WHEN I'M CALLING YOU
One of the small sorrows of my life is that I grew up
without benefit of a classic childhood nickname. Many of my friends had
monikers that fit them perfectly, ones that defined their appearance and
temperament. An appropriate handle spoke volumes about a kid’s style and
charisma. Some unfortunates received names that described their physical or
mental limitations. Children can be cruel at times.
Some girls had endearing and sweet nicknames, like my
cousins Babs Mary Heneghan (Galligan) and Pussy Mary Finnerty (Matchett). Mostly, boys twisted a girl’s name
around to make it sound funny. My grade school classmate, Geraldine Savrekeit,
did not like it when we called her Sauerkraut.
A few half-hearted efforts to nickname me failed to
endure the test of time. My brother referred to me as Skippy until I
began first grade as he thought I bore a resemblance to a comic strip character
by that name. It faded when my blond tresses turned brown.
My high school English teacher, Miss Marnell, called
me Archie, after the comedic bartender in the radio show, Duffy's
Tavern. He always answered the phone, “Duffy’s Tavern, Archie speaking. Duffy's
not here right now." (Duffy never
uttered a word on this program.) However,
none of my classmates took up the cause. To them, I remained good old
wisecracking Joe.
In college, one of my fraternity brothers often called
me Jose Finnergots when he got
drunk, a phrase he insisted demeaned my manhood. He spoke five
languages, most of them polyglot, and enjoyed combining parts of different
words with hilarious effect. For better or worse, none of my other college
chums hailed me thus.
Some kids are born to have a nickname bestowed on them
because of their genes. Jackie Red Burke comes to mind. While every
red-haired person qualifies for this name, his hair color blazed a spectacularly
orange-red shade, curlier than Shirley Temple’s. He inherited his hair color
from his mother, a beautiful woman. His father had the distinction of being Hoboken
Francis Fash, a sweet-tempered boy who used to skate
with me to the public library when we were in sixth grade, had a perfect nick
name: Beansie. He smoked cigarettes
all the time, and could always be relied upon to share one with moochers like
me.
I had the great misfortune of attending grade school
with the four Stinson brothers, Jim, Joe, Ed and Eugene, a year apart in age.
Ed, my classmate, never picked on me as did the other three. He answered to his
nickname: Nunu.
I never learned how the two brothers came to be called
by those singular IDs. Their nicknames had a melodic ring to them, Nini and Nunu. To me, one meant peace, the other meant war.
Kenneth Moore earned his nickname the hard way. While
playing marbles one afternoon, someone tossed a large stone into the air. It
landed on his noggin. Thereafter, he seemed to act somewhat bemused. At least
sufficiently for us to dub him Cueball, a title that bore no testament
to his pool playing skill. Rather, it seemed to fit his quirky demeanor.
A grade school chum named Robert Lahr took great
pleasure in strangling me. He called it wrestling, I called it mayhem. Out of
fear, I claimed him as a friend, hoping this would subject me to less brutal
treatment than he handed out to his enemies. It worked, and I managed to get
through high school with him as a classmate without loss of limb. Behind his
back, some of us called him Li’l Robba Lala, a name that both mocked and
imitated the way he seemed to pronounce his name. It would embarrass me now,
should he hear of this. Worse yet, he might put me in his famous stranglehold.
There were two Hoboken
Let me not forget Maurice Stack, whose father and
uncle owned the Stack & Stack Insurance Company. His family wealth
allowed him to own our sandlot team’s only football helmet, and a catchers'
mitt, shin guards and mask. He generously shared his equipment with others. Back
then, we called him Moe. Later, his
high school classmates called him Punchy, a nickname he seemed to relish.
Be it Moe or Punchy, he never outgrew either of these childhood
nicknames, even after he inherited the family business and became a man of some
prominence in the community.
Richard Taylor could outrun the wind when we were
grade school kids. In a fifty-yard race, in which I led the first forty, he
flew by me and won by five yards. He played on my sandlot football team one
year, and helped make us invincible. He outran everyone. No one could tackle
him. He went on to set high school track sprint records and won an athletic
scholarship to Notre Dame from which he flunked out, unfortunately. Everyone
called him Gee Gee (or perhaps Gigi), a perfect nickname. Gee gees is a
term once used to refer to racehorses. In his prime, Gigi could have beaten
most thoroughbreds in a fifty-yard dash. On the other hand, had I thought to
put a jockey on his back, he might not have beaten me that day.
Wait, I think I hear Beansie calling me.
“Hey Joe, have you seen Cueball?”
“Yeah, he’s playing marbles with Red and Moe.”
“You wanna go to the movies with me, Nini and Nunu?”
“Nah. I’m gonna play Hittin’s Out with Little Pickels.”
My boyhood chums like to stay in touch. They call me
on my brain cell every day.
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