Happy Birthday, Denny! A Few Poems about Our Childhood

Today is my brother Denny's Birthday--Happy Birthday, Den! To honor his birthday, a few poems about our crazy childhood:

“Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip (Snap! Snap!)”

We’d all sit there on the davenport

A Friday night in my black-and-white childhood:

Mom, me, Denny, Mary Ellen, Kevin, Baby Jimmy.

Dad was gone, working the hated 2^nd Trick.

“Bobby, go down to the Deli and buy us some cokes,” Mom said.

She hunted up a buck of change

Then Denny and I would jump on our bikes

And get the goods.

When we got home, Mary Ellen would say,

“Bobby, make us some fudge again!”

This was my calling, and I couldn’t refuse:

Cocoa, cups and cups of sugar,

Milk, a dash of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla . . . .

Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip graced the TV

(the one Dad found on a Farringdon treelawn on trash day

And fixed by replacing the plug).

We heard the song begin, Ed “Kookie” Byrnes and Connie Stevens,

Grabbed our belts to make the snap snap:

“Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip (Snap! Snap!)”—

We’d sing it over and over and over.

Then Denny would holler out, “Kookie, Kookie,

Lend me your comb.

Kookie, Kookie? (Snap! Snap!)”

Denny liked Kookie –reminded him of bad boys,

Like Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis

Or himself!

The fudge mixture began to perk and boil

And I would stir and stir then

Drop a bit into a cup of cold water,

Waiting for it to form a soft ball.

It took forever, the watched pot, but finally it was ready,

And we started the stirring, each kid taking a turn.

We added the vanilla and a stick of butter

(This, the health food of our childhoods!)

Then beat that mixture mercilessly

With the wooden spoon till our arms ached

Until finally, voila!

It was suddenly fudge!

And we had to pour and scrape it in a hurry

Into the buttered pan.

What kind of mother lets her 5 kids spend Friday night

Drinking coke, eating fudge, and watching Kookie Byrnes?

My Mom, that beautiful 36-year-old lady.

Sometimes, as we watched our show,

She’d let us brush her long auburn hair,

And we, her brood of children,

All so in love with her,

Would sing as we brushed,

“Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb,

Kookie, Kookie? (Snap! Snap!).”

 [ Robert M. Coughlin / March 4, 2004]

A Poem on the Drowning of Walter J. Zylowski (July 19, 1964)

Pray for Us Now and at the Hour

July 19^th, 1964, a beautiful summer Sunday in Euclid, Ohio,

Clear skies, sun shining, mid 80s and humid,

A Lake Erie day if there ever was one!

I had a ballgame that day at Memorial Park—

Playing the Euclid Admirals (we expected to get creamed!).

Dad off to Eastlake to take care of Grandma.

The Indians in New York, facing the great Whitey Ford.

Our secret weapon Luis Tiant with his Vaseline ball,

His sandpaper ball, his hesitation pitch, his endless trickery.

Our neighbor Walter Zylowski was taking his son Buster swimming

Right down the street off East 267^th. Frank Mondok and his kids

And Walter’s daughter Jackie were going too, aching for the cool lake.

Walter’s other son Kenny had a big day planned, an outing to Geauga Lake Park

With his cousins and Auntie Vicki. The little lake, the ancient wooden

Roller coasters—cotton candy heaven.

Lake Erie was calm and the water peaceful.

The Mondok kids and Jackie played on the beach, Buster skipping stones

On the flat Lake. Walter was diving off the old, half-sunken pier.

And then it was as if the music stopped, the world stopped.

Where was Walter? Where did he go?

Where did he go?

Maybe 10 frantic minutes later, Denny and Buster spotted him,

Floating in 7 feet of water, just 30 feet off the shore.

With Frank, they swam out and dragged him in.

Back on the beach, Walter, his red hair in a wild swirl,

His normally ruddy skin a shocking blue,

Did not move, did not breathe. No pulse, no nothing.

Buster and Frank started artificial respiration; someone ran up the hillside

To call the police. Denny and Jackie and the Mondok kids

Knelt on the beach and prayed the Hail Mary.

The words were automatic--we said the rosary every night of our lives--

But this time, the final lines,

“Pray for us sinners, now

And at the hour of our death”

This time the lines were real.

[Bob Coughlin / September 9, 2013]

Driving Home From Willoughby, 1959

After Thanksgiving Dinner at Gramma and Grampa’s,

Dad, Uncle Jack, and Grampa located a davenport or bed

For a half-hour’s nap, hypnotized by the turkey, the full belly, the beer.

Denny and Bobby went out to the field between the Sullivan’s and Coughlin’s,

Climbed the wild black cherry, while Mary Ellen and Kev

Played in the piles of silver and sugar maple leaves.

Mom carried Baby Jimmy on her hip, talked with Gramma,

Dried the dishes.

And then, around 7, we hopped into the old Ford,

Mom and Dad in front, 3 kids on the back seat, Kev on the hump,

And Jim stuffed up on the shelf by the rear window

(no seat belts, no rules in those days!).

We’d start the long drive home down Lakeshore Boulevard

Saying the rosary, Bobby leading the prayers,

The Joyful Mysteries, 5 decades of Hail Mary’s,

Sprinkled with Our Father’s, Glory Be’s, and the Apostles Creed.

And when we finished (and we were the fastest rosary sayers on the planet!),

We’d sing every song we knew, full-throated:

“Anchors Away My Boys,” to “Row Row Row Your Boat,” in rounds,

To “She’s My Darling She’s My Daisy, She’s Cross-eyed, She’s Crazy.”

