Flytown ladies, sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah

Amidst ongoing investigations with Big Sister Bamm-Bamm, about what sorts of neuroses, bad habits, obsessive thoughts and attention deficit disorders we might have inherited from our parents, I’ve been thinking about, you know, one or two good things that actually may be a part of my genetic make-up. Well, aside from the strong cheekbones and ageless facial skin, that is.

Besides a love of strong drink, I have inherited something from the late Big Ray Rubble that never fails to serve me well in times of distress; the uncanny ability to say anything, to anybody, at any time, no matter how insulting, and have them think that it’s a good-natured joke (which, because I am kind and good, it usually is. But you’d be amazed at what I can get away with.)

Big Ray Rubble who was…errr…well, let’s just say he was a drinker. Which occasionally caused a great deal of duress, especially during those difficult “teen” times. But I’ve been less and less apt to lay blame at anyone’s feet as I’ve gotten older, because…well, I have a pretty sweet life, and anything I want to change, I can, so why sit and grouse about the past?

Anyway, when Big Ray reached retirement age, and having spent his fair share of weekends in the hospital for various and sundry reasons (usually having to do with indigestion that he thought was a heart attack, and actual heart attack, or bottle-cap-sized kidney stones), he took to wearing hospital scrubs. Like, ALL the time. Not to work, of course (though he would’ve if he could’ve), but most evenings and every weekend. Just the basic blue model, no greens, pinks, or iron-on Winnie the Pooh characters, like I’m going to buy for Code Dependent when she graduates from nursing school.

So Big Ray was, one day, heading out the door one summery evening to attend a block party, which was likely organized to celebrate a Flytown reunion, as we lived in an all-Italian neighborhood. Flytown, for the uninformed (which is just about everyone, I suppose), was a Thurber-esque low-income neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, where they shuffled off all the Italian, Irish and black immigrants at the turn of the century and made them live in squalor while they did all the work of building the city. Today it’s better known as the tony “Short North”, but in 1955 it was a run-down slum and it was demolished to make way for Interstate 670, driving all the immigrant families out into the suburbs.

When I was growing up, there were only three non-Italian households on our street in the immediate vicinity; us, Hazel Devitt, and the Turners. Hazel Devitt was a mean old woman, who had a husband that I don’t remember, and after he died she would sit on her front porch and spray soapy water in the eyes of any curious dogs that would come near her porch. When I came of “age” (i.e. old enough to not chop my toes off with the mower), Big Ray made me mow her grass, for which I would occasionally, but not always, receive a shiny quarter.

The Turners were a trashy hillbilly family that lived across the street. And by hillbilly, I mean the hardcore Jed Clampett variety. They had one normal child, Lonnie, who had a mullet but otherwise was peaceful and quietly went about his business. Their other son, Danny, was crazy as a loon, and was often the cause of police activity on our block, and their daughter was the town tramp.

The rest of the neighborhood was composed of immigrant or first-generation Italian-Americans, and since our family was gregarious and beloved by all, we got invited to big Italian family buffets, and Flytown reunion picnics, and the like. And that’s how Big Ray came to be drunk at a block party.

So, Big Ray was stumbling around, and tripped or something (I don’t know, I wasn’t actually there), and busted his head open on the side of a barbecue grill, and the squad was called, and hauled him off to Riverside Methodist Hospital, where he sat and sat, I imagine. But because he was dressed all in medical scrubs, he apparently was believed by some to be an actual doctor.

So, by and by this black woman was sitting beside him, and (to hear Big Ray tell it), she was moanin’ and fussin’. So he asked her what was wrong.

“Oh, doctor,” says she, “my foot is in terrible pain!”

Never one to pass by a chance to put someone on, Big Ray had her plop her foot up on his lap so he could take a look at it. Apparently she was oblivious to the fact that he had a GIANT GASH ON THE SIDE OF HIS HEAD. But oh well.

So he pokes and prods around on her foot for a few minutes, and then says, “Ah, I see your problem.”

“What is it, doctor?”

“You’ve got gangrene, it’s turned your foot black!”

And that’s the story of Big Ray, and the Flytown picnic, and the barbecue. It never fails to get a laugh at parties, try it and see!

Meanwhile, be sure and check my new page, Found Fotos.