Well, so much for normal
Writing by treason on Saturday, 24 of December , 2005 at 11:09 pm
The weirdness continues. Maybe holidays bring back the past, but ever since I caught the news story about Marshall Field, I’ve been stuck on my childhood in Chicago. My mother always took us to the Loop at Christmas time so we could see the store windows and toy section at Marshall Field. We didn’t actually shop there - it was too expensive - but it was wonderful to think that one day we would.
A woman that the reporter interviewed summed it up pretty well:
“Macy’s is New York. Marshall Field is Chicago.”
After the holiday, Chicago’s landmark store will become a Macy’s. And this got me thinking about the call from the truant officer. When I was little, the phone rang and I picked it up. It was someone from the Chicago pubic school system who wanted to speak with my mother. Not here, I said, she’s working. Anyone else there, like an older brother or sister? None of your business, I thought to myself. Ah, this is what my mother means when she says someone is trying to “pump me” for information. Who was this person asking all the questions?
Turns out that I was truant. Chicago schools wanted to know why I wasn’t there, suffering with the rest of the little children. My education was important, the woman told me. I wasn’t being educated if I was sitting at home. That’s when the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was in an apartment filled with books and a new set of encyclopedias - I was convinced I could get an even better education at home. And then I blurted it out.
“The reason I’ve missed school lately is because we’re moving to Arizona. We’re leaving Chicago. My mother wants to be sure that we see as much of our city as possible before we move away. The museums, Downtown, everything. We have to see it all and we don’t have much time.”
She backed off. But I wasn’t surprised about the call. I knew I’d been outed. If you lived in Chicago and you met someone you wanted to date and the first date went well, you immediately got on the waiting list for tickets to Bozo’s Circus. At one point the wait was ten years, so that’s why - if you were thinking about having kids - you had to act fast.
To this day I don’t know how my mother got tickets to see Bozo before we left Chicago, but I remember everything else about that day. I remember what we wore, what the weather was like, and I especially remember how pissed off the other mothers in line were when Bozo, Ringmaster Ned, and Oliver O. Oliver walked up to the line and started flirting with my mother. These were my heroes. I watched these guys on TV everyday and they were hot for my mom. It was peculiar to say the least, but after scanning the other mothers in line, it was also understandable. My mother never looked like the other kids’ mothers. (Let’s just say she was very well put together. She was wearing the ivory dress that she didn’t like - thought the scooped neck showed too much chest and the skirt was too short. It zipped up the back and a tie criss-crossed at the waist up to her chest in a pseudo corset style that was popular then. It was my favorite, so she agreed to wear it. Good call.)
I was mesmerized. So close to them and they were talking to us. They were real! And although I didn’t get picked for the Grand Prize Game, I went home happy. The next day I showed up at school prepared with a handwritten excuse from my mother, but it was no use. Every kid in Chicago who went home to eat lunch watched Bozo, and there I was in my charcoal pinstriped dress with the red tie. My teacher knew, the principal knew - it was all on tape so how could I deny it?
I ran home from that school every day so I could catch Frazier Thomas and Garfield Goose. I liked Bozo (Bob Bell was the best), but I loved Garfield. Yes, I know Gar was a goose hand puppet. I loved that goose. So when I was channel surfing and landed on WGN and discovered that the station was going to air a two-hour retrospective — Bozo, Gar & Ray - I was thrilled. I told T that he would finally have the chance to see my first love, Garfield Goose. And my second love: Cuddley Duddley, the big stuffed dog - The Trib’s mascot. (My father gave me a Cuddley Duddley for Christmas and he was taller than I was. Long silky ears…ah, so cuddly. My third love, Bill Jackson, would not be in this retrospective. Jackson was WGN’s competition. Whole nuther story.)
Well, I watched the show and it was both wonderful and horrifying. There was so much I remember - but so much I’d successfully purged from my mind. And now it’s all back. I hadn’t forgotten Ray Rayner and the duck, Chevelston, who used to attack him every chance he got - and how could anyone forget Clutch Cargo and his pals Spinner and Paddlefoot? — but I did forget about those three animated shorts from the fifties that WGN ran incessantly throughout the Sixties. Hardrock, Coco and Joe, Frosty the Snowman, and Suzy Snowflake.
T watched for a while and left the room after Suzy Snowflake, saying it was just too damned creepy for him. He called it “scary.” That’s it! That’s exactly what it was! I had the same reaction when I was a kid - Suzy Snowflake was scary! And now she and that damned Suzy Snowflake song are both back in my head!
Aaaaaaaaaargh!!!!! They repeat this special tomorrow; I’ve got to inflict this one on my mother.
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