"To save a sparrow Lopsided" (Part Three – Chapters End "Home Sweet Home")

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Part Three: Home Sweet Home

Chapter One

A Soldier Goes Home

Shannon O’Day, returned to the United States in the summer of 1919 twenty-years old now. He had spent free time along the Rhine with some French soldiers, and German girls before the corporal caught his ship back home; not beautiful, more plain than pretty. In the few pictures he took, you got just a glimpse of the Rhine. By the time Shannon O’Day returned home, all the celebrations had come and passed. He was too late, hysteria had filled the cities, now peace had set in, and reactions of the people were back to normal-just to be written for posterity’s sake. Shannon needed someone, anybody would do, to talk to, to have listened to him, so he could get it all out, unbolted.

As people listened to Shannon it appeared they wanted his stories to be more fictionalized, and he accommodated them, so they’d continue to listen, yet it was drowning him. He didn’t like being vulnerable, a side show, with his lies, lies unimportant to him, just entertainment for listeners.

During this time, had spent the fall in Minnesota, and deeply in the city of St. Paul. He slept long hours, eating at a bar and restaurant, called The Coney Island Bar, "on St. Peter Street, between 6th and 7th streets, was a short walk from his apartment Wabasha Street. The evening had an old violin and guitar black faded brown, too small for him, but he had bought one of the manypawn shops along Wabasha.

When drunk, drunk and mostly in recent months after his return from Europe, and when his friends were drunk bar, he was a hero to many, and sober, only to his brother Gus was a hero who had a small farm in a short ways outside the city limits in the direction of township Stillwater.

One way not far from Coney Island Bar, which made delicious Coney Island Hot Dogs, with the unions made them before, and a lot of burgers with beans and an Italiansauce, and cheese, he’d head onto the Gem Bar, a more bar type bar, with cool reeking smells and moistness of a bar.

It was this one night after Shannon O’Day had been home, three months, near winter of 1919, when he went into the Gem Bar, she was a waitress, and she smoothed her apron out when she saw him.

“Do you want a beer?” Sally-Anne Como asked, then thought of what she said, “I, mean, what would you like sir?”

“Yeah!” said Shannon, with tired and bloodshot eyes, which she crawled like a robot.

"I know your brother Gus, is in its off, we talk a lot, tell us your views on the girls here in Germany, you know, the Great War?" He was completely fascinated by him.

"I bet it does," Shannon said with a chuckle.

"Yes, he does relay," said Sally-Anne.

"After work one day I'd like to bring to the bar and buy you a Coney Island Coney Island, okay?"

"Yes," said Sally-Anne, thenHe added: "Uncle Isaiah says he knows of yaw!" Shannon Blackman looked at the large bar behind him, looked familiar: "Yes, I know, okay," said Shannon, "was a bit 'since I saw was old when I met him some years ago, and looks old now, I think, are surprised to see him still kicking. "

'Well, I suppose I better get back to work, "he said.

Shannon looked liked him, liked him, and he looked long, "You 'snewspaper? "He asked.

It submitted the document to him, Saint Paul Pioneer Press. And as he read it, looked Old Uncle Isaiah, remembering the first time I saw him, met him:

(Daydreaming) It was the Nigger Roe, is what we all called him, we all knew where it was, on Rondo, I had never walked this road alone, a fact, I had never walked this road at all, riding it down, turned a couple of friends through his quarters. And this one night, aweekend night, late after the bars closed, I met Hank Lowery, and Seven Lundberg, and Charley Lund we all went down to Nigger Town, to this after hours club. That was the night I met the man they called Uncle Isaiah, he had a crowbar lying on an old wooden table, alongside the door entrance to the after-hours joint. I presupposed he was the bouncer.

“Youall ole-enough to drink whitey?” he asked. He had already let my friends through, put an ink stamp on their hand.

“All right, all right,” he said “no reason to be afraid of this big black nigger, you ever been so close to one before?”

And I didn’t say a word, and to this day, I have never seen a man laugh so hard, laughing behind his laughing, until he had to take hold of his stomach, undo a few buttons on his shirt, or they’d pop off. I was all of fourteen-years old then. Gus was to catch up with us, but he hadn’t showed up yet.

