Robert A. Mills, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Robert A. Mills
MOSQUE 8/13/2014 2:58:35 PM
MOSQUE-WED, AUG 13, 2014
I have been there four times — twice on a bus (day trips) when I sang at the Mosque as a member of the Maury High Glee Club, and twice, also from Norfolk, as an adult (I was twenty the third time and graduated) when I went to see the Confederate Headquarters where old Jefferson Davis hung out in Richmond and which Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad, visited when the Civil War was over.
“I-I-I am n-not i-i-impressed,” as a young, stuttering Tad said upon entering Mr. Davis’s office. “N-no w-w-wonder he lost the w-w-war! Did y-y-y-you see where he kept the p-p-people waiting to see him, w-w-w-waiting? It was a d-dungeon d-d-d-down there!”
The President is said to have replied, “Yes, that’s true. But I doubt they would have paid a dime extra to expedite their audience with Mr. Davis a moment sooner!”
Tad was too tormented with blushing to have concocted an immediate response. Obviously, Lincoln had more than just a memory of Tad’s ill-conceived earlier enterprise (see the Newsletter of Jan. 25, 2014, called LINCOLN).
John Wilkes Booth, by now, had done his dastardly deed, and I had not gotten back to Richmond for the fourth time until I was sixty-five, when I happened to be there when they tore the Mosque down to make room for a new minor league ballpark. Why was I there? Just passing through on my way to my grandson’s graduation from VMI.
I was born in 1931 at home in Coshocton, Ohio. Both my parents worked at J.C. Penny Co., my father as an assistant shoe buyer, my mother as a general clerk in the Jewelry and Ladies’ Clothing departments. My old man got transferred a lot, and my mother got fired a lot (usually for bringing me to work with her and storing me, as a screaming infant in a shipping box beneath the counter.)
My paternal grandparents had a house on Fourth Street that was large enough for the four of them (the old man had two younger brothers), and half of the place was converted into the Mills Family Restaurant, complete with a counter, seven bolted-down stools, five enamel-topped tables and twenty matching chairs, a hat rack and a multi-tubed chrome coffee urn. Plus a cash register.
Open Monday thru Saturday from 7 AM til 9 PM (Sunday was a full day to be spent in church!); we were hardly ‘poor folk’. We were employed, had our own business, and lived in a central Ohio town of 17,000. ‘Poor folk’ lived in the ‘Zerbiadition’, by choice, and they were mostly ‘blacks’ (so Uncles Don and Rollin told me).
When a toddler less than two, I allegedly pulled a pot of coffee from the table at breakfast time, and hot liquid cascaded all over me. I have no memory of the event (truth of matter, it was probably Aunts Gladys, Helen, or Rosemary who did the deed), and although the doctor was called, I was not hospitalized. What burns I suffered resulted in emotional scars only, despite my ceaseless, disturbing crying.
I remember as a toddler sitting on Grandma Mills’ plump lap, amidst virtual sails of black taffeta and silk — I loved the smell of her as she read to me in the early evening by the light of the Tiffany-like lamp.
By the time I was five, we were transferred to Dover. Then Youngstown (where I started School and stayed thru 2nd grade ), then Kenton that winter in 1936 where my mother had my l’il brother, Jack, then on to Syracuse, NY (3rd and part of 4th grade), then Buffalo (the rest of 4th thru 7th grade), then Norfolk (half of 8th grade), then Rochester (2nd half of 8th grade), then Coshocton High (the 2nd half of 9th grade). Then back to Rochester and Norview (where I lived and rode the streetcar in to Maury High where I went for the 2nd half of 9th grade thru Graduation), then to Atlanta, where I am now. Nine different cities; ten different schools. Totally confused? No wonder I’m so f***ed up.
But like I said, we were never ‘poor folk’. Although I was born at the start of the Great Depression. I never knew what it was to ‘want’ for anything. Christmas was always Christmas, birthdays were always birthdays — both with plenty of presents, relatives, ice cream, pie, cake — and dinners!
My maternal grandparents lived in a rented house by the train tracks on Sixth Street (where I was born and the ‘hot coffee’ incident occurred), and all four of my mother’s younger sisters were either employed or in school. When Grandpa Lasch lost his job at the bakery, they took a house in Utica, NY. Aunts Helen and Rosemary had already gotten married, and Aunt Gladys had run off with Clarence Lee; when my mother caught the old man with his paramour, she divorced him, and at the same time her father got fired from the bakery in Utica; they moved in with us in Rochester.
