Ting-A-Ling

Stevie Vahovitich’s corner store, nestled on the Southeast corner of Third and Ridge Street, Coaldale, was a smaller store than most. A store in a house in fact. Across the street was Wilbur Berger's mansion like house , catacornered from the Coaldale Bank, an institution of demanding size for our little coal town village.
It would take eighteen teen steps to go through his red painted front door and into variety store madness. Filled with tablecloths, mouse traps, a tricycle, tools and paints, and candy, the store was a haven for kids and grownups too. The magic would begin when you stepped inside. The door bell attached to the top of the door would ring as you entered and when you escaped. Ting-a-ling.


A thin small built man with wire glasses appeared from the yellow tulip flowered curtains behind the counter of the narrow aisled store. His gray and thinning hair, was neatly combed parted on the right, too far, into the top of his head. He pulled at the sleeves of his brown sweater with the quarter-sized holes in the elbows. His wife.... we never remembered her name.... peeked around the closed curtain, and said something that sounded like “hmmarmya.”
“You want candy ?” Stevie said in what seemed to be an Czechoslavakian
American accent.
"Uh-huh,"
Penny candies scattered in small cardboard boxes at the front of the glass encased counter. Candies ready to jump into your pocket ..... awaiting the pennies in your pocket to jump into Stevie’s hand.
Pink peppermint tablets, MaryJanes, black nigger babies, and red fiery lozenges. Occasionally a square of chocolate , some very small pillow like candies that tasted like licorice mints called Sen Sens.
“So,” he would say as he leaned on the counter awaiting the decision of the eight year boy from Ruddle Street.
“I’ll have….. three of those….and….one of those…no,no, those red things shaped like quarters….yeah. Ahh, yeah, that’s it.” A hungry pause. “And five of them…how much is that?”
“Nine cents, you got nine cents ?” Stevie would smile. He must have had false teeth from the same dentist my dad had, they looked the same. Stevie’s choppers were perfect.
My God, I thought, Stevie was old, he must have been at least fifty and he had one golden incisor ! Wow !
“Ahhh, six of those there jaw breakers.”
Ahhh, the jawbreakers, round hard sugared flavors of lemon, lime, orange and cherry filled with what seemed to be plastic chewing gum. Lucky if this good cheek full of artifical flavor didn’t actually break your jaw or a tooth along the way of bubble blowing fun.

There , I did it, spent the entire 15 cents mom gave me. The change from buying milk, bread and butter at Nardini’s Market two doors away. I almost tripped and broke the milk bottle running passed the druggist store in my eagerness to get to Stevie’s.
……………………………
Usually we would get our milk from Harry Bolles. His red truck with the golden "Freeman's" lettering would regularly stop on Ruddle Street on Tuesdays.
Harry, a gentle chubby Santa Claus for all seasons, would blow the old Chevy truck horn twice and walk up to the house. He always carried a wire bottle holder to our side porch door in the his left hand. In the square holes was buttermilk, white homogenized milk and an occasion, a bottle of chocolate milk.

He would leave a bottle of white at our basement window and pick up the empties. He’d carefully jump over the chicken wire fence between our house and Buehla’s making sure his pants didn’t catch a grasping wire end, and then he’d continue his deliveries.
I never actually saw Harry do this during the school year. He’s come about 9 am to deliver, but from June to August when school was out for the summer, I’d sit and wait for him. In that summer of 1952, Harry began his chanting.
“Georgie Porgie Puddin N’ Pie,
Kissed the Girls and made them cry,
when the girls came out to play…”
I would repeat the last line of the well known jeer along with him…
“Georgie Porgie ran away.”

We’d laugh- later when I was 11, and all grown up, I would see him coming to deliver and shout out at him…

“Harry Bolles, milk 'N Cakes
Kissed the dogs for goodness sake
When the cats came out to play
Harry Bolles drove away.

Okay, so it wasn’t very clever. But we still both laughed.

“Today, I got strawberry milk,” he said showing me the pink ambrosia.

I ran into the house and pleaded with mom to buy just a quart of this dairy delicacy. She’s gave me 21 cents and I was happy for a full week. I’d drink only a small amount each day to prolong the rare treat.
…………………………………………
Stevie Vahovitch took the 15 cents, put it in a green jar where all the candy money apparently lived.
After I was finished buying as much candy as my change would allow, he would ask whether my mom needed thread or yarn for her crocheting.
“No, not today Stevie. See you tomorrow, if I get any worn out pennies.”

It would take seventeen steps to go back through his red painted front door. The last, a leap back into the real world.

He never said goodbye, he just disappeared behind that flowered curtain again just like the Lone Ranger would disappear before anyone could say thank you. Back into his wonderful cabbage, onion and potatoe smelling Slovak kitchen with Helen…oh yes, her name was Helen.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

The Day the Music Tried

A remembrance of my short lived musical childhood. A later picture from C.H.S. of George Matrician.



...............1955. Monday morning. First class of the week. 8:20 am.There wasn't a more pleasant time to welcome the week at school than in sleepily floating up to the second floor, winding the light green corridor to the back rooms of Mr. Matrician. There were only fifteen of us chosen for this vocal class.....I was considered a mixed voice, a singer unknown to tenors,aritones or basses.
The classroom was bigger than most. Not only did screeching, maturing, teenage voices cling to the walls, but treble cleffs, notes, sharp, flats and musical military marches hung from the ceiling. The Coaldale High School Alma Mater was sung and practiced so many times in that room that the song itself seemed to be etched into the north wall plaster.

“Oh the wind through the trees blows cheerful
It sways them in their glory
It whispers a little earful
It tells a wonderous story
Of spirit true and athletes too
Of deeds both brave and gory
Of courage that has been true blue
Our Alma Mater’s glory.”

Only when the large bottom-swing windows were opened would the music escape.
When we didn't practice in the music room, we would be forced to use the cloak room on the first floor, a long narrow space where some of the instruments were kept.

Mr. Matrician was soft spoken and of a good nature most of the time. He always gave us a sense of a favorite uncle, and didn't act like a teacher at all!

One October afternoon, Bobby Davis, the tuba player, failed to show up for practice. Mr. Matrician put aside his violin and attempted to "get into" the junior sized tuba. His arms flailing through the opening of the mighty brass horn, he looked like a giant octopus caught in a cave underwater. He laughed for about two seconds, became aware that he might actually be stuck in the confines of the bellowing beast, and finally asked us for help to free him of the embarrassment. It took three of us from the reed section to give George his freedom again. After Bobby returned the following Wednesday, he gave up the tuba and started to practice on the bass drum. He said he “wasn’t gonna get into that tuba no more after Matrician stretched it !”

I took private clarinet lessons from Mr. George Matrician in his home on Ridge Street. Each Tuesday, after school, for four years I practiced the clarinet in his living room. I was in the Coaldale High Band, although I was less than fluent in conversation with the other clarinets in the troupe.

Mr. Matrician was very gentle and kind man but did have a mean streak. When I was not prepared for the lesson of the day as witnessed by "very poor fingering", George would threaten me with playing his trumpet. He usually practiced with me on his violin.

The trumpet would make the neighbor's Irish Setter bark, stop the mahogany mantel clock, pierce the eardrums of this student and would upset his wife, who sweetly appealed to me to learn to practice at home so this sort of thing did not happen again.

I always felt inadequateb with that clarinet. It was one of those old fashioned siler metal types, Everyone else had a sleek new black ebony wood style. I despise them because they could play better than me. No doubt, a black licorice stick sounded better and has memory of the notes played. Mine didn't.

The song's over now. My memory of that clarinet and of our school Alma Mater exposes an embarrassment and a peaceful moment of long ago.

It is as if the banshees were tapping on my shoulder again, telling tales to a long lost boy of another world, another time and place.

The boy is still within me, here, even now. But I've lost the clarinet and my mixed voice !