Eddie and The President

by Lucy McCabe

Eddie and the President

by

Lucy McCabe

October 2010

Those of us born in the early 1950’s can be a skeptical, cynical bunch. It was our parents deepest desire that we grown up as innocents, in a time where war and hatred would become a distant memory. But life has a way of becoming a constant seesaw between dreams inspired and dreams denied, a palette containing every color that mixes together to blur even the most idealistic aspirations. Childhood is never permanent and perhaps that is life’s greatest indignity.

In 1880, shortly after the Long Island Rail Road began service as part of its route from Long Island City to Howard Beach, two business partners Benjamin W. Hitchcock and Charles C. Denton purchased farmland and began carving it into building lots. Ozone Park, in the borough of Queens, New York, was created and settled in 1882. Hitchcock and Denton chose its name to lure buyers with the idea of refreshing breezes blowing from the Atlantic directly into the park like community.

Its sister town, South Ozone Park, was less upscale and afforded cheaper housing for many immigrant families looking to escape the tenements of East New York, while still having an easy access route to Manhattan. By 1910, Italian Americans, fearing their changing neighborhoods, decided to settle in the mostly Irish and German surroundings. After the Fulton Street Line, connecting Ozone Park with the rest of New York City, began operating in 1915, Italians became the largest group of new residents.

I was born in South Ozone Park in 1952, when it was still considered by many to be a suburb in the country. My parents and I shared a small-shingled cape, on 132nd Street, with my grandparents and my mother’s younger brother, Anthony.

We shopped on Rockaway and Liberty Avenues, fished in Jamaica Bay, and dined, on special occasions, at our favorite Chinese food restaurant on Cross Bay Boulevard. Uncle Tony was a big fan of White Castle burgers, and most Saturdays he brought home a bagful. We celebrated Sunday mass and feast days at Saint Anthony’s church.

Every year, my grandmother and I took the train to the Radio City Christmas show, and to finish the holiday shopping at Gimbels or Macys. In the summertime, vendors would bring ice cream, cotton candy, and amusement park sized rides directly to our street. Kids would ride The Whip over and over, so that our necks and backs ached by the time our parents called us in for bed.

The men played poker on Friday nights and winning pots were often large enough to pay for a new roof or to lay a foundation. These games were also the perfect opportunity to barter for whatever the winning pot couldn’t buy. Men would plaster walls in exchange for tile work in the kitchen or bath.

Most, if not all of the men at the weekly games were laborers, often becoming the next generation who plastered walls or laid brick or tile. They were handymen by necessity and the lack of a formal education. They hustled each day to feed their families and considered themselves lucky that they were still strong and able after their service in World War II. Anyone in the neighborhood who couldn’t work or had a sick wife or child had no need to barter. Bags of groceries would arrive on their doorsteps- the donor anonymous. Men with bags of tools would show up along with the food to do home repairs, content with a beer as payment.

There was always a crowd at our house for Sunday dinners and regardless of how hard our parents worked during the week, the Sunday gatherings were a time for laughter and song. Jokes flew as fast as the scotches and beers. Men sat; ate, drank and smoked while their wives or mothers cooked, served and cleared the table between courses.

Children were seen, but did not speak unless spoken to. Sometimes there was a separate smaller table that sat you even further apart from the grownups. Either way, younger kids were usually eye level with their dinner plates and if you were old enough to be out of diapers there was no reasonable excuse to cry or carry on. Most likely at some point in the day you would receive a healthy pinch on the cheek or pat on the bottom, the only acknowledgement that you were there at all.

Unlike the self -indulgent psychological traumas of today, in the 1950’s, thoughts of personal happiness were not forefront. You worked until you were ready to drop, came home, ate dinner, went to bed, and the next day, you did it all over again. Women cooked and cleaned and cared for their children, husbands and their elderly parents, who often shared their homes.