Despite my being nearly seventeen (and Jack eleven or so), I had no idea there was a difference between a property you actually owned and one you merely rented; you lived where you lived when you wanted, and that was that!
Grandpa Lasch, though he spoke little English, always had enough change in his pocket for an ice cream cone at the Pastime Pool Hall on Main St, around the corner from the Mills Family Restaurant (on the corner was the First National Bank, then Penney’s, then the Pastime Pool Hall). And he also always had enough left over for a 5ȼ cup of coffee.
Grandpa Mills worked at the Beech Paint factory before the Depression came, but when it did he got laid off; that’s when they started the restaurant. Grandpa Mills chewed Beechnut Chewing Tobacco and could spit into a small cup ten feet away and never drooled a drop on his chin (he always smelled of chewing tobacco, though). Neither grandpa smoked cigarettes because neither grandma would tolerate it, although Grandma Lasch (and four of her five girls) did.
Grandma Mills gets full credit for starting the restaurant, but Grandpa Mills designed the menu, having a chicken coop with fifty fat and fully grown hens in the backyard. Rollin supplied typed menus from Coshocton High while Donald worked full time as everything from waiter to cashier, from cook to dishwasher to server — wherever he was needed — EVERYTHING until his brothers (or his parents) were free to help him.
The 5ȼ cup of coffee eventually put them out of business — that, plus the 40ȼ dinners of fried chicken breasts or thighs, mashed potatoes and gravy or French fries, peas, zucchini, or carrots, half a loaf of bread and butter, milk, tea, or coffee, plus your choice of dessert (cake, pie, or ice cream. Water was free).
The Lasches did nothing to help with the Mills Family Restaurant, except Stevie occasionally worked there as a waitress and general assistant for Donald (before Stevie got a fulltime job at Lucky’s Drug Store fountain and counter), and Grandma Lasch sometimes subbed for Grandma Mills (when Grandma Mills was sick and unable to cook, etc.)
The 5ȼ cup of coffee contributed to the demise of the Mills Family Restaurant, but Grandma Mills’ illness (she was diagnosed, at forty-nine, with stomach cancer, hospitalized and operated on — and died — in Columbus a year later) was more than any of us could have foreseen and have coped with. I understood none of it, especially that I would never see her again, or sit on her lap and be read to — I am today uncertain which made me the most sad, or brought about the most radical change.
The restaurant closed and was dismantled, and Grandpa Mills moved to a smaller house on 17th Street. We lived in Buffalo at the time and there was a war on; Donald and Rollin joined the Army; the old man was temporarily 1-A in the draft, but he was an Air Raid Warden in our neighborhood; he even took a part time job nights in a civil defense plant making bombers (on nights there were no air raids).
Juanita, Uncle Don’s wife, moved in with Grandpa on 17th Street. We visited (from Buffalo and Norfolk (where we now lived, with the war over) from time to time, (where the old man now worked as Asst. Shoe Buyer for L. Snyder & Co.). Rollin was stationed in Germany, Donald (who was now 6’5”, weighed 296, and was address by everyone as “Fat”) was in the Army ‘type-cast’ as a platoon cook.
We got transferred to Dover first after Coshocton, and my li’l brother, Jack, was born in 1936 in Kenton (where the Lasches had moved when Grandpa Lasch lost his job at the bakery because the bakery had lost their No. 1 client, the Mills Family Restaurant — remember ‘the nearly half a loaf’ handed out with each dinner?
The flat in Kenton, a second floor affair, was rat-infested with little if any heat, two bedroom apartment for eight people plus an infant. Getting dressed in the morning in front of the roaring oven in the kitchen was not easy, and keeping the mice off the baby in the bassinette in the living room, where my mother and my old man slept with me, was no fun, either; I couldn’t have been happier than when told we had been transferred to Youngstown.
The flat in Youngstown wasn’t much better, though it was on the first floor and had one tiny bedroom. I recall a party my parents held for ‘store people’ one Saturday night when I was eight or so, during which my old man was naked except for his shorts and under shirt, and drank whisky (Seagram’s 7 Crown) right from the bottle. The next day I noticed there was a little left; I decided to try it. I wish I hadn’t.
A few days later, we moved in with the family of a guy with two identical first and last names: Alexander Alexander was his real name (names?). He was in Men’s Suits at Penney’s, a young and handsome Syrian fellow, who lived with his mother, father and three under-twenty sisters in a house much too large (and over-decorated even for a Syrian family). I had a difficult time, at first, calling his dad and mother Mr. and Mrs. Alexander when I knew their name was really Lipeides. We stayed until August 19. (Aunt Helen stayed a lot longer; she eventually fell in love with and married Alexander Alexander) — I got an email recently from their son (daughter), Sammy. He (she) must be 65!
