not finding the document his asked his wife for help.

(3)

“I dont know”, said Leona”. “Maybe you left it in your other pants”.

(4)

Replied Mr. Jim.

After all, it was wintertime!

One evening Mr. Jim and his friend Mr. Jerome got into an argument as to who could drink the most beer in the shortest amount of time. They decided to have a contest to decide the issue. Here is how the dialog went:

(5)

I never heard who won or if they even had the contest. I only know that if they really had a contest, the way those two old Germans could drink beer the breweries would be putting in overtime.

Mr. Ralph

Mr. Ralph was a tractor mechanic – and a good one. He spoke in a low monotone with a strong German accent. When he pronounced his name “Ralph” it would come out

(6)

He liked to drink beer, schnapps, and tell jokes. I remember one joke in particular. It went something like this:

A priest was driving along in his new shiny Cadillac when he spotted a girl standing along side the road hitch-hiking. She was wearing very short shorts and a spandex top. The priest stopped to pick her up. She got into the car and immediately lit up a cigarette.

The priest looked at her and said in a scolding tone: (Ralph’s voice)

(7)

And to this the girl replied:

(8)

Touche!

Mr. Ralph’s real talent came forth at Sunday Mass after he had a breakfast of schnapps chased down with beer. Fr. Bertram’s sermons were very long and full of shouting and scolding. After about an hour of this Ralph would become rather impatient. If you were sitting within a few feet of him you would hear the following over and over:

(9)

Every so often he would partially stand and act as if he were walking out – but he never did.

All of our asses were getting tired but Ralph was the only one to express his feelings, even if it was in a voice so low that only God, the angels, and a few people sitting around him could hear.

(1) {“Dutch, I jutht gotta haf a coupla beerth My nervth are all shot . Gotta thtop and haf a coupla beerth. Gotta calm down my nervth”}

(2) {“By Godt, thith ith my latht day” .}

(3) {“Leona, I can’t find my lithenth. Do you know where my old lithenth ith? I can’t find my lithenth”}

(4) {“It couldn’t be in my other panth. I have ‘em both on” }

(5) {Jim: What kind of beer should we uthe ? Jerome : The stronger the better .

Jim: “where do you want to have thith contetht ?Jerome: Anwhere you like.

Jim: Do you want to drink it by the cathe or by the keg ?Jerome: Either way.}

(6) {“waaalvve”}

(7) {“If the Blessed Virgin Mary was on this earth she wouldn’t be standing along side the road in shorts hitch-hiking and smoking cigarettes”.}

(8) {“And if Jesus Christ was on earth he wouldn’t be driving around in a new Cadillac picking up girls.”}

(9) {“Let’s go! Let’s go! Jesus Christ I’m getting bedsores.Let’s go. Christ my ass is getting tired!. Let’s go!”. }

Genetics and Heredity

When I was in the 5th grade one of our lessons was about genetics and how living things inherit traits from their parents. One evening I asked my dad how this worked and what it means to inherit a trait from parents. He decided to illustrate it by an example using an incident he said happened to him as a boy while working on the family farm in West Virginia. Here is the story as told by Dad:

“One day I was feeding the pigs when a mean old pregnant sow decided to attack me. There happened to be an empty barrel in the field with the head removed. In order to escape the sow I squatted down and pulled the barrel upside down over my head. This confused the sow and she walked back and forth and staggered around the barrel in circles looking for me, and in the process she backed up to the barrel. I was looking out through the bung hole watching her, and when she backed up to the barrel I reached out, grabbed her tail, pulled it through the bung hole, and tied it into a knot. At that point she panicked and ran away, pulling the barrel off of me and dragging it around by her knotted tail. For several days she ran around the farm dragging that barrel by her tail.”

“Several weeks later she had a litter of 12 little pigs and each one had a keg attached to its tail. That is an example of inheritance.”

If I really wanted to get the straight stuff all I had to do was ask my dad!

Excuses

My mother was a writer and humorist among her many other achievements. (see the post “Edith Lang Roliff”) She believed that laughter was the best kind of medicine – especially if you can laugh at yourself.

As I was looking through Mom’s many papers and newspaper articles I found these notes. It appears that even when she wrote a note to excuse her children from school she just couldn’t resist adding a bit of humor. Here is a note she wrote to the school principal Oliver Payne to excuse my brother Mark for early release:

And here is a note she wrote in pidgin-german for the same purpose:

I believe the first note is valid since Mr. Payne initialed it. I’m not sure about the second one. Maybe he was just too tickled to sign it!