Perhaps survivor’s gratitude accounted for the rarity of complaints. The neighborhood had seen its share of telegrams from the State Department and heard the screams of wives whose husbands would never work again. My father’s parents received their telegram when their oldest son, Timmy, was killed on the beaches at Normandy. If the pain was unbearable and the nightmares made their way to the surface, therapy was a trip to the corner bar. A few shots of booze, maybe a dice game or two would push the unthinkable momentarily aside.

Children were rarely privy to the pain of the past. The daily worries of life were dealt with in secrecy and I was positive that I lived in the Garden of Eden. My entire family, including both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends all lived within a few blocks of each other. We had our own tribe of the young and the old that enveloped us and kept us safe. No one was ever too busy or too tired to get together for a party, a birthday, a christening or a wake.

My father built my mother her dream house, on a vacant lot directly across the street from her parents, when I was four years old. She designed everything from the sunken living room, to the diamond shaped with his and her sinks in the bathroom. Whatever she dreamed, my father made happen. My bedroom was lavender and pink, a purple teddy bear seated in the corner. I loved our new house, but having my grandmother across the street was too big a temptation. Whenever she was home, you would find me across the street with her.

My grandfather died a few months after our house was completed. He had suffered a major heart attack eighteen years earlier at the age of thirty-six. When the doctors were sure that he would survive, they advised a year of bed rest, no drinking or smoking, and no trips to the race- track.

He promptly ignored every well-intentioned recommendation and frequently took me with him when he visited Charlie’s Bar. I would sit next to him on a very high stool, my coca-cola, with a cherry, next to his scotch, a Chesterfield burning in the ashtray. I loved the sound that the two red dice made when he shook them out of their black leather cup onto the bar. I recall it still now, and can hear the sounds in my minds eye whenever I think of him.

William had been an accountant for Fairchild Grumman during the war years. He was a tall man with dark hair and glasses who wore a serious expression that covered a sensitivity not considered appropriate for men of his time. Gruff on the outside but tender within, he was the one who always made sure my shoes and coats still fit me at times when my parent’s money was tight. It seemed as if my grandmother realized that he would not be blessed with a long life and always treated him with kindness and a deep respect. I remember scenes from her kitchen where she would shave him or cut his hair, as he teased us with impossible stories and silly jokes.

I was four years old when he died, young for a child to remember so clearly, but love has a way of making the oldest of memories live on. I know that he has been watching out for me throughout time. I have felt his presence in my joys and sorrows, my spirit guide, providing comfort and the affirmation that life goes on even in the face of great loss.

After his death, I became even closer to my grandmother. I would sleep in her bed where she would rub my back until I fell into a deep relaxing sleep. Even as a teenage girl, I would often lie down with my head in her lap for those special back rubs. Her touch was better than any pill for alleviating the stress on the worst of days. I have never forgotten the look and touch of her hands and I often find myself using her magical techniques on my own grandchildren, who love it just as much as I did.

This life, this community, these people, were my salvation. By this time, our family had grown to include my brother John, who was born in the January before my fourth birthday, and my brother Billy born shortly before the death of my grandfather in February of the following year.

Our proximity to the Big City made drugs flowing eastward easily accessible. Young men found their way to the boulevards or the dark recesses under the elevated trains where they would dabble in the dark arts. Many emerged from their hiding places addicted to heroin. Their parents who had worked so hard for the American Dream were often unable to recognize the signs of their children’s addiction and later found it impossible to help them heal. Too many teenagers and young adults who were not old enough to serve in the war became fatalities non-the less. Others spent years in jail for the crimes they committed to feed their habits.

The fear of having a drug-addicted child seemed to be an omen. It left my father determined to avoid the nightmare that was taking hold of our community. Two weeks after my seventh birthday, he put my mother in the car and drove with a vengeance to Long Island. He ended up in Stewart Manor, a sleepy little six-block town that was one train stop shy of Garden City, where the homes were just out of his price range. The town was such a small little hamlet that we often joked that only one squirrel was needed to harvest every acorn that fell from the trees. The ranch house that my father had built with so much love went on the market and we moved back to my grandmother’s house for a few months until the final details of the selling and buying were completed.

