And Slave did visit his cranky Mother at mid-day. But the rest of the day was a blissful retreat to our empty nest, highlighted by some late afternoon fucking amidst the disheveled sheets of our bed.
And we even watched more of Downton Abbey. For Slave it's a bit more interesting in the 2nd season, with some of the characters off in the trenches in France. Maybe there are no vampires yet, but at least folks are getting out of the Manse a bit more, with the real world intruding. And it got me thinking about my own doughboy Grandfather, who drove an ambulance under General Pershing's command in the final horrific months of that war. We have his old WWI helmet sitting in our living room still.
Or did he?
Friday I was talking to a new acquaintance, who I discovered hails from the same musty Northeastern state capitol where I spent my early years. My family history is filled with tales of my Grandparents' minor role in an entrenched Irish Catholic political machine that ran the city for decades. The sort of machine that slipped easily across the border into what some of us now would consider organized crime in these more "transparent" days. Think Miller's Crossing if you are a fan of the Coen Brothers.
The Party Boss who kept the city under his thumb from the 1930's until his death in 1977 was named Dan, sharing the surname of the famous Irish nationalist "Liberator" of the 19th Century.
This new friend and I started trading stories about our home town. He shared one I'd never heard before: that the machine's blue blooded front man Mayor - Erastus - who held office over 42 years, from before WWII until the 1980's - may be the real grandfather, by way of a multi-decade mistress, of the blonde U.S. Senator who took the seat once held by a recently retired Secretary of State.
When I stopped by my Mother's Condo, I figured this was a better topic to chat about than which of her friends got sick or died this week."So Mom, is there any truth to the story that the old Mayor had a long serving Mistress, who's granddaughter is now a Senator?"
She claimed had not heard the name of her old State's latest US Senator, , but hardly seemed surprised by the yarn.
"All those guys had a girl on the side in those days...."
And then she went on to add some details of a different a story she mentioned to me once.
"You know, when I was born, Dan (The Boss) sent 3 dozen red roses to my mother's hospital room... she always said that it had the nurses gossiping .... "
"And how did you interpret that, Mom?"
"Well would it surprise me if Dan was my real father? What do you think?"
She added some more detail, about how the local ward boss was always attentive when she asked for money to support the school yearbook. And how her purported father always had some small role in the machine.
And when her father (my grandfather) died in the early 1950's, not long after I was born and after years of suffering from the lingering effect of "The Hun's" mustard gas, Dan came calling. My mother overheard some of the conversation.
"He offered to pay all the costs of the funeral.... but my Mother was stubborn... she said no...."
"But he did get her a patronage job after that, right?"
"Oh yes.... she had to live on something....."
Here's a picture of Dan with Erastus in the 1970's. (Of course, Dan is the short guy in the hat):
(There are only a handful of photos of record of Dan, all with that same fedora!)
I do remember my grandmother "going to work" everyday at some office in the old City Hall, always wondering what she actually did there. My guess: Not much. But she was "taken care of".
I noticed a thick biography of the Mayor on my Mother's shelf and paged through it as we talked. Sure enough, there was a reference to the Mayor's legendary Mistress, Polly, the current Senator's grandmother. My mother recognized many of the names, including Polly's husband, from the old Irish South end neighborhood.
So I borrowed the biography and last night delved into the chapter on the Mayor's "unusual" family life.
Turns out that he, Polly and her husband may have been in a classic cuckold relationship, before there was a name for it. After the Mayor's death in 1982, Polly gave a long interview to the author describing relaxed nights at home, the three of them, their kids too, lounging about, sipping scotch and chatting.
The Mayor spent little time at his own home, where his wife focused on an elaborate garden, shipping their two children off to boarding school. Instead Erastus was typically seen out on the town and at political conventions over the decades with the voluptuous, frank and earthy Polly, who seemed to be the only one who could publicly give the Mayor a good "talking too."
Here's a shot of the two of them in 1937, both on the right, front row. He was a 28 yr. old State Senator then. She was his 22 year old newlywed secretary, who got her job (naturally) through Dan.
So what's the real story? Was Polly some throwback dominatrix, who, not unlike Suzanne over at All Mine, had a submissive husband at home, and a more Alpha lover who ran the City as the classic big fish in a small town, and who also fathered her children?
Or, as she insisted long past Erastus's death, was their relationship purely platonic and political, with the Mayor hanging about simply because hers was the type of "normal" family that he did not have back at his own mansion on the hill?
And what about my own grandmother and Dan, the boss of bosses? Was he really my mother's father, and my purported grandfather the willing "cuck"?
Some family mysteries are more intriguing when left unresolved.
