This is a slightly adapted extract from “Untangling the Shadows: Searching for the Voices of My New York Irish Ancestors,” a memoir by Charles R. Hale.
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“You must have been first in line when they handed out grandfathers, Charles.”
Dorothy Gorman Hale
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My mother was correct. My grandfathers, Alexander A. Gorman and Charles F. Hale, both had a major impact on my life. I often feel their presence. There are times when I can hear their voices.
Grandpa Charlie, Charles F. Hale, acted as if he were the mayor of Manhattan.
“He knew everyone, Charles,” my father would say. “Governor Rockefeller, Mayor Wagner, and Tim Mara, the owner of the New York Giants. No matter where he was, he acted like he owned the joint.” And I’d say, “Bigger than life, right, Dad?” and my father would smile as I repeated the same phrase I often heard him use. “Yes, Charles. “Bigger than life.”
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There was nothing like Christmas day at my grandparents apartment in Manhattan.
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“Did you ever see the movie “King Kong,” Charles? it’s a true story, you know.”
“It is, Grandpa?”
“Oh sure. See that painting hanging over the couch?” he’d say of the painting of my grandfather and two other firemen sitting around a table, staring at their poker hands. “That’s the night it happened. I remember that night as if it were yesterday.”
Grandpa Charlie would begin to tease the story from the painting. “We were playing cards, when all of a sudden ‘Engine Fourteen, report to 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, gorilla hanging from the top of the Empire State Building. And he’s got a woman with him.’ Oh my God!” Grandpa Charlie would yell, his hands flying up and out as I visualize four clubs and an ace of spades flying through the air, his voice now at full throttle, my laughter fueling his fertile imagination.
“We jumped from out of our chairs, slid down the pole, and with the sirens screaming raced over to 34th Street. Over the rig’s radio the dispatcher’s screaming, ‘Hurry, hurry, Kong’s got a woman in his arms. Oh, no, please hurry!’ And just as we got there, Charles, Kong came hurtling over the side of the building and barely missed our truck. But, by the grace of God, we caught that beautiful woman in the net. And you know who the woman was, Charles?”
“Who?”
“It was your grandmother. That’s how I met her. What a night.” I’d be rolling on the couch, in hysterics, looking at him with those ‘Aw, c’mon are you kidding me, Grandpa?’ ten-year-old eyes, but there was no stopping him. He’d be flying around the apartment laughing, his arms flailing, his white shirt half-hanging out of his slacks, a new gravy stain on his tie.
(I asked my mother about his ties. She said, “On Christmas he wears the one with the fewest gravy stains.”)
Grandpa Charlie imitating film actor and radio personality Joe Penner.
“I swear every word is true, Charles.”
“Grandpa, how do you think this stuff up? And besides, in the movie the woman’s name is Anne and Grandma’s name is Helen.”
“They changed the name to protect the innocent. You were innocent, right, Helen?” He laughs at that. Why, I don’t know, but it’s an unforgettable, suck-the-oxygen-out-of-the-room laugh. He shoves a slimy, half-chewed mess of a cigar into one side of his mouth and out of the other he yells to my grandmother, “Aren’t I telling the truth, Helen?” his shirt now completely flapping in the breeze.
“And can you bring me another Manhattan, with two cherries this time, one for me and one for Charles, and another Manhattan for my beautiful daughter-in-law, Dorothy, and how’s the turkey, Helen?” I have no idea what a Manhattan is—don’t my grandparents live in Manhattan?—but whatever a Manhattan is, who could resist.
He goes on all afternoon. He wears the hell out my grandmother, mother and father, but it doesn’t matter to him; he has the best audience imaginable, the one he most enjoys, his grandson.
Even as we wait for the elevator to leave—my grandmother tugging on his arm, trying to get him back into the apartment, my father looking for an escape route—Grandpa continues. “Did you know that I played the Lone Ranger’s sidekick on TV, Charles?”
“But Tonto was an Indian, Grandpa.”
“Before I lost my hair, I used to be an Indian, Charles.”
Finally, my mother coaxes me into the elevator and as the door is closing,
“Merry Christmas, Charles...and let’s go to the circus soon,” to which I am sure I hear my father say under his breath, “Circus? What the hell is this?”
My mother slumps against the wall, my father exhales, and all I can say is “Wow, what a day. Bigger than life, right, Dad?”
