The Day My Mother Cried and Other Stories by Kaufman William;Feldstern Baruch;Pitzele Peter;

Author:Kaufman, William;Feldstern, Baruch;Pitzele, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2021-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

Don’t Blame It on Greta Garbo

It was on a cold and dour day in mid-March during that plodding and violent coal miners’ strike in the late 1920s that Mr. Moore, our next-door neighbor, hit it lucky. That morning at about 9:30, while he was having his second cup of coffee, he received a telephone call from Mike Crawford himself, owner of all the movie houses in town, that he had a job for him. He asked Mr. Moore to come in that very afternoon to be fitted for a uniform.

The job he offered and that Mr. Moore accepted without even asking what it would pay was collecting tickets and supervising ushers at the Cameo movie theater, which showed the best pictures in town. John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore—the royalty of Hollywood—were regulars at the Cameo.

The job was a comedown for Mr. Moore. No question about that. He knew it and so did Edna, his wife. For more than twenty-five years, he had been a bookkeeper with the Shady Glen Coal Company, but the strike ended all that. At age fifty-five, the going businesses in town, and there weren’t too many of those anymore, weren’t grabbing at someone of his “mature” years, as Edna put it.

Mr. Moore plunged into his new job with the verve of a West Pointer on parade. With his new uniform, which was immaculately fitted by Mr. Crawford’s tailor, he looked like a military man. His pants, which had creases sharp enough to cut through cold butter, were a muted blue-gray serge with a black satin stripe running down the leg. His wool jacket was dark maroon with sparkling gold buttons in front and on both sleeves. His wide lapels were festooned by black braid piping that gave extravagant credence to Mr. Moore’s proud, puffed-up chest. He carried himself with dignity and authority. He was a credit to the uniform and to the Cameo theater.

He was also a credit to us, his closest neighbors. Sometime during his first week on the job, he told my father, “You can tell your kids they can come in free of charge any afternoon I’m at the ticket box. I’ll wink them in when the coast is clear and they can pass right through faster than shit through a tall Swede.” That was one of Mr. Moore’s favorite expressions; he had lots of them.

Now Mr. Moore was not the kindliest man in the world. Not even on our block. We kids learned early in the game to avoid his house on Halloween Eve or when collecting pennies for the Red Cross. He’d just as soon kick you in the ass as greet you with a “good morning.” Maybe sooner. I don’t think he actually hated kids. My mother who saw good in everyone, including biting dogs, said Mr. Moore was that way because he had grown up in an orphan asylum. Edna once told her that.

Edna was an old friend of my mother’s. We had moved next to the Moores seven years ago, but my mother had known Edna Moore many years earlier.

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