Family and Friends

Our family wasn't big on emotional connectivity and public, as

well as private displays of emotion were unheard of. This was
evidenced years later when I "ran away" from home.

For a week I’d been living in my best friend Bryan Hart’s

basement with no contact with home whatsoever. Hanging in his
basement and driving around at night with the Zogman was aces.
The best “wheelman” I’ve ever met, Bryan could’ve been blindfolded
and dropped from a helicopter into a car parked in the middle of
Antarctica and found his way home. A human global positioning
device, Brian invented the “gangsta” lean in his black ’64 Ford. A true
friend to “loan” me his basement; pizza and beer never tasted better
than when I was a runaway waif.

The Zogman, his future wife Jan, and my girlfriend Kelli Sue were
a very tightly knit foursome, and I trusted their opinions and judgment.
Saturday arrived and it marked a week since I'd bolted from the
constraints of my parent's home. I was a rather troubled youth, and
my smoldering intelligence couldn’t hurdle my problem with “authority
figures” I’d had of any and every kind, and the parental variety I found
particularly stifling. Born to be a feral boy, I found the cloak of civility
to be very binding and suffocating.

As we sat around talking, they began badgering me about how

I had to go home, I had to make amends, I had to do what's right, I
had to at least call home as my parents were surely worried
sick...yeah, yeah, yeah.

Goaded into action, like a quasi-prodigal son deciding to "call"

rather than actually return home, I pulled the phone over and dialed.
My dear mother answered and I could hear my five younger siblings
screaming in the background as they fought like jackals over my
share of bacon greased, two day-old toast crowned with chunks of
cold spam pried from dented cans. It was either that or “Hobo-Hut
Hash”; whatever…

"Hello," my mother said. Already whipped into a guilt-ridden,

emotional frenzy by my "good pals", my voice quavered as I said,
"Ma...Ma it's me, Jack."

"Jackie!" she gasped. "Your Father wants to talk with you," she
said rather abruptly. I knew she must have been emotionally
overwhelmed, and I imagined her handing the phone to Pops, then
breaking into thankful tears, unable to withstand the onslaught of
motherly love for her eldest. I was astounded to find myself on the
verge of weeping, as I knew Pops would get on the line, begging me
to come home, asking repeatedly if I was all right, can we come and
get you, are you hurt in any way, etc.

"Jack!" he cried into the phone.

"Dad...I, I..." my speech faltered, I fell silent, overcome by

emotion as I waited for my father’s warm reply.

"I thought I told you to cut that goddamn lawn!" Pops said.

Well, so much for my return as the prodigal son. Apparently my

fatted calf was grazing in an overgrown lawn that I'd not only
neglected to mow, but in addition I was only missed because I didn’t
mow it! I was left to wrestle with that age-old question…” Am I Jack
Acker or am I "John Deere", the human lawn mower?”

Like I’d often said,” public or semi-private displays of emotion

weren't de rigueur in our family.” Any emotive acts were met with
raised eyebrows as well as clinking glasses toasting in anticipation of
the guilty party's quick commitment to intensive therapy. When one
of my grandfather's most endearing, “playful" nicknames was "The
Iron Duke", well, you know Satan's right behind him with a fistful of
burning embers in one hand and a cat-o-nine tails in the other. Even
if attempted, I was certain hugging a family member during these
emotionally lean years would have been tantamount to embracing a
thorn bush shrouded in patchy fog.

Don't get me wrong, I knew my parents loved me and my five

sibs beyond comprehension, they just didn't know how to show it and
didn't have the wherewithal to break the ice with material "things".
Though we wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes and opened a lot of
dented cans, our parents loved all of us fiercely. Of course, we “kids”
were sometimes put into rather embarrassing situations because
“we’re poor”.

I’ll never forgot being forced to wear my grandfather’s (Poppy

Perry,on my mother’s side) pants to school in the fourth grade. I
could easily fit both legs into either of my Grandfather’s huge,
voluminous pant legs, and I vividly recall getting onto my school bus
one exceptionally windy morn. With an entire busload of students
watching, a huge gust of wind billowed Poppy’s pant legs and actually
lifted me from the ground. Hovering two or three inches from the
Earth and kind of skipping along like a bouncing box kite, I lurched
onto the bus, nothing more than a wayward tumbleweed with no
home and no future. How mortifying! Oh how I hated those “Double-
Leggers” with a passion.

Poppy Perry was also one of the slowest drivers ever. I could
vividly recall “going for a ride with Poppy” to renew his drivers license
along with brothers Dave and Ken. We had to travel from our
grandparent’s house in Chesterfield to Hayfield Heights, all of five or
six miles round trip. We were all worried that by the time Poppy
Perry renewed his expired license and returned home his new license
would have expired!

But God, what an arduous trip…You’d have thought we were

gearing up for Admiral Peary’s North Pole exploration, not Poppy
Perry’s license renewal. Me and my brothers didn’t know it was
possible to drive that slowly and not stall the car out. Unbelievably,
and I’ve sworn to this throughout the years, we were stopped by a
cop on state route 306 for going TOO SLOW! I even remember I was
wearing a red baseball cap because I damn near popped the top by
pulling the cap down around my ankles trying to conceal my identity.
The cop couldn’t believe Poppy was going that slow.

“Sir,” he asked Poppy, “are you sure there’s no mechanical

reason for your slow rate of speed?”

I figured he’d next look under the hood to make sure there weren’t
30 or 40 hamsters churning away under there. He continued saying,
“I mean, the speed limit is 50 and you were doin’ 20, maybe 25 miles
an hour tops.”

Poppy, softly humming a long forgotten “Show Tune”, looked up

at the cop with a Mona Lisa smile and blinked a few times like Mr.
MaGoo. I didn’t know if he was serious or just baiting the cop.

“Officer, I must say it’s a fine and dandy day and your badge
looks so bright and shiny against your crisp, white blouse!” Blouse?!
“What was he doing?” I thought. You don’t get stopped by a cop for
going too slow and start talkin’ about his blouse for God’s sake. Next
thing you’d know he’d be offering him a ‘training bra’.

Poppy was always calling our shirts ‘blouses’ but we were

grandkids, not cops. The hell with the cop’s ‘blouse’ I thought, the
creases in his pants were so sharp they hurt my eyes.

Poppy slipped off his rabbit-fur lined gloves and turning his
beautiful round, balding head towards the policeman said, “I was just
going to get my driver’s license renewed with my Grandsons. I
thought a little spring air would be refreshing and time spent on the
journey would be a good time for us to bond.” “Time to bond?” I
thought; “Journey?”… Lord, if we’d have driven the speed limit we
would’ve made it in four, five minutes.

The cop leaned into Poppy’s open window and said, “Listen
Bullseye, you better get this car goin’ a little faster or your Grandkids
will be going to college AND attending your funeral simultaneuosly
from this car. I don’t mean any disrespect, but you gotta’ get moving;
please” he concluded.

Actually, we were fortunate we weren’t ticketed for riding in an

unsafe, overheated car. Poppy, already outfitted in a heavy Donegal
tweed overcoat and a jaunty beret, had the heat turned up that sunny
spring morn to about 400 degrees. I felt like one of those broasted
chickens slowly revolving on a spit in a convenience store, but Poppy
never broke a sweat.

Pulling away from the cop car, blithely humming away as we

“hurtled” down the highway at 32 miles per hour, Poppy’s hands were
set perfectly at “ten and two o’clock” on the steering wheel. He was
un-ticketed, in control, warm as toast and happy as lark. What a
great guy. I glanced back through the rearview window just in time to
see the cop banging his head against his steering wheel in
frustration.

