Did Daddy Eat Souvlaki?

Busy Corner, while a noun, was actually a “busy” corner. It was a shopping strip about midway between my childhood home and the big metropolis – think population 12,000 – downtown. It was the “outer edge” of my childhood frontier.

You may recall, my hometown in Alabama got its name from a Creek Indian word for “buzzards roost” and it did seem to qualify. As if the worry of ever circling vultures was not enough, Mrs. Teel, the fortune-teller down in Coosa County, had predicted that a giant chasm would open up in the middle of downtown, revealing an underground river. Since Mrs. Teel had the reputation for being right - she had told the Widow Hopkins that she would find a handsome man in her kitchen - my Aunt Inie would not venture downtown under any circumstances. Inie explained that she didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the gaping divide and be attacked by the buzzards. So she ventured no further than Busy Corner. (Mrs. Teel did not narrow the timing of this event, so some people are still waiting in anticipation. The hardware store even considered offering a line of marine-oriented supplies to the possible boating community.)

Like Inie, I ventured no further than Busy Corner. Not because of the impending terrain change or the buzzards, but because my parents forbade it.

They made it quite simple: I could walk to Busy Corner to get a haircut at Rowe’s barber shop, buy a balsa wood glider at the variety store, or buy a comic book at Moseley’s Drug Store. I could have possibly purchased an Ace Sweeper at the broom factory out back, but they were wholesale only. That was the limit of my solo activity. I could venture no further in that direction.

In the other quadrants of my geography, I could go to the turtle pond down by the back of the spinning mill, I could go to the Harris residence – the last house on our street, I could play along the “big ditch” which, unlike my hometown, seemed unaptly named since it was a small creek, and I could go over on Comer Hill on windy days to test a new kite purchased on a foray to “Busy Corner.”

Trips downtown, usually on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday, were always accompanied by my parents. These involved a visit to the Cash Store, which was a strange name for the business since it seemed to me that everyone had a charge account. There would be grocery shopping at the A&P and, hopefully, a cherry coke at Macmillan’s Fountain Drugs. At one point, when I was older, I would be dropped at the Martin Theater with a friend and allowed to watch a movie. If we were lucky, it would be a good “shootem up” which was what we called the Gene Autry, Lash LaRue films. Movies in those days were always accompanied by a pre-Disney cartoon of about fifteen minutes in length and an action-filled serial. The serial always had a “cliff-hanger” ending which brought you back the next week. These ventures sometimes featured Tarzan wrestling a killer crocodile, Nyoka the Jungle Girl facing menacing natives, or Flash Gordon in a futuristic space ship dodging a death ray. (By the time I encountered the serials, Buster Crabbe had emerged from the jungle and been supplanted by Johnny Weissmuller.) We would leave the darkened theater asking ourselves, “Is it really over for the Green Hornet?”

Later, when television entered our lives and displaced trips to the movies, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and the Green Hornet transitioned and met foes in our living room on Saturday mornings. They were joined by Buster Brown and Tela, the great bull elephant. (Why I remember Tela more than Bomba, the Jungle boy, is fodder for another day.)

But that was my world.

Years removed, when I remembered it, I recalled a world lacking diversity.

Or so it seemed when I first encountered Chicago.

When I first arrived here, I was overwhelmed with the sounds and smells of the multi-cultural fabric which defined the city. I was constantly forced to compare it with the mainstream Protestant mold of my youth. I had grown up with Smiths, Sprayberrys, or Browns. Here there were Spejewskis, Maximovitches, and Przybylows; names so desperately in need of a vowel that you wanted to find Vanna. My own Scottish name was considered “on the fringe” in the land of honeysuckle and kudzu.

But there was the Dressler family from Germany who came to town so that Dr. Dressler could lead the music program at the Methodist Church. He even discovered an old Pleyel piano from Austria that had made its way into a Sunday School room at the Baptist church at Oldfield.

Then I recalled Little Paul.

Little Paul ran a greasy spoon café up on Busy Corner, the center of my world. It was across the street from the dime store and Mosely’s Drug Store. Sometimes, if my haircut went well at the barber shop, my Dad would treat me to a hamburger and fries prepared by the owner and chief cook, Paul Papadopoulous.

