5 Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

My father once spent the day with Paul Newman. At a bullfight in Mexico. Plaza de Toros San Luis. Out of all the people he met, my Dad went on about what a great guy Newman was. A real regular human being. Most of everybody else he called Sons o' Bitches after he had a couple of scotches. "HMS" had some dealings with movie stars in the late 50's, early 60's. Some kind of Savings Bond publicity thing. I have no idea why an aerospace company had a publicity guy do work like that? It all tied in somehow. 

All I have to show for it is the ticket from the bullfight. My creepy brother has the good publicity photos getting moldy in his basement. I don't want them because I don't want any "thing."

Just jumping around to show that there's some kind of vortex following me around? But everyone has a vortex, don't they? My German grandmother came to this country without a mother in 1888. She worked in a garment factory in NY until my grandfather chased after her. She got married when she was 14 & it was a blessing for her. She got out of the factory. Story goes they owned a dairy in New York City. I was taught the importance of evaporated milk as a child, over and over. Yes, I have been known to use it in cereal and tea. That canned milk kept some New York kids alive. They didn't have a heck of a lot else.

So they made a lot of money, but my grandfather made a lot more money dealing with smuggled artwork on the docks in Brooklyn. I think it was pilfered from the ruins of Europe during WWI. They lived in a fancy mansion with upstairs and downstairs servants. Had a Bentley. My grandmother loved parties. Very fancy guests... I kept hearing Sophie Tucker was a regular. A real wisecracker. Last of the Red Hot Mamas. Damn, we're boring the way we speak now. I'm not sure if she ever attended any of the seances my grandmother held though.

Last of the Red Hot Mamas

I kept hearing these stories over & over. I was driven past the area a couple of times when I was a child. It was once an affluent area. Think the place that young Corleone & young Clemenza stole the rug in Godfather II. It was a garbage pile when I saw it. Wow. The Depression. They lost every red cent. There were a couple of small paintings left, a desk and that's about it. That really affected my father, not the money but the people. He'd get drunk and tell me all about the people he thought were his friends. They wouldn't speak to him or look at him. Shunned because he was suddenly lower class. My parents were both completely cool, it was just everyone else that wasn't.

Everybody has amazing family stories, but I'm afraid everything is getting so homogenized. If it doesn't meet modern standards there's a new form of shunning going on. You know what it is.