1953
THE BATTLING FRANKLINS
“You’re Franklin ’s kid, ain’t ya?” said Mike Dugan, a high school
senior who ran South
Park South Park Franklin ,
and not that asshole Krause, right?”
“Right.”
I liked playing
park games, competing against older kids. I yearned to hang around the older
guys, picking up their jargon, their swagger. Dugan became my neighborhood
idol, especially after I quit Little League after my second year. Even though
I’d led my team in hitting and out hit all the shortstops in the majors, I was
left off the All-Star team because I was ten years old. They could stick Little
League up their asses. The kids I hung out with were close to junior high age,
and I adopted their cynical attitude and disparaging talk about girls. I
acquired a smart-ass persona that was probably insufferable to my parents and
teachers. So be it. I played in the parks and streets. Mother never worried about
me even if my new friends were “dead-end kids” and I was always late for
dinner. We were a pack, on bikes or afoot, and above all, we were up and coming
athletes of the type only a tough, blue-collar town like Compton can produce
******
When the 1953
season started, Richter, Salveson, Graham, Stringer and Tobin were gone. Of my
old buddies on the Padres, only Gorman remained, and he was coming off a
disappointing year that had probably dashed any hopes of his making the big
leagues. The Padres, with the acquisition of PCL mainstay and always productive
outfielder, Earl Rapp, a quiet lanky hawk-faced slasher, and the emergence of
Tom Alston, who’d found his power stroke, were still no better than the
previous year. Dad’s decline continued. His batting average hovered at .220.
One game, when the starting catcher was pinch-hitting for an ejected backup,
Dad volunteered to catch and ended up with a busted finger on a foul tip.
Cookie came onto the field, jerked the mangled digit back into its joint and
taped it to another finger, and Dad gripped the bat with the finger extended.
For the first time, I saw my father visibly depressed and even demoralized. He
was in a constant pain. No longer was baseball any fun.
After a series at
Gilmore, where the Padres took a thumping from the Stars, the club was slated
for a home stand. Mondays were always a PCL off day and the team gave Dad
permission to drive our family down to the apartment in Mission Beach Long Beach
on HWY 101, Mother sat as far as possible from him in the front seat, her body
and face turned away gazing out the window. Dad chewed furiously at his
fingernails. One of the reasons for their fight was my roguish attitude and
foul behavior. Mother blamed Dad’s influence for it; that, and my teasing and
torturing Susie, my younger sister. We were riding in the back seat. I pinched
her and burped in her face, which prompted her to cry hysterically and climb
over the seat to cuddle against Mother. Dad eyed me balefully in the rearview
mirror and barked that if I continued teasing my sister he’d ban me from the
ball park and that wasn’t all!
“I’ll pull over
right now and so help me God I’ll break you into a thousand bloody pieces!
Goddammit I’m in no mood!”
I went silent,
and we drove on down the coast. Peering at Dad’s mug in the mirror, I sensed
his frustration and anger, the rapid darting of his eyes indicating a frantic
search for a strategy to get mother to cease her brutal silence. The air
between them was so tense that any look or word from either would have sparked
a full scale war. I knew without a doubt that Dad could not in a lifetime win
an argument against her. And he knew it, and it galled him because he couldn’t
stand to lose at anything, let alone to Mother, who had his number and knew she
was punishing him with each passing moment of her loaded silence.
Finally, Dad
couldn’t take it anymore. “Yeah, it’s always me. Always my fault. I’m always
the villain. One hundred per cent wrong, hey? Guess I’m just a terrible person.
You can always find a better man out there,” he said, bitter, sarcastic.
Mother made a
face indicating his statement and perhaps his very presence left her nauseous.
Dad went on:
“Yeah, I get blamed for everything. In thirteen years of marriage I’ve never
been right about anything. I’ve been wrong a thousand times and you’ve been
right a thousand times. I’m O for a thousand. If it’s dark out, and you say
it’s light, you’re right, because you’ve never been wrong once in your life!
You’re perfect! Just like your family! You’re all geniuses! World beaters!
Beauties! Too good for me and MY family. Even if your old man did desert the
family during the Depression and you’re the biggest bunch of goddam
know-it-alls and leeches in the fucking world!”
“Pull over,”
Mother snapped, her lips compressed to a tight line. “I want out of this car
right now!”
Dad wrenched the
wheel, jerking everybody around, bounced over a shoulder and skidded onto the
dirt beside the beach. “Go on, get out,” he snarled. “Goddam fishwife, harpy,
witch, lousy carping fork-tongued shrew, rotten gutter whore! Go find a
man! You’re on your own!”
Mother, petite,
uncommonly beautiful and feminine, proud virgin before marriage, calm though
her eyes brimmed with tears, said, “Murray Franklin, I can’t stand the sight of
you. YOU are an ugly man. I no longer love you.” She calmly stepped out of the
car and commenced marching down the dirt shoulder, heading south.