And then, after a bit of silent driving, we’d turn south down East 266 Street and home:

By now Jimmy, Kevin, Mary Ellen asleep,

Denny and Bobby groggy,

Mom and Dad spent and quietly happy.

 [Robert M. Coughlin / Thanksgiving 2008]

October in Willoughby, 1958

the two sugar maples
glisten in the crisp pure sunlight

efflorescence of yellow, orange, red
against the cloudless blue sky:
Hayes Avenue looks like heaven

Grampa rakes the leaves into a grand pile:
Denny, Mary Ellen, Bobby play king of the hill,
somersault, stuff leaves into flannel shirts

the radio is omnipresent
blaring out the Browns struggle against the Giants,
Jimmy Brown against Sam Huff

Grampa lights the pile of leaves,
a fragrance that will linger in memory
until death

Gramma calls out for dinner:
roast beef, mashed potatoes, green peas

again

(Bob Coughlin / October 18, 1991)

Modest Little Poem About Growing Up in the 1950's

Before the Invention of Safety

I was a kid before the invention of safety.

Before seatbelts, helmets, and warning labels.

An era when we stuffed Baby Jimmy

On the back window ledge of the car on the trip to Gramma’s,

And rode Kevin on the handlebars to Mudville.

Of course there were some minor disasters.

And we can thank only our Guardian Angels

For not falling through the ice on Lake Erie

Or slipping down the steep shale cliffs over Euclid Creek.

Yes, there were broken arms, lots of stitches, some concussions.

And there were some serious errors in our knowledge:

It didn't help to be brought up in a blue haze of cigarette smoke,

To fool with vials of mercury Dad brought home from the shop,

To play with asbestos as if it were harmless snow—

But in general we did all right. We survived and even thrived

Before the invention of safety.

Bob Coughlin

April 5, 2013

Happy Birthday, 'Gert Ann!

Eulogy for My Mother, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Coughlin. December 11, 2003. St. Mary’s Church, Painesville, Ohio.

We would like to thank all our family members, our  friends, our relatives for their kind wishes and prayers for my Mom over these past few days. Thanks especially to Aunt Kay and Uncle Bill Coughlin, to all the Coughlin cousins, to the Brock cousins, and all the Fitzpatrick cousins, who are as numerous as the stars in the sky. Thanks to our Euclid friends, our Chardon friends, our Mentor friends, our Valley City friends, our friends from work. Thanks to my brother Denny, his wife Sherri, and children Marlo, Sean, Kit, and Cory, who flew in from California. And to Marie and Michelle Zaremba, and Mike and Amy Zaremba, all who came up from  southern Ohio. Thanks especially to Mary Ellen, who spent the last night of Mom’s life by her side in the hospital. And to Kevin and his boys, Ryan, Tommy, and Cody, who brought Mom into their house the last year of her life.

Those of you who saw my Mom’s obituary in Tuesday’s News-Herald probably had yourself a good chuckle. They listed my Mom as 70 years old, yet born on November 10, 1923. So much for the “New Math”! By that reckoning I’m 45 years old again. My Mom lied about her age as long as I can remember, but I have to hand it to the News-Herald!

In the last 8 years or so, many things have been taken from my Mom, many things lost. In 1996 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In 1997, my Dad died. That same year Mom was diagnosed with macular degeneration, which led to virtual blindness. A year later she was diagnosed with colon cancer. These tribulations would have devastated a lesser person, but my Mom accepted her life with an amazing grace. She maintained her wonderful spirit, her positive attitude, her joyfulness, her mischievousness and sense of fun right up to the end. Of all her virtues, I admired most her unfailing sense of gratitude. A couple years ago I wrote this poem about her:

“My Mother’s Grace”

 -for Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Coughlin

My Mother never holds

onto evil, suffering, hate,

resentment.

In her mind’s eye

is always centered

                Gratitude

joy and fun:

                It is the most amazing

                charism I have ever seen.

The day my Mother dies

she will have in front of her

not pain, regret, or fear,

                But the last wonderful thing.

                *              *              *

                                                               

And that last wonderful thing was, of course, gratitude. Gratitude for her life, her family, and her faith.

Mom with brothers Fenton (Skip) and Don (circa 1940)

Fooling the Toothfairy with Luckystones

Anyone who grew up near Lake Erie in Lake County, Ohio knows about "luckystones." They are small stones of milky quartz, usually white (though occasionally tinged with yellow or orange), that are rounded and polished by the wave action of the Big Lake. Many people collect these beautiful lucky stones.

As a kid in Willoughby, Ohio, I learned from my grandparents that you could put an appropriately sized luckystone under your pillow, and voila, the next morning, you would get a dime from the toothfairy. Does this still work? Of course it does, as long as the little kid informs his parents or grandparents about what he or she is doing. Of course inflation has hit this market too.

Once, while studying geology at the University of Notre Dame, I asked my professor what exactly a luckystone consisted of. He laughed and said he had never heard of a a luckystone--that it was not a scientific geologic name. Now every kid in Willoughby in the 1940s and 1950s knew what a luckystone was! And certainly my children know! So much for the limits of these brilliant Notre Dame profs.

My understanding is that these luckystones are washed down some of the local hills in creeks and rivers where they reach Lake Erie, and then are further rounded and polished by the Lake. I think the rock formations they come from are called "Sharon Conglomerate," and can be found on Gildersleeve Mountain in Chapin Forest (Kirtland), at Thompson Ledges, at Nelson-Kennedy Ledges, and around Chardon by the Best Sand quarries. Best Sand produces some of the purest silica sand in the world from these Sharon Conglomerate formations--and that's lucky for them indeed.

Give it a try. Find a luckystone down by the Lake, put it under your pillow--then let me know.