Big Mike: Franny's Life

Written Saturday, February 21, 2009

Good old Franny. My sis. Died a little more than a year ago. A day like today makes me think of her.

It's windy, snowy, and cold. The lawns are turning white. Louisville drivers are slipping and sliding all over the road as well as any environs within 30 yards of the pavement. Franny loved winter. This weather would have made her smile. She'd wrap herself in a comforter, slip an old movie into the DVD player, and act as though she were appearing in a Swiss Miss cocoa commercial.

I, on the other hand, despise winter worse than all the other ills that have plagued humankind since the dawn of recorded history. I'd tell Franny that I dream of moving to California so I won't have to put up with snow and ice and the hour and half of daylight of a typical January day. I'd tell her I crave spring and summer.

"Oh no," Franny would say. "You can't really enjoy spring unless you've experienced winter." Which, to me, is like saying I can't wait to serve a 10-year prison sentence because I'll be elated the day I'm released.

Franny took her pleasures wherever and whenever she could. She came from that generation of women who were, well, screwed by society and the times. She was born in 1938 and attended St. Giles elementary school and Notre Dame high school for girls. She was the kind of schoolgirl the nuns loved to hate. Sassy, rebellious, free with her opinions, she listened as more than a few nuns predicted a dire future for her. The women of the habit were certain she was on a one-way ride to cigarette-smoking, hot-rod-riding, liquor-guzzling, girl-gang membership, and, for all I know, membership in the communist party.

Funny thing was, they weren't so far off the mark. She was among the first of her peers to light up, go drag racing down North Avenue near Skip's Fiesta Drive-In, and drink alcohol. She didn't join a girl gang only because she couldn't find any. As for the communist party, she didn't care one way or the other.

Despite her teenaged moral turpitude, Franny got married when she was 20 to a nice boy named Bob. All Bob wanted was a comfortable home and the company of scads of children. By the time Franny was 24, she and Bob had four of them. They added another four years later.

With enough progeny to field a basketball team, Franny entered the 1970s harried, exhausted, and feeling a profound sense of emptiness. She was smart and ambitious enough to have gone to college and made a career for herself. But that option was as anathema to her neighborhood and the nuns who schooled her as if she'd become the Premier of the Soviet Union. Maybe worse.

Franny yearned to be well-read. She began to admire Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, women who spoke up and did things. She found herself disgusted by the Vietnam War and racism. Only she was too busy wiping snotty noses to do anything about them.

When bright, accomplished women who were five and ten years younger appeared on TV, women who were able to take advantage of all the new freedoms of the era, Franny would sigh audibly. She wanted so much more than what she had.

Eventually, that longing morphed into a desire for change of any kind, no matter the repercussions. And believe me, there were repercussions when she took a part-time job as a bartender at The Foxy Lady on Madison Street to help pay the mortgage on a new home. The bar was in Chicago's all-black West Side. One night, a man named Julian walked into the joint as Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" played on the jukebox. Franny fell for him instantly.

Oh yeah, repercussions. Her affair with Julian cost her a husband, much of her childhood family, most of her friends, her neighborhood, and quite nearly her life. Soon after Julian had moved in with Franny on Marmora Avenue just off Grand Avenue, her home was shot up with high-powered rifles. It's 50/50 whether the shooters were local racists turned rabid by the presence of a black man on the block or the kin of the wife Julian had left behind in Cabrini-Green.

Franny and Julian got married across the street from City Hall in 1978 by a preacher wearing a white suit, white shoes, and a wide brimmed white hat with an enormous red feather in it. His "chapel," a cramped, dusty office in a building slated to be demolished, was wall-papered with aluminum foil and had immense pictures of Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the front wall. A hidden tape deck played Marvin Gaye in the background. I was the best man.

Julian was gone by 1981. In the weirdest of ironies, he excelled in every vice that Franny's appalled, petrified family and friends had told her black men were known for. Franny never let on that he was a drunk, a philanderer, couldn't hold a job, and that he punched her like Sugar Ray Leonard when she displeased him. She never wanted them to think that they'd been right. She even hid it all from me.

She somehow rid herself of Julian even after he'd held her hostage at knifepoint one harrowing night. After that, Franny swore she was finished with men. She devoted the rest of her life to her kids and grandkids. She baked pies, cakes, and cookies enough to feed armies. She worked for days to prepare seafood gumbo, fried calamari, shrimp scampi, caponata, homemade bread and more on Christmas Eve and lasagna, ham, and lamb on Easter. She spent every dime she had on presents. Anybody who wanted could stay overnight. She was atoning.