The morning that the moving van was scheduled to arrive, my two cousins and I hopped on our bikes and took off in protest. We rode all the way to Aqueduct Raceway, with plans to hide out until my parents took off for the suburbs and I could return to live in happiness with grandma. After two hours of driving around an empty parking lot, we suddenly realized that perhaps a painful retribution would be the reward for our decision. We raced home to find both set of parents waiting outside and I traveled to my new home with a sore backside as punishment for my crime. My cousins got a beating as well and I still laugh when I think of the movers hearing the screams of three kids as they hefted our furniture into the truck.

Our new house was a large three bedroom colonial, that wouldn’t seem so big by the time I was a teenager and the progeny included seven children and a dog. For the first few months, my parents were consumed with ripping off sheets and sheets of old wallpaper, painting, and setting up our new home. My brothers and I explored the block and played in the backyard. They seemed to adjust just fine to the changes, but I was in utter misery. I didn’t know a single soul, and the neighborhood was so quiet that the nighttime crickets sang like a symphony orchestra.

After a few months, when time and money dictated that we be comfortable in our new home, I would often find my mother crying at the kitchen table. Many days I joined her in her tears, a box of tissues between the two of us, cups of coffee warm comfort. We were doomed, I thought. Life was over as far as I was concerned, and this was only the summer. What would happen when I had to start school in September?

The only worthwhile days were those when my grandmother would take the Long Island Rail Road and arrive at our house, her valise in hand, ready to cook, clean, sleep in my bed, and rub my back, until I forget that I was in hell.

I started the third grade at St. Anne’s school in September of my seventh year. The majority of my classmates had last names that did not end in a vowel. We sang Irish Eyes Are Smiling in music class, over and over again, until I swore that I came from the Emerald Isle. I never saw a single statue, pinned with money, carried through the streets and cannolli was not on the menu at our local bakery.

The Good Humor Man came each summer evening but The Whip was gone for good. There were tracts of farmland on Hempstead Turnpike and we bought our milk and fruit drinks from Gouz Farms in Elmont. Actual cows roamed behind wire fences and a wooden sign exclaimed - “Gouz Rhymes With Cows,” just in case Dr. Seuss didn’t want a career.

Sunflowers and rose bushes replaced eggplants and tomatoes in the backyard gardens and after a few years, I stopped understanding my grandparents when they spoke in their native tongue. Eventually, I adapted, made friends, learned to appreciate a lyrical Irish brogue- and life went on.

My role as a former princess changed quickly to the life of Cinderella before she met her prince. I babysat for the younger kids who I deemed the evil stepsisters regardless of their gender. I constantly cleaned the house and managed to get good grades. My parents seemed to appreciate the anxieties of my new position and allowed me to spend two weeks each summer at my grandmothers, where I was pampered and spoiled.

I was not the only one who was different since our move. My mother, surely feeling isolated and alone, even with a house full of kids, often seemed apathetic and indifferent. My father worked two full time jobs and managed some household project on the weekends, but neither of them seemed to be especially happy. There were no more Friday night poker games and few Sunday dinners with the extended family. Life was becoming different for everyone. Relatives were suddenly too busy or too tired for company, most especially company that was now a tribe.

The political climate of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear attack trickled down to schoolchildren throughout the United States. Air raid drills became part of the normal curriculum and during our practices for death by radioactivity; we lined up in the school’s basement or huddled under our desks. Instructed to place our hands over our heads during the hiding, I often wondered exactly what this would accomplish when a large bomb landed on our school.

It was during the Kennedy Administration, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when the threat of nuclear war became even more of a reality. Classes were suspended for live radio broadcasts detailing the negotiations between the United States and Russia. I noticed the nuns fingering their rosary beads and was sure that I would never have to learn long division. I kept glancing out the window, expecting to be blown to bits any second, and I wondered if I would make it all the way home.

