I've met the old bird once or twice in my life. I know he'd been a prof, teaching a ridiculously esoteric subject at a high-toned university. He seems as smart as Tolstoy and Sakharov put together. Any topic is fertile ground for his musings. He once lectured Benny that I mispronounce my own last name.
That's why it was so shocking to learn he'd been a paratrooper. For pity's sake, those guys are the toughest, boldest bastards to wear a uniform!
So not only does Old Man Jay possess a cerebrum that weighs more than the unabridged Old English Dictionary, he has a touch of Lee Marvin in him as well. That has to be a tough act to follow.
Benny Jay is more a combo of Royko and Alinsky. That's a terrific exacta but still, it pales in comparison. I wonder if, in his private moments, Benny Jay curses his luck that he'll never be able to live up to his father's standards.
The whole father-son thing rubs the rawest of my emotional lesions. My old man, to belabor the metaphor, was a mix of Archie Bunker and the Sphinx. The similarities between Old Joe and the protagonist of "All in the Family" are jarring. They were of similar age, both were high school dropouts, as philosophically attuned as two unlettered Depression-era babies could be, and prone to lash out at anything that threatened their provincial views of the world. I kid you not, they even had the same jobs - both were shipping/receiving dock foremen.
Whenever anybody waxes poetic about how brilliant the sitcom was, I roll my eyes. They ask, Didn't you think it was the funniest thing? I respond, Why the hell did I have to watch it on TV when it played out every night at my family's dinner table?
As for the second half of the tie-in, suffice it to say that if Old Joe and the Sphinx were pitted against each other to determine who could be the more mum, the contest would end in a draw. That is, except for when Old Joe was moved to howl to the world about how his family wasn't worth a nickel.
One day, during a period of family stress, he instructed me to set up a meeting of my siblings at his house because he had something important to tell us. Young Joey, Good Old Franny, and I arrived at my parents' Berwyn penthouse at the appointed time. (Charlotte was absent, having moved to Florida years before.) We sat around the kitchen table with Old Joe at the head.
What was the big news? Were he and Ma planning to move to Florida or Arizona? Had they won the Lotto and wanted to share some of their winnings with us? Old Joe looked at each of us before he spoke. Finally, his voice cut the silence. "The Glabs," he announced, "are shit!"
That was it! His big announcement! Young Joey and Good Old Franny sat gaping. My ears turned red. I leaped up and lashed out at him. All I remember was a torrent of invective that seemed to go on forever. Each of us gave as well as he got. As Old Joe and I bayed at each other, Young Joey and Good Old Franny sat stunned.
I don't regret flashing daggers in response to Old Joe's pronouncement although I realize now he'd suffered all his life from a horrifying clinical depression. He was never officially diagnosed but I don't need to be a shrink to know that he had the disease.
Whereas Benny Jay must surely grapple with his perceived inability to accomplish one-tenth of what his daddy-o did, I wrestle with my own perceived potential to live down to Old Joe's direst predictions. There were all too many of them.
Each of us - my sibs and me - has borne the scars of being raised by a man who utterly despised himself and anything that came from him (meaning us.) Old Joe never needed to make a formal announcement that I, a member of the accursed Glabs, was shit. He conveyed that message to me through subtle words and deeds all my life.
He died nearly fifteen years ago. His aorta burst and the surgeons spent an entire night attempting to sew it back together. They did this knowing that the odds of him surviving were infinitesimally small. How ironic that at the end of his life, a life lived wholly without hope, Old Joe's loved ones and those talented doctors clung only to the merest of hopes to keep him alive another day.
After the surgery was finished, I went back home to shower and change clothes. As I stood under the hot water, crying as deeply as a five-year-old, the phone rang. Old Joe had emerged from the recovery room on life support. There was no hope left.
I dashed back to the hospital to join the family around his ICU bed. Old Joe's organs were shutting down one by one. The consensus was to pull the plug. They only wanted to give me an opportunity to make the vote unanimous.
I couldn't bear to see him in such pitiable condition. Of course, I said, let's let him go. His heart monitor line went flat some 20 minutes later.
The funny thing is, he'd been in a coma since his aorta had ruptured half a day earlier; for the first time in his life, he wasn't suffering.
