The baby who was born Robert Ensign in 1895, during one of the Great Dakota Oil Field Fires, eventually became my Grandpa. On the way he decided the ladies might find him more exotic and like him better if he was a Frenchman, so he took on, among many others, the last name of Languein. Well, not so exotic now, but originally the name was L’ange vin; “angel wine”. Kinda cool. Too bad nobody could spell it. In those days nobody had I.D. - you were who you said you were. He found it convenient to be a lot of people. He became a musician, playing most instruments but loved the drums most, although in any of the movies I’ve seen him in he’s playing piano. He loved marching bands and had several, and owned a traveling carnival until the late ‘20s. His theory on carnivalia included the thought that the hicks down south were stupider than the ones up north so he went there with his troupe and his trade tricks using the name Robert E. Lee, keeping his own initials, which got him into a vacant lot to pitch his tent and ply his wares, and, as he eventually always managed to sully the name of the great general got him run out of town within a week or two with his W.C. Fieldsian chicanery. The last time his carnival was burned, including the tent, all the equipment, the band instruments and his 1926 Hudson Touring Car. My dad, who was 13 at the time, claimed the old boy started the fire himself with one of his cigars. There is a picture of Grandpa, titled something like “A Dapper Young Man Wearing a Straw Hat”, in one of the Dover books about turn of the century clothing. He was a ladies’ man way back in his day. At least Grandma seemed to think so. I’m not sure which of his talents got him tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, but I know the fortune teller’s tent (always Madame LaZonga, no matter who was working the tent that trip) always offered to young men the hope of meeting and falling in love with a dusky maiden, which romantic interlude, for another two dollars, could be secured in the next tent. By the time my dad came into the picture Grandpa had his Languein name on so many police blotters he came to believe it, himself, and it stuck. Dad grew up in the carnival down south and the frozen Tundra up north walking to school barefoot in the snow, 100 miles every day, uphill both ways, delivering newspapers to every single house, or on a wooden bicycle he carved himself, and he never complained, either, like some ungrateful kids nowadays. He also got straight As on all his report cards, and would love to prove it to me if only they hadn’t all burned up in The Mysterious Tablecloth Fire Of ‘31. The bike, its plans and all photographs of it have also, alas, been somehow reduced to ashes along the span of time, lost forever, like the library at Alexandria. The relatives on my dad’s side of the zoo all came from around the Dakotas, working the oil fields, moving to Wyoming and then eventually to Brea, California, chasing oil, after the Amazing Unsolvable Couch Fire, Number 27. In those early winters up north they got snowed in and played cards by lantern light. Imagine Grandpa in the same house with kerosene in glass containers. My dad was a card counter, and his Aunt Lucy, who dated the Gherig brothers and Ty Cobb, yet married an oil field roughneck, could deal you any cards she thought you ought to have in your hand. In a friendly little poker game once she dealt me two royal flushes in a row, I’m a believer. Aunt Lucy had a cleft pallete, and spoke really loud and nasally, and was a telephone operator for 50 years. Jack Benny used to poke great fun at her on his show. When I was around 6 or 7 all these examples of Darwinism would beg, borrow and steal to get Fridays off so they could have a 3 day marathon Canasta game. Sometimes they went into Monday. My folks always dragged me along where I died from utter boredom until they all got a little liquored up and the fights would start. Sometimes Grandpa would get a fire going in the doilies or the tablecloth with his cigar and the drunks wouldn’t notice it until lives were in imminent danger. I always dreaded the weekends in Brea because each and every one of these antiques would grill me on “What do I want to be when I grow up.” I had not a clue, but it was apparently the most important decision of my young life, which I was frittering away in indecision. I would start by claiming the most obvious choices; “I want to be a cowboy”. “Oh, no, you don’t want that - why there aren’t any cowboys around anymore, and besides they only make ten dollars a month, come on, what do you REALLY want to do?” “I want to be a fireman, this family could use one.” “Oh, no - you’re going to get burned to death in a fire, why that’s no choice.” “I want to be a policeman.” “Oh, no, why you’re going to get shot - you don’t want THAT, do you?” I couldn’t win. And when I wore out one of them, they’d slap hands with the tag teammate outside the ring and send in a relief interrogator. Me crying was their reward, end of the match, they always won, three falls in a row. So on Friday mornings on the way to Brea I’d watch out the window of my dad’s ‘36 Ford looking at business signs hoping to get a clue about what I might tell these people to get them off my back. “O.K. - I want to own a liquor store.” “Oh, no, you’ll get held up and have to deal with nothing but drunks and alcoholics all the time.” “Well, I’m getting my practice in now.” It never dawned on me back then, but I have to wonder how they’d have warned me off if I’d ever said “I want to paint SIGNS for a living.” Sometimes I wish they had. O.K., all the time. The high point of any card game was during the fights when they would NOT put down their hand of cards, and would be punching each other out one handed, shielding the cards from the other cheaters and pirates in the room, and Grandpa would be in a blind panic batting a 3 foot high flame on the dining room table with a handful of burning newspapers. I could have put the things out, myself with a glass of water in the early stages, before the curtains caught, but there was no TV in those days, what else was there to watch? All of grandpas’ cars had big burn holes in the upholstery, as did all of their house furniture, his clothing and the furniture of most of their friends. Curtains were replaced often. It scares me to realize that I am now the same age as he was then. By the mid ‘50s Grandpa was no longer playing drums, and promised his old set to me. At this time he was even retired from the movies and worked as a night watchman at the studios, a fall from grace of his days in the studio orchestras. Mom and Dad, for some unfathomable reason managed to get the drum transfer put off. Grandma was a “phone girl” for several bookies in town. She was a really good cook. Thanksgiving dinner was always at her house where she whipped up everything in her double decker stove. When Grandma died in ‘59 they still had black out window shades from the war. Apparently, they were fire resistant ones. Then Dad bought a trailer with butane gas to put in our backyard and parked Grandpa in it, until one night he came banging on the door yelling “Fire!” My dad didn’t want to hear about any fires and wouldn’t go look, but I was SURE he had a good blaze going by this time and I was right. He burned the trailer up with everything in it, including my damn drums.
How well I remember Thanksgiving dinners at Grandma & Grandpa’s house - turkey with EVERYTHING, all done to a T on her antique stove, family all gathered, an enormous olive on each of my little fingers, and the warmth of a small fire down by Grandpa’s end of the table...
Posts: 1859 | From: / | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
awesome story-telling. If you wrote that on-the-fly I'm doubly impressed. (Spelling even looks better then the preview of the book Cheryl posted for you)
posted
I was drinking my morning coffee too, great story Mike and Happy Thanksgiving.
-------------------- aka:Cisco the "Traveling Millennium Sign Artist" http://www.franciscovargas.com Fresno, CA 93703 559 252-0935 "to live life, is to love life, a sign of no life, is a sign of no love"...Cisco 12'98 Posts: 3576 | From: Fresno, Ca, the great USA | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
I love your writing Mike! Your Lenny stories always make me smile, and now this story today. You somehow always manage to keep the words flowing smoothly, while tossing in humor to your lifes adventures. Keep 'em coming my friend. I love your style.
Posts: 3729 | From: Seattle | Registered: Sep 1999
| IP: Logged |
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic