Back Home Again (Part 14)

The Apartment

Back Home Again ( Part 14) 

I recorded my story on tape September 18th 1997

5929 Merrimac

I lived here from 1961 to 1963

My age was 15 to 17

Well, we’re on our way to our new apartment and it’s east of here. If you get on Canfield road and then get on the Kennedy expressway and head east. We’re going to get off at Nagel and we’ll see how long it takes to get there..... Here’s Nagel coming up. Here we go, getting off at Nagel ave. Now we’re going to take a left on Nagel. I don’t know what to expect from this apartment because Mom hadn’t let us see the apartment until the day we moved in. It’s an old apartment built back in 1921. So it had old fixtures and everything else. My grandparents and my uncle being in the building business, had it modernized inside with new kitchen cabinets and carpeting and repainted it and everything. So it’s supposed to look nice. So we’ll see. My grandparents and my uncle are the ones that made the decision for my Mom to buy this apartment building. I don’t think my Mom had too much to say about it. The apartment is close to my grandparents and the real estate office. The apartment also pays for...if you live in it; it pays for itself because you’re collecting rent. So that’s one of the reasons they chose an apartment building. We’re coming up pretty soon here. Take a right on Peterson ave. We’re on a side street now in the neighborhood. That’s the park over there. There’s the grocery store, a little tiny Ma and Pa grocery store. Here’s Merrimac. Take a right and here’s 5929 Merrimac. That’s where we live.

                    The Apartment. We lived on the first floor

It’s a two story apartment building with a garden apartment. So there’s three apartments here. It looks old. So we go inside and Mom shows us around and she says, “You really don’t like it do you?” And we said, “Yeah Ma, we like it. It’s nice.” She says, “No you don’t, I can tell.” and she starts to cry. And of course I don’t like it. I hate it with a passion. Because I was living in all those nice houses my grandparents were building, you know, brand new houses and going from that to an old apartment building. Man, my Dad’s gone, my neighborhood is gone, my nice house is gone, all my friends are gone. So I’m really depressed at this point. It’s got kind of a big living room and then you walk down the hall and on the left hand side is a small dining room and the bedrooms are on the right hand side, the master bedroom were my Mom is. Further down the hall is the bath on the left hand side and then Jeanne’s room. And then you walk into the kitchen towards the back and my bedroom, it’s the smallest of all the bedrooms. And it’s a real tiny bedroom. It doesn’t even have a closet. So my grandparents and my Mom have to go to Polk Brothers to buy one of those closets made out of metal, you know and they stuck it in the corner. I had a double bed in the room and that took up the whole bedroom, there was no place to walk around, geez. My windows looked out into the back yard if you could call it that, take about three steps and you’re across the yard. That’s how small it is. And you’re looking at an old wooden garage back there. It’s a two car garage, a big garage. One side is for the people upstairs and then we have the other side of the garage. I really, really, really hate this house. Even today looking at it, I hate it with a passion.

 Well, it took us ten minutes to get here if you’re in a car going down the expressway from my old house.

Mom’s sober but you can tell she’s depressed, no kidding. You know with her getting divorced and moving into this apartment, she didn’t like it any better than anybody else did. I sure know how she feels. I didn’t at the time but I sure do now. 

  This is a Polish neighborhood around here which doesn’t bother me in the least, it’s just that’s what it is, that’s all. We used to have these Elm trees that lined the street. All through the neighborhood they had Elm trees. In the summer time it was like driving through a tunnel any street you go down because these huge Elm trees on either side would overlap each other. That was cool I have to say that. That was pretty. Then came along the Dutch Elm disease and they cut every tree down. All of them and everybody had Elm trees.  Now they grew other trees. Today the trees are big but you don’t get that tunnel effect like you use to back then.

