Look out below
This is one of those stories where, after reading it, you may ask, “Is he kidding?” It’s not apocryphal, for I assure you the basis is factual, I think. Who am I to question what Grandma told me? According to her, she was a witness. But Medzmama came from a family whose accounts were like fish tales. Fish would have been caught, but likely not as long as reported or heaviest reeled in.
In my side hustle, I repair baseball gloves, and many of my customers are parents having their kids’ gloves mended in time for the next crucial game (they all are). The kids are often purported to be the best player on the team, league or, while we’re at it, ever to live in town. The 1960s TV series, Dragnet, portrayed Los Angeles detective Joe Friday insisting in each episode, “Just the facts, ma’am.” I’ll try to comply.
Sticking with television references, my narrative won’t be as far out as another ‘60s anthology, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. It also won’t be as “factual” or raw as “true crime” shows, nor will it depict Armenians as did Michael Chiklis’ The Commish either.
Enough intro. Here’s the skinny (subject of my accompanying painting).
All those old-time families seemed to have one. In my family, it was Mom’s dad. Dikran, a.k.a. Richard, or simply Dick, was the one with a reputation of being crotchety and hard to get to know. I suppose he was what could be expected of him, having worked during the Great Depression as a grave digger, a position he landed through the WPA (the federal Work Projects Administration agency, 1935–43).
Hard work was his mantra, and anything else was goofing off, plain and simple. Through his diligence, he was able to get a loan to buy a three-family house with an adjacent two-family to boot. He lived on the third floor and rented out all the other units. Medzmama regularly washed the stairs on her hands and knees.
At home, Dikran was a tough taskmaster and not someone to be trifled with, hence the scoop. Whether the tenant — that bum on the second floor — never paid or was habitually late with rent, or kept a dirty, rodent- and insect-infested apartment, (see my Dad’s solid copper mouse), Medzpapa gave the fellow a warning, and then another. Maybe one more.
Finally, Grandpa had enough and was going in, literally. Using his passkey, he entered the flat. He grabbed furniture, said to be the sofa but I’ve painted it as a dinette set chair, and heaved it out the large double-sash window, to the sidewalk below.
One version has the tenant coming into his unit loaded for bear but, upon seeing my manic grandfather, hightailed out. I chose to depict the poor fellow simply leaving, wisely.
Does anyone actually throw furniture out a window? If someone is moving, lives on the ground floor and outside is a grassed area no one walks on, perhaps. Or negotiating stairs may be too difficult.
In any event, I’m reminded of MIT students who, every year for nearly 50 years, on Drop Day and as one of their rituals, heave a broken-down piano off the roof of Baker House. Certainly these pranksters follow protocols.
Thinking of pianos, my Dad had a tenant who owned an upright model. When she moved from Cambridge to western Massachusetts, she contracted allegedly bona fide piano movers, who assured her they could get the instrument up the stairs to her new apartment. Well, as you can guess, they got only partway. I bet she wished she had thrown the monster out the window back in Cambridge.
So, back to Medzpapa and the chair. Remember the Clairol ad, “Does she… or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.” To paraphrase the 50-year-old advertising slogan for Memorex recording tape, “Is it true or is it — sood?” Your guess is as good as mine.