When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer six years ago, she began to wonder if there's a heaven. If there is, I hope it's windy, snowy, and cold for her.

Benny Jay: Juke Box Battle

It's Monday night bowling, and we're on lanes one and two, the closest lanes to the jukebox. That's good, cause the closer you get to the jukebox, the more likely you're gonna play it. And, let me tell you, the music's been bad in recent weeks. All those thirty-something-year-old chuckleheads reliving their glory days, playing crummy 1980s rock. Good God, if I hear Axl Rose singing Paradise City one more time....

Cap starts us off with Tower of Power -- What Is Hip? I take it as a tribute cause Cap knows I love that song. And Cap and I -- we start jamming with the drums in the closing riff, going at it beat for beat with Tower's rhythm section, never missing a beat, cause we've heard the song one zillion times before and we'll probably hear it another zillion times again cause some songs never get old....

When it's over, we jump back, high fiving and walking with a little strut, like we're sending a big-time message to the young bucks in the bowling alley. We're a couple of old dogs -- born in the `50s, raised in the `60s, come of age in the `70s -- and we know what's good.

Watching it all is Young Ralph, one of our teammates, who's got to be, I don't know, 25, maybe 26. And he heads over to the jukebox and he puts on Snoop Dogg, `circa 1996 -- Gin And Juice. And he and J-Dub, who's maybe 31, sing along from memory, like the words are etched in their brains. Let me tell you -- it's not easy. Snoop raps fast. But, I swear, they don't miss a word -- something about "mama ain't home" and "bitches in the living room" and "pocket full of rubbers." I don't know -- I can't be sure cause I can't really follow them. When they get to the chorus, they come up close, waving their fingers in my face and going: "Rollin' down the street, smokin' indo, sippin' on gin and juice, laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind...."

And when the song's over, they start high fiving like they da shit. And so it's on. A generational showdown. Battle of the ages: `60s and `70s versus `90s and the `00s.

So we come at `em with Stevie Wonder and they come back with Ice Cube; and we do Johnny Taylor, and they came at us with Lil' Wayne, and we trump their ace with Al Green. And not just any Al Green. But "Love and Happiness."And that shuts them up cause you can't top "Love and Happiness" and everybody knows it. Especially the part at the beginning where the guitar does a little riff and Al Green cries: "Someone on the phone/Three o'clock in the morning -- yeah/Talkin' about how she can make it right." Only he doesn't say right -- he says ri-hight. And Cap and I press our right hands -- like they're microphones -- against our mouths, like their microphones, pretending we're Al Green up on stage.

They try to recoup with Outkast -- Elevators (Me and You): "Me `n yo' mama `n yo' cousin too rollin' down the strip...."

J-Dub's doing this gentle bump with Erica, Young Ralph's girl. I wave my hand in disgust, like that's nothing. But inside I'm thinking: Damn, I didn't know J-Dub was such a good dancer, and, damn, I kinda like that me-and-yo-mama-and-yo-cousin-too-bit. Though I'll never -- never, ever, never -- admit it....

Cap puts on The Marvelettes. Only instead of singing "Don't Mess with Bill," I'm singing: "Don't Mess With Benny -- leave my Benny alone."

Norm thinks that's funny. Cause I can't sing. I just bellow, more like a screech. But it's so noisy in the bowling -- what with balls crashing into the pins -- no one can hear so no one cares.

Cap puts on Darling Nikki, which is a compromise, cause everybody -- old and new -- loves Prince. Young Ralph, Norm, J-Dub, Cap and I are bellowing together: "I met a girl named darling Nikki -- I guess you could say she was a sex friend...."

Then Erica -- who's as young as Young Ralph -- shocks us all by playing "All I Do" by Stevie Wonder -- I mean, that songs got to be older than she is. And, well, that just brings down the house. Cap's Steppin' with Erica, who's getting quite a work out with all the attention. And we're all singing: "All I do -- is think about you...."

When the night ends we hug and high five. I guess you can say the great generational showdown ends in a tie.

I walk home in the freezing cold -- I mean, out of nowhere this goofy weather dropped at least 20 degrees -- but it's really not so bad. I'm singing "All I Do." In my mind I sound as good as Stevie Wonder. I'm still singing it when I walk through my front door.