A New Yorker at Green Gables Drive-in Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio©

By Linda Lee Greene

When in the early 1960s I met my former husband Bobby, his driver’s license gave an address of Cambria Heights, Queens, New York City, a relatively placid neighborhood a mere stone’s throw from the Nassau County, Long Island line. It was his parent’s address, a place to which they had moved soon after Bobby’s senior year in high school. Born in Manhattan, and as a toddler had moved with his parents and older brother to the Bronx, New York City’s northernmost borough, they remained there until Bobby’s pre-adolescence. The family relocated at that time to Flushing, Queens. It was there that Bobby received most of his schooling, and is the place he considers home.    

It wasn’t that the little family was unstable…they were upwardly mobile. Bobby’s beautiful Spanish/Puerto Rican mother Paquita, and his movie-star handsome father Eusebio (Americanized as Frank) were always on the hunt for a better life for their little family. Both of them had immigrated to Harlem originally, Paquita from Ponce, Puerto Rico, and Eusebio from Barcelona, Spain. A seamstress in a “boiler room,” as she called it, Paquita commuted every weekday by train and subway to the garment district in New York City, a musty room in a highrise in Manhattan located between 5^th and 9^th Avenues to 34^th and 42^nd Streets. Frank was also a daily train/subway commuter to his job as a kitchen worker at the Chase Building in midtown Manhattan. I knew that I was an accepted member of the family the day that Frank carted home to me a special disk-like pan from that famous kitchen, a pan with the name of Chase Manhattan engraved on its bottom, a piece of equipment that I use to this day, and each time I do, I recall with great affection my long-deceased father-in-law.

At the time that Bobby and I met, he was the saxophonist, clarinetist, and comedian with a five-piece combo that traveled cross-country on one-night to eight-week-long gigs at every type of venue imaginable; I was a dance instructor at an Arthur Murray’s Dance Studio in Columbus, Ohio. Fate brought us together at a nightclub, the infamous Club Rubu, in Columbus where his group was appearing and where my dance-instructor buddies and I often headed after the studio closed in the evenings. Subsequent to some stops and starts in our relationship, I went on the road with him, and absent the benefit of having met each other’s families, we married in Palo Alto, California in the spring following the year we met.

Bobby’s biographical background is an important element to my story, especially as it relates to the geographical and cultural aspects of it, for it points out differences between us that were always sources of humorous situations, as this one demonstrates. Before I proceed, I will list just a few of our dissimilarities: to Bobby, white castles are repeaters; pop is soda; lunch meat is cold cuts; mayonnaise is Hellmann’s; gingerale is Vernors; and Houston Street is pronounced like “house” with “ton” tagged to its tail-end. As multi-dimensional as was his upbringing within the borders of the five boroughs of New York City, as well as his cross-country travels, at the same time, he remained oddly unsophisticated in many ways. It was an innocence that theretofore I wouldn’t have associated with what one would expect to be a stereotypically “jaded” New Yorker. It allowed him a refreshing capacity to be captivated by new experiences. For instance, never in his life had he seen, or had knowledge of, drive-in restaurants, an enormously popular American phenomenon from sea to shining sea in the 1950s and 1960s—other than those spots that had been Bobby’s turf, apparently.

St. Louis was the home-base of the other four boys in the band, and when our work in California dried up, we headed east with them, camping out in the home of the parents of the leader of the group for a week or so, a week or so until some work materialized and we would be on the road again. But homesickness bit all of us fatally instead, which was the death knell of the band. The only choice available to Bobby and me was packing up our electric skillet, our ironing board, our iron, and our clothes (our only worldly possessions at the time, other than his horns) and to head to Columbus in our old Chevrolet. It was time for Bobby to meet my family and friends for the first time.

The introductions went swimmingly—everybody loved Bobby and Bobby loved everybody in return. I called my friend Carol Richardson, who was Carol Treadway by then, and she and her husband Dick, and Bobby and I, planned an evening together. Dick picked us up in whatever boat-of-a-car he owned at the time (Dick always owns a boat-of-a-car), and Bobby and I climbed in the roomy back seat. The early part of our evening is a blur to me, but we ended up at Green Gables Drive-in Restaurant, the favorite haunt of all of the teenagers and twenty-somethings of our area of Columbus when we were growing up, and judging by the steady flow of traffic in and out of the place that evening, it was still going strong.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the drill of such places, you would park your car, roll down your windows, and a carhop would walk, or in some cases, skate up to the driver’s side window, and take your order. Presently, she would return with your food balanced delicately on a tray that she would attach to the driver’s side door and window, and then she would fade away until it was time for her to return to fetch the tray at meal’s end. Well, that was the purpose of such places for the older folks, but not for the younger crowds that frequented them. The real function for them was for the young motor heads to show off their automobiles, their 1950s concept cars, classic cars of today, and for the girls to hang out of the windows of the cars and wave and shout to all of their friends. Around and around like an endless carousel the cars would circle, passing up open parking spaces with abandon.

My husband was fascinated! While the other three of us in our car chatted away, Bobby was so caught up in, and befuddled by, the parade that was unfolding before his eyes that he failed to contribute a word to our discourse. You must take into account that this is a person from New York City, where a parking space is golden, and never remains empty for more than a second or two. Street fights and turf wars break out over parking spaces in New York City. At Green Gables that evening, there happened to be an empty spot right next to our car, the side where Bobby sat, a spot that had been passed up by the same cars time and time and time again. 

Finally, Bobby just couldn’t take it any longer. Thrusting his entire torso out of his open window, and his free arm jerking wildly like a frustrated traffic cop’s, in his New York accent, Bobby shouted to the driver of a particular car on which he had kept his eye, “Hey Buddy, what’s the mattuh with you? There’s a pahkin’ spot right heuh? RIGHT HEUH!!!”

Original posting on September 17, 2012 – Updated on January 8, 2019

http://booksbylindaleegreene.gallery-llgreene.com/

To date, Linda Lee Greene has authored five novels: “Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams” (http://amzn.to/VazHFG); “Guardians and Other Angels” (http://goo.gl/imUwKO); “Rooster Tale” (http://goo.gl/vNq32g); and “Cradle of the Serpent” (http://amzn.to/VazHFG), which was designated as a finalist in the 2018 American Fiction Awards Competition. It was also awarded a 5 Star Review by Readers’ Favorites. Scheduled for release in early 2019, her latest novel titled “A Chance at the Moon” will be available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com. An extensive exhibition of Greene’s artwork can be viewed at www.gallery-llgreene.com. 

My Talking Heart - Chapter Seven: THE FACES IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Marlin Landon "Bob" Gaffin circa 1941

When I think back on the houses that have contained my life, including farmhouses, a log cabin, single-family homes, duplexes, condos, and apartments, located in diverse areas across Southern Ohio, Central Ohio, Queens and Long Island, New York, and the Atlantic Coast of Florida, one of the things all of them had in common was framed photographs of family members hanging on walls and ranging the tops of furniture—copious photographs that were, and are, storyboards of the lives of my ancestors and of me.

                My attachment to family photographs began when I was a toddler. The Second World War was raging, and Bob, my mother’s oldest brother, was in the very throat of it, serving as a half-track driver and sharpshooter in Patton’s Army in Europe. Bussy, my mother’s seventeen-year-old brother, had died seven months before I was born. My grandmother’s worries about Bob, and her grief over the loss of Bussy and of her own mother just weeks after Bussy’s passing were a serious threat to her emotional well-being. On the advice of our old country doctor, my parents agreed to let me stay with my grandparents, in the hope that my presence would be the balm my grandmother needed to regain her health.

The following is a scene evocative of the root of my love of family photographs. It is a dialogue between my grandmother and me when I was about two years of age. It is a fictionalized account of much less structured discussions we often shared about the family photographs that are the subject of the piece. I wrote it for GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS (http://goo.gl/imUwKO), my novel that is a blend of fact and fiction, a book populated primarily by my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents and the people of their circles, as well as one main fictional character. Mommaw and Poppaw in the passage are my maternal grandparents; Uncle Dickie is their teenage son.

Excerpt of GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS

“…As, like Mommaw and Poppaw, the sun gave up working for the day in our corner of the world, and retired behind the lazy hills reclining all across the broad horizon, it was then that the gloom of death-revisited settled in upon the household once more. Our nightly ritual never varied. Riding Mommaw’s hip, she carried me to the room where I slept. While the bedtime stories of other children were of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” mine were of Uncle Bussy and Uncle Bob. 

Bussy Gaffin 11 years old circa 1936

On the wall, within eyeshot of my bed, was a photograph of Uncle Bussy, a grainy black and white enlargement of his face and upper torso picked out of a family photograph taken when he was about eleven. Riding my grandmother’s hip, always she carried me to the photograph where it hung on the wall. He had been a good-looking, fair-haired, pale-skinned boy, and like my mother, his nose and cheeks were dusted with freckles, his station in life clearly evident in his bib overalls. It was like one of those portraits where the eyes follow you all around the room, and although some children might have been frightened by it, it called to me, instead. 

“Mommy says dat Uncle Bussy called me ‘Tadpole’ ‘cause I was in Mommy’s tummy when he knew me,” I reminded my grandmother, my pudgy index finger tracing the cheek of the young boy in the photograph. The man he would never become was unmistakable in the outline of the jaw, although not quite angular, was on the verge of being, like a flower halfway between budding and full bloom.

