Hard Times - the True Story - Part 6

The character “Chaney” donned a jockey cap - just like Dad’s. It was as much a totem of Hard Times as his characteristic Florsheims. He grew up in the Irish Channel of New Orleans - where Italians were eschewed. Wearing the cap identified him as bonified Irish blood. The truth is, he was as much Italian as he was Irish - 50/50. His father changed his surname “da Vinci” to Vince because of the animosity toward “Dagos”, after the war. (Dad had a quip whenever he was “accused” of being a “Dago”: “Day goes, and night comes…”). He simply wouldn’t engage about his Italian ancestry.

Born “Oliver Earl Anthony Vince”, his name reflected his mixed - and suspicious heritage. His sister insisted that they were Spanish and Irish - without a lick of Italian. Daddy looked every bit Irish with his cold black hair, clear blue eyes, pale rosy complexion, and petite features. And he sure loved whiskey, horses, backstreet fighting, superstitions…and long yawns of days past…

But the Italian blood was evident, too…As he aged, his face morphed continuously from Gabriel Byrne, to Frank Sinatra, to Al Pacino - each persona subtly ebbing and flowing into each other. Ironically, as his features transitioned from Irish-to Italian-to Irish again, so did his idiosyncrasies!

His “Gabriel Byrne” personality was replete with the Irish Catholic aura of religious mysteries:

He saw “dead people” - and talked to them, too.
He titled God, “The Big Man Up There”, and never made any plans without saying, “God willing, I will do this or that…”
He despised immodesty in women, vulgar talk or obscenities - and pontificated on always being truthful.
On his wedding night, he offered to God the sacrifice of abstinence, (for which his bride rebelled by dancing the evening away in a bar with sailors… and never forgave him…). When his wife was too old to get pregnant, he refused to be intimate with her because he was convicted that “sex is for the purpose of child bearing”.
He studied Bishop Sheen’s writings until the paperbacks were brown and yellow from coffee smears and age.
His response to hard times in life was, “The people in hell want ice water. Won’t do any good to complain here, either.”
He prayed…a lot. ( I have a letter he wrote to me about his prayer life which I cherish).

His children were all baptized into the Catholic Church, and he obediently enrolled each into parochial schools. (Only his youngest - me - survived the strict regiment of discipline and education through high school). Daddy raised his two daughters and son with a belt and dictatorship; he was determined that we would be moral and virtuous. He tolerated his Baptist wife’s faith as long as it didn’t negate the “true faith”. He wasn’t a regular church-going guy, or a Bible reader - he might have been more sinner than saint - but anybody who knew him discovered quickly that God was the only one Hard Times answered to.