 Well, I left all my friends at the other neighborhood, so I don’t know what to do. I saw that there was a park on the next block as we were pulling in. So I decided to go over there to see if I could meet anybody. I remember I went over there in the evening one night. I’m age 15 now and I’m a punk. I’ve got the hair hanging down over my forehead, you know the pompadour now and the hair swept back and I’m smoking and I think I’m really cool. I already flunked out of Notre Dame. I think I’m really cool. So I go over to the other neighborhood and act like I’m tuff to see if I can find anybody else over there that hangs around the park over there that night. Nobody showed up. Boy, did I ever feel lonely. I remember sitting there that night all by myself. God was that ever depressing. Eventually I went back to the park a couple of more times and I met one guy who knew all the other guys and eventually I met all the other guys in the neighborhood. I really don’t remember their names to this day. I mean we had fun, I had fun with the guys but I can’t remember their names. I guess my best friends were left back at the old neighborhood.

  Well somehow they get me enrolled in Taft high school and that’s a public school. It’s not too far from here. I have to walk to school. It takes me maybe 20 minutes to get there maybe 15 minutes. But I really don’t care about school at all. They got me in there but I still don’t care about school. I could care less if I ever went back. The only thing that got me excited as far as school work goes....I always wanted to be a heart specialist. I said that in my paper from when I graduated from eight grade and at this point, I don’t think I’m smart enough because I already flunked out of Notre Dame and I really think I’m dumb. Oh, we had a science class at Taft and you had to come up with a project for a Science class. So I made a diagram of the heart. I had a row of buttons on the....I had a heart on a board. I drew a heart. Then I put a series of buttons on the bottom and when you press that button, it would say like Aorta and you press that button and then it would light up on the heart were the Aorta was. Like I’d pressed the button for the left Ventricle and the left Ventricle would light up to show you were it was. I got an A+ on that one. I really got excited about that. That was fun. I drew the picture and came up with the idea but I didn’t know how to do the wiring for the buttons. My uncle Andrew Gallager helped me with the work on it. He built the buttons and everything. So, anyway that was neat. I liked that. But otherwise school was really terrible and I would cut school all the time. I would hang out at a restaurant on the corner of Nagel and Northwest Highway. The restaurant is still there. I used to sit there while everybody was in school. I just didn’t care.

 My Mom really tried here, she really did. She worked at my grandparents Real Estate office even though she really hated it. She worked over there in the office. She didn’t get paid very much but they were taking care of her. My grandparents had Tilly, she was a colored woman that’s been in the family for years. She cleaned the Moreland’s house and cleans the office. So my grandparents had her come over here to help Mom to do the ironing and cleaning the house. My Mom was really trying. But it was just...she was getting depressed. She never dated. She dated one time and we had to talk her into that one. Then my grandparents I guess got her to go to a hypnotherapist, I guess that’s what they call them, they would hypnotize her. And Mom would come back from the hypnotist and we’d ask her all about it. “Mom, did you get hypnotized? What did you do? And she would tell us. She even had an album of that that this doctor put out on relaxation. I still have the album at home. I saved it after all these years. But in the end the hypnotist just didn’t work and she was getting more depressed.

 Oh, I remember one time she heard this record and it was called, “Don’t You Know” by Della Reese. I remember she liked this record. We had this record player, this stereo. So Mom goes to Polk Brothers right next door to the Real Estate office and she wants to go and see if she can get the record. She hears the record on the radio. So she goes over to Polk Brothers to see if they have the record. And she says to the salesman, “I want a record, Don’t You Know.” And the salesman says, “I know I don’t know, what record do you want? And my Mom says, “Don’t You Know.” It was like a comedy routine. That was funny. She came back and told us like that and we were laughing like crazy, Ohhh that was funny. That was one of the good ones. I like memories like that, when Mom used to laugh. If you haven’t guessed it, I love my Mom with an absolute passion. And that’s why I get so upset when she drinks because it’s like two different people. I mean when she’s sober, she so alive and vibrant and happy. Just like an angel. And then when she drinks and she’s on these pills, she turns into a total different person. So depressed and despondent and that’s what really, really gets me.

 Oh, this is good. Now a cop lives across the street. She just got in her car. I hope she doesn’t stop me..... There, she went by. Boy, I just can’t get away from those cops, geez.

