"Joannie, when I stayed over your house as a boy, after you made me breakfast you'd disappear from the room for a while. Where'd you go?"
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"I never left the kitchen. After I gave you the bacon, I snuck behind you, leaned over your head, and listened to you hum while you chewed."
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Joannie Baloney told me this right before she died at 56 in 1991. Joan was my Mom's middle sister, my godmother and the funniest person I've ever known. On the rare Friday night, Dad took Mom out, I'd stay over Joan's 5th floor apartment at 321 East 85th Street. Rory would stay with another relative because I had first dibs on Joan, and more importantly, there was a unilateral pact in our family ~ under no circumstance were Rory and I allowed to stay over together in any one relative's house. Everybody did it once, and once was enough to trigger this Pryor brothers babysitting boycott. If Mom tried dumping us both on one relative she'd get responses like this.
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"Can't do it, the kids got the German measles and their scratching their asses off."
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"Sorry, Patty, Eddie gashed his leg, and he's bleeding all over the place."
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"Jesus Christ, gotta go."
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Joan's husband, Georgie, worked for UPS and bowled on Friday nights downtown near his Canal Street route. So it was just Joannie & me, the couch, a cool radio and bongos that hung on the wall near the poster of the Spanish Matador, Pepsi Cola, Dipsy Doodles, Wise Potato Chips, Dip, TV with the the Avengers and Emma Peel, the Wild, Wild West, Twilight Zone, Hitchcock, then quiet, no fighting and uninterrupted sleep.
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photos above:
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Joannie and Barbara, my two Ryan aunts
me to the right, well dressed & eating a sandwich
one pound of Oscar Meyer Bacon... yummmmmmmmmm
1 comment:
Enjoyed the story, and thank you, thank you! I had been thinking and trying to remember for weeks, the name of the show, Wild Wild West. Whew...what a relief....now I can get some peace! :-)
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