In case the scans of the originals are illegible, here is the text typed out.

English version:

May 31, 1962

Dear Mr. Payne,

Mark may leave school after tests if:

1- It does not take him longer than 15 minutes to pass the Goody Shop.

2- He turns to the left at corners 224 and 44, and halts at 4027 Waterloo.

3- He promises to wash the windows, gather the eggs, clean the house, mow the lawn, start the supper and in the meantime, stay out of mischief.

He has my permission to walk, run, ride, and fly home, if he keeps one foot on the ground at all times.

I hope that I thought of everything.

E. Roliff

————

Pidgin-German version:

May 31, 1962

Herr Payne,

Las das kleinen Mark from der tests home ge-kommin. Das grass ben needin der cutting and mowen to preventin das wildebeasts from der prey ge-stalkin. Das hamsters ben home ge-starvin mit groanen and squealin, and a fit ge-pitchen. Das breakfast dishes ist on der table ge-standin. Das garbage ist ge-spoilen and over ge-running. Der mutter ben thinkin das boy needs der salt ge-earning.

E. Roliff

Old Codgers

Mr. Chris

Mr. Chris was the owner of the Sohio gas station located across the street from our house in Randolph. He was a gruff old German, and looked like Don Rickles after someone had beaten him with an ugly stick. He also had a temperament to match. Almost everyone in town was afraid of him for very good reason. He was known to physically beat the tar out of anyone who disagreed with him or gave him any lip. Because of his sour personality he had everyone in town intimidated – everyone that is, except my dad.

One time Mr. Chris got into a fight with a customer from out of town, over what I don’t remember. Mr. Chris and the customer ended up rolling around in the mud in front of the gas station trying to choke each other. During the fracas somehow Mr. Chris bit the other man’s thumb. I don’t remember if he bit the thumb completely off or if it just was good and bloody, but the bite did serious damage to the man’s hand. Everyone was afraid to bring this incident up to Mr. Chris – except my dad. Every year on the anniversary of the bloody thumb fight Dad would find an old glove, cut the thumb halfway off, dip the thumb stub into a can of red paint, put it on his right hand and go over to the station and shake hands with Mr. Chris, at the same time wishing him a happy anniversary. He was the only person in town who could do something like this and still stay alive.

We had two doctors in the area, one was my uncle Walter Lang who was about about 5 feet tall. The other was Dr. Silbiger, the town GP, who was Jewish. One time Mr. Chris became ill and had to spend time in the hospital. My father went to visit him, and asked him how he was being treated. Mr. Chris replied gruffly, “At 5 in the morning when I am trying to sleep I keep getting pestered by the goddamn nurses who want to check my armpits, look down my throat, take my blood, give me a shot, and stick a thermometer up my ass. Then the doctors come in. First the Jew comes in to check me over, and then the Shrimp comes in and does the same damn thing. Between the Jew, the Shrimp and the nurses a man can’t get no damn sleep around here!”

Mr. Jake

One morning I was hanging out in the post office where my mother was working when I heard this strange noise out in front. It sounded like someone was scraping a piece of metal against the sidewalk. When I looked out the front window I saw the old farmer Mr. Jake coming up the steps. On his right foot instead of a shoe he had tied a bread pan. Inside the pan surrounding his bare foot was a generous helping of very fresh cow manure. He explained to Mom that he had stepped on an old board in his barnyard and a nail had pierced his foot. He said that the manure would draw out the soreness and cause the wound to heal.

I don’t know if Dr. Oz or Bristol-Myers ever heard of this cure, but it appeared to be effective since Mr. Jake didn’t need an amputation or develop lock-jaw. This method seemed to work since there were no further infections to the foot or other complications that couldn’t be cured by a good hot bath and a half-gallon of Chanel No. 5.

The Outhouse

When I was a small child, indoor plumbing was just beginning to appear in Randolph and outhouses were standard equipment at every dwelling. I remember one of my great aunts saying that living under the same roof with a crapper was a revolting thought and if someone brought one into the house she would move out. Later when I was a teenager almost everyone had indoor plumbing but there were many outhouses still standing, either as a backup in case that new-fangled indoor facility quit working or as a spare when relatives visited and the crowd became too big for one toilet. In those days it was unheard of to have more than one toilet in a house.

One of the most popular tricks for pranksters on Halloween was upsetting outhouses. They were tall and narrow and usually fairly easy to push over, one just had to be careful not to fall into the “goober” pit. If that happened a clean-up session at the creek would be needed because you would smell too bad to sneak into your own house.

Kenny and I did not usually partake in this pastime because it was too mundane, took no imagination, and anyone could do it – we needed more of a challenge. Fortunately we did not have long to wait for the golden opportunity to appear.

We were sitting in the local bar one evening when “Mr. Robert” walked in. After a few beers he started bragging in a strong German accent about his outhouse. It went something like this:

“By Godt, nobody vill be upsetten MY shithouse zis year. Zose halloveeners tried for ze last 10 yearss at Halloveen und zey were chust not strong enough to do it”, he bragged on and on.

Well now that definitely got our attention. This was like waving a red flag in front of a bull!

We knew that Mr. Robert would be in the bar for awhile bragging about “his shithouse” so we went over to check this thing out. It was a fancy facility with curtains and plaster and wallpaper inside. What he had done to foil the tricksters was place 2 inch angle irons all the way up each outside corner of the outhouse and set each in a large block of concrete. This made the building very stable and I don’t think a truck could have pulled it over.

This called for extreme measures. We considered two options. Option number one was using a torch to cut the angle irons, but we rejected this idea because it called for heavy tanks of acetylene and oxygen, and we just might end up burning the outhouse down instead of upsetting it. So we decided on option number two – sawing the angle irons.

The next day I went up to Montigney’s Hardware in Ravenna and bought a dozen of the best hacksaw blades I could find and mounted them in frames. We knew Mr. Robert and his wife would attend the bingo game at St. Joe’s the following Saturday night so we planned our attack for then.

We talked two of our buddies into helping with the operation. We spotted Mr. Robert’s car at St. Joe’s, knocked on the door to make sure nobody was home, and started sawing – one person at each corner. After about an hour of labor and several broken saw blades we finally sawed through the angle irons. We then gave the outhouse a shove – and over she went!

Later that evening we stopped at the local gas station and the owner Jim Jones told us that Mr. Robert had driven in squealing his tires and fuming mad. He said that he was looking for the people who upset his shithouse and when he found them he was going to shoot off their kneecaps and other things that I won’t mention. Jim told us we had better go home and keep quiet about this if we wanted to live.

After this incident Mr. Robert appeared to be a changed man. He never did set the outhouse back up, no more bragging, and seemed to have lost his spirit. It looked as if this outhouse was the most important thing in his life. Seeing this made me feel somewhat remorseful and sorry for him.

But then you should never go into a bar and challenge young people that way. It just isn’t prudent!

The Teenage Brain

I firmly believe that many teenage brains are late in developing the part that controls judgement and promotes survival. In looking back at some of the shenanigans that my friends and I pulled as teenagers, I’m convinced that we had that kind of undeveloped brain. Here are some examples that I believe support this theory:

Unique Greeting

Kenny, Mahlon and I had an agreement that when we passed on the road driving in opposite directions, instead of greeting each other by waving, we would swap lanes and pass each other on the wrong side. This was our way of saying hello – also it would scare the bejesus out of any one riding with us. It worked quite well except for the following notable exceptions:

One day I saw Kenny’s car coming toward me and I pulled into the left lane as agreed. What I didn’t know was that it was Kenny’s mom driving his car to shop for groceries. She didn’t know about our secret greeting so she ended up in the ditch.

Another time I saw a big red dump truck in the wrong lane coming straight at me at a high rate of speed. In order to keep from hitting it head-on I took to the ditch. I learned later that it was Mahlon, who had just been hired by Herman Miller to drive a big red dump truck. I did not know about this, but that didn’t stop him from saying “hello” in the agreed manner.

Busted!

One evening Kenny and I were slowly cruising around downtown Akron. Kenny was driving and we were each slowly sipping on a bottle of beer. One of the city policemen spotted us and pulled us over. I set my beer on the floor beside my leg hoping the cop wouldn’t notice it, but Kenny just kept on drinking.

“GIMME THAT BEER”, the cop said to Kenny in a loud demanding voice.

Now I have to explain that Kenny had somewhat of a stuttering problem. When the cop asked for the beer, Kenny handed the bottle to him, looked him straight in the eye, and said with a stutter:

“Doooooo you want a glass?”

The policeman looked at Kenny in disbelief. Suddenly he burst out laughing, handed the bottle back to Kenny and said, “Get out of here and don’t come back”.

So we did – and didn’t.

