How it all happened, thank goodness
The Column: 07.28.25
My neurologist says I have multifocal cerebral infarcts primarily cortically based and a narrowing of the left palpebral fissure, and yet I clearly recall the screech and rumble of the big yellow streetcars along Bloomington Avenue in Minneapolis in 1947, the jingle of coins dropping into the farebox, the clang of the conductor’s dishpan bell as the motorman swung the big wooden handle and the streetcar rolled down the street toward downtown. I was five years old. I remember standing up on Sunday morning and reciting my Bible verse in front of forty people. And I remember the coins in my fist that I stole from Mother’s change jar in the kitchen and walked down the alley between the rows of little white garages to 38th Street to the luncheonette.
A man held the door open for me and I said, “Thank you very much.” I had eighteen aunts and so I had very good manners. I climbed up on a stool at the counter, and the cook said, “What do you want?” and I said, “A cheeseburger with ketchup.” I put my 50 cents down on the counter. I heard a man a few stools away say “Goddamn it to hell,” which I’d never heard before in my life. The cook was smoking a cigarette, and the smell of tobacco smoke was new to me as well. He set the burger down on a white plate and I said, “But I wanted cheese.” And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Dad. He pushed the plate away and led me out the door. I said, “But I paid for it!”
Mother was waiting by our garage. She handed Dad a yardstick and told him to give me a whacking, but he could not bring himself to do it. He and I sat in the garage on the bumper of our 1941 Ford not looking at each other and after a while we went up the stairs to the kitchen.
The next day, Aunt Marion said to me, “I understand you like cheeseburgers” and she laughed and so did Uncle Bill. Aunt Elsie said something similar. My bad deed was amusing to them. My dad had told them the story, the “But I wanted cheese” line and “But I paid for it.” The story amused my family. They loved me. They never said so but if you could make them laugh, then you knew you were loved, it was just as simple as that. And so I took a turn toward comedy, all because my dad couldn’t hit me with a yardstick for stealing money, though it was a thin light yardstick, not a heavy one.
I was a very quiet boy, which back then people thought indicated a high IQ but I knew better. I knew I couldn’t be a teacher or doctor. I couldn’t go into sales either because I have a gloomy face, having grown up evangelical and thinking the world is about to end any minute and eternal hellfire awaits those who’ve strayed from the path (and which of us hasn’t?). A man with a face like mine can’t work in a haberdashery and hope to interest a customer in a fine suit; you’d be lucky to sell him a pair of black socks.
I went into radio when I was 18 to impress a girl I was in love with and found it easy work, no heavy lifting, no expertise required, you simply offered friendship to strangers and that became my career. I also was a writer but people bought my books because they listened to my radio show and were friends of mine.
Writing was hard because it’s never good enough and you can waste months going down the wrong road and a live radio show simply is what it is. The “On Air” light flashes and you do what you do. An evangelical upbringing is a weird preparation for comedy, but now I’m an old man and still working at it. I went home to Minnesota recently and I rode down Bloomington Avenue and it all came back to me. Had Dad thrashed me with the yardstick, he wouldn’t have told Marion and Elsie and it wouldn’t have become a joke and I likely would’ve become a drama critic known as The Mortician, famous for my devastating reviews with wicked put-downs that have closed many a show. Instead I celebrate my 83rd with a show telling stories and singing love duets with my pal Heather Masse. A cheeseburger costs twelve bucks and it’s worth it.
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Your story was an interesting counterpoint to some long-held feelings about my own "bad deed" from childhood, but I was about 4 years old, if that, and there were no cheeseburgers involved. My mother would always enclose a coin in a handkerchief, knot the hanky, and I was to put the coin in the collection basket at church on Sunday mornings. I had no concept about money at that age, other than this ritual that seemed important somehow. We visited at a neighbor's after church one Sunday morning where I saw a nickel on the edge of a dining room table that I was barely tall enough to see; I scooped it into my hand and there it stayed while the family took a Sunday drive. What my plans were for the coin, I have no certain memory, but it had some connection to church, the collection plate and some custom that involved a coin. My mother discovered the hotly clutched coin in my hand and to the shock of my innocence, I was made to know I had committed a serious "bad act." Were my parents so worried that they had produced a criminal that that little child had to be thrashed into abandonment of her wayward path, at 4 years old, if that?
When we arrived back home, the shaming and punishment intensified. Your father was restrained; my father was not. I suppose I learned some concept of theft, but I certainly learned about shame and guilt. With the punishment and the shaming, the lesson I really learned was the feeling of injustice and the frustration of being misunderstood. Your lessons seem much gentler and more useful to a child's spirit.
No one can tell a memory better than you ~ you took me right back there with you. I just love reading your writing. Makes me smile and brings tears at the same time. Thank you.