Our next move was into a house I have always felt was my absolute favorite, one that the old man was negotiating for a long time. Not only did it have four bedrooms, it had a bathroom on the 2nd floor, adjacent to the bedrooms, and an upstairs sun porch with half a dozen screened windows. Unfortunately, it was still May in Ohio, and not every hook on every eyelet was inserted, and my li’l brother, Jack, pushed the screen out, tumbling right behind it into the rock garden a full story below. He had a fractured skull. The old man was home from work at the time, so he accompanied my mother and brother to the hospital, and I forever have been blamed for unfastening the hook and ‘trying to kill my li’l brother’. It didn’t occur to them as often as it did to me, but if I’d wanted to do him in, plenty of opportunities presented themselves later, much later, in Watertown, Syracuse and Buffalo when getting away with it would have been less difficult.
As far as times in those cities go, I’d have to say Norfolk and Rochester take the cake. It was in Norfolk that I decided to become a writer, whatever that was. I started by converting our 3rd floor apartment into a ‘writer’s den’; there, I turned out a steady stream of short stories; there was a fiction editor at each magazine worthy of its name, and I particularly liked Bryna Ivens (more about her later. Did I mention she was fiction editor at SEVENTEEN?)
In Norfolk I was enrolled in Maury High back then, when the old man came home on night to announce we were moving to Norview, a city just outside Norfolk — I would be required to change schools, “Did I mention” he said, ”I forgot to pay last month’s rent, an’ we lost our lease? Seems there was a ‘war-time’ clause which said that if the rent was not paid on time they could raise it one and ½ times. That means that next month we gotta pay three hunert dollas! So we gotta be outta here by the en’ of the month. . . Did I tell ya Fred at the store told me about new place out in Norview where we can get a sort of condo-like place for ‘bout thirty-five a month?”
I threw a fit, and cried aloud all night. But I concocted a plan. I sought out the next day a ‘minor’ friend named Jimmy Ladue. Jimmy, ironically, lived at 1421 Princess Anne Gardiner Road, directly around the corner from our place on Colley Avenue. I merely told Mrs. Schuster, the registrar at Maury, after I had clued Jimmy in, that my mother and father were divorcing and I was going to have to live with the Ladues. What is truly amazing is Mrs. Schuster believed me — and Mr. and Mrs. Ladue backed me up! Of course, my own parents were divorcing anyway, so what difference would it make?
I was ‘going steady’ with a real doll named Betty Hamilton; one day I was walking her home from Maury High when Laddie Wintringham, giant of a kid, too good-looking for his own good, pulled up beside us in a car driven by his current flame, Joanne Holmes, the only co-ed anybody knew who had her own car; Laddie’s window was already rolled down.
“Hey, Millsey!” he shouted over at me, “you always get telegrams sent to you at school! This came for you at 3:20 this afternoon, but you’d already left! Told Cranberry I’d get to you! Yes, I read it, you lucky bastard!”
He threw the telegram at me and they sped off. I opened it up and saw it was from Bryna Ivens. (I always look at the bottom first to see who was from, not that I’d ever gotten a telegram before.) It said:
MR. ROBERT MILLS STOP 9TH GRADE STOP MURRY HIGH SCHOOL STOP ***** MURRY STREET STOP NORFOLK STOP VIRGINIA **** 08O3STOP45
CONGRATULATIONS STOP PLEASED SAY STOP HAVE WON 1ST PLACE STOP SEVENTEEN’S SHORT STORY CONTEST STOP ENTRY “POOR, POOR JUNIOR” STOP FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS PRIZE STOP ENROUTE STOP LETTER FOLLOWS CONGRATULATIONS STOP AGAIN BRYNA IVENS STOP FICT ED STOP SEVENTEEN STOP
Nothing of this magnitude ever happened to me again. Not the day — or night that I broke up with Betty Hamilton, or Dorothy Kushner, or Roberta Rasley, or Sally Hamilton (no relation to Betty), Beverly Thone, Nancy Messenger, Gracie Coon, Wilma Randolph, Linda Rothman, Shirley Lee, Liddie Katz, Linda Johnson, Marlene Marion Fulcacey, Barbara Poppick, Ann Townsend, Anna Rita Mure — plus the 1,000 and 1 I have not wed (and the handful I tried — but not too hard).
I would forsake them all for one hour with the one who really matters to me — Christine Rosack Mills, my second and forever wife.
