A Sudden change in Appearance

On a beautiful moonlight evening in the summer of 1942 my appearance underwent an abrupt and dramatic change. I was seven years old when it happened.

Each summer, the Colombo Lodge sponsored a fund raising street carnival. Poplar Street between 40th and 41st streets was blocked to vehicular traffic and festooned with strings of red and blue and yellow lights. Booths housing various games of skill and chance filled the street as barkers and carnies enticed all comers to step right up and win a prize for the little girl. Men pounded a sledge on a padded spring that would drive a weight upwards to ring a bell. Women danced in the street as local musicians played the latest Tin Pan Alley tunes. Both sexes mingled to try their luck at the large outdoor bingo table. Freshly grilled Italian sausages and meatball sandwiches and roast beef were available in abundance. Soda and other soft drinks could be had street side from trunk sized ice filled coolers. Adults would slip into the Colombo Lodge for a cold beer. The summer air was charged with festivity and I was missing it all.

My father had gone to the Colombo Lodge earlier to help set up for the block party. My mother was playing cards with some of her friends and the evening was wearing long and dully as I was forced to stay at home with mom and listen to adult chatter. Mom had promised to take me to the block party, but I could see that it was going to take quite a while before that would happen. My mother was one of the best card players in West Philadelphia. She could play Rummy or Poker with anyone. Stakes never bothered her. She was equal to any pressure that a raised bet could cause. At the end of a hand she could tell you your cards before you laid them out in front of her. She would amaze me when we sat down to play Rummy together. All game long, I'd be waiting for a particular card, the Jack of Spades, for example. Mom would declare Rummy and show me the Jack of Spades as her discard. She'd say that she knew that I was waiting for the card because of several plays which she had observed me make earlier in the hand. She was patient with me and taught me a great deal about tactics and strategy. But I could never beat her. She loved cards and maintained her own gambling purse, which was never mixed in with household money. The gambling purse was strictly hers and no one, not dad or me or my siblings or the parish priest or the gates of hell could prevail against it.

She was a traditional Italian-American housewife, hard working and family oriented. The meals were always skillfully prepared, plentiful and on time. The house was spotless and the laundry always fresh and clean, and none of those chores stood in the way of her weekend card games. She was warm and caring and with a tongue that was sharper than cheddar. She was sometimes too quick to speak. Her tongue could get her into trouble, but you always knew where she stood, though you might just as well not have cared to hear about it. I inherited her quick tongue and put it to use. I begged, cajoled, annoyed and harped. I whined. I pleaded. I beseeched, implored and entreated. I promised to get to Poplar Street by leaving through the alleyway behind our house so that I was not even going to be close to a street corner or near any automobile traffic. I swore to go straight to the lodge and check in with my father before I engaged myself in any of the festivities – that was an easy promise, dad had the money. Finally she relented and I zipped out of the back yard and skedaddled through the alley. I approached the colored lights of Poplar Street in a lustful run, stepped out of the alley onto the concrete pavement and the lights went out and I awoke on the floor of the corner drug store in a pool of blood, blood on my sailor suit and on my face and shoulders. My father was holding me in his arms and looking down at me and people were talking. “Take him to the hospital”. I hugged my father and sobbed and begged him not to take me to the hospital. They cleaned me up at the drug store and dad carried me home. I was a bloody mess. The doctor came to the house the next day and declared that my nose was broken and my septum was deviated. He advised either an immediate operation or a wait until I was fully grown before surgical correction. I begged again that I wanted no part of a hospital and my parents decided to wait until I was 18 for the rhinoplasty and the straightening of the septum. From that day and all through my teen years I suffered frequent nocturnal nosebleeds. I would awaken at night to discover blood on my pillow and sheets. I got so used to it that I wouldn’t even bother waking my parents. I doctored my self, changed the sheets and went back to sleep. For eleven years, until the rhinoplasty, my nose was as bent as a prizefighter.

It took me years to piece out what had happened. I was married and had children of my own when I solved the mystery. I was deliberately and cruelly run down by a neighborhood bully twice my age who sped his bicycle at me just as I emerged onto the concrete sidewalk. I swore revenge, but never had to take it. “Revenge is mine”, says the Lord. As an adult I inquired as to the bully’s whereabouts and was informed that he lives as a solitary and lonely recluse who never leaves his house. I’d still like to bust his nose.