I arrived home intact but slightly shaken. My mother was at her usual place at the kitchen table looking slightly bored and not at all concerned for my health and safety. I knew in that instant that all grownups were crazy and that I needed to take matters into my own hands. Always slightly outspoken, as reflected in my conduct grades, I decided I would go directly to the source. I would write a letter to the President and find out if he was crazy too.

Eddie Regan ventured out in snow, rain, and sleet to deliver the mail to the citizens of Stewart Manor. Slightly red nosed from his post delivery stops at the local tavern, Eddie also served as the town gossip. He could let you know what was happening at each home along his route and would gladly inform you regardless of your solicitations.

Eddie was not psychic, nor did he ever open a single piece of mail. In the long years of wading through the envelopes of his profession, he had learned to divine the contents of most letters and official documents. He could let you know that the Monahan’s were petitioning the town for approval to build a swimming pool, that the Cleary family was joining the country club. If a letter from the principal were in his bag, he would announce somberly to anyone willing to listen that – “ the Jones boy is in trouble again.”

High school seniors, waiting patiently for responses to their college applications, might hear Eddie exclaim, “ Princeton’s out, but it looks like Adelphi’s a shoe-in. Think how much money you can save your parents by going to a local school! I bet you might even get a scholarship.”

I figured that Eddie must have broken at least one of the privacy statutes enforced by the Postal Inspector General, but I liked him anyway. He was the neighborhood yenta in a town where folks didn’t generally sit on their stoops or play stickball in the street. You could always count on Eddie to bring you the latest news and local gossip along with his opinions on world events, and the community at large.

Women who did not work outside the home were the official guardians of their towns. It seemed as if there were less predatory creatures then and children were encouraged to spend most of their free time out of doors. There were no video games and few children’s programs on the one television set that usually remained off until after dinner. So children played outside, walked everywhere, and front doors were open and often unlocked. This open door policy gave Eddie easy access for his daily mail announcements.

“Its looks like Lucy passed her road test,” he would yell through the screen. “Electric rates are up again, look at your bill. It’s disgraceful.”

Income tax refunds and social security checks were worthy of an additional knock and Eddie would often wait on the stoop to deliver these gifts in person. There were countless Eddie knocks at our door. They would send my mother to the back of the house where she could pretend not to hear him. She would peep down the hallway, after waiting at least five whole minutes, to assure herself that he was indeed gone; knocking on the next door. I guessed that Eddie knew more secrets about the residents of Stewart Manor than the church confessional. For me, he was the one sane adult in this whole crazy upside down world.

It was the summer after fourth grade when I decided to write my letter to President Kennedy. Everyone I knew was enchanted with the Camelot reign of John and Jacqueline and placed their most fervent hopes for the future in Kennedy’s hands. It was a time where the President of the United States existed on a different plane than the rest of the mere mortals that inhabited the planet. I wondered if he knew about our air raid drills and how fearful we were that we would not live to see our future. I made it my summer mission to let him know.

In July of 1963, I mailed my first and only letter to the White House. It was the missive of a child, without the inkling that evil might just overcome good, that all was not well, not even if you were loved.

Dear President Kennedy,

I will be starting fifth grade at Saint Anne’s school in September and I wanted to write to you to let you know what is going on.

Every week during the school year, we practice our air raid drills. We hide under our desks or line up in the basement to prepare for the time when the bomb drops. Even though we pray the rosary during this time and would probably go to heaven if we were blown up, we are still afraid.

I would like to know what you are going to do so that children have the chance to grow up in a safe world. It might be a good idea if there were no more wars and if we made friends with all the countries that want to hurt us. It would be a great thing if children never had to be afraid again.

Thank you for reading this letter and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sending a letter to Pennsylvania Avenue was the highlight of my summer, second only to receiving the most gold stars in the summer reading program at our local library. Every few days I would carry home an armload of books and lay on a blanket in the grass of our backyard and be carried away to worlds without bombs.