Well, since my real good friends are back at my old neighborhood, I get on a bus here on Nagel. I take it back to my old neighborhood. It drops me off just about....pretty close to John’s house. So I go there all the time. I hop on the bus. I wish I had a car but I’m still only fifteen so I got to take a bus. So I go over there and we’re still working on the “50" Ford coupe, you know, putting in the engine and everything. So that’s what I do most of the time. I hang around with John. I go over there and get away from this neighborhood. That’s where I spend most of my days. I don’t see too much of the other guys because I have no way of getting there and I’d have to walk too far to get to their house. So I just stayed at John’s and if the other guys happened to stop by John’s garage, then we get together and we talk and goof around and stuff. Otherwise I just see John a lot.

  I don’t get to see my Dad very often. He doesn’t call very often. Every once in a while. I remember one time he stopped by in front of the apartment here. My Mom told him that she called the cops on him. She really didn’t, not yet anyway. He was half bombed and causing trouble I guess. But he got in the car before she really called the cops. But my Dad does buy me my first car. 

My dad at work selling Fords in 1960

He works at Norwood Ford now as a salesman. And he buys me this “49" Chevrolet 4 door. It was a dark green and I buy it for $25. That was a good deal because I only had it two days. I turned around and sold it for $50 bucks. My Dad said, “Hey Bill, You want to sell it, I got a customer.” So I said, “Sure.” I mean for fifty bucks in two days, that’s pretty good. Then I’m thinking to myself, maybe I ought to make a living at this, buy and sell cars. Make money off this. This is a good deal. I had to wait for a while and then he came up with another car. He found a 1950 Ford convertible. That was cool. That was one of my favorite cars and I buy it for $25. I just saw one recently restored in the Volo auto museum. They wanted $27,000 for it, Wow. Anyway, so that’s what I work on. Even though I’m not sixteen yet, I’m still fifteen. I put the car in our side of the garage and I work on that. It had a white primer on it and a black top. I said to my Dad....I talked to him about getting it painted. It had a little dent on it on the right hand side door and I wanted to get it painted so I ask my Dad, “So go to Earl Shives, $29.95, get your car painted.” That was the advertisement. So that’s what I did for $29.95. I had it painted. Since it was already white premiered, I had it painted white with a black top. The thing is when they went to paint my car, I thought they were going to fix my dent in the side of my door but they didn’t. They just painted right over the dent. Ohhh god, Well what do you expect I guess for $29.95. And even the paint along in the front of the hood there by the window that took a couple of months to dry. It was still tacky. I can’t believe it.

 I thought I would go around to the back were the garage is. Oh, you know this is just like going back in time. This neighborhood doesn’t change. See what my garage looks like, I wonder.... they repainted it. It’s not gray anymore. It looks a little better. Boy, the yard’s just so small. There’s my room back there.

   Well, I just stopped by the park here. It’s called Rosedale Park. And I can see where I sat that first time in the park. Right on the side of the building there were there’s a walkway. Partly down the walkway, there’s a ledge and that’s where I sat that night, I remember. 

                    The park hasn’t changed one bit.........Damn!

                                       

   L to R, Bill Moreland, Marie Pisors, Izora Moreland, James Moreland and Eleanor Kaufman at a party held at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant and Motor Lodge

  Well my grandparents stopped building houses and they built a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge and restaurant on the corner of Cumberland and Higgins. That was quite a project. It’s still sitting there today. We don’t own it anymore though (Since I did this tape back in 1997, the Motor Lodge was gutted and is now called Chicago O'Hare Garden Hotel. Since then, it got so bad that they tore it down. I took this photo on Dec 2, 2012).

