The parents!
My parents came from the PA coal regions and met post-WWII working at a music store. He hauled and delivered pianos, she sold sheet music and could play piano and sing to hawk a song.
He was the youngest of 5, born to the town drunk and his wife. His father beat his wife often and all his kids as well. An aunt told me my father was the slowest runner, so he tasted the strap often just for breathing. Food was scarce, even before the Depression. He was overweight by the fifties and had been gifted with a prodigious nicotine habit, courtesy of his Uncle Sam in WWII.
Mom was the youngest of two, growing up in a lower middle class side of town. Loving father and stern but fair German mother. She had a passion for music, seeing all the big bands in high school, even Tommy Dorsey and that skinny boy singer, Sinatra. By college she was playing saxes and piano, even Rhapsody in Blue. Weekends were spent playing clubs with her (all male!) band mates. She was very tall for the time, and very self conscious about her long feet. She played keyboards barefoot, which got her teased by her band mates.
My father had a hungry gambling addiction nurtured by his membership in a firehouse. He did everything he could to impress my mother when he had money. She settled for him; no one else was showing interest. In Monopoly, she had drawn a ‘go to jail’ card.
They moved to south/central PA; she became a teacher, he an insurance investigator. The chip on his shoulder was steel. He obsessed about showing his family he could become ‘someone’. But he missed a subtle detail–they didn’t give a shit. He was considered an idiot for leaving town, and his brothers were smarter and wiser because they stayed. Which is a glistening irony, because one was a raging alcoholic.
My maternal grandmother told my mom not to marry him, but mom knew he would never cheat and he swore he would not follow his loving father down the path of spousal violence. He kept both promises and rarely even sipped a beer.
They lived in a succession of apartments, as both had long work commutes. On a rare slow day, my father met a young doctor starting up his business two doors down. They played cards for hours. The doctor married young and when he got his license, he watched the love of his life die drop by drop from cancer. This man became my godfather, the most important man in my life.
Next time: “Let’s make a Nest’