Scamming The System

Another thing our teenage brains told us to do was always try to scam the system. Here are two examples:

In every gas station and bar there was a peanut dispensing machine. Each machine had a glass bowl about the size of a soccer ball full of salted peanuts. Beneath the bowl was a lever along with a coin slot and dispenser chute. To get a handful of peanuts you put a penny in the slot and moved lever to the right. Then put your hand below the chute, moved the handle to the left and the peanuts would fall into your hand. We found that we could take a piece of stiff wire, bend one end into a circle the size of a penny, and place it in the slot while holding onto the wire. We then put a paper sack under the chute and moved the lever back and forth until the sack was full or the machine was empty.

Another thing every restaurant and bar had was a juke box with small kiosks at the bar for selecting songs. These were hooked to the main machine by 3 wires. We learned that we could take a straight pin, puncture the insulation of two of these wires, and when we moved the pin rapidly in and out, a series of clicks could be heard over at the main machine. A little practice with this setup would allow us to play every song on the jukebox – for no money! When the man came to empty the money bucket on the jukebox, he would look around suspiciously at the customers because the money box would be almost empty, even though the counter showed that hundreds of songs had been played.

We didn’t particularly like peanuts, nor did we care to listen to the music on the jukebox, but we had beaten the system and impressed our friends. That made our undeveloped teenage brains happy.

In today’s world these shenanigans would probably also make us convicts!

Paul Lang

My uncle Paul Lang was legendary in Randolph for his mechanical abilities as well as his constant search for an opportunity to laugh. He could find humor in small things that most people overlooked. Following are a few examples:

During the 30’s the local paper would publish a sample ballot prior to an election. Today the symbol for the Democratic party is a donkey and for the Republicans an elephant, but in those days the Democratic symbol was a rooster and the Republican symbol was an eagle. At that time the state of Ohio permitted voting a straight ticket. At the top of each ballot was a rooster and an eagle. Underneath each was a place to indicate your vote. You could vote for every Democrat on the ballot simply by putting an “X” under the rooster. An “X” under the eagle would vote for all of the Republicans. Paul would cut the ballots from the paper and pin them on the kitchen wall so I could practice voting. He told me, “Always put an X under the rooster”.

When company came to visit the family, Paul wanted to demonstrate my political abilities, so he would say to me, “Gene, go up there and vote”. Of course I would go up to the ballot and put an “X” under the rooster as any good 3-year-old would. He would then look at the impressed visitors and start cracking up.

I once had a small wooden pushcart with a long handle and wooden rabbits on each side. One day I visited Paul at Jenior’s garage where he worked as a mechanic. He took my cart, drilled a hole in the back, and installed an electric switch. Being 3 years old at the time I was very proud of that switch and used it often even though it wasn’t hooked up to anything. He just laughed hysterically about that switch even though it didn’t do anything – or maybe because it didn’t do anything – or maybe because he just enjoyed kids.

There was an old buckeye tree behind Lang’s gas station and during autumn there were hundreds of buckeyes lying on the ground beneath this tree. Paul taught me that I could punch a hole in each of two buckeyes with a nail, fasten them together with about 3 feet of string, then swing them like a slingshot and heave them up over the power lines. After I did this for several days the power lines in front of the gas station were festooned with buckeyes hanging from strings. Needless to say, the linemen from Ohio Edison were not amused when they had to climb up there and remove the tangled mess. I was really terrified when I heard them talking to Grandma Lang and threatening the dastardly villains who threw those things up there with prison and broken kneecaps. That put a stop to the buckeye tossing.

My dad told me this one:

The local Methodist church planned to have a chicken dinner as a fund raiser. Paul was a good friend of the preacher and he offered to provide chickens for the dinner at no cost.

It appears that Paul decided to furnish the chickens by stealing them from the preacher’s own hen house. The night before the dinner he sneaked in with a burlap sack and started to gather up some nice fat hens. As fate would have it the preacher decided to feed his chickens at this same time. Paul heard him coming and hid behind some feed sacks. This would have worked out well but as the feeding progressed Paul got so tickled that he couldn’t suppress his laughter and was thus discovered. When the preacher found Paul with the sack half full of hens he also began to laugh. He told Paul that since he was that far along with the heist he might as well finish the job, so the hens were procured and the dinner was successfully held.

Paul was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was 24 years old. Even though I was only five when he died I remember well this happy fun-loving man.

The lesson I learned from living with Uncle Paul was that It is worthwhile to sometimes lighten up, take time to laugh and enjoy life, but stay off of motorcycles.

