Читать книгу Standpipe - David Hardin - Страница 22

FOURTEEN

My mother was the heart and soul of the family. If my father was the bringer-home of bacon, hand on the wrench that kept the cars running, oxygen thief—every room he entered depleted of air—she was constant as the Morning Star. The singer of songs, reciter of rhymes and maid of make-believe. We danced—to forty-fives, the radio—Bill Justice’s “Raunchy,” Hank Williams’s “Kaliga,” and the York Brothers’ “Hamtramck Mama.”

Hamtramck, Michigan. Encapsulated by the City of Detroit, urban beetle in amber. Historic gateway to immigrants from central and eastern Europe, Appalachia, the Ozarks, and, over time, the Middle East—late, from Africa and east Asia and pioneering suburban kids seeking cheap studio space. My parents took a flat on Caniff, near Joseph Campau Avenue, sharing a bathroom with an older Polish couple, the Geibors. Ornate Catholic churches, Polish social clubs, and unassuming shot-and-a-beer bars abounded. The sprawling Dodge Main plant dominated the neighborhood.

She may have fantasized about life as that latter song’s free-spirited namesake. I remember her dancing and popping her fingers. She’d vamp, twirl around the room to Arlen and Mercer’s “Blues In the Night”—probably the Rosemary Clooney version—pantomiming the chanteuse, thin dowel of a red Tinker Toy standing in for a saucy cigarette. She was a drop dead-ringer for Patsy Cline. They were the same age, Tennessee gals born eight days apart.

One night in 1963, she returned from Kresge’s with a big surprise; a forty-five of “I Want To Hold Your Hand”—“I Saw Her Standing There” the B-side. I can still see the orange and yellow Capital swirl spinning hypnotically on the little turntable. We stood there for a moment, transfixed, my mother, brother, and me, stung by the sublime revelation of the Beatles. Once my father abandoned the field for the basement, we Twisted our asses off like Chubby Checker, lighting fresh Tinker Toys off the stubs of the old.