I guess it would be alot of fun to look back at my brother Joe's progression from his angelic early moments to his very humorous expoits as a typical Tommy More hooligan...
Joe was the first boy of the family...after 5 girls in a row...Not only was my father beeming with pride but he instantly inherited 6 mothers to watch his every move...Joe could be seen early on, wobbling about, holding rosary beads...This was evidence enough to my Mom that he would someday grow up to be a priest...
Joe had a great imagination playing with plastic dinasaurs and MOON MEN...A very odd combination but as we would find out, Joe was no ordinary kid...He excelled in school but never wanted to be thought of as anything special...As a matter of fact, I think Joe took great pride in remaining grounded hanging out with his crazy bunch of friends who would remain life-long buddies up to this very day...
Joe certainly did have his wild side and a penchant for being a little diruptive...His antics with my brother Dan remain classic stories...of which some of them I've shared already...I think Joe was fortunate enough to take advantage of what his surroundings offered him...
His young teenage years were very unique times...It was then, that a show called THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E had every young kid utterly fascinated with being a SPY of some sort. Other shows of his era included were I SPY and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and IT TAKES A THIEF and GET SMART and WILD, WILD WEST...All of these new shows had a flair for getting their heroes in and out of trouble with miraculous deeds evolving from impossible scenarios...I think every kid from that era had a little bit of rambunxious curiosity to push themselves to the limit...and try to get themselves out of improbable jams....
See, originally...along came JAMES BOND, 007...He became an icon, for these youths and his wild adventures of dangers and delights...bringing on a whole new perspective to a young generation that had been trapped in an endless amount of old western tv shows...Seeing cowboys shoot em up at indians had become a little tedious and the life of a dangerous spy was alluring and elusive...like opening a pandora's box...
Joe, like all his friends, had this new sense of thrill and adventure within them and they kinda pushed their limits as they run rough-shod all over the neighborhood...I think he could recall many endless stories growing up that were probably a little on the wild side...and taking risks and chances became a typical thing to do on any given night...
As Joe grew older, he indeed had a robust personality...that indulged in quite a bit of partying and this out-going, good-natured attitude served him well as he grew up on the South Side.
For instance...Listen to this little story...My Dad had this loud, obnoxious gold-plated bell hinged to the top of the inside of the basement door, that stood far back in our laundry room...in our house on 86th Street...This door was the escape route for all of the young O'Leary kids when they had over-stepped beyond the curfew for which my father had established...See, if they came thru the kitchen side door...that was within ear-shot of the bedrooms upstairs...But the basement door...was as far off as you could get. The laundry room, almost itself, almost muffled all sounds, due to the large amount of stuff stacked for storage like board games and sports equipment and stacks and stacks and rows and rows of clothes that had been ironed by my mother, earlier that night.
The concrete floor in the laundery room never left a hint that a footstep could be heard and it was a perfect place to regain your composure...But on some occasions, all of us kids would stumble in a little tipsy and set off the dreaded clattering bell....
RING-A-LING-A-LING...!!!!
Even though we tried as hard as we could to gently turn the key in the lock of the door from the outside and carefully, almost praying as we would creek the door as slightly and as slowly as we could...sometimes the bell would just need a little jostle to send out that horriffic tremor of sound that echoed throughout the house...
You have to remember, most of us...were still at an awkward age...where our clumsiness got the best of us, sometimes...Sadly causing our worst fears to come true...That disruptive noise just went right thru you...It was just too much to rationalize at that point...
RING-A-LING-A-LING...!!!
We all can still hear that high-pitched, alarming, ear-shattering whail...God, that thing was pure evil...The bell wasn't even that big...but the sound it emmited...well...you can get the picture...
In a way, it was kinda comical...because the drunker you were...the more desperate you wanted to conceal your entry past curfew...Yet, it always seemed futile as the door just got nudged a little too aggresively and the result was a thunderous clatter...Sometimes, even worse, you'd be so pre-occupied that you completely forgot there even was a bell on the other side of the back door, basement entry....(Yes, we were that incredibly dumb & stupid at that age...)
It was an ingenious device that my father had installed and insisted that it was there strictly to act as a burglar deterrent...but it was really the funniest thing you would hear, sometimes, in the middle of the night, as some unfortunate soul stumbled in...having had a few too many libations...
Surely, as can be, the bell went a clatter and that person would instantly become horrified. It was as if somebody had thrown a bucket of ice water in your face...the startling alarm echoed and echoed all the way upstairs to my parents room...which in turn...awoke my father from a dead sleep and suddenly he would jump up and immediately proceed downstairs...He was furious, he was angry and he was ready to kick some butt...as his footsteps thunderously, pounded and pounded, down each and every step....You could just sense his temper coming to a boil as he got closer and closer and closer...down two flights of stairs to the basement where he was ready to unleash his wrath upon one of his kids...It didn't matter which one...they were in big, big trouble...I'm sure right now, many of my brothers and sister can recall such a moment happening to them long ago...That damn bell meant some heavy duty chores for the following day for the person who set it off...
But I do have to say...My brother Joe, was like a ninja door opener...even when he was quite toasty... I don't know if he saw this as a way to enact something he had seen in a spy movie or what...It was like a phenomenenol, super-spy, magic trick that he had mastered like no other. Somehow, Joe would just pry the door ajar and set off a tiny, little tinkle...I don't know if his gangly height helped him reach up and clench the bell, silencing it from erupting, drowning out that venomous noise...or he just had the luck of the Irish going for him...
No matter what it was, I always got the sense that he saw himself as somewhat of a master spy, a 007, James Bond type-of-guy, who could get himself out of any predicament....
I can fondly recall such a moment...really a classic Joe moment...late at night...a little past curfew...as I had somehow found myself down in the laundery room searching for something.
Suddenly, the basement door came open, in came Joe, stumbling in...with the uncanny ability of keeping the bell down to a mere trickle of noise...He shut the door and then burst out in laughing as quietly as he could contain himself...For he had once again, demonstrated his amazing ability of thwarting my Dad's curfew trap...
As you can plainly see...Joe was James Bond...at least in our house on 86th Street...
I betcha he forgot about that...
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