Decidedly Greek!

Now I find myself wondering if there was saganaki on the menu and a beloved icon over the sink in the back. Did Little Paul substitute virgin olive oil for the Wesson’s? In the midst of what I thought of as a bland and colorless world, did my father eat souvlaki?

Years later he discovered a basil leaf in the spaghetti prepared at a restaurant in Chicago and assumed that a leaf had blown in through an open window. So maybe there was no baklava in his life.

It turned out that the handsome man that the Widow Brown encountered in her kitchen was a Lithuanian plumber named Adomas Minkus. He was there to repair a leaky faucet.

Despite some very large cracks in the pavement on Fourth Street near the new tacqueria, there is no word on the underground river.

No Room In The Inn

My granddaughter Grace, the youngest of my three grandkids, has a nativity scene with which she is fascinated. She is constantly rearranging the figures. There is only one of which she identifies with any regularity: “Baby Jesu.” (She is either having trouble with the “s” or speaking in classic Latin.)

Her two-year old cousin in Texas refuses to admit to the divinity at all. When told it is the baby Jesus, she adamantly corrects her mother, “No! It is just a baby.” (She would be termed a “maverick” had that designation not been opted by a ditsy individual who can see Russia from her front porch.)

“Baby Jesu” keeps coming up missing. I have explained to her father that she is merely being liturgical. The baby isn’t due until Christmas Eve. Of late, the only one in the stable is the shepherd boy. Even Mary has been relegated to a spot among the cows.

All this reminds me of the locally famous “Living Nativity” staged in my boyhood hometown; a village of about 15,000 souls with a Creek Indian name which means "Buzzard's Roost." (It was aptly designated.)

The nativity was situated in the public park on Broadway since it got the most automobile traffic. Various townspeople volunteered to be shepherds and wisemen. Mary and Joseph were generally chosen by the local pediatrician since he knew whose baby could handle the situation with the quietest demeanor and didn't require a pacifier. (Despite the occasional appearance of a pair of canvas Keds, the look was relatively gratifying.)

The animals were the most difficult to cast. Cows were ok, sheep a bit of a challenge, but camels are not native to Alabama. Otis Sprayberry, who furnished the livestock and insisted a sign be erected near the stable to attest of his altruism, offered three mules to be the transport of the seers of the East.

“Hold on!” This was the cry of Mrs. Augusta Lawson, the art teacher, who was the artistic consultant of the project. In her vision, there were camels. A mule is not a camel.

Mrs. Lawson was an enterprising woman. (Not only an artist, she was also the author of a very popular book, “What To Do With The Preacher On A Hot Day.” Relax, it was a book of cool drink recipes for entertaining and was very popular among the Presbyterians.)

Not content that three mules would spoil her Living Nativity, she fashioned papier-mâché “humps” which were attached to the sagging topsides of the aging equines. She also improvised a large headdress to further camouflage the fact that they were not camels. She insisted they be placed as far from the street as practical – off in the shadows to achieve as much illusion as possible. The placement really bothered the wisemen who were responsible for keeping the “camels” from straying away. Who could see them in the dark?

Maylene Moore made all the costumes. It was a real improvement over the “terrycloth bathrobe” look most associated with local Christmas pageants. Mrs. Lawson had sketched patterns adapted from famous paintings. Since most of the fabric was donated by the local cotton mill, something was lost with the preponderance of blue cotton ticking. (The blue did look good on the Virgin Mary.)

Things went well for the most part. That is until the handbell choir from the Methodist Church at Renfro made a guest appearance to play “carols and hymns of the season.” Rather than Christmas charm, the enthusiastic clanging had an alarming effect on the “camels.”

Despite the fact that Junior Sprayberry, the oldest boy of Otis, was Melchoir and familiar with his beast, he was unable to hold on. The frightened creature bolted, plowed right through the bell-ringers and headed down Broadway. The two others followed close behind. These followed by three wisemen. It was a cloudy night, so there was no star to guide them. By the time the “camels” reached Fourth Street, the humps had shifted position to become udders. It really frightened Birtie Parker who was out walking her dog, Mitzi. She did so each night to avoid the buzzards.

The parents of Baby Jesus assessed the trauma of the evening. He came up missing too.