One From the Ghost of Xmas Past
Xmas of 1952, I was three years old and my family had a custom that became ultimately short-lived. On Xmas eve we would go to Father's family and on Xmas day we spent the day with Mother's. Well, that Xmas eve got, well, exciting.
My father's parents had long since gone to their heavenly reward and his family consisted of his sisters, his brother, various offspring thereof and their spouses. Uncle Vito was a barber and a saint. Uncle Pat was a tightwad who never cut the hair in his ears but left his wife well set when he passed on, for which he deservedly sleeps in Abram's bosom, and Uncle Tom, well how do I describe Uncle Tom. Pig might be too strong a word, moron perhaps better. Scumbag, obnoxious, vile. Ok, you get that I did not like him. This Xmas eve was the reason.
Uncle Tom had visions of being an entrepeneur of sorts and owned a hardware store. It seemed that 1952 had been a good year for him and Aunt Rose, perhaps it was first year he actually made a profit. Anyway, he was a hopeless showoff and he came up with the idea of having his kids open their Xmas presents at the party. All of them! Of course no one besides him and Aunt Rose had any idea that this was going to happen.
So my aunts and uncles bought what they thought would be nice presents given their age and experience not realizing the horror that was about to ensue. And this is the first Xmas that I have direct memory of to this day, crying, traumatized, enraged. Uncle Tom's offpsring unwrapped toy after toy and I got clothes. I was beside myself, crying hysterically that I did not want any clothes and they should take them back. My mother was furious, my father, well my father, I learned about that after he died from my mother.
We left early, I cried all the way home, my parents trying to comfort me telling me that Santa would leave extra toys for me at home when I got up the morning but I was beyond comfort and cried myself to sleep. But the next morning proved them right for the toys were piled high indeed, in fact the old 16 mm movies I have of that day show them covering virtually the entire living room floor, and they were wonderful, big toys. And I was sort of content, but I never forgave my relatives.
That ends my direct memory. Now for what I learned after father died.
My father was a mafiosi of some sort in addition to being a very legitimate businessman. I never learned and probably never will learn exactly what he did, but he made arrangements for people and knew just everyone who was anyone in the Chicago outfit. My maternal Grandfather was Adolph (Ace) Will, who was one of the founders and Secretary of a Chicago Teamster's Union Local and who frankly could have bought Uncle Tom's store with his pocket change. Keep all this in mind as the story unfolds.
When I got into bed, father went to work assembling toys and mother threw the clothes into the garbage. I know that I never saw them again. Mother told me that that night she had never seen my father so angry before or since, and as I inherited my temper from him I can only guess what that must have looked like. She said his skin was totally white, which for a dark Sicilian took some doing. He made a phone call that night and while I was playing with my new toys the next morning he ran out to do an "errand." What he was doing was meeting a hit man to put a contract on Uncle Tom, with or without his cabin! Now, you have to understand that the mafia was a sort of extended family and so everyone knew everyone and the hit man knew that Tom was a yutz but was sort of unhappy about this situation and told my father that he would do the job but could he put if off for a couple of days it being Xmas and all. Father reluctantly agreed and came home looking forward to the funeral.
The hitman was in a dither and took the matter higher up, right to The Big Tuna, Tony Accardo, Joe Batters or JB to his intimates. I just knew him as Uncle Tony when we saw him maybe once or twice a year because it was common to have children refer to friends of the parents that way. (Hey, I was three years old, I wouldn't have known a gangster from a fedora!) Well, Tony was really unhappy. Yes, Father was right to be angry. Yes, Tom behaved badly but maybe just breaking his legs might be sufficient? But knowing my father that would not be enough to he set out to bring peace to my family!
His sisters hung out with my aunts, particularly Aunt Josie. Now Mother hated Aunt Josie but she was always good to me and was one of my favorites. So the Capo di tutti Capo told his sister to call my aunt and tell her what to do and if everyone knew what was healthy they damned better do it! Then he called my Grandfather and told him what was going on and what he had in mind and could Grandpa please calm father down? That took some doing as Grandpa had already made up his mind to have Tom run over by a truck the next day!
Aunt Josie called Uncle Vito and Aunt Jenny and told them what was happening and they were of course upset. Then she told them what had to be done.
Meanwhile my father was busy looking at possible floral pieces to send to Tom's funeral.
Italians of that generation were really into funerals.
The next day I was busy playing with my new toys when what should pull up in front of the house--Uncle Vito and Aunt Jenny's car. I was not happy to see them. I was still mad about the pajamas they gave me.
They opened the trunk of the car and took out a pile of boxes. It took the two of them to carry the load and they barely made it up the stairs without dropping anything. They got into the house and told me that Santa had come to their house on Xmas night with the load and that he had made a terrible mistake and had mixed me up with a bad little boy from the other side of town. These were the presents that I was supposed have gotten.
They were all toys, very nice toys, very expensive toys. And while I was revelling in my loot, they went with my father into the back room of the house where Aunt Jenny literally got down on her knees and begged him not to have Uncle Tom killed. Father agreed very reluctantly because he had already put down a deposit on the job and was about to order the floral arrangement, but as The Great Man himself requested it and restitution had been made it worked out.
Except that I never got over the trauma until I was well into adulthood! I never trusted father's family after that, never could stand Uncle Tom and when I got into psionics he was one of my first targets. For most of my life until I was well into my thirties I was convinced that they all had planned it. Of course that was nonsense. It was confluence of events that blew up in everyone's face. But I have never liked the idea of clothing as a present, though I learned to tolerate it when I got too old to get toys as a kid and not old enough to get them as a man. In fact a number of years ago when I first met my wife's family one of the older people suggested getting one of the offspring clothes for xmas and I nearly bit her head off, telling her that giving a child clothing as a present was a vile and despicable act. And I hate children!
And as I look at it now, for the vantage of over a half-century, I am most amazed that the role of Santa was played by none other than one of the most ferocious persons who never spent a night in jail, because Uncle Tony was not a nice man. But hell, I got a load of toys and that's all that matters.