I could imagine him pulling us over once more, sauntering up to

Poppy’s window and asking “Do you know how fast you weren’t
going?” To which Poppy would answer “Yes officer, I weren’t going
fast at all.” What a great guy.

Above: “Poppy” Perry, my grandfather (mother’s side) whose pants I

was forced to wear. One of the kindest, gentlest men (as was my
grandmother) one could ever know, his pants sucked! Pictured here
holding my brother Ken (my God, he looks like Jack Benny!) and
sister Regina.

Tough yet Triumphant Times

When you're broke, as in having not much money, your prison is

the entire world. The prison bars are inside you, invisible to others,
but squeezing, squeezing, squeezing tighter every day and night.

When you have six kids living in an upper middle class

neighborhood where more than a few high school juniors get NEW
CARS for their senior year, the pressure and guilt on my parents had
to be relentless. Like a giant mortar and pestle, debt and fear
continued to grind down our family, especially our father, into dust.

I can still see the dents in the refrigerator from my father's fists
and I remember lying awake upstairs in bed hearing him desperately
asking my mother (and himself) "What do you want me to do? What
the hell do you want me to do?"… A trillion years later, I still didn't
know, I really don't know. My parents didn't either, and after a long
torturous "bad marriage" period, they divorced in the mid-seventies.

I kept a letter that my father ironically taped to the dented

refrigerator the night he left our house for the final time. By
backdating, I know it was written the very early morning of February
10th, 1973. Addressed simply "To My SONS", it was three little, eight
by five sheets, written on one side only, the third page barely filled.
Twenty four years of marriage and six kids later, three single-sided
eight by five sheets...Jesus, that must have been a tough letter to
write; It's still a tough letter to read...From my father...

To My SONS

As you know, your mother and I attained our 24th wedding

anniversary yesterday.
It is difficult to conceive that all those years have passed by so
quickly. I wish that I could say that they were all happy years, but
alas I cannot. I will say that in courting your mother and in asking her
to marry me I had to work for it. I was one in a long string of guys
that wooed her, but I won. I should have remembered those tactics.
I think we went to one football game - - - and fifty concerts - no
boxing matches; but trips to the museum, the parks, school activities,
et cetera et cetera. A lot of flowers, & candy, & trinkets. I wrote love
letters, & daydreamed, & made plans weeks in advance; but like so
many of us, once the prey is ours we neglect it.
While lying in bed this morning, turning all those things over in
my mind, a lyric (I think) came to me, that I had thought, long since
forgotten:
"Say something sweet to your sweetheart - -
Tell her how much you care.
Say something sentimental - - - it don't cost a thing,
You know what happiness a tender word can bring.
You can't hide these love words inside you,
And still keep the one you adore;
So; say something sweet to your sweetheart,
And you'll be sweethearts for evermore.

Love, Your Dad

First page of letter written by Jack’s Father 2-10-1973

Coming from a long line of seriously flawed, damaged, yet

incredibly decent, fair-minded and brilliant ancestors, my own faults
were hard-earned, too numerous to count and quickly discovered.
Forced to attend Catholic schools, by the seventh grade I was
confessing to sins I hadn’t committed, considering the one's I had
committed were too plentiful and time consuming to relate/confess.
 While growing up, I had some aunts and uncles that were major-
serious about the carnal, more sordid side of life. Again, not being
close to any of my family, the details are a little hazy, but I am sure
one of my aunts died of a heroin/drug overdose at 36 or 38 years old,
followed rather quickly by her husband (Uncle Jack, a doctor) of
another overdose of some type I cannot recall.

My father in the middle of my four uncles (on my father’s side). God

help the poor bastards who tried to out argue these guys. This
picture was probably taken in the mid/late 70’s. They’re all gone
now… Boy, I loved all these guys and still miss ‘em.