As summer waned, I thought less and less about my letter, spending time with my girlfriends or walking to Woolworths on Hempstead Turnpike in Franklin Square. We would buy tubes of pink and orange lipsticks and nail polish that we were wore only in our bedrooms, always ending our shopping time with a cherry coke and fries.

The music of the sixties generation was making an impact on our generation as well. My old blue record player no longer played my parents Tony Bennett albums, although to this day, I can recall every word of The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Stranger in Paradise, my father’s favorite song. We had The Four Seasons and the Beach Boys and new groups were springing up as if a mass inspiration had touched every one with the hint of a song in their soul.

In one year, a group of mop headed musicians from London would change everything and like millions of other young girls in the 60s, I would become a Beatlemaniac, convinced that I would marry Paul McCartney and live happily ever after.

It was a bright September Saturday morning that still whispered the promise of summer when I woke to the sound of Eddie Regan pounding furiously on the metal of the screen door

“ Lucy got a letter from the White House,” he announced to an empty screen. “ A letter from the White House! – from the President.”

“ Hello!” he said as he pounded yet again, this time adding the door chime to further emphasize his presence. “Is anyone home?”

I came flying downstairs at the sound of my name, my nightgown billowing around my ankles, my hair a mass of curly frizz, embarrassed to be seeing the mailman in my present state.

Mom and Dad, used to Eddie’s laments and running commentary, realized that this was more than his usual fuss and left the kitchen table, hurrying to meet him as he opened the screen door and surprisingly stepped into the living room.

“What’s all the fuss about, Eddie,” my father asked calmly as he tried not to appear too shocked that the mailman was actually in the house and that I was standing in front of him in garb unsuitable for company. He motioned me behind him as his six-foot frame towered over Eddie, who at only five feet six, just now realized that he had entered our home without being invited.

“ A letter from the White House for Lucy,” he gasped, as my parents showed him to a chair, his nose unusually red for ten o’clock in the morning. He put the still full mailbag down with a thud as he leaned back into our green wing chair and took a deep breath.

“ Imagine that!” he said as he handed the letter to my father, and looked at me with an expression bordering on awe.

It took three or four thank you’s before Eddie took the hint, aided I am sure by my father placing his palm in the small of Eddie’s back and leading him to the outside, before closing and locking both the screen and wooden doors.

By this time, the rest of the kids had gathered around us. My father handed me the envelope as if it were made of pure gold. Gathered in our dining room, surrounded by my family, I carefully opened the envelope and read my letter from the President.

Dear Lucy,

Thank you for taking the time to send me your letter. I always enjoy hearing the thoughts of the future generation of American leaders. I want you to know that I am working very hard to make sure that all of the children in our country will have the opportunity to live in a peaceful world. Continue to work hard in school and never lose your interest in the world around you. Children are the most valuable assets of our country and I intend to make sure that they are able to grow up in a world without fear.

Sincerely,

John F. Kennedy

President of the United States

I passed the letter to my parents who read it silently and then held it at arms length for my brothers and sisters, who more than likely had no idea what it was, and who quickly went back to whatever they were doing prior to the morning’s ruckus.

My mother smiled, surely thinking I imagined, that I was clearly the cleverest girl in the universe. My father looked as if he would burst with pride and shook his head as if to say that I was a handful and one day would surely try the patience of the saints. By early afternoon, my status as near royalty was over, replaced with Saturday chores and the needs of the brood.

That day, I read the letter again and again, called my girlfriends and read it to them and felt like a real citizen with a voice that would make a difference. Eventually, I tucked the letter in a drawer where I kept my special treasures. Over the next few weeks, I would take it out on occasion and read it to myself, thinking, The President knows who I am!

I would probably be very famous now that J.F.K. and I were friends and I looked out the window each morning for a month or more, as I dressed for school, just in case the President decided to send a car and bring me to Washington for more advice.

November 22, 1963 started out as just another unremarkable school day. I ate breakfast and helped dress my brothers and sisters, but my mind was somewhere else. Like most kids, I was looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday and the start of the Christmas season.

Chilled by the first hints of winter, my classmates and I were almost glad to hear the bell that signaled the end of our lunchtime recess. At one o’clock, more than half of the day was over, and I said a silent prayer that the rest of the day would fly by as fast. We lined up to go back into the building that was suddenly absent of the sound of chalk on the board or the shuffle of books. An eerie quiet greeted us and took our own voices away.

The Sisters of Mary were gathered in small groups in the hallways. We could hear the muted sounds of the television coming from the office of the principal. The door of each classroom closed tight after the last student to enter made the short walk to their desk.

We were instructed to start our homework assignments and to maintain absolute silence while doing so. Every few minutes we could see the face of a nun peeping through the glass just to make sure that order was maintained.

It was so unusual for us to be left alone and we were so anxious to catch a word of the quiet hallway conversations that not even the sound of a rustle of paper invaded the space. Not one child rose to sharpen a pencil or to deposit a scrap into the wastebasket at the front of the room. No hands were raised for the restroom, no one laughed or coughed. We became statues, not seeing the words on the pages of the books in front of us, not seeing each other, and feeling more than a little betrayed.

Caught up in the drama of our silent house, we waited for the end of the day in a complete hush. The three o’clock bell pealed so loud in the static that more than one child jumped with surprised. The doors to our classrooms opened and I noticed Sister Joseph wipe away a single stray tear as we lined up for release.

We had not been told that President Kennedy was shot as he made his way through the parade route in Dallas, Texas. He died at approximately one P.M. on this Thursday November afternoon from a shot to the head fired into his car.

The car that I had fantasized would some day park outside my house and take me to Washington was now covered with the blood and brains of his assassination.

The Sisters of Mary decided that our parents should be the safe-keepers of this tragic news and as we left the building we remained unaware that this day would represent the first of many times that would chip away our shells of innocence and leave us with no trace of our previous selves.

The walk home on that November day was different than any other. The streets seemed deserted, the dead quiet reminiscent of another day that would come in September of 2001. I found my mother sitting in front of the television set, a cup of coffee gone cold in her hand. She wore an expression that I had not seen before, and I imagined it to be the same one she wore as she wept at the coffin of her father.

My own father just slowly shook his head from side to side in denial, as he was prone to do in situations where neither physical strength nor determination would make a difference. We watched the news together as a family, late into the evening. Each time they replayed Walter Cronkite, taking off his glasses to wipe away his tears, confirming that the President was dead, I felt the sobs rise in my own throat.

I ran upstairs to my room to get my letter from John Kennedy and I thought, Who would keep me safe now? Who kept him safe?

For a moment in time, I wished that Eddie were standing in our doorway. He would knock, or ring the bell and tell us it was all a big mistake and that the rest of the world had just gone slightly insane! He would ask for me and tell me that my friend was still alive and needed me in Washington. But, Eddie didn’t lie and the next morning he delivered the mail without saying a single word. I watched him from my bedroom window and noticed that, on this day, his eyes were as red as his nose and I knew my friend, The President, was really dead.

Over the next few days along with the rest of the nation, I cried for what might have been. I cried when a little boy saluted his dead father and I cried for the fact that I would never again believe in the promise of safety. The day that they buried John Kennedy, the day of his son’s salute, was the day that my childhood ended.

Time is the pickpocket for those few moments when we believe that paradise exists. I do, however, demand that it remain the birthright of the young to expect that it is more than just a dream. Now, at this time in my life when most of the ones dearest to my childhood heart are gone forever, I have become the momentary giver of childhood dreams.

I don’t know what happened to Eddie Regan, but I like to imagine him on a stool in his favorite pub, waxing still on world events and enjoying a good scotch or two. Through the years, I married a good man, loved my children with an open heart and with great regret admit that my letter from the President went the way of many of my childhood treasures. Although a healthy dose of cynicism has replaced much of the innocence of my youth, I can still see the sense of wonder in the eyes of my grandchildren and I hope that there is a Camelot and an Eddie in their future.

The End