“Jes’ call me Uncle Isaiah, this her’ crowbar aint fer you son, it fer those wild ones that is a-comin’, they jes’ is not her yet…! I knowen you aint no trouble maker, cuz you is too scared to be one, so, you go-on in dhere, and be my guest.”

After going to the after-hours joint several times Uncle Isaiah would say to me, chidingly, and then jokingly, “Youall’s goin’ in dhere to try and see dhe black girl’s behinds, pumping up and down inside those dresses until somebody stops dhem,” then he’d look at me again and say, “Yippee!”

“Sally-Anne,” yelled Shannon, and she come over and stood by him, “Sally-Anne, please don’t muss up the paper next time, no one can read it proper.”

She stood there a moment, watched him unfold the paper again, trying to iron out the wrinkles on the table with the palms his hands, he liked reading the paper.

“You are an odd one,” she said with a peculiar look on her face, “but I like heroes, I’ll meet you at the Coney Island Bar whenever you want!”

“Good,” said Shannon, “how old are you?”

“I’ll tell you, but you have to keep silent, I was seventeen. "

"Yes," said Shannon, "I thought so."

"You bet."

"Could not you get in trouble for lying?"

"I do not know."

"Sure you do. You can be my boyfriend, okay?"

"Sure. I'm your girl now."

"Sure you sure?" Shannon asked putting on a serious face.

"Are you sure, I'm sure, and if you're sure to love me, I can also be safer!"

"Uh, oh … maybe!"

"Will you love meforever?”

“Sure, why not!”

“You run along now, I got work to do,” said Sally-Anne, happy as a peacock, flapping its colorful wings.

She put his empty beer bottle on her try and brought it up to the bartender, Uncle Isaiah, and he dropped it back into a box, below him, and he started wiping down the counter, which he did quite often.

Chapter Two

The Prison

It was in 1921, Shannon O’Day was at the Gem Bar reading the paper, reading about two soldiers that had caught the last day of the battle of Verdun, who had given their history with a magazine, newspaper and collected about it at national level, when he read the names of two soldiers was the same as Shannon had lost two into account.

The statement read:

… Two sentries stood guard on duty outside the closed door of the small prison …; late in the night, a German soldier would come with a lantern in hand, across the hall from cell to cell, made noteall the sentries, and ordered all the guards to stand at attention for inspection. He then entered each prison’s cell, leaving the door ajar, to allow fresh air to enter. The dungeon was moist and dark, and silent. -it was gloom and shadows, mostly sleeping men; almost peaceful, until he’d show up. We’d had been laying on a bundle of straw, some men slept deeply, no one tried to escape.

The man they called captain, moved close to each one of us, standing tall by the frames of our prison doors, noiselessly standing. He’d press his clinched hands against our throats, his eyes gave a gesture of motionless terror-dots for pupils, he’d tell us to kneel and pray, he’d press his revolver to our lips, the whites of his eyes would open up wide, a dim light in them.

“Ah,” said he, “it is you tonight,” and he’d take one of us out of the cell, out and down the hallway, out through the metal doors of the prison, there beyond, never to return, or be seen, or heard of again. Then one day the doors opened and a French officer, an American and English stood by and one of them said, and I can not remember which, he said, "Your free, what do you mean by that?"

I thought this at the moment but does not say, but I will say now what I thought, because now I fully understand: each of us, and we all have to each a whole life in a sort of quiet, social order, beyond this simple law, nothing but war. There is no justice without equity to build for the futureno obligatory service to mankind. I want peace, that last word is what I told him, “We found peace!”

“What are you reading, you’re so intense?” asked Sally-Anne, Como, to Shannon.

“Nothing much, just a fling of manure, he throws the paper onto Sally-Anne’s tray, “it belongs in the sewer.”

Chapter Three

Gem Bar, Isaiah Christianson

It was old Isaiah Christianson, Uncle Isaiah to most folks he knew, fifteen-years he worked at the Gem Bar, Sally-Anne liked working there has been slow during the day, and she had his nights free. The bar was cold but weak, like most bars, but the Gem was dimmer, and Shannon O'Day liked the bar for this reason also, a kind of quiet bar.