Paul Lang on left

Dynamite

When I graduated from high school in 1951 my first job was at a strip mine in Deerfield working summers and weekends while I attended Kent State University. There I drove a dump truck, ran a D7 bulldozer, welded bucket teeth for the power shovels and dragline, repaired tires, set dynamite, and other odd jobs. At times the company would buy surplus equipment from ordinance depots in various parts of the country and I would ferry these back to the mine.

The first summer I was put on a dragline as an oiler. A dragline is a large machine with a 120 foot boom that sits on top of the mine pit and uncovers the seam of coal. This one was run by a 2 man crew – an operator and an oiler. The oiler keeps the dragline fueled and lubricated, runs the bulldozer to build the ramp on top of the high wall where the machine sits, keeps the light plant running at night, and does various other jobs. Since the dragline ran 24 hours per day each crew worked a “swing shift” – one week 7AM to 3PM, next week 3 to 11, and the 3rd week 11 to 7, etc. This was exciting work for me but difficult physically because my body never got used to the change in hours, and I always felt fatigued.

The dragline operators were very skilled at their job but were a wild bunch of individuals. For them sex was not a spectator sport. They did not greet you with “Good Morning” or “Good afternoon”, but with “Are ya gettin’ any? ”. After their night shift they would often visit the “Homeworth Laundry” and come back with wild tales about Peaches LaFluf, Lena the Hyena, or Linda – the girl with the magnetic tongue. This was quite a bit to handle for a naive 17 year old kid with a strict Catholic background.

One night my operator ran out of matches and could not light his cigarette. He asked me for a match but I didn’t carry them, so he poured some gasoline on the catwalk, lit it with a torch lighter, and dipped his gloved hand into the flaming gasoline. Now he had 5 flaming fingers which he held up to his grinning face and lit the cigarette. In the dark he looked like the devil himself when those flaming fingers lit up his evil-looking face.

Sometimes when I was working the night shift one of my buddies would visit me. My favorite thing was to have them ride with me on the D7. Riding on a dozer at night in a strip mine is quite a scary experience to someone who has never done it. I would push a load of dirt over the high wall, dropping the blade over the edge. The heavy blade would cause the dozer to pitch forward giving the sensation that you were about to take a 70 foot plunge into the dark abyss riding a 26 ton machine. More than once my rider would abandon ship and “jump for his life”.

Now for the dynamite. The dynamite was used to break up the rock so the dragline could uncover the seam of coal. Each stick was 6 inches in diameter by 2 feet long and weighed 12.5 pounds. They were packed 4 to a 50 pound box. A driller would drill a series of 9 inch diameter holes each 60 feet deep into the high wall. He would drill maybe 12 of these holes 20 feet apart. Then we poked 15 to 20 sticks of dynamite into each hole with a long pole. We plugged the hole with dirt and connected the whole works together with an explosive rope called primacord, attached an electric cap with a long wire to a generator-plunger, and took cover. When the explosion occurred, the earth shuddered with a tremendous jolt and the sky blackened for several minutes with flying dirt and large rocks.

On inspecting the spoil banks during one of my night shifts I noticed that not all of these dynamite sticks had exploded. Some had been dug out by the dragline undamaged, and since they were never going to be used again, I could pick them up and take them home.

This opened up a whole new set of interesting possibilities!

After consulting with Kenny, my idea man and partner in crime, we decided that these large sticks would be ideal for celebrating New Year’s Eve. We set up two sticks in the woods on top of Sand Hill. I put in a cap and fuse and lit it at 12 midnight, making sure nobody was too close.

Sand Hill is about one and one half miles from Randolph Center. The explosion reportedly knocked dishes off of shelves there.

That night my friend Tom Hogan was working at the Sohio station across the road from my home. We stopped there later and Tom told me that my dad had been in and asked if he knew where Gene was. Tom told him that he hadn’t seen me. “Did you just hear a loud noise?”, Dad asked Tom.

You can fool most people most of the time but you can’t fool Dad! I will say that Dad never brought it up, but this is how he let me know that he knew.

Not all of the sticks I found were as large as the high wall blasters. Some were only a foot long and one inch in diameter. These were good for smaller jobs – like fishing. We could throw one into a pond and the concussion would cause fish to come to the surface. We then paddled around the pond and gathered them up. It sure beat putting a dirty old worm on a hook!

Then there was the well on Kenny’s parents property that had gone partially dry. Kenny’s mom complained about this so we decided to do her a favor and loosen it up a bit. This well had a piece of pipe sticking out of the ground about 2 feet and was open at the top. We dropped in a stick of dynamite and fired er’up.