My favorite (aforementioned) uncle was from my mother's side,

Uncle Dick. We called Uncle Dick the "Great One", as he made
Jackie Gleason and Chris Farley look like Fred Astaire or Cary Grant.
A Pleasure Seeker of extraordinary proportions, very successful
(insurance), very smart, didactic, opinionated, somewhat loud and
totally unabashed and unapologetic about ANYTHING; his appetite
for excess was matched only by his sense of humor and generosity.

The Great One's best friends (other than his sometime "girlfriend"
Bivalve Betty) were my father and a rather gigantic fellow they called
"Dutch". I only met Dutch once in the mid/late seventies, but the
whole afternoon was surreal and representative of virtually every
weekday afternoon for these gentlemen of leisure. I recalled stopping
by around 2:00 pm one afternoon and was immediately surprised to
see that 'cocktail hour' was in full swing.

"Jack, I see you're still tweaking the Devil's tail by smokin' those
cigarettes” said the Great One.

"Yeah, and I see your in his full embrace with a triple Jack
Daniels in one hand and a fried bologna sandwich in the other" I
retorted. My barb fell harmlessly to the floor - there was nothing I
could say that would slow these locomotives of double-binging my
uncle and his coterie had become, and the party roared on.

I couldn’t help but notice that when the Flying Dutchman got up to
refill his schooner with Black Jack bourbon he careened into the
kitchen with a pronounced limp. “Hey Uncle Dick, what’s with the
Dutchman and this limp?” I asked.

The Great One looked up and said “Your cousin Mike (Uncle
Dick’s eldest son) washed my car and also Armor-All-ed my car seats
yesterday. After I picked up the Flyer we headed to the Lobster Pot
for the ‘Seafood Extravaganza Special’ they have every Tuesday
night. Some 90 pound blue-haired old lady pulled in front of me; I
slam on the brakes and Dutch slides off his seat like a giant fried egg
from a non-stick skillet. His knees hit the dashboard so hard the
radio popped out. My God Jack, I had to stop the car and pull him
back up into the seat. It was like pullin’ a 350 pound dough ball out of
a foxhole. I haven’t worked that hard in years.”

Dang, and I thought ‘Humpty Dumpty’ was quite a yarn… this was
true stuff.
 By 4:30 or so, my Pop (weighing150 pounds, tops) had
consumed four or five martinis, while Dutch and my uncle had plowed
through almost an ENTIRE HALF-GALLON of Jack Daniels. Bivalve
Betty was in the corner, slurping down a Vodka and clam juice
smoothie she'd whipped up in a blender. This was BEFORE they all
left for their favorite restaurant, The Lobster Pot, to enjoy happy-hour
and chew through an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. One truly
wouldn't have believed it if they hadn't seen it; and this was almost
every afternoon!

They were like a “moveable beast”, so articulate and intelligent

they could transform a room, bar or a small geographical area into an
intense forum of debate about any and all possible topics. With multi-
syllable words peppered with every expletive known to man or beast,
they were like an argumentative, thought provoking black hole that
could be spellbinding and all-consuming. One never left their
company without a furrowed brow and eyes wide with thought.

Ten or fifteen years later, not hearing any news about Dutch
(who LOVED seafood) and his eating/drinking exploits, I was told
he'd moved to the East Coast, I think I was told Maine. When I asked
Pops why he chose to move so far from his best friends, it was
explained to me, in all seriousness, that "Dutch wanted to be closer to
his seafood source, the Atlantic Ocean." That's True Love.

The Great One and Dutch, Goliaths of Gluttony in the Pantheon

of Trenchermen, are deceased along with my father, but I remain
confident they're at some Lobster Pot in another galaxy, enjoying an
endless happy hour/buffet where they never get drunk, full or run out
of money.
“The Great One” Uncle Dick, Jack’s father “Jocko” and Jack on
December 27, 1986. Pop Acker was celebrating his marriage to
Shirley (Jack’s fake mother) and the rest of us were there to” help” as
best we could. We did.

Of Moles and Men