Dim perhaps because the owner-Jefferson Manning, never washed the windows. Isaiah would have said the customer, the owner liked it, and kept the noisy young crowd. Isaiah said: "No one can see, and no body can see outside, so you do not know of anyonebusiness, and so that nobody can be in trouble. And so he just had to enter the old, mostly old, just like Gus and Shannon O'Day, but very few. Old And Isaiah was becoming very old and slow, and no longer worked in any after-hour joints, as did a few years ago, he needed sleep. He even playing cards and dice with the customer who is slowly taken. And to be honest, the old Isaiah could not see more clearly, however, a thick yellowish Gook surrounded hiseyes.

Mr. Jefferson Manning, was a big man, weighted some 400-pounds. Wore small glasses, ate all day long, eggs and pickles, and fried hamburger, and fried chicken and watermelon, and cakes, and pies, and popcorn, then would go up to the Coney Island Bar, and eat a half dozen Coney Island hotdogs in a fat bun, with chili been sauce, and cheese, and raw onions. He’d sit by the big gas stove in the middle of the floor of the bar, and wash it all down with two or three beers, then return to his apartment on top of his Gem Bar, take a two hour nap, and start the routine all over again. But he was going broke; he needed more money, even though his bar was paid for, left to him by his parents. And he was thinking, when he came in after taking that two-hour nape one spring day, in 1922, and he looked at those dirty windows, and he looked and he looked, and he formed an idea.

Chapter Four

Jobless Isaiah

Old Isaiah Christianson was fired, Mr. Manning, the owner of the Gem Bar, had come down from a nap, looked at his windows, looked at Sally-Anne, never even looked at Isaiah, and said “Sally-Anne, you’re the new bartender,” Isaiah’s fired, “I hope you know his duties, and if you don’t I’m sure it will not take you all that long to figure them out, get to it.”

Isaiah was in shock, he didn’t say a word, he was just too dumbfounded, he was handed a check for the weeks pay, and $500-dollars in cash, for severance pay, saying “I got new plans Isaiah, and you're in them, simply do not fit, I'm sorry! "

So he took a bucket of warm water and soap, and various rages and washed those windows cleaner, clean and clear as ice on the Mississippi River, a few blocks away. It helped me to paint, painted across the bar, walls and all the wood, the hiring of Shannon and Gus and Sally-Anne, after hours, and were painted in two days. Then he bought a large sign that said "Live Music Night, Jazz!"

And the crowd begancome almost immediately and two months was to make more money than he had throughout the previous year.

Well, this is not well with Isaiah, not a bit ', he took an aversion to everything, and rented an apartment across from a new hamburger joint called White Castle. " And he sat outside on a chair, a bottle of whiskey in hand, these little burgers, eating one after the other, and had cuss all the customers who went to a bar and called Mr.Manning every fat name he could think of and made a few up.

Some days he’d sit on the curb, until Mr. Manning called the police, and got a court order for him to stop his monkey business, stop being a pain in the ass for everybody, to stop his nonsense. The judge warned him that they had places for mentally ill folk, although everyone knew it was anger that got Uncle Isaiah’s goat.

And every week, when one of the waitresses would clean the windows now, Isaiah would throw dirt at the window, he actually had a little supply of it in little white sacks, he pull one out of his coat, and it was fine sand, and he’d spat in it, to get it nice and gooey, then throw it at the window. He even told Shannon one day when he was about to enter the bar, “Youall tell um, I goin’ to hit him ef’in I ever sees him alone.”

Chapter Five

Death

After a while old Isaiah only came out of his apartment on occasions, lost 100-pounds, of his 190-pounds he had at one time. His eyes It seemed cracked eggs in deep sockets, skin and face scruffy, unshaven, warts and pimples all over him. 'm Not saying that he forgot what he said about revenge against the fat man has never forgotten, never just managed to do it, and if he did, when he did, it was too late because when he arrived at that point, Mr. Manning was dead and has left him holding a bag filled with sand, which has never dropped once was Six Feet Under, then three months after Jefferson died Manning,died.

Manning died at fifty-three years old, a heart attack. Uncle Isaiah, at 73, of cancer; It would seem after he got fired he never recovered from the wound, worse than Shannon’s in combat, a deeper scare I’d say.

It wasn’t long after both their deaths, those windows got dirty again anyhow, and one of Manning’s relatives by the last name of Ingway, took over the Gem Bar, that was in 1923, they had closed the bar down for a spell I guess.

See Also : Fender Musical Instruments

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