That thing went off like a cannon, shooting rocks bigger than baseballs high into the air. I have no idea how they all got out of that small pipe. Neighbor Frank Lang was sitting in his yard across the road and big rocks were falling all around him. Fortunately God was with him that day and he didn’t get hit.

Our theory on well-restoration was not very good because not one drop of water was ever obtained from that well again.

Wiener Huth

Among the many interesting people living in Randolph was Wayne Huth. Everybody called him by his nickname, Wiener. As with many American men of that time Wiener was drafted into the army and was later injured in combat, his injury causing the loss of one eye. Upon his discharge the government furnished a new eye for him made of glass. As a kid I was fascinated by this glass eye since it was so realistic. I asked my dad how we could tell the glass eye from Wiener’s real eye. He told me the glass eye was the one with the honest look!

Wiener had been a very good athlete in high school and the mere loss of an eye didn’t prevent him from doing everything a normal person would do, including playing on the town baseball team as a catcher.

It also didn’t stifle his orneriness.

This glass eye was removable. One had to pay attention at the ice cream parlor if Wiener was present or suddenly the glass eye would appear on top of an ice cream sundae where the maraschino cherry would normally reside.

This also held true for people sitting at the bar in the local tavern because sometimes when an unsuspecting patron finished his beer there would be an honest-looking eye in the bottom of the glass staring back at him.

After the laughter subsided Wiener would calmly retrieve his eye, lick it off, and poke it back into his head.

I cringe when I think of what Wiener would have had to do to get his eye back in case someone accidentally swallowed it. I don’t think he would have been licking it off!

Jane

Jane was my mother’s sister and the youngest member of the Clem Lang family. She was a student in high school when I first lived at the Lang household. I remember her as a vivacious, light-hearted fun loving person. Her beauty could rival that of any Hollywood star, and she would light up a room when she entered. She liked to giggle, and because of her pleasant personality she was quite popular.

She had many male admirers. During WWII many of these were soldiers on leave. After a while she got tired of so many boys hanging around bothering her and she would sometimes treat them poorly. I remember one soldier in particular who came all the way from Detroit to see her, but she wouldn’t come out of her room to say hello to him.

“I told him not to come”, she said in her own defense.

At the start of WWII Jane was hired by Goodyear Aircraft of Akron, a company that made planes and other devices for the military. Goodyear Aircraft’s trademark symbol was the winged-foot of Mercury and they published an in-house paper called “The Wingfoot Clan” whose purpose was to disseminate information to the Goodyear employees. In one edition Jane’s picture appeared on the front page in a swim suit as a “pinup girl”. During the war pictures of girls in bathing suits were called pin-ups because the GIs would “pin them up” on their walls and lockers. They also painted them on war planes for good luck.

Pin-ups

Some employees sent the edition with Jane’s picture to family members who were stationed overseas.

Someone also happened to send one to Fr. Bertram.

Now Fr. Bertram was not a huge fan of pinup girls! He was also suspicious of anyone who appeared to enjoy life as much as Jane did. Anyone having that much fun, especially a girl, must be up to something devious or sinful. This pin-up picture confirmed his suspicions, and the result was a month or more of fiery oratory from the pulpit at Sunday Mass. My poor saintly grandmother sat there with her ears burning, listening to her family being castigated from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday in the presence of her fellow parishioners with words like decadent, scandalous, and horseflesh. The scolding was general and no family names were ever mentioned, but everyone in the congregation knew who the villain was.

Later Jane met Chuck Weber, a quality person who had a fun-loving personality similar to hers. After a while they decided to wed, however there was one large problem – Chuck was not a Catholic. To marry a non-catholic In those days in that community was considered to be as serious as the highest form of treason.

When it came time for the wedding Jane and Chuck visited the priest to face the music. When Fr. Bertram asked Chuck which church he attended Chuck replied, “I am a Protestant”.

“WHAT ARE YOU PROTESTING?”, the priest demanded in a voice so loud that it could be heard all the way to Purgatory.

Evidently Jane and Chuck survived the grilling because they were eventually married, had three wonderful children, and lived happily together for many years.

At a family reunion after Chuck’s death many years later I asked Jane how she was doing without her life-long companion.

“I am doing fine”, she replied. “As a matter of fact, right this minute he is sitting at home on the mantel” (he had been cremated). Then she added with a light-hearted giggle, “I turned on the TV when I left the house, so he’s watching the baseball game”.