In the summer of 1956, any Saturday at midnight, especially when
the moon was out and the stars were bright, you would be able to see Grandma
Groth sitting on her front-porch swing waiting for her son, Clarence, a
bachelor at 53, to make it home from the Blind Man's Pub. He would have spent
another evening quaffing steins of Heineken's.
Many times that summer before I went away to college, I'd be
strolling home at midnight from another pub, just steps behind staggering
Clarence. But unlike Clarence, Id be sober so I'd always let him walk
ahead of me and I'd listen to him hum "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Sometimes,
very quietly, Id join in. I dont think he ever heard me.
However, on the last Saturday night that Clarence and I came
down the street in our odd tandem, I didn't see Grandma on her swing even
though the stars were out and the moon was full. For some odd reason, on this
particular night, she wasn't waiting to berate him.
So far so good, I thought, for Clarence. He wont have to
listen to Grandma give him hell. But then, not far from his house, and without
warning, he toppled into Mrs. Murphy's hedge. It was like watching a sack of
flour fall, in slow motion, off a truck.
When I finally got him up, I managed to maneuver Clarence slowly
down the sidewalk toward his house. He didnt make a sound but it wasn't
easy moving a man that big who was essentially asleep on his feet.
Somehow I got him through his back door only to encounter
Grandma, a wraith in a hazy nightgown, standing in the hallway, screaming. She
began thrashing Clarence with her broom, pausing only for a moment to tell me,
"Go home to your mother now so you won't be late for Mass. It's
almost Sunday morning!"
After that, she resumed thrashing Clarence. He never made a
sound, just took the blows across his back, head bowed, without moving. But
Clarence was a man who said very little even when he was sober.
After that sad night in 1956, I never saw Clarence again, either
marching to work in the morning, his lunch pail gallantly swinging, or
staggering home at midnight from the Blind Man's Pub.
But many a midnight after that, years later, I'd be coming home
from the other pub and I'd see Grandma reigning on her front porch swing, broom
in hand, waiting. Maybe Clarence was coming, I thought. But if he was, I never
saw him.
I remember coming home from college every summer and asking the
neighbors if they had seen Clarence. Not a sign of him, they said. But on a
Saturday night when the moon was out, theyd still see Grandma, on her
swing, waiting.
Now, so many decades later, as I stroll home at midnight, after
an evening at the Blind Mans Pub, I can see the moon is as big as it was
the last night I saw Clarence.
Suddenly I realize Im older now than Clarence was the
night he disappeared. And even though Grandma's been dead for many years, I can
see her in the starlight. She's sitting regally on that swing, broom in hand,
waiting. So for old times sake, I give her a big wave, hoping to hear her
say, just one more time,
"Go home to your mother now so you won't be late for Mass. It's
almost Sunday morning!"