Dad gunned the engine and veered toward her,
and I feared he was going to run her over, but he veered away at the last
moment as she jumped away, her eyes frozen in disbelief as Dad aimed the Pontiac onto the highway
drawing honks from drivers. I looked back through the rear window—Mother
marching on, head high, wearing jeans, a white turtleneck sweater, blue denim
jacket and Dad’s old sailor cap. Susie was sobbing and hysterical, yelling
“MOMMY! MOMMY!”
Dad slowed down.
“This is the last straw. Alright I’ll leave. That’s what she wants. She doesn’t
love me. She can go live with her family of deadbeats and parasites and starve!
I’ve always been a good husband, a good father, a good provider.Who you think
bank-rolled her family’s move out here from Wisconsin ? Me! I did! They’re lucky they got
a pot to piss in. Well, now they can have their precious daughter back Let her
test the waters and see what kind of man she finds.”
I tried to
imagine a life without mother and felt immediate panic. “Dad, she could go back
to nursing and find a doctor. All kinds of rich Jewish doctors wanted to marry
her before you met her.”
He bit savagely
at his upper lip, glaring at me in the mirror.
“I want Mommy!”
Susie wailed. “Please Daddy, I want Mommy!” She was sobbing.
Dad made a
U-turn, again peeving honking drivers. “Okay, for you, honey,” Dad said. A mile
or so down the road we spotted mother, who refused to look at Dad, who made
another U-turn, again drawing honks and shouts, and crept alongside Mother, who
continued marching. He leaned across the seat, rolled down the window and while
steering with one hand implored her to get back in the car “for the good of the
kids” even if she hated him and no longer loved him. Mother increased her
marching pace. Dad kept alongside her, and she whirled on him, “You tried to
run me over! If I hadn’t moved you would have run me over! How dare you!”
“Rose, goddammit,
if I’d wanted to run you over I would have.” She turned and marched on as Dad
steered along shaking his head. “Maybe I should-a ran her over,” he said. “then
all my problems would be over. They put me away for life and she can support
the family. Her family can support youse. HAW!”
“Dad, you better
go get her,” I said. “She might walk clear to San Diego and never stop.”
He stopped,
turned the engine off, sat there a moment, sighed, then got out and loped after
her. She saw him coming and tried to scurry away, but he caught up and blocked
her path, pleading, gesturing. Mother, hands on hips, looked away as he talked,
remaining stiff, unresponsive. Dad looked like the most miserable human on the
planet.
Finally, she
turned to face him, and he had to listen while she let him have it. Head
hanging, he nodded in accord with her tongue lashing. When she eventually
stopped, he put a hug on her. Her arms went around him. He kissed her on the
forehead, the cheeks, and they held each other for a long time. She was no
longer crying as they returned to the car holding hands. It was obvious they
had both been crying. They got into the car and sat close together like
sweethearts.
Dad drove off,
Susie curled up against Mother. Their faces in the mirror were serene, content.
Dad caught my eyes. I grimaced in disgust and silently mouthed the words: “Real
corn.” He looked sheepish. But I was relieved. Nothing could be worse than not
having Dad around to tell me about facing Feller and playing against DiMaggio
and Williams when I pumped him for stories.
As we drove on,
they chirped and discussed pulling over at one of the little beach towns for a
picnic. It had been foggy all morning, but now the sun shone. We pulled off the
highway, found a corner grocery store, drove a couple blocks to a spacious
park. Mom spread a blanket. We had ham sandwiches, sodas. Dad mentioned how the
picnic reminded him of when they’d done the same in parks in Havana . Real mush. I finished quickly and
excused myself to go to the bathroom, when in truth I was drawn to the distant
sounds of a baseball game.
Not far away I
found a diamond where a game was being played by a bunch of kids older than me.
I decided I was easily the equal of these players, walked up and announced I
wanted to play. A kid who seemed in charge flashed me the stink eye and said I
couldn’t play. I told him I was better than any of them and would prove it if
they let me play. The big kid puffed out his chest and said I couldn’t play and
if I didn’t like it I could do something about it. So I slugged him, knocking
him down, and then I jumped on his chest and pummeled him. He tried to throw me
off, but I was crazed and crying, and now the kid was crying because I’d
bloodied his nose. He quit struggling and all the kids around us were pulling
and screaming for me to stop, but that only inspired me to continue hitting
him—with a sadistic viciousness that was new to me. I was flailing away when I
was snatched off the kid and held in the air swinging wildly, crying—and it was
Dad, carrying me away, his eyes wide and concerned as he urged me to cool off,
asking me what was wrong and why was I fighting strange kids? I wiggled free
and ran toward the blanket, where Mother sat with her face in her hands. She
looked up. We were both crying.
“Oh God, what
have we done,” she wailed.
“For Christ Sake.
Why were you fighting with that kid?” Dad wanted to know.
“He wouldn’t let
me play ball.”
“Oh God,” Mother
cried, and started collecting the picnic items.
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