“My land, yes, Honey. He tried so hard ta hold on so he could see you. Poor Little Bussy,” my grandmother replied, her voice breaking, her great intake of breath tamping down the nagging voice of her great loss. 

“I wish Uncle Bussy could know me, Mommaw. He wooks so sad in da pichure. I could pway wiff him and make him feel bettuh.”

“He was just so sick, Honey.”

“Is Uncle Bussy in Heaven, Mommaw, wike Mommy says?”

“He surely is, Honey.”

“Can people come back home fwom Heaven, evew, Mommaw?”

“He surely would want to, if he could, ‘specially ta see you.”

“And, dis is Uncle Bobby,” I pointed to a photograph on another wall in my bedroom, a photograph of a young man in a military uniform, sporting a handsomeness so blond and well put together as to be the envy of any movie idol. Mommaw carried me over to the photograph, my brow wrinkling seriously. “Uncle Bobby is fighting dat bad man in…I can’t ‘member dat pwace, Mommaw.”

“Uncle Bobby is fightin’ a bad man named Hitler in a place called Germany. Hitler is the leader o’ them German people, an’ we ‘er fightin’ them ‘cause they do bad things,” Mommaw explained patiently, speaking to me as if I were an adult, as she always did.

“Uncle Dickie spanked Wex dis morning. Wex got in da henhouse. He ate some eggs after dat fox weave.”

“I know, Honey. Uncle Dickie had ta learn the dog that it’s bad ta eat them eggs. That’s kind o’ like what Uncle Bobby is doin’ over there in Germany, but not exactly.”

“Is Gewmany weawy, weawy fawr away, Mommaw, wike Heaven?”

“Germany is away over on the other side of the world, but not as far as Heaven.”

“Why did Uncle Bussy go to Heaven, Mommaw?”

“Because he sneaked out ta play when he was down with the measles.”

“You wet me go out to pway, and I don’t go to Heaven.”

“Uncle Bussy got real sick outside. When people git real sick sometimes they go ta Heaven.”

“You made bad wike Wex, Mommaw. You forgot to tell Uncle Bussy no when he went outside, wight?”

“No, not exactly, but I shoulda stayed right there in the room with him.”

“Did Uncle Dickie spank you for being bad wike he did Wex?”

“God spanked me, Honey.”

“Did it weawy weawy hurt when God spanked you, Mommaw?”

“Yes, Honey.  It really really hurt, an’ it still hurts mighty powerful.”

“But when I go out to pway, I won’t get sick ‘cause Uncle Dickie says I’m weawy weawy stwong. Uncle Dickie says dat Uncle Bobby is vewy big and stwong. And he wuns weal fast wike Old Smoky.”

“He runs pert near as fast as that old horse.”

“He can wun home to us, den, if dat bad man twies to hurt him.”

“The Good Lord awillin’, he will, Honey.”

 The nightly “visit” to the photographs of Uncle Bussy and Uncle Bob completed, Mommaw carried me to the living room, where the old rocking chair sat in wait. And Mommaw’s rocking and crying commenced anew. After I had fallen to sleep, she carried me to my bed in the downstairs room nearest to the bedroom she shared with Poppaw….”

Award-winning author and artist, blogger, and interior designer Linda Lee Greene is on social media at the following:

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/lindaleegreene

Email: lindaleegreene.author.artist@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Twitter: @LLGreeneAuthor

Blog:  http://Ingoodcompanyohio.blogspot.com

Also look for her at LinkedIn and Google+

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/LindaLeeGreeneAuthor

Twitter: @LLGreeneAuthor

Blog:  http://Ingoodcompanyohio.blogspot.com

Also look for her at LinkedIn and Google+

A New Yorker at Green Gables Drive-in Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio

When in the early 1960s I met my former husband, Bobby, his driver’s license gave an address of Cambria Heights, Queens, New York City, a relatively placid neighborhood a mere stone’s throw from the Nassau County, Long Island line.  It was his parent’s address, a place to which they had moved soon after Bobby’s senior year in high school.  Born in Manhattan, and as a toddler had moved with his parents and older brother to the Bronx, New York City’s northernmost borough where they remained until his pre-adolescence, again the family moved, that time to Flushing, Queens.  It was there that Bobby did most of his schooling.  It is the place he considers home.    

It wasn’t that the little family was unstable…they were upwardly mobile.  They were always looking for a better life than had been available to them in Harlem, and before that in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the place from which Bobby’s beautiful Spanish/Puerto Rican mother, Paquita had immigrated, and Barcelona, Spain, the homeland of his movie-star-handsome father, Eusebio (Americanized as Frank).  A seamstress in a “boiler room,” as she called it, Paquita commuted every weekday by train to the garment district between 5^th and 9^th Avenues to 34^th and 42^nd Streets in Manhattan, as did Frank, to his job as a kitchen worker at the Chase Building in midtown Manhattan.  I knew that I was really a part of the family the day that Frank carted home to me a special disk-like pan from that famous kitchen, a pan with the name of Chase Manhattan engraved on its bottom, a piece of equipment that I use to this day, and each time I do, I recall my long-deceased father-in-law with affection.

At the time that Bobby and I met, he was the saxophonist, clarinetist and comedian for a five-piece combo that traveled cross-country on one-night to eight-week-long gigs at every type of venue imaginable, and I was a dance instructor at an Arthur Murray’s Dance Studio in Columbus, Ohio.  Fate brought us together at a nightclub, the infamous Club Rubu, in Columbus where his group was appearing and where my dance-instructor buddies and I often headed after the studio closed in the evenings.  Subsequent to some stops and starts in our relationship, I finally went on the road with him, and absent the benefit of having met each other’s families, we married in Palo Alto, California in the spring following the year we met.

Bobby’s biographical background is germane to my story, especially as it relates to the geographical and cultural aspects of it for it points out differences between us that were always sources of humorous situations, as this one demonstrates.  Before I proceed, I will list just a few of our dissimilarities:  To Bobby, white castles are repeaters; pop is soda; lunch meat is cold cuts; mayonnaise is Hellmann’s; gingerale is Vernors; and Houston Street in Manhattan is pronounced like “house” with “ton” tagged to its tail-end.  As multi-dimensional as was his upbringing within the borders of the five boroughs of New York City, as well as his cross-country travels, at the same time, he remained oddly unsophisticated in many ways.  It was an innocence that theretofore I wouldn’t have associated with a “jaded” New Yorker, and it allowed him a refreshing capacity to be captivated by new experiences.  For instance, never in his life had he seen, or much less experienced, a drive-in restaurant, an enormously popular and visible American phenomenon from sea to shining sea in the 1950s and 1960s, other than those spots that had been Bobby’s turf, apparently.

St. Louis was the home-base of the other four boys in the band, and when our work in California dried up, we headed east with them, camping out in the home of the parents of the leader of the group for a week or so, a week or so until some work materialized and we would be on the road again.  But nostalgia for home bit all of us fatally instead, which was the death knell of the organization.  The only choice available to Bobby and me was packing up our electric skillet, our ironing board, our iron, and our clothes (our only worldly possessions at the time, other than his horns) and to head to Columbus in our old Chevrolet.  It was time for Bobby to meet my family and friends for the first time.

The introductions went swimmingly…everybody loved Bobby and Bobby loved everybody in return.  I called my friend, Carol Richardson, who was Carol Treadway by then, and she and her husband, Dick, and Bobby and I planned an evening together.  Dick picked us up in whatever boat-of-a-car he owned at the time (Dick always owns a boat-of-a-car), and Bobby and I climbed in the roomy back seat.  The early part of our evening is a blur to me, but we ended up at Green Gables Drive-in Restaurant, the favorite haunt of all of the teenagers and twenty-somethings of our area of Columbus when we were growing up, and judging by the steady flow of traffic in and out of the place that evening, it was still going strong.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the drill of such places, you would park your car, roll down your windows, and a carhop would walk, or in some cases, skate up to the driver’s side window and take your order.  Presently she would return with your food delicately balanced on a tray that she would attach to the driver’s side door and window, and she would fade away until it was time for her to return to fetch the tray at meal’s end.  Well, that was the purpose of such places for the older folks, but not for the younger crowds that frequented them.  The real function for them was for the young motor heads to show off their automobiles, their 1950s concept cars, classic cars of today, and for the girls to hang out of the windows of the cars and wave and shout to all of their friends.  Around and around like a carousel the cars would circle in the place, passing up open parking spaces with abandon.

My husband was fascinated!  While the other three of us in our car chatted away, Bobby was so caught up in, and befuddled by, the parade that was unfolding before his eyes that he failed to contribute a word to our discourse.  You must take into account that this is a person from New York City where a parking space is golden, and never remains empty for more than a second or two.  Street fights, turf wars break out over parking spaces in New York.  There happened to be an empty spot right next to our car, the side where Bobby sat, actually, a spot that had been passed up by the same cars several times. 

Finally, Bobby just couldn’t take it any longer.  Pushing his entire torso out of his window, and his free arm gesturing like a traffic cop’s, he shouted to the driver of a particular car on which he had kept his eye, “Hey Buddy, right heuh?  There’s a pahkin’ spot RIGHT HEUH!” 

 

Many thanks to my fellow Franklin Heights High School alumnus Don McCarty for permission to use the drawing of Green Gables in this posting.

Linda Lee Greene's latest book GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS is available at

http://www.amazon.com/Guardians-Other-Angels-Linda-Greene/dp/1897512562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338336762&sr=8-1

To view Linda's online art gallery log onto www.gallery-llgreene.com