SHE WAS LATE FOR HER OWN FUNERAL

 In 1958 I was a 17 year old apprentice at the Aaron-Ruben Funeral Home in Indianapolis when Tillie Frisch died in Los Angeles.

Aaron-Ruben Funeral Home 1958

 Her body was to be shipped in from LA and the date and time for the funeral were set.  Two o'clock at the funeral home in two days.  Since she had left Indianapolis for a more congenial climate some years before
the general opinion was that it would be a small gathering.

Bodies were shipped  by rail in those days and the duty fell to me to get up in the middle of the night and trek to Union station to greet the train.  What I lacked in seniority I compensated in responsibility. 

Three o'clock in the morning found me deep inside the massive Romanesque Union Station.  the red brick walls were stained black
by the coal soot of three quarters of a century of steam engines.  The loading docks were supported by thick wooden beams chewed up by being bumped by countless carts and trucks over the decades.

 There I got the news that the train was late and would not be in for another three hours.  So, back to the funeral home where I settled in on my cot for a couple hours of sleep.  Up again and back to the station.  I found a dispatcher who told me the train had now derailed in Kansas and the shipping crate would be put on another train that was due in Indianapolis at---Two o'clock that afternoon.
The same time the funeral was scheduled.  This was getting serious.

To make a bad situation worse, no one knew if a Tahara had been performed.  A Tahara is the ceremonial washing and dressing in shrouds of the dead by a group called the Chevra Kadisha.  It is a very religious and sacred thing.  So the women of the Chevra Kadisha were brought in to stand by just in case.

Tillie Frisch was the first woman Certified Public Accountant 
in Indiana, if not the nation.  She was well known in many circles and had an illustrious and accomplished family.  At two o'clock our small and rather seedy chapel was packed with what appeared to be the entire Jewish community of Indianapolis.  The Rabbi.  The Cantor.  The electricity in the overheated room was overwhelming.

This time the manager went to the station along with a police escort.  Close to two thirty they arrived at the side entrance of the Funeral home, pulled out the shipping crate, pried off the lid and....
she was in street clothes.  The Tahara had not been performed.  Another delay while the Chevra Kadisha hastily went to work.

Finally as I pushed the casket through the doorway into the waiting throng the Cantor intoned his first note .  Tillie had finally arrived at her funeral.

LOVE AND DEATH: CHRISTMAS 1964.

"Toots" Vestal lay in state in my Funeral Home on that cold foggy Indiana Christmas day.  A fine cold mist in the air.  Not a single person called, perhaps due to the weather and the holiday. Toots and his wife, Dorothea, while not loners did not have a wide circle of friends.  

Toots, a veteran of The Great War, had met Dorothea while they were employed by the same hotel in Capitol City.  They had married late in life.  They were not a handsome couple if I remember but they were devoted to each other.

 Dorothea spent that entire day sitting in a folding chair in front of her husband's casket, refusing an offer of water or conversation, a manifestation of that love and devotion.  I have seen all sorts of grief by too many widows.  Dorothea's was the most sincere.

And I could not possibly have foreseen that 50 years later to the day, I would be sitting alone in front of a computer in Denver writing  about a love I observed long ago.

THE GIRL ON THE MALL SHUTTLE

Denver.  August 8^th.  4:00 p.m.  The hottest summer since records have been kept.  I am on the mall shuttle on my way to the library and then to an AA meeting.  I noticed her

standing across from me.  Shortish.  Just short of beautiful.  What a lovely face----and then, cleavage.  Not enough to be as obscenely in your face as so many women do now, as though I would miss the point.  This was displayed just tastefully right.  Firm and a light creamy brown.  Pert.  The more I gazed the more my desire.  Look gave way to an unabashed stare on my part.  My lips parted and the tip of my tongue involuntarily played out and gently…..And then she smiled at me.  It was a gentle, friendly smile off invitation.  Or was it?  She exited the bus and glanced over her shoulder at me as she entered a McDonalds.

And then---my concept of reality, or fear….of rejection, or what took control.  I am no longer a young man.  Was it that female cop who specialized in entrapment back again having polished her act.  This woman was young enough to be my daughter if not my grand daughter.  Still I could make contact perhaps sound he out.  I faintly heard a voiceover of  

Eartha Kitt singing September Song.  And it is a long, long way from May to December.  Perhaps I had read the signals wrong and I would be rejected and embarrassed.  But then I did have to go to the library and I did want to catch the meeting.

