His Al Pacino character - a contradiction entirely to his Gabriel Byrne side, was consistent with Frank in that “he did it his way”! The law be damned if it didn’t agree with his personal philosophies or politics. He declared often that the “average Joe” carried a lunch box and punched a clock. He was a man, for crying out loud, and a real man had to love what he did - even if it meant breaking an unfair law.
As a kid, he rolled marijuana cigarettes in the backroom of a grocery store, in between stocking the shelves. He got a newspaper route, and made deliveries containing small brown-paper packages rolled up in the classifieds to men with names like “Sam the Snake”, “Joey the Butcher”, and “Louie P”. He was paid handsomely with $20 bills slapped between poor-boy sandwiches from Joey the Butcher, or in a bar napkin next to the Coca-Colas that Sam the Snake served him. Louie P, the grocer, paid him his honest wages…and then some…
The young Earl never peeked at his “deliveries”. “Wouldn’t have been right. Wasn’t my business.” And Daddy wouldn’t let me call these men “mafia” - ever. “Businessmen, little girl. Just businessmen.”
He made friends as a kid with some “influential” New Orleans contacts who had fingers reaching around the United States. I asked Daddy once about how he got the job of bat boy for the New York Yanks, and he said, “Friends, little girl. Just friends.” When I was 18, I was arrested for not being able to prove I was old enough to be in a pub - but I was of legal age. I called my Daddy, and within minutes I was released. Friends, I guess…Just friends…
Showing posts with label Angus Lind Babe Ruth Charles Bronson Cigarettes Claude Williams Earl A. Vince Gary Ronberg Hard Times Hard Times - The Movie llBrutto memoirs Movie New Orleans NY Yankees St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Angus Lind Babe Ruth Charles Bronson Cigarettes Claude Williams Earl A. Vince Gary Ronberg Hard Times Hard Times - The Movie llBrutto memoirs Movie New Orleans NY Yankees St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Hard Times - Part 7
The “Frank Sinatra” persona was his playful - and vain - self. I remember Daddy standing in the kitchen with a Coca-Cola in one hand, and a Pall Mall in the other, crooning “My Way”, and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”. He’d boast how “Old Blue Eyes” didn’t have anything on him…and how when he was young, he was mistaken often for Frank…
Dad would dress up for a photo racetrack event - bathe, shave, trim his nails - habits he did not practice on a regular basis. But when he finished the transformation from “bum” to “dandy”, he looked mighty good - and he knew it! There wasn’t a mirror in the shot-gun house that he didn’t admire himself in…He’d spontaneously start snapping his fingers and singing something jazzy - grab Momma and do a spin, then launch into a witty joke - laugh loudly and declare just how entertaining he was! It was times like these, when I could imagine the young “Frank”, cocky and confident - and knew why Momma married him…
Momma said that she first saw him at an uptown New Orleans restaurant. She was delivering pies that her mother baked for many of the local eateries. He was holding court with his buddies and mesmerizing the lip-sticked, doe-eyed girls hanging on his every word. She said that he was “prissy” and too pretty for her taste - and he annoyed the heck out of her the way he kept flipping a silver dollar in the air with his thumb and forefinger. And though she was staring contemptuously at him, he ignored her - purposely it seemed…
Daddy said he noticed her: “For crying out loud, she pulled up to the restaurant driving a big white motorcycle! She was wearing a helmet, pants and a big coat. If it hadn’t been for her breasts, I wouldn’t have known she was a woman.“
His pals razzed him with “Hey, Earl! That’s Eva Mae over there. Five dollars says she wouldn’t give you the time of day. Doesn’t like men…” Earl shook his head “No thanks.” The bet rose to $25 - if he could get her to go out with him - and $50 if she actually kept the date.
He strolled over to her and said, “Eva Mae? My name’s Earl. Those guys over there are betting that you won’t go out with me. They say you don’t like men…” She placed her last pie on the counter, and said, “Tonight. 7pm. At the movie house on Coliseum.”
Earl showed up outside the theater. He was looking down at the match he had struck to light his cigarette, and didn’t notice her approach him. He took a long drag, then felt her breath on his ear as she whispered, “Waiting for somebody?“ She had high-cheeked bones framed by long auburn hair, serious green eyes, and slightly-parted red lips. His eyes fell down her body - the dress - green like her eyes…clung to her breasts and cinched at the small waist. She was wearing heels and had the most beautiful legs he’d ever seen.
Earl won the bet…and Eva Mae.
Dad would dress up for a photo racetrack event - bathe, shave, trim his nails - habits he did not practice on a regular basis. But when he finished the transformation from “bum” to “dandy”, he looked mighty good - and he knew it! There wasn’t a mirror in the shot-gun house that he didn’t admire himself in…He’d spontaneously start snapping his fingers and singing something jazzy - grab Momma and do a spin, then launch into a witty joke - laugh loudly and declare just how entertaining he was! It was times like these, when I could imagine the young “Frank”, cocky and confident - and knew why Momma married him…
Momma said that she first saw him at an uptown New Orleans restaurant. She was delivering pies that her mother baked for many of the local eateries. He was holding court with his buddies and mesmerizing the lip-sticked, doe-eyed girls hanging on his every word. She said that he was “prissy” and too pretty for her taste - and he annoyed the heck out of her the way he kept flipping a silver dollar in the air with his thumb and forefinger. And though she was staring contemptuously at him, he ignored her - purposely it seemed…
Daddy said he noticed her: “For crying out loud, she pulled up to the restaurant driving a big white motorcycle! She was wearing a helmet, pants and a big coat. If it hadn’t been for her breasts, I wouldn’t have known she was a woman.“
His pals razzed him with “Hey, Earl! That’s Eva Mae over there. Five dollars says she wouldn’t give you the time of day. Doesn’t like men…” Earl shook his head “No thanks.” The bet rose to $25 - if he could get her to go out with him - and $50 if she actually kept the date.
He strolled over to her and said, “Eva Mae? My name’s Earl. Those guys over there are betting that you won’t go out with me. They say you don’t like men…” She placed her last pie on the counter, and said, “Tonight. 7pm. At the movie house on Coliseum.”
Earl showed up outside the theater. He was looking down at the match he had struck to light his cigarette, and didn’t notice her approach him. He took a long drag, then felt her breath on his ear as she whispered, “Waiting for somebody?“ She had high-cheeked bones framed by long auburn hair, serious green eyes, and slightly-parted red lips. His eyes fell down her body - the dress - green like her eyes…clung to her breasts and cinched at the small waist. She was wearing heels and had the most beautiful legs he’d ever seen.
Earl won the bet…and Eva Mae.
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.
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.
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