Childhood reminiscences: The art critic

 

I am hoping this will be an ongoing series, and that The Urban Blabbermouth will contribute some, too.

Back in the 1960s, our closest neighbor was Mrs. Sherman. Her house was corner-wise across the street. She was in her 70s and suffered from "arthur-itis," which apparently was held in abeyance by an advanced medical formula known as Carstairs White Seal American Whiskey. My mother, raised to be polite, joined her in the indulgence whenever we visited her to make sure she was OK. There was a Mr. Sherman, but he apparently spent a lot of time on the road, and I assume Mom thought Mrs. Sherman was lonely, so we spent a lot of time around her kitchen table. I got to drink Pepsi; that's the company Mr. Sherman spent all that time on the road working for.

Other than listening to my mother and Mrs. Sherman yak, my other favorite things were walking around her spiral living room rug until I got dizzy, and trying to peek into the two end tables. They were "Pembrooks," according to Mrs. Sherman, and she had uncanny hearing anytime I tried to quietly pull out a drawer. "Hey!" she'd yell. "Get outa my Pembrooks!" I never found out what she kept in there. Maybe some spare bottles of Carstairs White Seal, which looked too big to fit into a bathroom medicine cabinet.

That was in the very early years. But later, my friends and I would spend our summer days randomly riding bikes around town. You could do that back in the 1960s. Nowadays, kids under the age of 18 have to be within sight of their parents 24/7, and/or on a leash, or the parents get sentenced to life in prison for child neglect. 

We'd get tired of riding around, so we'd check in with our moms. Anytime my mom was over at Mrs. Sherman's, the whole bunch of us would show up. That's probably why Mrs. Sherman started spending her summer days outside. She had a pretty nice back yard. Sometimes her extended family would visit. Mrs. Sherman had two daughters, Madlyn and Frederica. Madlyn also had two daughters, "Little Liz," who I didn't know too well, and Linda, who became my idol. She was probably about 4 years older than I, and had quite a bit of patience. She was a model of impeccable manners, and just to ensure that she would want to continue hanging out with me, I forced myself to emulate her. I remember her telling my parents, "My mother's Catholic, my father's Jewish, and I'm e-pis-co-pa-li-an." She said this in kind of a sing-songy voice, so now I'm pretty sure that's what her parents taught her to say, to avoid questions about their family having a mixed marriage.

One time, my friends and I were feeling artistic, so we spent part of the day drawing with crayons and markers. We were young enough to want to get parental approval for this, so we eventually showed up in Mrs. Sherman's back yard. There was Madlyn, helping her mother administer liberal doses of Carstairs (who knows, maybe she had arthur-itis too). Linda was probably at home, riding bikes with her friends.

Some years later, I read a novel that described an older woman as having something called "Locust Valley Lockjaw," which is a snooty speech affectation. Picture someone trying to speak while clenching a long cigarette holder between their teeth. That's how Madlyn generally talked. She and her family lived in Huntington, New York, a fairly upscale place. I imagine she played bridge, and felt a wee bit sorry for her poor old mum and dad, living out their semi-retirement in Levittown.

My mom liked my drawing, so in order to get even more praise, I started passing it around to all the adults. When it got to Madlyn, she stared at the paper, looked at me, and said "Oh, dahhhhhling, it's faaaaaaaabulous." 

It didn't take long for all of us to notice this. So my friends made sure to pass their drawings over to Madlyn. And each time, she would study the picture, look up at the artist, and say exactly the same thing, in that whiskey-and-cigarette voice that I can still hear, all these decades later:

"Oh, dahhhling, it's faaaaaaaabulous." 

Soon, my friends would take crayons, scribble an X on the paper, then pass it to Madlyn, just to hear her say the same thing. She seemed indefatigable. Never showed the slightest sign of impatience or boredom. 

No one else noticed this. They were all very busy keeping their glasses full of Carstairs, so that Mrs. Sherman wouldn't feel lonely. We were waiting for some adult to tell us to go play, but they didn't. Eventually, we got bored. Maybe if there had been food at this little backyard soiree, we would have stuck around. But there wasn't even Pepsi, so we finally left the poor adults in peace. I believe, however, that we left our masterpieces with Madlyn, so she would have something to decorate her house in Huntington with.