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Random Thoughts Of A Tired Old Man
 

Most of the 4 flat row houses we lived in were built around the turn of the century mostly in the late 1800’s. Back then they didn’t have indoor plumbing in many of them. Chicago didn’t become mostly plumbed till around 1910. The 4 flats we lived in were plumbed after the turn of the century. In order to do this they couldn’t run the pipes inside the walls so what they did was each room that needed water or sewer had iron water pipes and cast iron sewer pipes ran through the floors in a corner of the room from the basement. This served as a primitive communication system. My grandmother lived above us on the second floor rear while we lived on the first floor rear. If Ma wanted Gram to come down she would take a broom and bang the water pipes twice. If she was coming up she would bang the pipes three times. This was a common method in all these buildings and most of them had extended families living in the same buildings. At one time we had our unit with my aunt Helen above and Gram in the building nexdoor which was a 6 flat. Gram lived on the third floor in that one. It was about 1947 or 1948 that I was introduced to my life long love affair with beer. Aunt Helen’s husband Matt worked at the Fox Head brewery on the 3-11 shift. Many evenings Aunt Helen would take a bag lunch down to the brewery and have lunch with her huband in the break room. Aunt Helen had a daughter also named Helen about the same age as me. We would accompany Aunt Helen down to the brewery and play while they ate their lunch. Back in those days brewery workers were allowed to keep a keg on tap in the refrigerator room and were allowed to drink as much as they wanted as long as they didn’t get drunk or abuse the privilege. Naturally in my explorations I found this room. Naturally I had to pull the lever on top of the keg. Naturally I had to taste the stuff that came out of the faucet. Cousin Helen sampled it as well. She spit it out. I didn’t. Thus started my lifelong love of the taste of beer. It caused me many problems over the course of my life and I can safely say almost all the dumb, stupid things I did were because of beer. More on this later. Many a night I walked home with Aunt Helen in the dark seeing double. I never, to this day, knew whether she knew what I was doing and didn’t mind or whether I was good enough at playing sober so she didn’t know. In any event I always looked forward to keeping Aunt Helen company when she took Matt’s lunch to him. This was during that time when my mother was gone and I was under Gram’s watch and care. Pa served with Patton’s tank group during the late stages of the war. He was with the combat engineers and their job was mostly clearing the roads of disabled German tanks and trucks and building Bailey Bridges across streams and rivers, many times under German fire. In any event he was blinded in the final days of the war and sent home. He spent 1946 and 1947 at a GI hospital in Connecticut. Ma went over there and stayed in an apartment while he went through the rehabilitation process. He didn’t come home until late 1947.