So the risk taker of old regretfully turned away from another ‘face in the train window’ and plodded. stoop shouldered to the library thinking of the old saying,  “Nothing  ventured, nothing gained”.

MILKMAN - INDIANA - ca 1940

THIS IS THE FAMILY I WAS BORN INTO.

     My cousin Herman was a man on the make.  He was handsome, intelligent and married a beautiful woman from a prominent family.
Everything was working for him. 
     He started out as a teller working for Otto Metchler at the Industrial Bank & Trust and by the time he was in his mid forties he was cashier.  The world was his.  
     Then came the 4th of July weekend when the bank was closed for a four day holiday.  When the bank was opened for business again Herman did not show up.  Nor did one of the lady tellers.  And furthermore, the vault door was open and the vault was empty.  Like cleaned out.
     Herman had apparently, fled with his lover.  They surfaced in sunny California far from the Indiana winters and Herman's wife and family.  
     Herman's father reportedly mortgaged all of his farmland to pay off the bank to keep it out of the press and keep Herman out of jail.
     Herman much later died in obscurity in South Carolina. 

THIS IS THE FAMILY I MARRIED INTO

Or:  How Uncle Dave stole the Navy Payroll 

                     This was told by my ex wives aunt,                                 a sister to Uncle Dave.  I am                                       changing names to keep from

 getting into trouble. 

During WW II, Uncle Dave was a Commander in the Navy stationed on an island in the Pacific.  The island was hit by a typhoon and everyone ran for cover.  Everyone except for Uncle Dave who ran for the Navy Payroll.

For some time after that he sent money home to his mother.  It was hidden in clocks and saddles and anything else he could conceal it in.

For several years after the war, the FBI was sniffing around Mariposa.  They were watching Dave closely but they never did find anything they could pin on him.) 

Uncle Dave was heavily involved in the Black market during----and perhaps after----WW II.  If he could have gotten back into Japan he would have been a very wealthy man.  The Government was watching his every move and if he would have tried to leave the country he would have been detained.

                                                         

About two miles East of Mariposa and about ¼ miles South on the East side of  the road, sitting on top of a small knob was a vertical white clapboard two and one half story house which was the family homestead.  At the top of a steep narrow flight of stairs there was a small padlocked room containing a wringer washing machine, also padlocked.  The washing machine was full of cash.

.It is possible that the money was laundered out of Chicago through family connections.  Uncle Dave had a cousin who was married to a man who farmed a section of land one county to the North.  They in turn were close friends with the president of the bank in the county seat.  Entirely supposition but when there is smoke, there’s fire.

At any rate, for several years after the war, Dave quietly farmed and then took some of the cash and got a matching mortgage and bought a small piece of ground.

He continued this practice until, at the time of his death, he owned extensive farmland in Indiana plus controlling interest in a utility company in the nearby city of Indifference.  He also held a chair in either History or English at State University

                        The Shadow says: Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.

THE OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD OF UNDERTAKERS

There was a time several years before. It is three o’clock in the morning. I am driving my Cadillac, a symbol of hollow, empty status, aimlessly aware that I am going mad. I drive toward a place called Longcliffe. I knew this place because  my Grandfather died there. What I didn’t know was that he was there because of alcohol, not the garden variety of insanity. My plan was to turn myself in. The Gothic towers and spires of the century old hospital were superimposed against a full moon. My repeated thought was: If I go in there they will never let me out. They will keep me there and never let me go.

Day is night and night is day. Time warps. I don't know how long I have been drinking. A week. A year. Multiples of years? There are five liquor stores in town. I buy a bottle each night and on Friday night I get the weekend supply, hoping to make it until Sunday morning without guzzling both liters and running out on Sunday. I passed out on a sofa in the Elks club. I drove so drunk I had to shut one eye to identify the three yellow lines on the center of the road. I awaken, dressed in a suit and slumped on a couch.  The room is filled with surreal half light.  I don't know if it is twilight or dawn.  How long have I been out?  My world shrinks and becomes infinitely smaller. I am still untouchable enough that I am allowed by the local law to proceed through town at 15 miles an hour, hugging the center line and with the windows open in order to get enough fresh air to avoid passing out.

I did pass out. On a cement garage floor. On the winter night I ran out of Gin and hope  I closed the door of the garage and turned the ignition switch on a brand new Mercury station wagon. I came back to my private Hell staring at the ceiling of the hospital emergency room. My first words were; My God, I have fucked this up too.  And on to a padded ward and Nurse Ratched.

Suicide is a very selfish act.
 .............with each broken shoelace out of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one thing enters a madhouse./bukowski