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AUNTIE 7/5/2014 7:18:32 AM
Grandpa and Grandma Lasch (my mother’s parents) met (somehow) in Pittsburgh. I say ‘somehow’ because neither spoke the other’s language. Grandpa was a Croatian Jew who knew no English and Grandma (Lizzy Maugham) was just the opposite — unless Grandma was pregnant with my mother (highly likely), if you remember the story about Aunt Gladys and her.
Grandpa and Grandma’s interviews at Ellis Island must have been a gems in 1917:
Irate Inspector: Name!
Grandpa Lasch: Ugnah!
Irate Inspector: Name, dammit! Name! What do they call you by, you dumb Jew!
Grandpa Lasch: Oh, ah — Stephan Laschcovitch!
Irate Inspector (writing down something official on his pad): All right, smarty ass, from now on, you’ll be known as ‘Stephen Lash’ and your heirs as ‘Lashes’. (He had misspelled ‘Lasch’.)
Nicer Inspector (to Grandma): Name! Please.
Grandma: Lizzy Maugham.
Nicer Inspector: Spell it. Please.
Grandma: L-I-Z-Z-Y M-A-U-G-H-A-M.
Nicer Inspector (writing down something official on his pad): Thanks. All right. From now on, you’ll be known as ‘Elizabeth Maugham’ and your heirs as ‘Maughams’. (He did not, however, misspell ‘Maugham’).
Grandma: Thanking you, sir!
Nicer Inspector: You’re velcome, ma’am!
Once Grandpa learned to say “I do!” they were married (by a JP). He had an I.Q. of 2.9.
This was in January. 1917. Momma was born on July 12. I was born in July also when Momma had turned seventeen. My old man was twenty-one. I was born in 1931, in Coshocton. Ohio, where my old man had grown up and his parents owned a large house on 4th Street that was divided in half by a ‘family-style’ restaurant; my dad was the eldest of two other siblings (uncles, who worked in the restaurant as waiters/dishwashers); my old man was employed as a shoe salesman at J.C. Penney; he helped out at the restaurant on Sundays and holidays when the store was closed.
Grandpa Lasch found a job as a baker (only job he could do); he had been a baker in Croatia and had accidentally invented and perfected sodium probinate in the proper (and harmless) amount as the SLF (Steve Lasch Formula) for bread. To the amazement of all, this procedure kept bread unwrapped on the shelf fresh and soft for up to four weeks! And perhaps this alone accounts for the popularity of Croatian bread over all others in Europe,
Grandpa had a patent and a lawyer named Morris Weintraub, who stole the patent from him, charged him a small fortune for services rendered, and persuaded Louis Laurent, of the National Biscuit Company of Buffalo to use ‘his’ product and say the bread (Millbrook) was ‘baked to music’ (which it was not). Incidentally, my weather show on TV was sponsored by NBC Bread and Millbrook; needless to say, I never mentioned the Weintraub/Lasch fiasco.
Grandpa Lasch somehow saved enough to buy a house on 6th Street for his growing brood about the same time Momma met Poppa got married; it wasn’t long before Momma, too, found herself pregnant and employed (as Ass’t Ladies’ Apparel Buyer) by the J.C. Penney Co.
Aunt Stevie was born in 1926, and she was five years my senior. Grandma and Grandpa Lasch had wanted (and expected) a boy (Grandma, although only twenty-eight, had already brought four girls into this world — a boy, much to the surprise of her OB as well as Grandpa, was apparently what was anticipated).
Of course, I was more than ecstatic when I was given with a brother in 1937 (in Dover, Ohio), but to have a SISTER (although not really mine) five years older than I, was a boon never to be sneezed upon! Or at! Or whatever you prefer! . . .I didn’t know it at the time, but I soon found out.
Grandpa and Grandma Lasch eventually sold the house on 6th Street (when Grandpa lost his job and parted company with Weintraub), and they all (the Lasch’s) moved to Kenton, Ohio. There, Stevie, at nineteen, fell madly in love with Emerson Porter, the twenty-four year old handsome and debonair son of Emerald and Emil Porter, the town’s only husband/wife morticians (We Will Be the Last Ones To Let You Down!).
Stevie and all their friends called Emerson ‘Port’; Port, a mustachioed and only heir-apparent to his father and mother’s business, was in love with Stevie (I never found out why); and they were to be married when the war was over — (I always suspected Port was a ‘draft dodger’ despite driving a Lincoln convertible and flying his own airplane). One day he flew to Dobbin’s AF Base to pick up his friend, Jeremy Barthohmeau, who’d been discharged due to homosexual aberrations.
Somewhere in the mountains of northern Georgia (at Helen, near Ellijay), the plane crashed and Port and his friend were both killed, their bodies identified by their clothing. Stevie, her short hair and flat body notwithstanding, was pacified, after a period of mourning, by a string of boyfriends, none of which came close to igniting the flame that, in her non-existent breasts, Port had once fanned. Raymond Ball tried — as did Larry Cantor and Gary Lassman (she actually married Lassman) — but all, in the final analysis, failed.
Years later, after a successful career as a department store ‘buyer’ and Lassman had passed away, Stevie retired and, being a widow, moved to Gulfport, Fl. I often visited her there in her second-floor condo (I was an adverting salesman at the time, and it was cheaper to stay with her and use her telephone than stay in a motel and use theirs).
She said, on the occasion of her seventieth birthday as we celebrated at PETE’S CRAB SHACK, one of our favorite eateries, “Bobby, we’re not getting any younger. I know; I know what you’re going to say — but we’d best make some plans. When I kick off, I’m going to leave your brother, Jack, and his wife, Mary, some money, some clothes, and some jewelry they’ve always admired — but for you, I’ve set aside what’s left of Port’s life insurance policy — it ain’t much, but not even Gary knew about it. I want you to have it ALL -- all seventy grand of it." .”