 Anyway at the time, the restaurant opened up first and I’m living on Merrimac. So I get my real first job as a busboy at Howard Johnson’s restaurant. I think I was getting a dollar and quarter and hour. It wasn’t much but the neat thing about it was I could have a pick of anything on the menu I wanted for lunch except the steak and I liked that. For desert, I always use to get the strawberry shortcake all the time 

   One of my jobs at the restaurant was to clean the washrooms. And one day I was cleaning the woman’s washroom. I had never been in a woman’s washroom before. So I’m washing down the stales like they told me too and there’s this box on the wall that I’m not familiar with. And I’m washing around the box and accidentally as I’m going up with my hand, I lifted the lid open and my hand goes down inside this box. It happened so quick and it ended up being a used Kotex dispenser. That’s where you put your used Kotex. Oh, that was terrible. So when I get back to the park, I was telling the guys about what happed at work. How my hand accidentally fell into the used Kotex box when I was washing down the walls and all the guys just laughed their heads off. So they came down with a name for me, a nickname. And they called me “Rags” and that was my nickname. Oh, I hated that but that’s what everybody called me from then on, they called me Rags.

     One time I was introduced to one of my friend’s parents. I forgot the guy’s name. And he introduces me to his Mom, “Hi Mom, this is Rags.” I said, “Hi” and his Mom said, “Rags? Your friend dresses real well, why do you call him Rags.” He says, “It’s a long story Mom, I’ll tell you later.” He kind of laughed it off. That was a terrible name, geez.

Now that we own the Howard Johnson Motor and restaurant over there, one of the things they…one Christmas…or the last Christmas they had given all the kids shares of the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. All the kids like myself, and my sister and Jimmy and Bobby and Tommy Pisors and Joyce Pisors all get shares in the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge and restaurant. Plus my Mom my aunt and my uncle Bill, they got real large shares of course. So anyway, that was one of the Christmas presents. I didn’t think of it much then but of course later on it made a big difference.

  I never had a girl friend at this house for the two years that I lived there. But I did go to the dance, at the sock hops over at the church on Saturdays. This one Saturday, this one sock hop dance that I went to, it was the last dance and there was this really sharp looking girl there. Everybody wanted to dance with her and I swore that I was going to be the one to dance the last dance with her. So I went over and I asked her. And we’re dancing the last dance and all of sudden this guy wants to cut in on the last dance. No way! I said, “Get out of here.” All of a sudden he gets really mad and he challenges me to a fight outside. The last thing I want to do is fight. I just want to dance with this girl. But I can’t back down because all the guys are around me. If the guys weren’t around, I would have backed down. But I couldn’t, I had to stand my ground. After the dance...I didn’t let the guy cut in either. So after the dance, I meet him outside. Man, I just don’t want to fight but I have no choice. So we start swinging and blowing and I’m trying to hit him on the back of the neck with my fists. And I got about maybe about three or four good shots on the back of his neck. I’m trying to pretend like a karate guy, you know? And knock him out real quick. That’s what I thought was going to happen. But it didn’t work like that. In the meantime while I’m reaching around way in the back not protecting my face, he gets a good shot right in my nose. My nose starts bleeding and the blood starts really coming out. All of a sudden I can’t breathe because there’s so much blood coming out. So I just say, “Stop, that’s it. I can’t breathe. There’s too much blood.” So he agrees to quit too. I’m not hurt bad, it’s just that the blood is coming out to much. So I get the blood to stop. My shirts torn so me and the guys are off to the.....They said, “Come on Bill, we’ll go and get a pizza. So I started walking towards the pizza place and I’m bloody and my shirt is torn and I said, “I can’t do this. I have to go home and change.” So I went home and changed and then I decided to say the heck with it and stay home. I found out later the other guy that I hit on the back of the neck....I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know how bad he was but a couple of weeks later, the guys told me that he had been home in bed for a week. Because I hit him on the back of the neck and I guess I hit some.... I guess you could kill a guy like that. And I said, “Is he really hurt bad?” Maybe I should go over there.” And the guy said, “No” So I never went over there but I guess I really hurt the guy. 

I had been working on my “50" Ford convertible and now that it’s painted white, I decided to paint some scallops on the car. Scallops are.... on my car they’re great big strips. They can be any size but I had great big stripes on my car on the hood and on the side. It makes it look real customized. One time I took it to....I don’t have my license or plates for this car yet. This one guy, his Dad was changing his license plates and his old license plates were still good for a couple of weeks. So I took his old plates and stuck them on. I had driven it around Taft high school during the daytime with the phony plates on. I never got caught though, thank goodness.

    One Saturday at the dance, I took my “50" Ford convertible to the dance. Just to show off, you know? Oh, it was in winter and it was so cold, that car was so cold, geez. And I drove it over there that was fun. 

 Now that John is... my friend, John Bleasing, You know after we had put that Chrysler engine in his “50" Ford coupe, I decided to do the same thing with my “50" Ford convertible. So John and I go over to the junkyard and I buy a 1956 Chrysler Hemi engine for thirty bucks and bring it over to my garage. I’m going to stick the Chrysler engine in the...so I take out.... I have to get rid of my flat head engine that’s in the car and the transmission because I’m going to be using a different transmission so one of the guys in my neighborhood wants to buy my flathead for his car. So he comes over with a bunch of guys and he gives me the thirty bucks. But I tell him you have to take the engine out. So they take the engine out. They left me the transmission. They just wanted the engine. So they take it out. So now I got a car with no engine in it. So I was really down. I shouldn’t have done that at all. So as time goes by, I can see I’m never going to get this Chrysler engine in my “50" Ford because I don’t have the tools to put it in and the tools to overhaul the engine. I end up selling it to Chip Johnson that lives on Summerdale. My other friend and he brings it over to his house. I sold it to him for Fifty bucks. Of course he’s not doing anything with it either. He just has it in his driveway for a while and his parents are yelling at him to get rid of it. One day we went over there and his driveway sits well below where his porch where you come out the side entrance. You come out the side entrance of his house and there’s a porch and then the driveway is way down and that’s where the car is. So Chip Johnson I told you he was a little crazy. He says, “I’m going to jump right on the roof of that car.” Even though it wasn’t my car anymore, I said, “Don’t, you’ll ruin the top.” He just goes crazy and he gets on the railing and he just jumps right on top of the convertible roof. Of course everything just collapses. He acted like he didn’t get hurt but I know that fall really hurt. So that was the end of the “50" Ford convertible. He didn’t know what to do with it. So he thought of this farmer that lives on Cumberland and he had to pay the farmer to bring the car over there to store it in back of his barn. That’s the last time I saw the “50' Ford convertible. Later on in my years, I went back there to see if the car was still there. Of course the farmhouse and everything else was gone because they were starting to build stuff. Somebody must have picked it up. Maybe it’s the one I saw at the Volo auto museum. Maybe it’s the same car. That would be fun but anyway, it’s gone for good

 Well, it’s 1961 and I’m 16 years old and I want my driver’s license. So I study. I don’t know whose car I took. Somebody went with me. And I take the driver test and I flunk it. Evidently, I had my arm out the window while I was driving. That’s why I failed, ohh boy. I had to wait a while. I guess you have to wait a while before you can take the test again. I took it again and I failed it a second time. Oh, was I ever mad. I couldn’t believe I failed it again. So I talked with my Dad, I said, “Dad, I don’t know what to do. I’m allowed to take it one more time and if you don’t pass it the third time you have got to wait,” I don’t know how long it was. You have to wait a real long time before you can take your license again, your test again. So he knew this attorney downtown. He was a cooked attorney and my Dad takes me down to the driver’s license place on Elston ave. The attorney had this all fixed with the driver’s license people. Those driver license people were always....If you slipped them some money they’d pass you no matter what you did. So we had it all fixed up and my Dad says, “This guy has been paid Fifty bucks. All you got to do is get in the car drive around the course and he’ll pass you.” And I get in the car and he says, “Haven’t you been here before?” And I said, “Yes” He said, “You should have told me, I would have passed you before.” Evidently he just wanted the money before that’s all. So on the third time I passed, he passed me but it was all rigged. Yea, now I’ve got my license. Now I can drive.